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Greek Language and Culture January 2012 OMILO Newsletter

Dear OMILO friends, Happy 2012!

Hope you enjoyed the last days of 2011 and are all full of new ideas and energy for 2012! We thank everybody for the nice cards, emails and calls. We are also very happy to hear that many of you keep contact with other students you met in an OMILO course and many times visit each other in your home countries. Keep up the good spirit! After the many family gatherings, big meals and parties, you can now start thinking of your good intentions for 2012! We hope one of these intentions will be continuing your Greek studies!. Greece made it into 2012 and we all hope things slowly slowly will get better. As mentioned already in December, it is not an easy period, but it remains an interesting period, as well as a period with new opportunities and different ways of thinking. As usual, we will cover news from Greece as well as an OMILO update. And as usual, we will stay optimisticMost TV-channels and newspapers choose to concentrate only on the negative news, but completely hide the positive newsLets try to change that. Of course it is also a set of mind ! Most news has a negative as well as positive side. One of those examples is this one: The artistic workforce of Athens gave an emphasis on giving life to the commercial center of Athens. Due to the financial crisis, many shops in the center of Athens were running out of business and closed down. During the Christmas holidays, artists and students of the academy could use the empty shops of the city to showcase their artistic work. They turned the windows of empty shops to "Windows of Art". A double target was set: to revive the city center by giving a chance to Athenians to see artistic work, as well as to give young artists the opportunity to expose their work. So this Christmas season, Athens was reviving. Young people took action in bringing a sign of hope and participation to the City. The festive program that the City of Athens had prepared this year, concentrated on solidarity and joint efforts. This newsletter will have the following chapters:

1. OMILO-news 2. Australia seeks skilled labour from Greece 3. Selling Greek islands? 4. New ideas and voluntary work 5. Mysterious Mastiha 6. An OMILO experience (written by an OMILO student)

1. OMILO news
We thank everybody who has registered already for a Greek course in 2012 and we are also very happy to see many ex-participants again. OMILO is doing fine, the teachers as enthusiastic as ever and we are proud to say that in 2012 OMILO exists for 15 years. A reason to celebrate! However, financially things are not easy this year. With a government desperately looking for money, the taxes going up every month, as well as a new implied solidarity tax, every extra registration is a blessing! We would like to emphasize that Greece has not changed at all for tourists and holidaying in Greece is still as nice as ever. Everybody regularly traveling to Greece knows that every year there are strikes and organizational problems with public transport. Those strikes are not only related to the ongoing crisis, but always existed. Its a way of life! So turn on your computer, look for cheap flights to Greece and book your course with OMILO!! . We will make sure you will not regret! Our 10-week courses just started from January 16th in Athens, with many non-Greeks motivated to continue learning Greek and investing in their future life in Greece. For all other courses in Athens, Nafplion, Syros and Andros, our website is completely updated for 2012. All information can be found online and any other questions are welcome at info@omilo.com! Thinking of new ways to attract foreigners to Greece, we decided to also have a cultural week in Andros, emphasizing on Greek dancing lessons, Greek cooking lessons and/or Greek private language lessons. For all your friends or relatives in love with dancing and cooking, we would appreciate to let them know about the extra program of OMILO from 29/7 till 3/8/2012 on the island of Andros.

2. Australia seeks skilled labour from Greece

Greeks know how to survive..even if they need to leave their country! More and more young people with higher education or university degrees fear for their future in Greece and are looking for other options, across the borders. In response to a high demand of young Greeks with lots of qualifications, looking for a more promising future abroad, the Australian Department of Immigration organized a seminar in Athens explaining the procedures and restrictions of relocation and employment to emigrants. Details about the procedure, which remains rather complex and costs around 2,900 euro, are on the website of Australias Department of Immigration. The ministrys website also featured a list of professions for which there is high demand in Australia, including occupations ranging from doctors, dentists and social workers to sociologists, engineers, plumbers and geologists. Home care workers are also reportedly in demand as Australias population is rapidly aging and the birth rate dropping. Melbourne is very known to Greeks, since it is the 3rd biggest Greek city, after Athens and Thessaloniki! Many Greeks do have family members in Australia.

3. Selling Greek islands?

On a constant search for money, the government tries to sell many public companies. However, since this program does not have the hoped results yet, the government might be thinking of selling some islands to wealthy individuals? One island seems to have an interested buyer.. The Prince of Qatar and the royal family are frequent visitors to Greek islands and have recently shown greater interest in acquiring two islands off the Ionian Sea, one of which is Scorpios Island which was once owned by Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis who bought it in 1963 from the Greek authorities. Two years ago, the granddaughter of the well-known Greek shipping magnate, Athena Onassis, revealed plans to sell the family owned Scorpios Island, which once hosted the wedding of Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of the late US President John F. Kennedy. The 80-hectares island is estimated to be worth $200 million, according to British news reports. Qatar is listed as one of the largest parties involved in the rescue of the Greek economy from its debt crisis as it has big investments in the country. Greece is also a popular destination for Qataris for tourism and business opportunities. However, somebody else is interested to buy the island as well: Bill Gates! The Microsoft founder visited the island in July 2009 reportedly with the intention of buying it. Then, Greek authorities were not willing to sell it as they viewed Onassis island as national heritage. But times changed There is only one problem! Theodoros Varikos, the mayor of the region where the island is located, said: Athena Onassis (the granddaughter) cannot sell the island because Onassis has specified in his will that it cannot be sold. Ti na kanoume!

4. New ideas and voluntary work

In times of crisis, usually new ideas pop up. The same happens in Greece. People become more and more creative to make their businesses attractive. The last months many shops closed, but also many new shops opened. We see a new fashion of various shops selling traditional Greek products, from bread (the way our grandmother baked it), traditional baked cookies, wine (Greece has excellent wines), olive oil (from every corner in Greece), honey (from bees enjoying the different wildflowers in Greece) to mastiha shops (see below), Korres natural products (a Greek success story in cosmetics, shampoos, etc), woven baskets and much more..Its a pleasure to see all those products coming back, giving Greeks their proud again. Apart from the shops, we also see more and more organizations doing voluntarily work. Not only many people volunteer in various soup-kitchens feeding homeless and immigrants, but also other ideas find their way. Two examples:

SAPT Hellas www.sapt.gr (Stray Action - Pet Therapy Hellas, a Non Profit Organization) It has the following main goals: To inform children, the future citizens of Greece, both in theory and in practice - about the right behavior towards dogs (stray or owned) To offer social/community welfare services to disabled (mentally or physically) people of all ages by bringing them in physical contact with cross-bred, former stray but now adopted and trained dogs by volunteers. SWAP NOT SHOP Three young women have set up the Swap not Shop project, a clothing exchange. What started as a friends initiative, grew in 2 years into events which more than 1000 women and families attended. Various Swap not Shop clothing swap events are organized all over Greece. Their Facebook page has already more than 3000 members. http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/132292216551/

5. Mysterious Mastiha
During our 2011 summer courses, two of the questions in our afternoon quiz were: 1. Which is the name of the ice-cream that has mastiha in it? (a. kamaki, b. kaimaki, c. kalamaki) 2. Which island is famous for the production of mastiha? (a. Kos, b. Lesbos, c. Chios) Some students were very familiar with mastic, other students never had heard of it. We will explain you a bit more about this Greek success story! So what is mastiha? It just looks like globs of tree sap the color of old wax (similar to retsini (resin) ). People on the island of Chios love their crying mastiha trees and see a golden opportunity for profit. The sticky secretion mysteriously found only on certain trees in a few areas of Chios has become a success in a world hungry for new products. Mastiha, also known as mastic, was traditionally a natural chewing gum with a woody-resin flavor. Now, it is used in products from food to cosmetics to pharmaceuticals. Mastiha production rose 25 percent to 130 tons last year. Almost two-thirds of the 8 million euros it brought in was from foreign sales, said the head of the Gum Mastic Growers Association on Chios, an island in the Aegean Sea off the Turkish coast. The price of mastiha has remained constant since 1998 at about 48 dollars per kilogram. The reason mastiha is becoming more and more popular abroad are reports supporting the traditional belief that mastiha can ease digestive ailments such as some ulcers. Locals on Chios have used mastiha for centuries to treat stomachaches, lower blood pressure and aid digestion. Also some foreign pharmaceutical companies are now starting to take an interest. In Japan tests are under way to compare mastiha to Japanese green tea as a natural treatment for stomach cancer or gastric ulcers. Mastiha also has a presence in Greek cuisine and nearby kitchens. A very popular Greek ice-cream,

called Kaimaki has mastiha flavor and can be found all over Greece. Turks, who use mastiha in desserts and drinks, call it sakiz, the Turkish name for Chios. In Egypt, it is used to add flavor to soups. A big part of the marketing pitch for mastiha is its uniqueness. Chios is the only place in the world that produces it. While mastiha trees can grow anywhere, sap production is only confined to trees in 21 villages on the southern part of the island. Locals say that if a mastiha-producing tree is replanted in the north, it wont cry. Also efforts to produce Mastiha outside Greece were all in vain. While no clear scientific explanation exists for why this happens, researchers speculate the microclimate of the crying area or nearby underwater volcanic activity could be factors. You will now be able to answer the two quiz questions and next time you might buy an original mastiha gift from the many Mastiha Shops all over Greece (Also in the Athens airport there is an excellent Mastiha Shop. A good idea for last-minute gifts before leaving Greece!).

6. A student describes her OMILO adventure!

Margarita Beiner from Switzerland attended for the first time an OMILO course on the island of Syros in September 2011. She enjoyed it, she made friends, she learned a lot and she explored the island of Syros. Margarita wrote a nice article about her experience (in German). For all the German speakers among you, have a look at the following link: http://www.omilo.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/margarita_artikel_syros.pdf For those not understanding the German language, an Australian student also described her OMILO experience of a course in Syros in September 2010. Have a look at: http://www.omilo.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/omilo_athens_news.pdf +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Time to start working again and concentrating on the needs of our students. We wish you all an amazing 2012, but first of all, in good health and spirit! Hope to see or hear from you soon,

The OMILO team

OMILO, PO Box 61070, 15101 MAROUSSI, ATHENS Tel. (0030)210-612.28.96 email: info@omilo.com