Bon, Bah, Voila

A new year begins and with that a new blog post is long overdue.

Bon, since my last post at the beginning of November many things have happened. So where to begin?

Bah, at the moment there are six volunteers, with four different nationalities (German, American, French and Spanish ), working and living together at JRS. My French flatmates are the ones who gave me the inspiration for the title:)

The first weekend of November we made a visit to one of my favorite cities we have been to so far, Thessaloniki. Maybe it is the architecture or the food or the walks along the pier that draw me to the place. Whatever it is, something about it just feels special.

As I had mentioned in my last post, the end of October also marked the beginning of the workshops in the “Pedro Arrupe Center” (PAC). Although these workshops have their ups and downs, I have really enjoyed working with the older kids.

During November and December the activities alternated between music and arts and crafts. In the music workshop we practiced a neutral Christmas song «Ω Έλατο» (“Oh Christmas Tree”) which we then performed for the Jesuits on the 22nd of December. Teaching the kids rhythm and coordinating everyone to sing at the same time was definitely more difficult than I imagined it would be. Since the kids are all different ages, they have varying reading levels. This is mostly due to the fact that many of them are just learning Greek and don’t have parents at home who can practice reading the language with them. So reading the lyrics together was less of an option. Explaining things to them like which verse we were currently on or what the next exercise was going to be was also quite frustrating. What ended up working well was repetition. For example, we would play the song on repeat while they would copy the written text. After that we would go over the song verse by verse using their hand-written texts. In the end though, all the hard work was a success and all the children were able to recite the lyrics by heart. Even now, while they are working on projects, they will sometimes start to sing the song. We volunteers now kind of feel like we have «Ω Έλατο» brainwashed them, which is pretty funny to us.

If we were not learning the song, we would always plan a Christmas-related craft like constructing instruments for the concert or making reindeer masks. Now that the holiday season is over we will have to come up with new ideas. For now we will continue with crafts and maybe some competitive games, which they also seem to enjoy. 

Furthermore, there have been many new changes to the JRS building itself. JRS used to consist of two addresses,but as of December 2023 everything is now in one building. We now even have a welcome hub which really helps people find exactly where they need to go and we are hoping to further expand this by the end of January. 

There are now freshly-renovated classrooms and offices as well as other common rooms for future projects. Having everything in one space has already proven to be much better for communication amongst the staff, volunteers and bosses. The only issue is that we now do not have any specific class room for the “Women’s Day Center” (WDC) language courses. For now they have been taking place in the kitchen of the WDC, which is not optimal. The plan is to relocate them to the new classrooms downstairs by the end of the month. I’m really excited to see what these new changes will do for JRS Greece.

As for my work in the projects, everything is going very well. For a while I was subbing for one of the mothers’ English classes, which I really enjoyed because it helped me to get to know the women of the WDC better. The positive energy in the classroom as well the excitement when students would advance in something always helped me remember why I decided to volunteer in the first place, to help people especially for the long run. At the moment I am not teaching English, but there are plans for me to take over a class in the future. 

I do, however, teach crochet every Wednesday. This is a first attempt at an “open workshop”. Basically I sit in the living room of the WDC, and either women will come to me and ask if I can teach them or I ask if they want to learn. What I most like about this activity is the possibility to constantly meet new people. They are always excited to talk about culture or projects they have done in the past. The environment also tends to get the women to engage in conversation amongst themselves, which is one of the basic ideas behind the workshop: to create a safe and comfortable place for the woman to socialize.

Work in Playroom and Magazi remains the same. I have noticed though, that the number of Magazi appointments and kids in the playroom has increased. I was told that this is normal because now that it is winter, people are no longer working on the islands and are back in the city. The explanation for the rise in magazi visitors is self explanatory as well: it is cold, so people are looking for more layers. Something problematic is the noticed rise in young men coming to magazi, because we barely have any men’s clothes and have a shortage of jackets in general. Every time I am in the magazi I find myself sending away people looking for sweaters and jackets empty-handed.

Another unfortunate development is the potential closing of Khora, the social hub and meal source for many refugees I talked about in my first post. Sadly, they have lost most of their funding and are now unable to offer warm meals every day. 

To see this go would be devastating for the volunteers in Athens, especially for new ones coming in the future. Khora was the way to meet people. Not only that, this NGO is the main place we refer people to who are looking for food. Without the social kitchen, there are not very many options for these people.

Greek tradition has started to make its way into our community in different ways. For example, at the beginning of November I organized a thanksgiving celebration for the staff of JRS. Everyone was asked to bring a dish typical of their origin country. Our meal ended up representing Morocco, Greece, Romania, Germany, the USA, France and Spain. 

Since then a few more lunches like this have taken place and we have gotten more and more Greek recipe ideas to try for ourselves.

Through our weekly Greek classes we have the opportunity to learn about topical Greek behavior from or worksheets or from our Greek teacher herself.

We have also been going on field trips with one of the Fathers around the city visiting different ruins, more specifically ones that travel tours will never visit. These trips always make me giggle because of the places we have to go to to see these things i.e. To hotel basements or shopping mall parking garages. If an ancient ruin was found in Germany there is no way anyone would build a commercial building around it. The site would most certainly be turned into a museum. But not in Greece. Here they have such a surplus of ruins that they don’t know where to put new buildings any more. This has been such an interesting way to learn about the history of Athens, and it’s definitely more exciting than just going to a museum, because we go to locations we pass by every day to see places not technically available to the public or just not generally known about.

at the beginning of December we went on a field trip with some of the older kids at the PAC. This was a really nice experience mostly because of the charisma of the kids. They are all a lot of fun to talk to and interact with. They even gave us volunteers all nicknames. Mine is Miss America, which is amazing in my opinion.  Every time we see them in the hall of the PAC they address us by these names.

Christmas time in Athens was an interesting experience. It wasn’t much different from other Western European cities. They have the city decorated with Christmas lights, sing the same songs, decorate a Christmas tree, etc. It was, however, unusual for me for it to be so warm. Most Greeks also have plastic trees which is understandable because pine trees don’t tend to grow here. Something I could not wrap my head around though were the Christmas markets. Most of the markets around Athens consist of stand after stand filled with cheap products all with the Made in China label on them. This part definitely made me miss traditions such as stands full of handmade items at the Christmas markets in Germany. Aside from this 

At the end of December we threw a Christmas party in the WDC. This was an interesting experience because of the stress we had in finding neutral Christmas activities that would interest kids of all ages. In the end I think it is safe to say that the party was a hit and we made it out with only a few paint stains on the newly painted walls and my Favorite pair of jeans.

Christmas itself I did end up spending at home. An unexpected occurrence but nice nonetheless

We ended December by taking advantage of the cheap travel costs and went to Aegina and Nafplio once again. Both nice little weekend getaways. 

January has been full of meeting new people and setting up the new projects at JRS.

Voila! At this point in time, Greece is definitely feeling more and more like home, and as my 5 month mark here starts to creep up I get sad that the time is passing so fast. Nevertheless I try not to dwell on this and look forward to the experiences to come.