- The OMILO Newsletter

October 2013
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Dear OMILO friends, After a long summer, here our Newsletter again. Although this is our Fall Newsletter, we are still in a late-summer mood, for the simple reason that we did not need any warm cloths until today. Temperatures in most parts of Greece are still above 20C, sunshine every day, no need for a jacket neither socks and we still prefer the cappuccino fredo above the warm version! We cannot complain! In this Newsletter we will write about: 1. OMILO News 2. The new book of Petros Markaris 3. Playing Tavli 4. Future professions 5. The magic of Greek music

1. OMILO News What the OMILO-team was doing during the long summer? Most importantly, from July till September we took care of our students during the intensive Greek courses on the islands of Andros and Syros. As usual, we had the honor to work with so many enthusiastic and motivated students of all ages. It was so nice to see so many known faces as well as new students. The end of September the OMILO team left the islands and returned to Athens, where we organize courses during the entire Greek school year. We really like our job! Apart from teaching and organizing cultural activities, a lot of work was also done behind the scenes! A new website was born and we hope you like it. More photos, videos, social media, new photos, a blog and new programs. The website will be updated regularly with new blog articles, new videos, photos, etc. If anybody would like to send us some articles for the blog, new photos or useful feedback, you are very welcome. As you probably already noticed, the 2014 program is online. For all dates and prices for the Greek courses in Greece, have a look at: http://www.omilo.com/dates-prices-2014/ In case you are interested in learning Greek back home or you would like to learn more about Greek culture, do not forget to look at the other options as well. In a nutshell, you fill find all the Greek courses, the cultural activities, as well as the cultural week at http://www.omilo.com/overview/ Some more words about the Cultural Week! This year the Cultural Week will take place on the island of Syros from Sunday 27/7 till Friday 1/8/2014. We offer various cultural lessons

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October 2013
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throughout the day. Are you interested in Mythology, Etymology or you are wondering how Greeks live today? You just want to have an easy-going holiday with Greek dancing lessons every night? You would love to continue learning Greek, but without a course book? All this is possible with OMILO during the Cultural Week. Have a look at http://www.omilo.com/cultural-week/. On top of that, you will have a lot of opportunities to visit festivals, expositions, concerts and much more in Ermoupolis, the beautiful capital of Syros! We would like to end the OMILO news with one of the students comments we got recently: Dear Omilo team, What can I say.. only nice words come to my mind when I think of the classes, level of teaching, activities, students, teachers and of course also Maya. It was a great atmosphere in general. In March I came to Athens and had my first experience with Omilo. This summer I booked your courses in Andros and Syros, for three weeks in a row. I watched people come and go and even felt like a small part of your Omilo team, its like family. Athens, An dros and Syros were perfect but I fell in love with Syros. The people, the food and the great offer of cultural activities in Ermoupoli. From the first day I came back home I was thinking about returning to Greece and to Omilo. So for the third time this year I will! I look forward to seeing you all again in Athens this fall, as well as some of the other Omilo-students I met this year who I know will be there as well. ! Sabine The OMILO-team hopes to welcome many of you again in our future courses.

2. The new book of Petros Markaris A book about Athens. Athens has many faces. The tourists who visit the city for a few days have a different view from the Athenians themselves or from the international media, which sees Athens as the center of the crisis. A good way to find out more about Athens, is through the eyes of a novelist. Peter Markaris, famous for his trilogy "The Crisis Trilogy," recently published a book showing Athens in a special way. Title of the book is "Athens in one journey." The journey refers to the route of the electric railway for nearly 100 years: Piraeus-Kifissia. (The first part of the line, as we know it today was realized in 1926, while the line Piraeus-Thissio dates back to 1869). For your information, the OMILO school is located at 300 meters from this electric railway, the Maroussi station.

Taking the oldest subway line, known as the " elektriko " (or Green metro line), you can see the whole of Athens and its inhabitants in less than an hour. This route is intertwined with the life of the Athenians and penetrates all key districts of the capital and all social

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October 2013
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classes: it starts at the districts of Faliro and Moschato, goes to middle class Kallithea, through the old quarters of the glorious center with its modern day problems, it continues to Nea Ionia (Greek refugee area) and reaches the upper-class districts of Maroussi and Kifissia. It is a book that helps us to learn more about Athens, covering beautiful and ugly, poor and rich,etc. From the windows of the train we can see all aspects of the Greek capital. Surely, after reading this book you will want to make the trip to look at the city from a new perspective! Any OMILO-student that has followed or will follow a course in our Maroussi school, will surely be able to recognize many things! The book is published in Greek by Gabrielides . First published in German in 2010 from the publisher Hanser.

