The logistics…
I am loving Greece so far. The teaching fellowship is going wonderfully. Many of you may be wondering what exactly I am doing, where I am living, and why I keep posting pictures from around Europe on my facebook page. Well let me use this post to explain the logistics.
As you learned in my first post, I am working at Athens College. It is said to be the most prestigious private school in Greece, producing CEOs, famous writers, and high ranking politicians including a prime minister. Technically, the school is broken down into two separate “colleges,” Athens College and Psychico College. Don’t let the term “college” confuse you. In American educational terms, they are two, private K-12 schools. The middle schools, or “Gymnasium” consists of grades 7-9 and the high schools, or “Lykeion” consist of grades 10-12. These are located on the campus that I work and live on, along with beautiful basketball, tennis, soccer, and aquatic facilities . The elementary schools are off campus, and three of the other teaching fellows commute there. For more information on Athens College, click the links below.
http://www.athenscollege.org/html/history.htmor
http://www.haef.gr/index.php?LANG=en
Here are a few pictures of the campus:
I work for both colleges, Psychico College and Athens College. I work two days a week in the Office of U.S. University Admissions and Counseling (located in the Benaki building pictured above) and three days in the Library. In the counseling office I read personal statements for kids, help then with random questions about schools, and teach an SAT course for juniors once a week after school. In the library I teach a Research and Information Skills course to 7th graders. They come in with their English class once a week and I get to teach them that period. They have already given me 4 classes to teach by myself and assist in several others. Talk about getting thrown right into it! It has definitely been a blast so far, and I learn something new every day.
Also, nearly everyone at the school speaks English, which is obviously nice. I’ve even been able to talk to those who don’t a small bit… each morning one of the school janitors, an adorable little old man says, “Good Morning Κυρία (this means miss, mrs. or ms.)! How are you?” (that is the extent of his English) so I respond in Greek, “γειά σας κύριε! καλά, ευχαριστώ! εσείς? (that means “Hi Sir! Good, thank you! And you?”… and that is just about the extent of my greek). It does get annoying when the kids start whispering in Greek in class and I can’t understand them though!!
Finally, there are 9 other teaching fellows in the program, ages 22-26. Most just graduated. They are from Brown, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Charlottesville, UCLA, MSU, Furman, LMU, Smith, and Yale. I live with 5 of them in a house on campus (Allyson, Chris Duffy, Chris Shukla, Kristin, and Stephanie) while the others are living in apartments off campus. We each have our own room. So far, life is good!
Pictures of our humble abode:
