Let's talk about home!

In the spirit of me trying to find cheap/free housing associated with my jobs (i.e. SJP dorm, Tomahawk tent), I opted to live in an on-campus house at my school in Athens.  Now, I'm pretty sure most of you have no idea about the scope of this campus, so I figured I'd give you a tour.  We'll start off with the school grounds and will end with my luxurious mansion.

Kollegio Athinon (Athens College) is a campus between two well-off parts of outer-Athens: Psychiko and Halandri.  It's a gated campus, with security staffing the gate 24x7.  I suppose this is necessary for two reasons:  First, this school draws the children of many wealthy and/or important Greeks.  This includes children of the former or current Prime Minister, children of diplomats, actors and actresses, and many others of the same type.  That's not to say they do not have your typical Greek family sending children to school here, but you get the picture.

From the gate, we have the option of hanging a left to the athletic buildings or straight to the academic buildings.  Athletic buildings include a swimming pool, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, a turf soccer field, tennis courts, a weight room, and a racquetball court.  

This pool has the honorable distinction of being the cleanest body of water I've EVER swam in.  

Yes, that includes Long Lake.  And the YMCA.
Maybe those aren't the best comparisons...

Like I mentioned earlier, if you went straight up the hill from the gate, you'll start passing a few other buildings.  The first one of distinction is the library.  This is the largest school library in Greece, and it has a full-time staff of around twelve.  Then there are the teaching fellows, who work in the library either with specific classes or full time.  Tons of resources.  Further up the hill is clearly the hallmark building of campus: the Benakio.  This is the building that I'll be spending most of my time in, and it houses most of the classrooms for the high school.

On either side of the Benakio are two other awesome buildings:  to the west, we have Saka, the alumni and staff "lounge."  The school hosted a cocktail party for myself and my co-fellows on Thursday evening, and they regularly host other functions.  Pictured is Saka in preparation for (presumably) a wedding.  To the east of the Benakio is the Athens College Theater.  This is a really large auditorium (probably seats upwards of 2,500), with a few areas for art displays as well.  Apparently professional groups come through to use that venue quite often, too!

And now, finally, we head up to my house.  I think the best way to describe the room is to go through the description provided to us and fact-check it:

The house has six bedrooms... (FALSE:  It has five real bedrooms, and there are seven people living in it.)
two and a half bathrooms... (True, but only when they're all functional)
a kitchen... (Technically true, but it's a stretch.  We have no stove nor oven, but a combination of the two that we affectionately call a "stoven."  Sketchy.)

a breakfast nook...  TRUE

a living room...  TRUE, a very nice one at that too!

a library...  FALSE.  That is now my "bedroom."

a rooftop balcony...  True, but it is completely filled with a solar panel.

a piano... True.

and a lovely garden terrace... False.  It is not lovely yet.  It will be, though!

complete with a 264 gallon swimming pool!  False.  Our inflatable pool was punctured.  We have a 0 gallon swimming pool.

Regardless, it's home.  In time, I think we'll all grow to love the place!

Our chapel.

I may be cursed...

Some of you may remember my woes when I was trying to return to the United States from my time in Ireland a few years ago.  You'll probably remember that it didn't go well.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just trust me on this one: it's a great story, but one to hear in person.

Anyway, yesterday I was embarking on my first trans-Atlantic journey since that lovely trip in 2010.  It started off very promising.  The sun was shining at the Rochester International Airport, my bags had been packed for several hours now, and I had just enjoyed a deliciously filling El Carambas lunch with a friend.  Well, we arrive at the airport and unload the bags, when lo and behold, my first flight is delayed by an hour.

To give you a bit of perspective, my itinerary never really gave me much time between flights -- usually between 90 and 120 minutes.  I had a flight from Rochester to Chicago, followed about two hours later by a flight from Chicago to London-Heathrow, followed about 1.5 hours later by my final flight to Athens  You can see how delays make travelling on that itinerary significantly more difficult to deal with, particularly for trans-Atlantic flights.  To say the least, I was a bit nervous.

After browsing the internet for a bit looking at potential options in case, you know, I miss my connecting flight in Chicago, I figured I may as well just go wait by the gate.  We board the plane, then are told that our wheels-up time is being pushed back, due to bad weather in Chicago.  Great.  But, there's not a whole lot I can do, so I contentedly read SkyMall magazine.  Twice.

7:31 PM:  Finally!  The 5:20 flight is leaving the ground now!  So we're two hours late for a 1:55 layover... I may be a bit fuzzy in my math skills at times, but that doesn't seem to bode well for me.  It turns out that our in-air time was only about 45 minutes (through thunderstorms, mind you), so we were de-planing in Chicago at 8:25.  There's a chance, right!  After all, my international flight isn't scheduled to leave for another ten minutes, and it's in a different terminal where I'll need to clear security again...

Luckily, British Airways was especially accommodating for me.  Their ticketing agent must've seen the desperation in my eyes as I'm running up to the counter at 8:35, hoping the plane hasn't left yet.  It hadn't.  In fact, he is able to call over to the gate and have them hold the plane for me, and then he escorted me through employee-only areas of the airport, sped me through security, and got me to the gate in about three minutes.
Did I mention that I love British Airways now?  I sat down in seat 22K, and within a minute, I am being offered a newspaper and a glass of water.  After I have a chance to re-assess my surroundings, I realize that I'm literally the only person sitting in row 22.  Yes, I have the entire row to myself.  This'll be a nice flight.  Top this off with a delicious dinner, several travel bottles of wine, and The Hobbit, and I'm golden.

