The School Year Begins for Us All

Now that the actual move is behind us, we are settling in to the rhythms of life in Athens.  School started for the kids on Sept. 4 at Byron College in the northeastern suburb of Gerakas, and they have amazed us with the way they have gotten used to a whole new way of school life:  wearing uniforms, getting up early, riding the bus to school and back, taking Greek lessons (and French, in Alison's case) as well as adapting to British English:  ZEBra instead of ZEEbra, VEETamins instead of VITEamins, "rubber" for "eraser" and "biscuits" for "cookies", etc. etc.  We are right now trying to figure out if there will be any tryouts for girls' soccer ("football" here, of course) as the 5th and 6th grade girls are not mentioned in the letter that the sports dept. sent out.  It will be a great pity if Alison is not able to play team soccer for a year. 

The girls' teachers seem to be excellent, friendly and approachable, but we do find ourselves floundering in a lack of knowledge of all those small details which get taken for granted once you've done it:  what details of the uniform are required and which are optional, how does the sports program operate, how the lunch program operates.  All the students are assigned to houses, a la Harry Potter:  in this case, the houses are Heracles, Theseus, and Perseus.  (The girls are hoping to be in Perseus, as he is the only hero on the banner who is actually wearing clothes).  We were utterly unprepared for all the expenses that came our way for uniforms and books:  thank goodness we have the free housing attached to Gary's position here!  However, the worst of that bloodletting is over, and now we can settle down and see how the budget actually operates under normal circumstances. 

Gary started Greek lessons at the Athens Centre on Sept. 1, M-F for a month, and I on Sept. 10, 3 times a week .   It's a lovely place with a whitewashed courtyard and lots of folk art and posters for various cultural events, and a varied international student body.  Folks are there for all sorts of reasons, including embassy personnel, folks working on the Olympics, and international business people.  And a few just there on a lark.   We were unsure what class levels we should be in, since we both had studied Greek when we were here in 1984-85, but it has managed to squirrel itself away in pretty obscure areas of our brains.  Gary, who has been back on several occasions since then, and also has occasion to use modern Greek in his work from time to time, has kept it more active, and he settled in at Level III.  He is very happy with the class:  the instructor is excellent, the class is small (only one other pupil:  a British woman who writes for travel guides) and he gets lots of personal attention.  He's also taken to joining the Loring Hall maids here at the school when they take their coffee break in the morning, and that has given him even more practice in practical everyday Greek.  I started out at Level I, but was very unsure if I should be there:  although the words were not coming out in conversation, the grammar was too basic and the homework a bore.  So I tried Level II for the second class and will stay there if I can keep up:  the grammar is more or less where I left off 20 years ago, although I am having a hard time dredging up the vocabulary from the depths.  It's unsettling to be trying to learn a language at the age of 49 and seeing just HOW much the old brain has atrophied in 20 years -- things are not sticking like they used to, and I have to keep looking up words that I just looked up a minute before -- and then again five minutes later.  But repetition will have to drum some things in, I hope, and every word that sticks has immediately come in handy!  In the meantime, I am just grateful for the ubiquity of English speakers, who luckily have been available at all critical moments so far.

--Edie Folta, September 2003

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