One Month Anniversary!

This is the Aristotle market just a few blocks from my house. There are all kinds of tavernas, butchers, fruit stands and bakeries there. It is one of my favorite places to go.
This is a shot from Panorama.
Me trying to be artistic
This is the gang minus Mauro at Pella, it was very cold and windy.
These are the mountains behind Pella that I am going to try to visit. There is a town called Edessa in the foothlls that is supposed to be fantastic.



ONE MONTH!

Officially, as of Friday, February the 15th, I have been in Greece for 30 days, a.k.a. one month. I am not sure how I am effected by this; some days I feel like I have been here for so long that I forget about things from home; while, on other days I can not stop thinking about how new I am in this world. Did time flow like this when I was in the U.S.?

Things continue to go well here and I am finding myself busier everyday. My father’s last e mail to me finished with him saying, “Don’t work too hard.” Unfortunately, this does not seem to be a part of my job description at the moment. What really interests me is that the busier I get with the things that I am supposed to be doing, the more other opportunities that I feel like I cannot pass-up appear.

Opportunities I have taken advantage of:

• 
  I start tutoring this Wednesday for one of the students from Anatolia, an affiliated school, whose mother works at Pinewood. I will make 15 euro an hour. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on my perspective at any given time, they only want to meet with me once a week. On one hand this is great, it means way less prep for me, on the other hand, it kind of stinks because I will not make as much money, and on one foot, I do not know how effective or helpful I can be in just one hour a week. We shall see.
  



• During the first week of April I have agreed to take a paid substitute position in a 9th grade science classroom. My mentor teacher from 7th grade will be gone for a full week and has asked me if I would be willing to take over her classes and has passed it with the head councilor for me to receive substitute pay. Now this is not a lot of money, but it is some still.
  



• I have agreed to join a committee at Pinewood that will be headed by the language arts department. Their goal is to work on a program that reinforced writing across the curriculum. The principle of the school asked if I would be interested in joining, as she had read in my student teaching application that this is a specific interest of mine. This was one of the stresses in my education in the language arts curriculum of Kent State and my role on the committee will be to watch, learn, and contribute what few ideas I have of my own.
  



• I was invited to practice with Pinewoods High School Football (I will never be able to call it soccer again) Team by the coach, who is also the 7th grade language arts teacher. I chose to accept and my first practice was on Friday. Now, for everyone that is unaware my professional football career ended when I was about eight; I decided that swimming up and down a pool had more of an objective than running up and down a field chasing a ball. So, I spend 12 years swimming in chlorine; oppositely these young men have chosen to chase the ball for a multitude of years. I want to stress this point because it quickly gives you an idea of how talented these players are and how utterly awful I am. I am a pretty fast runner, I have plenty of stamina as I have been running everyday for about three weeks, and I am pretty agile on my feet; unfortunately, I lack any kind of ball handling skills and I do not really understand football strategy. These seem to be very important aspects of the game. For the way that I play the ball may as well be a brick and my strategy is to confuse the other team and my own team-mates with my lack of strategy and organization (mind you this rarely gets them). But, as the gear fiend I am, I have bought shoes, socks, shin guards, and a jersey, so I’m committed.
  



• I have been asked by the principle to turn in a letter explaining my interest and qualifications for a job at Pinewood on Monday and she would like an official resume to turn into the board within two weeks. Pretty crazy. I need the resume for my seminar class that I am taking from Kent and will be able to use this for both applications.

Needless to say, things are busy. I don’t sleep too much and have grown to love Italian and Greek coffee (I know what I said about Greek coffee before, but since then I have had a Greek prepare it for me and it was very good). I am currently working on my science curriculum that I start on Monday, I am in the middle of a book study that I am working on with the sixth graders and I have to start working on a book unit for the advanced group; thankfully it is on the Hobbit, which I have read more than a few times.

I am a bit nervous about the science unit due to the fact that my mentor teacher, while wonderful and nice, is a bit old fashioned and obviously set in her ways, she has told me so. I have to teach a unit on ecology in between two and three weeks. I know it is possible because both Keith and my Mother have pulled off such a feet; however, I am finding it a daunting challenge due to the amount of information and the expectations of my teacher. But, it has to be done so it will be done.