3. Playing Tavli Playing tavli or backgammon is a very popular Greek habit. Almost every Greek has enjoyed a sunny morning with cold coffee (preferably a frappe) and a round of portes or a summer afternoon with a glass of ouzo accompanied by a meze and a round of plakoto. Backgammon is a board game for 2 players. It consists of one board, twelve checkers for each player and two dice. Backgammon has different ways of playing. The main games are: portes (doors), plakoto (crash down) and fevga (leaves). All games combine luck with strategy. The result depends on the dice and the player's ability to move the checkers. The duration of each game is not very long, so the suspense and interest is always very high. Backgammon is known since Antiquity and has several varieties. In Mesopotamia and in Egypt, a game similar to the modern backgammon already existed. Later, we find it in Greece with the name Pessoi and in the Roman Empire with the name Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum (game of 12 letters). Also in the Middle Ages it was popular, although the church prohibited playing backgammon. When it was banned in England, the English players made a board which looked like a book so they were able to carry it without fear. Backgammon owes its current appearance to this construction. In modern Greece, backgammon is popular within every age. In the beginning, you could find it in mens cafes (kafeneia). Men who used to frequent the cafes were playing cards and backgammon. Gradually everyone loved it and tavli even ended up being a student habit. Today, you can see people playing backgammon everywhere: on the beach, on the boat, in the caf, in the park, and at OMILO! During one of our Greek courses on the island of Syros, the OMILO teachers were teaching the

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October 2013
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OMILO students how to play portes (doors) or how to improve their scores. It seemed to be popular, since many bought a backgammon before returning home! So what do you think? Maybe a good idea to ask for a Christmas Present! 4. Professions of the Future The crisis in Greece is a reality and has a large impact on the labor market. Unemployment rates have risen particularly high and mainly young people are the ones affected. Professions which some time ago were very popular and prestigious, such as engineers, doctors and lawyers are currently among the many unemployed. Artists, journalists and teachers are considered among the most saturated professions. After many years of studies and obtaining many degrees, students specialized in various fields have no work and are forced to go to other countries. With Greece going through a crisis, people, in order to survive, become more creative, turning to new areas, implementing innovative ideas. Professions related to medicine may be oversaturated, but health care professions, such as special education or speech therapy open new roads. Renewable energy is also an area that has not been exploited in Greece, although the country offers all the required elements (sun, wind). Consequently, engineers and electricians focus on these areas as the construction sector has died. For those involved in IT, there plenty of opportunities, like creating applications for smart phones or tablets, developing social networks, or even designing educational programs based on computers. Finally, many young people are turning back to the primary production sector: animal farming and agriculture. Specialized agronomists, nutrition experts and herbalists are in high demand. There is also a profound interest in organic crop production and the use of herbs. More than 3.000 different herbs and plants grow in Greece, which, up to today were not used or widely known. Overall, the crisis in Greece is an opportunity to rebuild and find new ways to ensure a better quality of life. The new created jobs do not only combat unemployment, but also improve the services and products available to consumers. What we need in these difficult times, is creativity, insight and optimism! The OMILO-team totally agrees!

5. The magic of Greek music I consider myself very lucky today to sing in a Greek choir in Stockholm, Sweden. Orfeas is an amateur choir consisting of about 40 first and second generation Greeks, Swedish lovers of Greece (like me) and a few non-Greek speaking singers who love music. See our website where youll find information in Greek, Swedish and English: http://grekiskakorenorfeas.hemsida24.se/ My story of the choir begins on a cold, grey and dark winters day in Stockholm in 2012. My daughter Amy had just left for Australia on a work-travel visa. Sad and lonely, I spotted a caf named Amys Caf near my home, and it became my hangout. One Sunday two women there

