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One morning, a Tuesday, I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. I stumbled across my room and slowly picked up the phone. The head of the boarding department, one of my several bosses at Anatolia College, was on the other end of the line. "Hi, Brad, how are you doing?" I said I was fine, thinking it odd that my boss would wake me up just to find out how I was getting on. "Do you know what day it is?" I answered that it was Tuesday-wait, TUESDAY! On Tuesday, as with Friday, it is my responsibilities to wake up all 75 students living in the dorm at Anatolia promptly at 7 a.m., so that they can be ready when the school bell rings at 8. I reached over to look at my clock, ignoring my boss. The dim numbers on my clock read 7:28. I had messed up, big time. I quickly apologized to my boss, and rushed out my door, trying to make up for my mistake. However, Emily and another dorm advisor had gotten up to check on the kids, and only a couple of them need to be woken up more than once. Still, with my s
urge of energy I flew about their rooms, checking every five minutes to see that they had their books packed, and hair brushed. Forensic evidence later revealed that a.) I had gone to bed too late the previous night and b.) my alarm clock was set for 6:45 p.m. not a.m. I felt really bad about letting the kids down and giving them a few extra minutes of sleep, especially since my boss knew about it, so I vowed that the next time, I would be sure to wake them up at 7, on the dot.
The following Tuesday, I did just that. At 7, I started banging on the girls' doors, saying "?a??µ??a, it's time to wake up." In the third room I roused from rest, one of the girls groggily asked, "Brad, do we have school today?" I was confused. However, I glanced out the window, and saw some snow; not an Iowa-caliber snowfall, but several inches, which was enough to cover the ground and the students' desire to learn. Still, I had no way of knowing if there was school or not-I didn't know which radio stations to tune into to hear school closures. Determined, I told the girls that I wasn't sure whether they had school or not, and continued knocking on doors. When I had finished waking up the girls' floor, I went downstairs and saw my boss walking towards me. It was the second straight week he checked in on me during my wake up duty. He said to me, "Brad, there's no school today." All of my hard work, by which I mean getting up before 9, had been for nothing! I turned around to go tell the girls the
news, but a couple of the students had overheard my boss, and, thanks to several proclamations and shouts, everyone knew that they would have the day off.
The snow day was a lot of fun, at first. Unlike most mornings, the boys and girls were talkative at breakfast, and lingered over their bowls of Cocoa Puffs. Several of the boys gathered up their blankets to watch football videos together in the playroom, and someone started a fire in the fire place. Of course, at 7:50-ten minutes before school would have started-I heard some girls complaining because they would probably have school the following day. The snow fell during the middle of exam weeks, which made the International Baccalaureate student happy-they had more time to study. Later on, I had the best snowball fight of my life, thanks to some eighth and ninth graders. It spanned over an hour. Somehow, the teams were the Greeks versus the internationals, so I sided with a couple Bulgarian students and some Greek-Americans. I think the dominance of football over baseball and other throwing sports has negatively impacted Greece's accuracy in snowball fights. Then again, I had a sizable age and heigh
t advantage over the kids, but their teamwork in spraying snow in my face helped them overcome their weak fundamentals.
While that morning was one of my best times at the dorms, that afternoon proved to be at the other end of the spectrum. All of the dorm advisors and the head of the boarding department, my oft-mentioned boss, gathered to talk about what to do with one of the dorm students. Last year, this student broke a big, big rule, and was told that any small rule-breaking this year would result in expulsion. By my boss's count, there have been nine of these small infractions this year, including directing disobeying a dorm advisor a couple weeks ago. Logically, this students' case seems easy: kick 'em out! However, this kid's a senior, and will be graduating in about a hundred days. After five hours-yes, FIVE-of deliberation, we decided to give the student one last chance. I agree with the decision we made, but the process was unbearable, and at times unnecessary. Discipline is definitely a difficult part of the job. I not as familiar with the school rules or the Greek language as most of the students here, and
I know they try to get away with more when I'm on duty. And I let them, because, in the end, I know (and make sure) that they're having a good time, they're not hindering their education, and they're safe. So, despite a few dumb mistakes, this kid will probably graduate on time, thanks to a little leniency and a lot of debating.
When I don't have long meetings, wake up duty, or snowball fights, I have a lot of time to myself. Dr. Phil Holland, the head of the English Department at Anatolia, recently apologized to Emily and I because the English faculty has been remarkably healthy this year, and we have not done very much substitute teaching. I'm thankful not to have a full course load of school-it's nice to be able to read and write at my own pace, knowing that no one will grade my performance. I have been mildly productive with my time, though: I've started producing a podcast, which is a weekly audio recording, on my life and Greece. If you'd like to hear the sound of my voice, point your web browser http://feeds.feedburner.com/soundvoice.
I've also used my time and location in Eastern Europe to do some traveling. In December, I went to Kosovo with a bus full of students from the American College of Thessaloniki. We saw Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo, and got to speak with several politicians, U.N. workers, and journalists, and learned about the present and future status of the area. Kosovo, which NATO protected in 1999 with a bombing campaign, isn't progressing in its postwar state as smoothly as Bosnia-Herzegovina. The province, nominally still part of Serbia and Montenegro, is controlled by NATO troops and a U.N. government. Ethnic Albanians, who are in the vast majority in Kosovo, want independence from Serbia, but most of the Serb minority does not want this and is concerned about their civil rights and security. Though cable news networks have shifted their focus to other warzones, the problems in Kosovo haven't left. However, thanks to international aid, Prishtina has been rebuilt, and while it looks somewhat drab, it is a livel
y city.
In January I got to visit my sister in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Montenegro. She's also doing service work in Europe, though her organization, Women in Black, a pacifist feminist organization, seems to be doing a lot more "good," and is certainly more politically active than I am at Anatolia College. The Balkans aren't a great place for travel in the winter, and Belgrade was quite cold, but friendly. Most of the old city survived the NATO bombings I mentioned in the last paragraph, though the Chinese Embassy remains in ruins. In Belgrade you can also see the grave of Josip Broz Tito, who somehow held Yugoslavia together for decades, and was, according to many, actually a decent person. Belgrade is also the final resting place of Nicola Tesla, the physicist who invented the induction motor, which I saw a working model of, but am not close to understanding how it works.
Back on campus, a nice routine is developing. Since Anatolia College is an American school, they celebrate all the familiar holidays. Emily and I gave speeches at Thanksgiving (mine attacked the Dallas Cowboys) before settling into a turkey dinner, and for Christmas we joined the students in a gift exchange. Despite the winter weather, plenty of students still turn out for my baseball club, and several of them manage to hit my junkball pitches. Emily and I are also starting to tutor some of the dorm students in English; I'm very happy to pass on my sage advice about not splitting infinitives.
Every day and every week, I realize that there are tons of opportunities for travel, cultural exchange, and goofing around with kids here in Greece, at Anatolia, and the only thing limiting me is an improperly set alarm clock and frigid weather.
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