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When I accepted the Grinnell Corps fellowship last March, there was a secret fear lodged somewhere deep within my stomach. I wasn't afraid of being far from home, or living in a new culture. I wasn't afraid of long plane rides, or getting up in front of a class to teach, or being responsible for seventy-five teenagers. I wasn't scared of being run over by a speeding car, or even of bird flu. But I was terrified- terrified- of learning Greek.
Though I'm an extremely verbal person (perhaps excessively so, at times), and though I have no problem expressing myself in the English language, I've never had any luck with foreign ones. Five years of high school Spanish left me frustrated, discouraged, and barely able to construct a sentence. Freshman Latin was a complete disaster, apart from ensuring that my cumulative GPA went steadily up for the remainder of my college career, simply by virtue of the fact that I was no longer taking Latin.
Learning Greek in Greece, however, is a completely different matter. I'm certainly not going to finish the year as a fluent speaker, of course, and I admit that I sometimes only halfheartedly study the finer grammatical points of the language that we cover in our Greek class. I understand a lot more than I can say, and I'm shy about using what I know. But the exciting thing is, an increasing amount of the time, I really do understand what people are saying. And sometimes I can even reply to them in Greek. The difference is that, of course, languages need to be learned practically, and no amount of textbook memorization can replace actual experience, and no test or exam can create the same impetus as actual necessity. My Greek skills may be imperfect, but they come in handy when I want to order a sandwich or explain to the woman at the repair shop how I managed to break my camera. (My cat did it.)
This is, of course, what Brad and I provide for the students; practical foreign language help. We give the Anatolia students with a reason to speak English and to help them practice. After all, if they don't talk to us, they won't get permission to order gyros or help with their homework. I think that our presence helps some of them, though of course the students who need the most English help are often the shyest and most tentative when it comes to chatting with us.
I do find myself delighting in the English mistakes that Greek students make; they are sometimes humorous, sometimes poetic, and always remind me of what a terribly complicated language I speak. "The door of out is next to the room of the Brad" a ninth grader informed me once. Other kids ask me to "open" or "close" the lights, or talk about "writing a test," while nearby restaurants offer "Godfish," "Grab," and my favorite, "Pudding with slightly trashed rice."
I frequently moan about Greek, cursing the fact that "Nai" means "Yes" and P makes the R sound while v is a lowercase N. However, I often have an extremely difficult time explaining the structure of my native tongue. Only last week, I spent a good twenty minutes drilling my tutoring students on the differences between 'abused,' 'misused,' 'unused', and 'disused.' Looking slightly shell-shocked, they emerged from the exercise and begged for a rule to determine which negative prefix attaches to which adjective and when. I had to break the bad news gently; it's mostly a matter of memorization and of course, practice.
Of course, my verbal and linguistic experiences are only one facet of my life here in Greece; I also spend plenty of time ushering kids to study hall, acting as the mediator between arguing teenagers, and urging students to either go to bed or get out of bed, depending upon the time of day. Several nights ago, I popped into one of the girls' bedrooms toward the end of a long evening shift in the dorm, and with the prospect of 7am wake-up duty looming ahead of me. "Good morning girls!" I said cheerfully. They responded with giggles and a reminder that it was after 11pm at night. Sheepishly I admitted that my mind was numb from popping in and out of rooms, and I had gotten ahead of myself.
The most important holiday of the orthodox calendar is Greek Easter. It is currently approaching, and we have been following the pre-Easter celebrations for some time now. In mid-February, right around the time of Mardi Gras, I went for an evening stroll through downtown and found the entire area packed with costumed revelers, all singing, dancing, grilling souvlaki and eating cotton candy. Everyone was elaborately costumed, and I was delighted to see little girls in poufy dresses, adults in Roman soldier helmets, and best of all, a thirty-five year old Harry Potter smoking a cigarette with Yassir Arafat. That, I later discovered, was the holiday known as "Smoky Thursday", and the beginning of several weeks' worth of Carnival festivities. Two weeks later I traveled with Brad and Will Stroebel to Naoussa, a nearby town that holds an annual parade on the Sunday before Lent. We watched large numbers of young boys in masks and armor dance down the street waving swords, while a 'brides' (either little girls or men
in drag) paraded between them in elaborate dresses. The streets were filled with people in costume, and it was wonderful to watch a large circle of people dancing in the largest square in town; Roman soldiers, hippies, women in traditional dress, clowns and G.I.s, arm-in-arm, stepping in time to the music.
Of course, after Carnival began a period of abstention and fasting; meat and dairy are officially taboo until Easter, although people follow this rule with varying degrees of rigidity. Religion permeates Greek life in a way that is foreign to most Americans. The vast majority of Greeks are Orthodox and the church is connected to the state; an arrangement that most Americans find odd. Nonetheless, while religion pervades the Greek culture, it does not always dictate how people think or act; most of the Greeks I know seem fairly relaxed about their adherence to religious rules and customs. One student who had spent a summer in North Carolina told me "it's amazing how Americans are so religious!" This offhand comment left me contemplating the different ways that religion can play a part in life.
Still, though religion dictates that springtime is a period of austerity, the atmosphere is anything but. The weather is getting increasingly lovely as Spring opens (the Greek word for spring is 'fthnopero' or 'opening') and the Anatolia campus is blooming. On several March mornings, arising at the crack of dawn for the aforementioned wake-up duty, I caught a glimpse of the tree outside my window, covered in snowy blossoms, and wondered momentarily "did it snow overnight? Is school cancelled?" It took me a little while to adjust to the change of seasons, which takes place earlier here than in Iowa.
As I stumble over Greek words and English grammar, I also stumble over the inevitably tricky terrain of life in a foreign country. However, the once mystifying and occasionally frustrating experience of my first few months has become smoother as the months go by. I realize that I have probably adapted, slowly, without even realizing it, and wonder what my self of eight months ago would make of myself now.
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