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October 2013
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were speaking Greek and I joined them. Sofia and Kicki said they sang in a Greek choir in Stockholm, and I was welcome to come along. I was certainly in the right place at the right time. My first trip to Greece was to Crete in 1982. My knowledge of Greek music then was pretty much limited to Zorba the Greek and Never on a Sunday. Little did I know then that my love affair with Greek music was just beginning. On Crete I then purchased an LP with Mikis Theodorakis. It was an instrumental recording called Fun in Greece with the music of THEODORAKIS ( ...) and I played it over and over again after returning home to Sweden. I cant explain the magic of the bouzouki sounds, but I was spellbound by the haunting melodies. Perhaps I just wanted to savor the sweet summer memories of Crete at the time. But today I know there was much more than Zorba for me to discover in the way of Greek music. Years passed until my next visits to Greece, which began again in 1995 with my then 5 year old daughter. We would spend three or four weeks every summer island-hopping in the Cycladic islands. As a single mother I always felt very safe in Greece, we have met many wonderful people and have heard a lot more Greek music. Our favorite island became Naxos, where we would return every year. But no matter where we were, the music was always with us: in the tavernas, cafs and even on the buses. In fact we named the bus on Naxos disco bus because the driver constantly played the laika (popular music) with the volume way up it was a happy and festive atmosphere. Of course we didnt know what they were singing about, but we liked it and that was enough then. Greek language barriers in music have been broken in Sweden by excellent interpretations of the texts of Greek Nobel Literature Prize laureates Giorgos Seferis (prize 1963) and Odysseas Elytis (prize 1979), whose lyrics have been put into music by Mikis Theodorakis. Therefore many people in Sweden have enjoyed Greek music without always knowing it was Greek. Perhaps the most popular is O Kaimos sung by among others Swedish-Finnish singer Arja Saajonmaa. She sang it at the 1986 funeral of Swedens prime minister Olof Palme, and children learn to sing it in Swedish schools. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-PZXEKReVQ. It is of course good that these famous poets can be appreciated in other languages, but by learning some Greek a new world of music and understanding of the culture opens up. OMILO provides a wonderful opportunity to learn the Greek language and culture through its intensive courses and to have fun at the same time. Every summer the OMILO teachers present a brilliant introduction to Greek music, and put together a super

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October 2013
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CD with a variety of songs and lyrics in Greek and even translated into English for those of us who are not so advanced yet. I have studied at OMILO for four summers now, and I am always amazed that I have hardly ever heard any of the OMILO songs before. There is such a wealth of Greek music! After singing in Greek with the Orfeas Choir for over one year now Ive learned so many songs from different parts of Greece as well as Cyprus, sometimes folk songs in dialects that even Greek choir members find hard to understand. One such example is Seranda mila kokkina (Forty red apples) in the Pontian Greek dialect. Its always exciting for me to see the many Greek words and verb constructions that Im familiar with pop up in the songs over and over again. Our repertoire is close to 60 songs now, all in Greek. Besides the compositions of Mikis Theodorakis we sing lyrics to music by composers such as Manos Hadzidakis, Manos Loizos and Stavros Kougioumtzis. But many of the songs are traditional folk songs from different parts of Greece. Performing in front of an audience is rather daunting at first, but easier in a choir when so many others can back you up. Nevertheless we must all work hard and do our best. That means learning our parts (we sing in four-part harmony) as well as learning the lyrics. For those who dont read Greek, the lyrics are written in the Latin alphabet in phonetic Swedish. I think its much easier if you can read Greek and understand at least some of the lyrics. Meanwhile we have the excellent leadership of Rolando Pomo from Argentina who does not speak Greek but is a professional choral director. Hes strict with us, but is also sensitive to the Greek mentality (which I would say is similar to the lively Latin one!). Orfeas recently performed together in Stockholm with our Norwegian counterpart the Arkadia Choir from Oslo. Among other things, the talented choral director Marilena Zlatanou specializes in Byzantine music and is also a gifted composer. Read about her here: http://zlatanou.net/homeenglish/ And all you Norwegian songbirds can apply here: http://www.arkadiakoret.no/ Last but not least, I would like to tell you about Orfeas prime annual performance held this year on November 23, 2013 in Stockholm at Klara Church. Its a popular event with a full house, so let me know if you would like me to reserve you a ticket! (about 10 euros). A note about the writer: Gail Ricksecker is a Swedish-American born in 1951 and has lived in Stockholm since 1975. She has studied with OMILO since 2010. Gail works as a translator from Swedish to English. You can contact her via e-mail: gail.ricksecker@telia.com .

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The OMILO-team also loves Greek music and was happy to see so many enthusiastic singers this summer. Have a look at this small video, where the students sing along with Antonis Remos . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17-u1aAVTJQ
(For the original version, click: , http://youtu.be/-x6hf9ka8zc)

On Monday 28/10 we will start our Intensive Greek Course in Athens again and also witness some different music : Greek students marching for the October 28th National Holiday : the Oxi day! The Greek youth amusing themselves! The video is taken from the balcony of the OMILO school on March 25th. The same parades take place on October 28th, in all neighborhoods and all over Greece.

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October 2013
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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v= 570648482968705&set=vb.113515072015384&type=3&theater Now that we reached the end of October and Beginning November, it is time to wish you a nice winter or kalo xeimona! Enjoy this nice season, with chestnuts, warm coffees, family moments and some time to start booking your next holiday to Greece! Hope to hear from you soon.

Sunny greetings from the OMILO-team.

OMILO
Visiting: Pan. Tsaldari 13, 15122 Maroussi, Athens (GREECE) P.O. box 61070, 15101 Maroussi, Athens (GREECE) Tel. (00 30) 210-6122896 Fax. (00 30) 210-6122706 Email: info@omilo.com www.omilo.com