Week Eight: Sweltering Church, Militant Children, and Clifftop Monestaries

This week was quite the Greek experience.

A Recap:
Monday - Two hours of confusing the Greek υ with the "Latin" u, followed by lunch then class, class, class.

Tuesday - A lesson in the Greek conception of time. "I am there when I get there. When I leave, I'm no longer there."

Wednesday - MARCH 25 - A combo-holiday for Greeks. The one-two punch of nation and religion: Annunciation Day and Independence Day.

Annunciation Day, for the heathens among you, myself included, is the Christian holiday celebrating the day that the angel informed Mary that she was to have a child, conceived miraculously through the power of God - kilometers and kilometers away in Heaven (after all, Israel DOES use the metric system).

A note to the non-heathens among you - despite God's best intentions in providing for the conception of a child, don't believe any angels that try to give you the "birds and bees" talk. There seems to be a slight angel-human disconnect surrounding storks and diapers.

Sarcasm aside, we decided to make the most of this "twofer" holiday and headed off to the Greek Orthodox Annunciation ceremony. Some notes on the differences between this ceremony and the typical Catholic ceremonies I grew up with:

• Come and go as you wish. Stay for 4 hours or 10 minutes.
• All women on the left side, all men on the right.
• At some point, any point really, make your way up the aisle and kiss the "idol" (painting) of Jesus at the front.
• Do the sign of the cross in sets of three and do it frequently.

• Demographics: 60% over 60; 35% between 45-60; 5% (including us) below 45. 70% women; 30% men. 99% wearing winter, fur-lined coats while sitting/standing/bowing inside the church.
• Service is still given in the ancient form of the language, though it is much more akin to modern Greek than Latin is to, well, anything.
• Communion is passed around randomly throughout the seats and left in random baskets throughout the church for parishioners to pick up at will. No communion procession. Literally consists of chunks of bread.
• On a non-comparative note, the service was held in a basement (the main church is under repair) that was an absurd 90+ degrees Fahrenheit. Everyone was still wearing their fur-lined coats. We took our cue from others and stayed less than a half hour lest we melt or strip naked - whichever would've come first.

Greek Independence Day celebrates their declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. I'm not sure this holiday acknowledges that this was followed by almost constant war - for independence, against neighboring aggressors, against the Turks and Germans in the World Wars, for the extension of territory, and civil strife - through the 1970s.

In a awkward show of an elevated sense of patriotism, each town holds a parade on this day in which all the middle and high school students MARCH - in step, arms swinging.... "Ενα, ενα, ενα-δυο-ενα!" replaces the familiar "Left, left, left-right-left!" Though not as impressively organized as I'm sure it's supposed to appear, it is still remarkable to me to see these 11-18 year olds in lines marching military style. A remnant of the dictatorships that haunted the country for years on end.

A group of Greek flag-bearing high schoolers.













High school students from Anatolia - the high school associated with ACT - the university I am studying at. I was somewhat surprised to see them here - Greece has an interesting prospective on the public vs. private education idea. Mostly getting a private education excludes you from most public positions, events, etc. However, getting a private degrees is more likely to show some sort of achievement outside of Greece.


KIDS! MARCHING! WHAAAAAAAT?!

I am somewhat disappointed, for the shear experience of it, that the military parade in Thessaloniki is downsized for Independence Day so that Athens can see the full procession. Too bad we won't be in Thessaloniki in October to see the guns, artillery, and tanks of Greece just an arm's length away in the other major parade of the year!

Thursday - an exciting day of volunteering at the US College Counseling office - tutoring for the writing portion of the SAT which I never took and folding hundreds of brochures for the elementary school summer camp!

Friday - Another experience with Greek Orthodoxy for "Friday Night Vespers" - a long ceremony that occurs each Friday during Lent that consists of chanting stories in ancient Greek and practitioners coming and going as they please. See Wednesday.

Saturday and Sunday - a trip to the Meteora Monasteries. These monasteries are located in central Greece in an area that pre-historically was part of the sea. Starting in the 1400s, monks took refuge in the rocks of this area. Soon, in the sense of a couple hundred years, they had built 20 monasteries on the tops of the rock formations - an astounding achievement of engineering and architecture realized by the most humble characters imaginable. The Greek Orthodox monk's life: 8 hours of prayer, 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, repeat.

Historically, Greek Orthodox monasteries serve as a refuge for Greek nationals when facing wartime struggles, and these were no different. Sadly, that is why they number only 6 now, and most have been restored or rebuilt completely within the last few decades.



Kalambaka - the town we stayed in overnight at the foothills of Meteora. Can you imagine waking up to that view everyday?








A view of the courtyard and buildings of the first monastery we visited - actually a nunnery.










Doors to the nuns' quarters. No guests allowed inside that part!













A view of the valley created by the receding waters throughout thousands of years.
















Artistic masonry of the church at the second monastery we visited. This monastery is the largest and most elevated (physically) of the monasteries. It did not meet nearly as much destruction throughout the wars and conflicts as the others.




One of the many frescoes painted on the churches' walls. Most of them are inside the churches and we weren't allowed to take pictures there. Not that it much mattered. My camera battery was about dead, so I had to fuss with it to get any of these to take!




The rock formations that the monasteries are built on. The second one we visited is perched on top of the rock on the right side of the picture.
















Two monasteries (which we didn't visit) from a distance.











The trip included an initial lunch stop in the town of Trikala - a beautiful town in the middle of nowhere. The town is supposedly home to Hippocrates' first hospital and a section of the town is dedicated to the "old" style of architecture which made for numerous artistically picturesque photos.


Trikala.

































The trip also unintentionally included a four hour "break" outside of the second of two monasteries we visited so that the bus could be repaired. Having learned in the last year how to change a car's oil, replace the brakes and install a radiator, I know this much: I can repair a car faster than a Greek can get a bus to start by letting it roll down a mountain.

And now, it's Monday. Again. Greece, don't be in such a hurry!