Day 10: Sunday 6.5k Hike!
Sunday, August 3rd
Welcome to Sunday Funday! Today’s blog is brought to you by Artemis in Ms. Amelio’s English class. Enjoy!
Travel Journal
The Greek concept of φιλότιμη (filótimi) has no direct English translation. It is difficult to explain at best and impossible at worst; it is a meld of friendship, hospitality, honour, pride, and another untranslatable concept called ξενία (xenía).
The day started long and arduous, with my worst enemy: packing. We were preparing to leave for Tinos the next day, which entailed methodically packing the explosion of clothes, school materials, and Greek delicacies (such as a Red Bull Racing baseball cap and Caprice chocolate sticks affectionately nicknamed “cigars”). However, while my roommates and I were attempting to repack the suitcases that had exploded across the room, some people had gone for a hike to a small church hidden in an oceanside cove called Aigos Stephanos (Saint Stephano). According to Oakley, the trek was long and taxing but worth it in the end, even if only for being able to say, “I did it.”
While I continued working away at some homework, some students from our group faced off against some dual-credit students in a beach volleyball competition! After all was said and done, with sweat covering their foreheads and sand between their toes, the winners got the grandest prize you could imagine: ice cream from a mini market, paid for by Bertan. According to Amelia, “It was a lot of fun, especially with the people from the double credit program.” Despite her team, the Airballers, having finished in second place, she thought it was “a good experience to integrate with the other group.”
However, the concept of φιλότιμη only shows itself to us after the sunset photos have been taken, when the heat dissipates and the town, as small as it is, comes alive. See, before we even left for Greece, I was tasked by a friend to stop by a particular bed and breakfast and say hi to the owners, Adonis and Fotoula, who happened to be her uncle and aunt. I’d done this before with my roommates, but today I had two new companions to introduce them to: Chris and Holden, friends from the dual-credit group. I confidently walked onto the porch, my two friends trailing me (less confidently, might I add) as our fourth member, uninterested, sat eating gelato at the café next door.
Fotoula’s first instinct, like any good Greek, was to tell her husband to reach into the bucket at his feet and offer us some figs. I distributed them to the boys (whom I’d already prepared to never deny food), eagerly peeling back the green skin and digging in, not caring about the sticky, sweet juice on my face. As I enjoyed myself, I looked up to see the boys looking with near humiliation at the foreign object in their hands. Then I heard what shouldn’t have been unexpected: these old Greek people, talking the meanest smack that my poor friends couldn’t even understand. Fotoula looked at me and asked, “Have they never eaten figs before?” Then, Adonis turned and asked me something that shifted my perspective on both culture and travel: “Do you guys not have figs in Canada?”
See, when we travel, we have a tendency to view locals as if they are the strange, foreign people, living in a culture different from our own, with weird views and foods and customs. However, when in another country, we are more foreign to them than they are to us. Despite having grown up within this culture, despite knowing the land like the back of my own hand, this had never occurred to me – to Fotoula and Adonis, I am an insider, and Chris and Holden are the outsiders.
As I laugh alongside Fotoula and Adonis, not at the boys, but with them, I think, perhaps the connection is what φιλότιμη is. It is not merely having Greece in your blood and your native tongue, but laughing alongside friends you met two days ago as you teach them how to eat figs. It is the acceptance of the foreign and the genuine curiosity when outsiders come with an open mind. It is the kindness and warmth you are treated with when an old lady asks if your male friend is your boyfriend. It is the love and hospitality you will feel in the Greek culture and its people.
It is home.
Tomorrow we head to the nearby island of Tinos, only a 35-minute ferry ride away. We can’t wait to explore our next destination!