I have taken a few trips since we last talked; Panorama, Anopoli, and Pella. Panorama is a suburb a little ways past Pinewood. The town is situated on the hills outside the city and it’s worth visiting for its name-sake. Anopoli is the general area that surrounds the city wall. Back in the day the wall used to provide the protection for the city; now, however, the city has grown so much that the wall falls in the middle of the city. Pella was supposed to be one of the main day trips from Thessaloniki; however, when any of you come to visit I will not take you there. It was simply a heap of stones piled on the ground. The museum there was pretty sweet but really small. The scenery surrounding the city of Pella is amazingly beautiful and I would like to go up into the mountains that you see in the background, somewhere up there is Pinovo, the climbing area that I want to start going to, but I did not have the opportunity did not arise. What is in Pella, is the best taverna I have ever been to, the food was awesome, cheap, and plentiful. The owner was great and he even gave us a ride back to the bus stop.

Well, I have spent too much time on this post and have taken away from my time for work; the days are cool and beautiful as my life here continues. I can only hope that next month will go as well as the first.

Stay sane and let me know what’s going on.

Peace, Love, and Happiness,
Ian

Interesting Tidbits

The men of the house (left to right), Your's truly, Andreas (Honduras), Jose (Guatemala), Mauro, Gianluca
Art, right?
My view from my balcony of my bedroom
Agias Sofias St. from my window
Saturday morning fishing trip

Well . . . it’s Friday. Not only that but it is 4:50 on Friday afternoon. Needless to say it's an exciting time. I have so many little things to share that I thought that I would find a theme for this entry by having no theme at all, just what the title describes. So, without further delay, here we go. . .

With no time to wallow in my stupidity I turned right around on Wednesday with a new sense of purpose and overdrive work ethic to salvage the week in science, which I was able to do with positive results. I am getting more used to the students and they to me. I finished the unit on animals today and will review next week to test on Thursday of next week.

In language arts things progress smoothly if not superbly so. On Wednesday I moderated an incredible discussion between all the students in the class as they debated the sanity of the main character in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart." Mind you these are sixth graders and I had to hold them back from a full on argument. The students are still talking about the lesson and so is my mentor teacher, Roxanne. I could not have dreamed of how successful it was, if only you had seen it. Next week I start my first full unit on a novel called Freak the Mighty which should be an experience if nothing else. I have a bit of clean up work to do with that so that I am ready. It will be interesting to see how it goes as I created the whole unit from scratch.

There are two big deal tidbits from school that I think are important to relate. One is that I am going to tutor one of the sophomores in physics, 15 euro an hour. That might not sound like much but that buys a lot of food. The other piece is that there was an off-hand comment by the head instructor about keeping me on for next year. . . we'll see.

On to other subjects. . .

Things are going great overall, as you can see from above and as everyone said, all has recuperated and I find myself back on top with a renewed focus. I have fallen into a solid effective schedule during the week where I wake at 6:15 and do 70 push ups, make the bus at 7:30, arrive at school at 8:00 leave school at 4, get home around 4:45, run from 5-5:40, nap from 6 till 7, eat at 7:30 and then do work until usually 2 depending on what I am working on. I love it it feels so comfortable. Some nights if I don't have to do too much and someone is game we go down to the sea and drink a glass of wine under the heated awnings. I believe that this is the life.

On the weekends we travel all over the city, but recently I have been so busy that I spend most of my time reading and planning, its ok, I've got plans.

On to other subjects. . .

The roommates are great. Caty, Dina, and Mauro are all part of the Eurasmos (sp?) program which is a masters program where they spend two years studying in universities all over Europe. They are from Ecuador, Russia, and Argentina respectively. The fourth is Gianluca from Italy and he is studying at the university here, Modern Greek. I caught a lot of heat for only posting pictures of the ladies, but really what do you expect? I have posted a picture of the rest of them plus some friends in this post along with pictures from my bedroom window and some artsy shots.

On to other subjects. . .

I have found a climbing shop, a climbing gym, and a climbing area (thanks to Jud, interestingly enough). The climbing shop is actually an outdoors store, Mike and Olga work there, super cool people, and very helpful. The gym is tiny but will be fun for a while, I plan on going for a while tomorrow, we'll see.

