In the post titled “From a Distance”, I mentioned that sometimes, things do not look as good up close as they do from a distance. I have already posted some pictures of our apartment building and the views from our balcony. However, here is a picture of what is next door to our apartment building. It doesn’t look so good. There are many lots like this one spread throughout the city. Sometimes they are right next door to an extremely nice and relatively new building.
By the way, you may notice on the news today that there is a general strike of many different groups in Greece today. There may be some protests or riots in Athens and Thessaloniki too. It doesn’t really have any impact on us because we walk to the office and don’t take public transportation. Most all of the shops were open so it seemed like a pretty normal day to us.
Given the economic condition here, there could be quite a few strikes this year but we don’t expect it will have much impact on us. However, sometimes there are strikes by the garbage collectors and the electric company. If those groups go on strike, we will feel it.
Today it has been cold and cloudy and rainy all day long. It is the kind of day which makes you want to curl up under a blanket and watch a football game. Today is Super Bowl Sunday and I would love to watch the game but unfortunately for me, the kickoff will be at 1:00am local time. I imagine that I could find the game on the internet but I don’t think I could stay awake from 1:00am to 5:00am to watch it. Besides, I just got my internal sleeping clock reset and i don’t want to mess with it right now. So, I will check the result when I first wake up and hope that I can find a website where I can view all of the commercials.
Don’t feel sorry for me about missing the Super Bowl. Here are a couple of pictures I took this week from our balcony when the weather was clear.
The other day, we were in Thessaloniki to buy some things for our apartment. I needed to run in one store quickly to get just one thing. Mary decided to just wait in the car so I parked in a place where she would have a nice view of a mountain which overlooks the city. There is a small town on the side of this mountain and the white apartment buildings of the town contrasted nicely with the green mountain, the blue sky, and the white clouds.
I commented about how nice the view seemed and Mary’s comment back was something like this…. “Greece is beautiful from a distance but not so much up close”.
I was surprised at first by her comment because it seemed like she was saying that Greece is not beautiful. We talked about it and after she explained what she meant, I understood and agreed.
This small town on the side of the mountain did indeed look beautiful from a distance. However, we have been in that town and it is like all of the other towns we have seen up close. The nice apartments are mixed together with the dumpy apartments and vacant overgrown lots. From a distance, the whole thing looked nice but in reality, there are plenty of places mixed in that town which are not nice at all. There are plenty of dumpy places in that town.
You really notice the good and bad when you are walking through a city. We walk a lot here and you get to frequently see the city up close. There is quite a bit of graffiti and you have to watch your step because the sidewalks are uneven and there are sometimes things you don’t want to step in.
I agree with Mary that Greece is beautiful from a distance but doesn’t look as good when viewed up close. The same thing can be said about the planet earth. The following pictures are some of my favorites. The earth is so beautiful from space and from there, you can’t see the warts.
Our lives are also look best from a distance. We usually look like we have things together when viewed from afar but there are plenty of things in the details of our life which are not so good. Unfortunately, details matter.
The following video is of a song called “From a Distance” and it reminds me of this principle of viewing things from a distance.
You may have noticed that there is a new picture in the heading of the blog. The previous picture was of Thessaloniki and this new picture on the heading is of Katerini. The mountain in the background is Mount Olympus. It is often too hazy or cloudy for a good view of the mountain but since the weather is cold now, the air has been dry and the sky has been mostly clear. We have had some good views and I have taken some pictures which show the mountain from our apartment. I will be posting these pictures soon.
We really like our new apartment. We have been working hard in the last few days to get everything organized and to purchase the little things which will make it more comfortable. We can tell though, that it is going to work out very well for us.
However, every place has some pros and cons. Here are some of our observations so far.
Pro -We can flush toilet paper. This is not the case everywhere in Greece so we are very grateful about this.
Con – Living of the 4th floor means more stairs.
Pro – We have an elevator so we don’t really have to take the stairs unless we want to.
Pro – Living on the 4th floor means a better view. Since there are not other buildings right outside our window, it has a very open feel.
Con – Our apartment is small. We have a kitchen, living room, one bedroom, and a small bathroom. The bathroom in particular is very small and this is more of an inconvenience for Mary than for me. The washing machine is in the bathroom so that also gives it a cramped feeling.