Arriving in the London-Heathrow airport,I also had a bit of a tight connection, but luckily the plane to Athens was also running a bit late.  I boarded without too much difficulty, and about three hours later I set foot on Athenian pavement, minus my checked luggage, which was presumably left behind in Chicago.  Oh, the glories of air travel.

What's next?

As promised in my last post, I'd have some exciting news for you in the future  Well, at this point the drama is all but vaporized, as you all know what I'm about to share with you.  I've been awarded a Fulbright grant to work with high school students at Psychico and Athens Colleges in Athens, Greece.  Obviously, I'm pretty stoked about the opportunity, and I hope to use this as both a personal development tool as well as professional development.  For your convenience, the rest of this post will be a FAQ section.  If your question isn't included on the list, then you'll either have to Skype me for the answer or live without knowing it (OR I suppose you could write a comment...)!

Q:  "Will you be teaching, or will you be a student at the college?"  (Another variation: "Are you qualified to teach college students?")
A:  The institution I'm working at is a private Greek primary and secondary school, serving grades 1-12.  College is just a term used in Greece for this type of institution  Also, the school has its own campus (a pretty nice one, too -- more on that later), which is probably the biggest similarity to the college you're thinking of.

Q:  Have you been to Greece before?
A:  Nope!  My first time on Grecian soil was about 20 hours prior to the posting of this entry.

Q:  What language do they speak in Greece?
A:  Greek...

 Q:  What will you be teaching?
A:  Good question!  That's one topic that is still up in the air right now.  My primary role will be in the English department, rotating among the various classes to teach a lesson or a unit at a time.  Other jobs may include some college admissions counselling, SAT preparation courses, some extracurricular activities, and hopefully some time in other classrooms of my choosing (i.e. social studies).

Q:  What about the Prep School?  Wasn't that a great job?
A:  Sure it was.  The biggest difference between the Prep School and here (among many smaller differences) is that this school is in Athens, whereas the Prep School is in Minnesota.  I trust you can see the allure...

Q:  How long will you be gone?
A:  I'll be working over here until mid-July 2014.  There's a good chance I'll be back in the States for the Christmas season, and I promise I'll bring some Athenian weather with me.

Two years later...

Okay, it's been a while.  I had high aspirations to be telling stories about my time in D.C., but then my supervisor strongly discouraged we interns from blogging or engaging in any kind of published media.  Something about Congressional fallout... you know.  So that went out the window.  And then, I'll be honest, I just forgot about this.  Oops.

So for those of you who have been diligently following this blog and may have concluded that I simply was doing nothing with my life, I'm happy to tell you this -- YOU'RE WRONG.  I've been very busy with lots of cool stuff.  Here are some of the highlights:

 Interning has its perks.

Always a pleasure to be with friends, especially at weddings! 

I didn't take this picture.  I just think it's really cool.  Michael Becker © 2012

Reunion of the Cottage 4 residents! 

Family picture!
No particular reason for it or anything... 

Trip out to Colorado to visit a good friend.
Pictured: Rocky Mountain National Park 

 Myself and a handful of the students I work with at my school
on a camping trip to Itasca State Park!

Nothing better to get into the Christmas spirit than a
fireplace and Christmas decorations!

And now it's mid-April and I have stuff I should be working on, but when it looks more like December out than April, it's tough to get the motivation really going.  Why else do you think I chose such a strange day to re-kindle this blog again?

Anyway, keep posted for more updates on my future plans.  I promise they'll be exciting!

Memorial Weekend!

Yep, I'm in the Swamp. And let me tell you, D.C. is very swamp-esque. Extraordinarily humid, it's pretty brutal running around in the middle of the afternoon. But with so much to see, there's no way I'm just going to stick around our house!

I'm sure I've talked to most (probably all) of you about my summer plans, but for the sake of consistency, I'll toss out a bit of a recap. I'm out in Washington D.C. with eleven other students from CSB/SJU. We are living together in a row house about two blocks from the Capitol, and we are all interning at various organizations or offices throughout the city. I will be starting an internship in a Senate office on Wednesday morning. I'm not really certain what my job description will be -- just that I'll need to play the professional.

The past day and a half has been jam-packed with a bunch of orientation-like stuff. Had to find a grocery store for food, made a run to Target, and figure out the Metro. Those are all the practical things that had to be done. After that, I started the impractical things, such as a photo scavenger hunt across DC. Highlights of this include:

1. A search for Sarah Palin, who was making unscheduled, unannounced stops at various monuments, memorials, and landmarks across D.C. all day.
2. A conversation with a Secret Service agent outside of the White House, in which he described the weather as being "hot as balls." Never thought I'd hear that one from someone in his position.
3. A delicious (free) pizza dinner.
4. Things like this:

Yeah, I think I'll be enjoying D.C.

What's next?

This.

And the long-awaited return...

... of Evan Howard to blogging!

I'm sitting here at work, watching the State of the Union. And while I've been sitting here, I've decided that it's about time to re-start this guy up.

Now, it would probably be LOGICAL to start back up where I left off, but that's a loooooong time ago, so that's not gonna happen until I've got some notes or something with me. So pretty much, this is gonna be current stuff that's been going on.

This is my second week back on campus, and it's been incredibly busy so far. Apart from having a pretty crazy class schedule, I've been heading up the prep for our mock trial program's first competition of the semester this past weekend. We took two teams down to St. Paul for a tournament at St. Thomas Law School. We had quite a few new people to mock trial, which is really unusual for this time of the year, so I was going into this tournament with realistic expectations, not so much optimistic. In the end, one team placed 11th out of 18, which was pretty satisfying.

That's all I've got, I guess. This is way lamer than I hoped it would be... apologies. Check back later for a more entertaining entry.