A bit of Greece

The past 3 months I have been working on an annual conference that was held in Greece this past week. Since my name is Greek, I was even more fascinated by the culture than I thought I would be. There is a town called Melissa in Greece! :-)

Anyway, one night of the conference we were sharing the dining area at the hotel with a large group of retirees. When we sat down I noticed that there was a large empty space in the middle of the room and a small band was warming up. Imagine my delight to learn that the band and dance floor were there for the retiree party! I was SO excited to see Greek people dancing Greek dances.

Well.. when the dancing began, a kind woman asked me to move my chair so she could get by and go dance... As I moved my chair, she extended her hand to take me out to the dance floor with her. So.. there I was... 1 american girl dancing with about 30 Greek retirees... it was fabulous! My coworker took video... the actual video was over 9 minutes long... the dance.. lasted about 15 minutes. :-) I intend to put a bit of it on my blog but I am having many issues getting it to load. so you all have to wait.

The time in Greece was very good. I will write about it more in my next musings I am sure. but here are some photos of what I saw when I was there...

Mt. Olympus

6 nationalities working as a team... fun times!

finally... photos and a video of my new living space

Welcome to my flat! i wish you could come see it in person. But, since that is not possible for most of you... here is a tour... beginning with a video that brings you up the last set of stairs and into my main room. After that are some photos of the other rooms in the house.


Here is one half of my bedroom.. the other half is in process... :-)

Here is another part of my bedroom.. Carrie Margaret did the painting of the tree and I did the abstracts. Can you see the Daymed on my dresser? I have been sick for the past week and I am just getting over it...


this is my great balcony!


One side of the bathroom... bathtub AND shower! I am blessed indeed!


other side of the bathroom.. the heat in the room is like a towel rack! Hooray for heated towels!!


So... there you have it... the tour of my flat. Did you see the red and orange in the background of the main room on the video? this is what that area normally looks like... this great chair turns into a very comfortable bed. Hooray for versatility and place for friends to stay when they visit.

A video on YouTube that High School and University Students should see

Ah the adventures of a new language

So I took a risk with language this week... I know many of you think that I am bold and adventuresome... but I really am cautious because I don't like making mistakes.

Recently I thought... I need to take more risks. Why don't I have any embarrassing language stories? It is not because I am the master of every language... rather it is because I am very very careful and not very confidant. Well.. I decided that maybe I need some good language/culture stories... And wouldn't you know it... I step out and right away... Sigh....

It is good for me to be kept humble.

So to the story...

My brother Matt can do amazing things with pork loin. And I have never tried cooking pork loin. Well, since Germany's main meat is pork, I thought I would find some pork loin to make for some friends coming over to dinner. I found a recipe on-line that sounded really good and then went to the local grocery to find myself a pork loin.

I know that the German word for pork is Schwein. But I ignored that and looked for what might resemble that cut of meat. I took it home... doubt scratching at my mind... but opened the package and began the preparation... at which point I thought.. I really should find out what this is... I tried direct on line translation and came up with something Salmon... but I knew the meat was not Salmon! So I contacted a friend in town who has been here for years and she said that the meat was cured ham... but she was confused by the Salmon word in the name too...

Well, I ended up making a really good piece of ham... which is not quite the same as pork loin... but my friends liked it. So did I. And now I am resolved to find a real pork loin... but I will research before I go looking again.