Pro – We have three balconies and two of them are pretty large. This will be nice when the weather is warm.
Con – We have to switch on the hot water heater breaker 20 minutes before we take a shower. You could leave it on 24/7 but we’ve been told that it is too expensive to do that. Also, the breaker to the hot water heater is supposed to be turned off when you shower or it can cause a “problem”.
Pro – The apartment has a good location. It is about a 10 minute walk to the center of the city. There are a couple of grocery stores within three or four blocks away.
Con – Not much storage in the apartment for clothes or other stuff. The lack of space will be a challenge when we have people come to stay with us.
On the last leg of our flights here, we were especially tired and a little hungry. The following is a photo of the snack that the airline gave us. It was one of the most gross foods I have seen in a long time.
It looked like two pieces of toast with regurgitated cottage cheese on one slice and mustard phlegm on the other slice. Here’s what made it even more disgusting … some of the other people on the flight were actually eating it.
We didn’t have any problems with our flights and arrived on Thursday afternoon as scheduled. All of our luggage arrived too so everything went smoothly. Our friends picked us up at the airport and it took us one hour to drive to our new city.
Our new place is very nice and we like it very much. Here are a few quick pictures. I will post more pictures and details soon.
Here is our building. We live on the 4th floor which is the top.
He are a couple of pictures from the inside of the apartment.
Here are a couple of pictures of the neighborhood.
On Sunday, I went to Schlotzskys and had a sandwich and a Cinnabon. On Monday, I ate at Chick-fil-A for lunch. On Tuesday, I ate at Chick-fil-A for lunch again.
Today is Wednesday, and we are leaving for the airport this morning to catch our flight to Greece. I think that we will stop at Chick-fil-A for a Chicken Biscuit on the way to the airport.
As soon as I can, I will post something to let you know that we arrived and I will be posting some pictures of our apartment and the city where we will be living.
I recently heard a sermon by John Ortberg and he said that the second most common emotion after love is regret. As I reflected on this, I think that it is true.
We feel regret every day. Sometimes the regret is minor. For example, I regret it when I am in the slow lane of traffic. I regret that I didn’t change lanes. I am always looking for the best lane of traffic and the fastest checkout line in the store. It bothers me when I make a bad choice on this.
Sometimes I regret how I spent my money or I regret making (or not making) certain investments. Sometimes I regret things that I have done (or haven’t done) to my family and friends. Things regularly pop into my mind that I did decades ago which I regret. I still wonder to myself, “Why did you do that?”.
When the bible talks about hell, it mentions that it will be a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. This sounds like maximum regret. I think that hell will be physically painful but I also think that it will be tremendously emotional painful because of the regret that will be felt.
As I cracked pecans this fall, I would sweep the bad pecans away. Because I cracked so many pecans, I found a lot of bad ones. Here is a picture of the big pile of bad pecans that were rejected because they did not have a good nut inside them. I know that pecans don’t have feelings but if they did, this pile would be a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Here is a link to John Ortberg’s sermons. The one I mentioned above is from January 3, 2010. I highly recommend all of his sermons.
Some of you know that in the last year or so, I have learned a few magic tricks. I first learned and used them in Greece as illustrations during the English classes for the refugees. However, I was also able to make use of them while I was a substitute.
I was a lenient substitute and didn’t strictly enforce the all of the rules on talking, seating charts, cell phones, and mp3 players. I usually told the class up front that I would be reasonable with them as long as they did the work that was assigned. I told them that if they would do the work and behave reasonably well for me, that I would teach them a magic trick at the end of class. My hope was that this would be a type of bribe to get good behavior.
If the class acted badly, I wouldn’t do the magic trick for them. Most of the time though, I would do the trick and they seemed to genuinely enjoy it. As a matter of fact, some classes would actually ASK for a magic trick before I even had a chance to mention it.
I tried to teach only at high schools and there are seven high schools in our district. I eventually worked at all seven high schools and had multiple days at each school. Invariably, there would be one or two students in my class who had previously had me as a substitue where I did a magic trick. When they would recognize me, they would often say “You are the substitute who does magic tricks. Will you do another one today?”. I kept the things needed to do four different magic tricks in my backpack. When I had a student for the second time, I would try to do a different trick than before.
Here is a video clip of someone else doing the trick that I often would do. The only difference was that I didn’t use a magic wand.
