June 26, 2011
This morning we headed to the Doukas School here in Athens. It was cool to see a Greek school and we had some Greek youth with us. The first session this morning was presented by Andrew Rezpa from Gallup. It was one of the best sessions we had. He was very engaging and interactive with the youth. He spoke about the 3 aspects that Gallup focuses on when they do their youth surveys (ages 12-17), hope, engagement and well-being. He stated that these are the three aspects that have nothing to do with economic status. For Kim, this was an incredible session because it validated her feelings about these things being part of a school and they are usually not the focus. For Alli and Jordan, they felt similarly and wished that they felt that these were part of the focus in their schools and not just academics. One of the activities that Andrew did was to have us imagine our perfect day 10 years into the future. It was a great activity and at the end we all had to share with our individual teams. Andrew asked for a volunteer to share their perfect day and Jordan immediately raised his hand and shared. He shared his perfect day and said it would be that he was teaching high school Spanish and all of his students had gotten A’s and B’s on their test. He was asked how he would get to that day and he said he would study hard. When asked how he would avoid obstacles, he said he would go to the library or to his parent’s house to study. When asked who would tell about this goal, he firmly said, “EVERYBODY!” It was great and he did a great Job. Alli and Kim were very proud of him for sharing.
Our next session was regarding the “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign. The team from Trinidad & Tobago presented a great PowerPoint that defined the r-word in dictionary terms and in slang terms. The quote we liked the best was “If you can’t help someone, at least don’t hurt anyone.” (Dalai Lama) The team from Oregon and India presented on the R-word and how it made them feel. The team from the Philippines presented on their Rotary Club and they have helped support this campaign back in their country. They also mentioned that they help people with disabilities set up micro businesses in the form of food stalls or trucks. The team from Panama was next and they presented a great list of words to use instead of the R-word, which got everyone excited. It was incredible to see the athlete being so passionate in her language about this topic because we could still feel the power of her words even before her partner translated for her. North Carolina was up next and they had an activity for us. They had us all stand in a large circle and asked us a variety of questions and depending on how comfortable we were, we had to either stay where we were if we were comfortable, moved a little towards the center if we were a little uncomfortable and move to the center if we were totally uncomfortable. It was a great activity that got the youth moving and thinking about what they were willing to do and why or why not the would do it. The youth then had the opportunity to participate in Unified Sports, which the team from Germany organized. They were able to play basketball, soccer and volleyball. Jordan was in heaven!! The school was kind enough to provide us with dinner.
After our time at the school, we went to the village mall to have dinner. We went to the food court which was similar to the food courts in America (there was a Ruby Tuesdays, Starbucks etc) but it was also different because there were a lot more sit down restaurants than we have in our malls. Also, the food court portion of the mall stays open even when all the shops close. We went to a restaurant called Be Twins coffee shop, but it didn’t look like a coffee shop nor did they serve food like a coffee shop! Alli and Kim had a turkey sandwich on a thin pita like bread and Jordan had a club sandwich, which was slightly different than our traditional club sandwich, but he still enjoyed it.
When we got back to our hotel, Loretta Claiborne was in the lobby waiting for us. It turned out that everyone was running late so we moved our night activity back an hour so Jordan, Alli and I were able to hang out with her for awhile before we started our cultural exchange. She is an incredible woman who is passionate about youth, sports and Special Olympics. The cultural exchange was fun and it was great to see everyone share his or her culture with everyone here. Everyone got involved in the dancing and singing. It was a fun night!
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