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:
The beginning…
I have been in Greece since arriving with my parents on August 23rd… and I don’t think I have stopped moving since stepping off the plane. After a nice flight (during which the adorable Greek speaking flight attendant gave me her number so that we could get coffee next time she was in Athens. She also offered to give me some Greek lessons, but only in exchange for marrying her son… not so sure about that one.) Anyways, after the flight we dropped our things at the hotel and poked around Athens. The picture above is from the rooftop restaurant and bar of our hotel. We ate dinner and admired the Acropolis, which you could see from the roof and in this picture.
In the next two days we played the part of the ultimate tourists. We climbed up the Acropolis to see the Parthenon and the many other breathtaking temples, theaters, and ruins. They were absolutely stunning, despite a large portion being restored and covered with scaffolding, as was the view of Athens. I never realized just how large the city of Athens is; it sprawls out as far as the eye see, ending at the base of the hills surrounding the city. The heat was a killer on the way up, but the experience made the hike well worth it.
We also took a ferry from the port of Piraeus to the island of Aegina. Aegina is beautiful. It is the closest island to the mainland, being only 30-40 minutes form the coast and it was full of beach-like shops, Greek restaurants, and winding European alleyways. Despite being warned by locals that Aegina has felt the impact of being so close to the mainland and has become much more urban than other Greek islands, I was still quite delighted with the experience. 
The two highlights of our day there may have been during lunch…and both involved old men? The first was the Greek wedding reception we thought we had stumbled upon.
However, after further investigation, we discovered that the noisy people spilling onto the street were the result of a retirement party. 
In honor of his retirement, the old jeweler was selling all gold for half off! (sadly no purchases were made on our behalf).
The second highlight was when a little old Greek man hopped up onto his chair at a table near us, started dancing, and yelled “Opa!” several times when an accordion player came up to play at his table. Of course I caved and convinced my dad to give the accordion player a euro since he had created my first “Greek” experience!
The day we went to Aegina was the same day I moved my things into my house at the school as well as my birthday! It was so nice to be able to share my birthday with my family, rather than brand new people, in a brand new house, in a brand new country. With that said, my parents and I said our goodbyes that afternoon, I hoped on the bus, and went home to meet my new roommates. Only a few had arrived up to this point, but those who were there, Chris, Chris, Stephanie, and Allyson (all my roommates but one) went to dinner with Molly, the returning teaching fellow living in one of the apartments (four fellows live in the apartments off campus and six live in the house on campus). Molly took us to a great restaurant in Gazi, a hip neighborhood downtown. They kindly treated me to a delicious Greek dinner, wonderful conversation, and excellent company. It was a birthday certainly unlike any other, and one I won’t soon forget.
The next few days were spent unpacking, running errands to Carrefour (like a big Target!! it’s awesome!!), getting cell phones, and exploring the city. Once we finished these errands, all of which took much longer than one would think, considering we speak very little Greek (read: absolutely no Greek), during the weekend days, we began our orientation. Our orientation consisted of learning the structure of the school (there are basically two schools joined together, Psychico College and Athens College, to form the Hellenic American Educational Foundation — the middle and high schools of each are located on the main campus where I work and live, while each has it’s own elementary school campus located about 30 minutes away.) So anywho, we learned about the structure, a tid bit as to what we would be doing (each of the 10 Fellows has a separate placement, I’ll talk more about mine later…), we made reading packets for the English department, and we talked about which islands were a must see. That was the moment when I knew I had landed the dream job for a recent college grad… we were talking about where to vacation during our work orientation. I’m ready for a great year.