On to other subjects. . .

I actually cannot think of much else, Things are going well. I want to thank you all for your support, I know I was being a bit over dramatic with the last post but it seemed really bad at the time, after some reflection time and all of your help I realized that it happens and that I must simply better my abilities. I really enjoy reading all of your comments and encourage your questions I'll try to get to them. Keep in touch and stay sane.

Peace and Love,
Ian

Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.

-Lao tzu-

Wonderland is a Fickle World

Not all can be wonderful all the time, right?


Well, it has been a while since I have been able to write; the ride is finally up to speed and I do not think that there is break fluid in the break lines. I have decided that my blog is far too happy; you are not sharing in my frustration and mistakes enough. Originally I thought that I would spare you, the reader, these moment, but I believe that they are sometimes more interesting and more often than not more insightful. This event is the latter of the two.


I flubbed up! Nay, flubbed is too much like oops. To bomb a lesson is more than an oops and that is what I did.


Truthfully, no matter how pompous it sounds, I have never really messed up a lesson before, I have never so completely made a fool of myself as I did today while teaching a science lesson. But, there is always time for a "first."


I was teaching a lesson on birds . . . wait let me back up I forget that we have not talked in a while.


I am teaching not only sixth grade language arts but I am also teaching seventh grade science, life science. Sixth grade is going wonderfully; the students love me, the teacher is enjoying my lessons and is very open to new ideas, and I have stepped in gradually after a period of observation, so it has been a successful start there and I am able to show off my real abilities as a teacher. Unfortunately, I did not have these luxuries in the science class that I am in. The teacher that I am mentored under is wonderful and no doubt very knowledgeable, but she is set; she has little room or patience for new ideas in teaching philosophy in her classroom, I also only observed the class for three days, I was thrown into a unit mid way through, and the class presents another unique challenge, every child with the exception of two is an ESL learner. Now I know what Keith is going to say, "Oh yeah, well I taught in Las Vegas for four years where all of my students were basically ESL!" Well, this is not his experience and this is very new for me, daunting perhaps.


Now, these are all excuses. I, as the teacher, am to take full responsibility for the screw up. After a bit of quiet introspection, a long aloud talk with myself, and a bit of childish moping I have come to the stark realization that it is indeed my fault, I messed up, and while the above factors may have been influential, it all falls on my shoulders. Worse yet is that the mess up came from a series of teacher 101 mistakes:


Teacher 101 mistakes:

I rushed.

I tried to teach too much information (this turns into covering and not teaching).

I tried to over simplify the information with too many words (this turns into the giving of misinformation)


The third in the list is the actual end all be all mistake; I misinformed my students and instead of taking a step back and saying, "Wait a minute?" I pushed on feeling I had to get through more information instead of going back and correcting my errors.

Now I face the challenge of going back tomorrow and mending my mistakes, not an enjoyable situation to role out of bed for.

But, I should have seen it coming, right? I was beginning to think that I was infallible, I was becoming pompous, which I am capable of sometime as many know. Things were going so smoothly in every aspect of my life and I lost my more effective, humble, hard working nature.

God, karma, bad chi, luck, whatever you care to believe seems to come at the most appropriate of times to put you back in your place. My sails were open wide and I was sailing with the wind and now, suddenly, I am trying to rebuild my mast.

I know that I have a tendency to over think, over analyze, and worry too much, but the mess up makes me question my ability to teach. I know that everyone messes up, I know that no teacher is perfect all the time, I understand that I am still learning, and that I am still a new teacher; I have heard it all. Having heard this information however, does not change the fact that I did not want any of it to be true, a childish ideal I know, but my childish ideal.

There you have it. For many of you it may sound like a meager unimportant event, but I took it pretty hard. Although in some kind of sick, self destructive way I am glad it has happened, I can now return to reality.

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
-Churchill-
Peace, Love, and Happiness
Ian

My Wonderland

Finally a picture post.

Sunday Morning at the Sea

The Classroom

The New Room

Catilina (left) Dina (right). The new roommates

The City Wall At Night.