Greece

Vanessa joins us as a contributor this month, to reminisce about some idyllic time she spent teaching English, in a small coastal village in Greece.

It wasn’t snowing in Austria. As I was there to work the ski season, that was proving a handicap. I decided it would be much nicer in Greece and headed south through Italy across to Athens and then south again to a tiny village in the Peloponnese. There were really only 2 options for work in the village – the local bar, or the English school. It was a traditional village and to work in the bar would have meant low wages and lower respect from the locals. It was a no-brainer, really.

Fortunately, word travels fast in a small village. The owner of the English school actually came to me, delighted that a native English-speaking teacher was in the village. We agreed that I’d teach classes 3 afternoons per week, which was perfect for me. It meant that I had plenty of time for myself, and was making plenty of money to live. We rented a whitewashed cottage straight from a postcard, complete with blue window frames, thick stone walls and a trailing grapevine. I bought a scooter to get around, and settled in to life in a Greek village.

Teaching was fun. Most of the kids in the village came to English classes – it was the only extra curricular activity in the village. Even their state school was a bus ride away in another village. Consequently, some of them loved class and some would have rather been at the beach.

The school had two classrooms, although we normally only used one at a time. The classrooms were well setup with blackboard, desks, a few charts, and some reference books. The owner had passed some high level exams in English, so I had to assume she did speak English – but never to me. She taught a few classes herself but was happy to leave the majority to me. Until I arrived, the kids were used to being taught in Greek, with some English words thrown in as part of the lesson. It was quite a change for them to be taught by someone who spoke no Greek whatsoever. I tried to keep it that way, although the first Greek words I learnt were “sit down and SHUT UP”.

Although I had textbooks to work from I found that it was easy to develop my own lessons based on the concepts in the textbooks. The textbooks didn’t always relate to life as they knew it. Most of the kids had never left the villagr. At best, they had been to Athens. They watched a lot of TV, but primarily Greek soap operas, and so their knowledge of the outside world was fairly limited. Se we’d discuss the Greek basketball team, the local football team, the best way to catch an octopus, and whether it was worthwhile for girls to go to university, rather than world politics. It seemed that some English words were more easily learnt than others and it was rare to walk down the street without being followed by a chorus of childish voices calling “hello – how are you – I am fine" followed inevitably by "I looooove you”

Teaching meant that I was accepted as a part of village life, rather than being ostracised as a western woman of questionable morals. Like most of the other houses in the village, mine had no oven. Instead I’d prepare my meal and take it to the bakery, leaving instructions on how long to cook it. I’d see the women of the village there, and we’d discuss the price of tomatoes – or whether I’d guess the wrong amount of time for my dinner to cook and be presented with a cremated moussaka once again. As the teacher, if I was out walking in the evening I’d often be invited to join big family groups dining on huge plates of octopus, whole lambs cooked on an outdoor rotisserie, grilled fish, and fantastic tomato and feta salads.

Summer days were usually spent on or close to the beach – the weather was really hot, and the coast was full of perfect deserted coves within walking distance of my house. It was quite normal to pass older couples riding their donkey into town, or girls leading goats on a piece of string, as I walked down the hill to the beach. Often I’d walk out past the harbour to the white church on the headland, take a picnic lunch and read my book above the perfect blue sea. Other days I’d visit a new friend who had retired from his days as a wealthy globetrotting bohemian, and now lived in picturesque squalor below the cave known locally as Odysseus’ cave. For a few months each year, gypsies camped there in huge yurt-like tents; speaking a totally foreign language and enraging the locals by taking anything they liked without paying. They’d accepted my friend Alessandros, and so accepted me too. He didn’t understand how they could be so friendly with him but still raid his house and take his cameras as they moved on at the end of summer.

Somehow though, no day was complete without at least a couple of hours sitting in one of the tiny outdoor cafes, drinking frappe coffee and eating sweet baklava pastries. There was time for everything – time to write, time to read, time to explore new places and live a new culture, and still time to prepare lessons and to teach. It was one of the happiest times of my lift – and it could never have happened if the teaching job had not given me an entrée into that magic world.