Here we are back at the American College, Thessaloniki setting
up the equipment and about to start our workshop at the local TESOL Convention. This is our introductory screen-shot (thanks
to Angeliki’s creative talent) followed by the summary of our workshop.
‘Today’s teacher is inundated with information overload whereby he is exhorted to be like this, to do that, making
it extremely difficult to evaluate what is of value out there. Our social media
pages are vast market places which exert pressure on us in terms of how to be
an up-to-date, efficient, informed classroom practitioner.
Instead of supporting the
teacher, this information plethora can alienate the time-strapped teacher,
making him feel distanced from the elite entrepreneurs who dominate cyber space. In addition to having this sense of
distancing, the teacher can feel helpless and de-skilled in trying to keep up
with new technological developments.
In this workshop we review some of this
information in an attempt to discriminate between marketing hype and issues of
substance.’
Here we are in action, with our dynamic audience hard at
work with the tasks on their worksheets.
The topics in focus helped generate lots of interesting discussion too!
The topics in focus helped generate lots of interesting discussion too!
Workshop completed, we draw breath and start out for the village of Arkochori at a height of 600 metres, in the foothills of Vermio mountain, near Naoussa, and in the vicinity of several ski-resorts.
We’re there to help Dimos (aka ‘The Daft Dentist’) to celebrate his birthday and he has brought along a rich supply of his home-made wine. It’s a rather excellent full-bodied, fruity, red and we are all instructed how to hold these glasses to enjoy the wine at its best. Below are the three ladies who have helped organize the event, bless them: Eleni, Stephania and Maria! There is no birthday celebration without a cake, and the occasion is marked with a group photo: people have come from Italy, Thrace and Athens to honour him.
The select company – and wine - meant traditional dance was de rigueur: Thracian - including my beloved Baidushka-, Macedonian and Nisiotika (island
dance) thrown in for good measure
We were staying at
the family-run Villa Vadolas, a traditional stone building with very thick walls
and open fires in every one of their 7 bedrooms which we had taken over! As the
evening wore on, we got worn out and gradually the company sloped off to bed.
We were all greatly looking forward to our
breakfast as the Vadolas family are renowned for them. Our hosts had brought
some potted meat – a Thracian speciality known as kavourmas which resembles
corned beef a little. Since some was left over, a lady of our group had asked if
they could cook it for us in the morning. And did they live up to their
reputation! My favourites were the
spinach and cheese pies, but they had cooked up a really delicious omelette with
the left-over kavourmas, as well as great platters of French toast - the
Greek equivalent being known as avgofetes
- ‘eggy-bread’ would be a near-equivalent.
Mustn’t forget to mention their delicious
home-made breads and marmalades- mmm!
It was actually snowing very delicately as Angeliki and I
went for a walk around the village and found a bear on a plinth, concrete (sorry
! :) ) evidence that these animals stlll
roam around the area and, in fact, the original name of the village was Arkoudochori
, or ‘bear village’! Fortunately they all seemed to be hibernating
during our visit!
We decided to take a shot
of our villa with its distinctive red wall and realize later that Zissis had managed
to photobomb from on high!
After what has been a thoroughly enjoyable time, we bid everyone farewell and take one last photograph of the villa shrouded in a wintry morning mist.
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