some reflections

Lejome Katherine. Ime apo tin Ameriki, alla tora menos stin Thessaloniki.


I am sitting on the second floor of the library on campus. The sofa chair is comfy, and to the right of me is a wall of windows, overlooking some trees, hills, and a pretty blue sky. I love the view from this floor.

Is this what students in rural campuses see? Every day in class, I look out the window and am amazed that I am in another country; that I can look across the water and see Mount Olympus; that the view from the tower bridge on campus takes my breath away every time I walk it.


I am in Greece but I'm speaking English every day. I hang out with English-speaking people. I watch American movies (yesterday we watched V for Vendetta, and a couple of days before, it was Fight Club). I'm loving the family I am creating but a part of me feels empty because I am not completely immersed in Greek culture. I learn Greek in theory but I want to practice it in reality. I get frustrated at people who assume that a Greek person will speak English, so they start speaking English off the bat without even trying to greet them in their native language. I want to walk the streets and understand the signs, know what each store is selling before I walk up to the window. I realize that it may take a long time for this to happen - that it may not happen at all - but I wish I were making a bigger effort.

Yesterday some friends and I sat in a cafe for a couple of hours, doing our homework and listening to old school American music playing on the radio. Here I felt settled into my routine, knowing that I was being productive and yet still enjoying my time drinking frappes and eating spinach pie. Here I felt like I was a member of this city, that I was doing my part and living my life, as a productive individual in a bustling city. I feel this way when I get on a public bus, successfully order something entirely in Greek, and when I understand something that is being said to me.

Not so when I hop into a cab. I have yet to successfully direct a cab driver to Alexandrias when he doesn't know where my street is. I have yet to successfully say one-hundred-and-twenty-four instead of one-two-four (which will surprisingly confuse most cab drivers). I get taken for rides, but I don't mind it - and most times the cab driver is extremely nice and will ask where I am from or tell me the names of areas we are driving through. But the time when I feel most like a foreigner is when I step into a cab, say something haltingly in Greek, and have to explain to the cab driver where I mean to go.

One other thing that I have come to realize: while I may be in a different country and culture, it seems that even a small group of 90 can successfully transfer the typical, overdramatic and overindulgent lifestyle of the subgroup that I will now term "the American college student" all the way to Thessaloniki, Greece. I don't know why I'm surprised, but I am.