Η Χίος μέσα από τα μάτια της Melanie

Η μικρή φοιτήτρια που πριν τελειώσει της σπουδές  θέλησε να διδαχτεί τον πολιτισμό μας !

Την melanie μαζί με άλλα παιδιά  του προγράμματος (ERASMUS)  που έζησαν για λίγο στο μικρό Καταρράκτη  και στην Χίο, θα σας παρουσιάσουμε μέσα από το katarraktisvillage!!

Εμείς ρωτήσαμε!!  και τα παιδιά μας απήντησαν!!

Ξεκινάμε από την Melanie μιας και ήταν η πρώτη που ήρθε στο μικρό χωριουδάκι μας!!

Γεια σας, I'm Melanie from Germany,

First day of school katarraktis

 I'm 20 years old and I study media and communication science in beautiful Vienna. I'm really happy with it, but right after graduating school when I was 18 I didn't want to study immediately: I first wanted to travel and live abroad for some time! So I decided to do an European Voluntary Service (EVS) on beautiful Chios Island for one year.





 I wanted to experience the pure Greek culture so that's why I prefered a small and unique Island like Chios to big and anonymous cities. In the beginning I was in the village Vrontados but then in summer 2015 I started my voluntary work in Katarraktis village along with two other volunteers, Raphaela from Austra and Natalia from Poland.

moments creation!

The three of us should establish our EVS project in this nice little fishing village. In Vrontados we were working in two primary schools as assistant teachers in sports and art lessons, creating costumes, presentations and helping with everything else that the teachers needed.

We also run several web pages about Chios Island, including our

 web radio chiosradio.gr. Besides these tasks we made computer and


summer
activities with the school children, so we thaught them how to use different computer programs and were doing excurisons with them. Then the project expanded so we moved to Katarraktis and we had to start from zero and offer our help to the local community.

moments of entertainment!

That meant creating contact to the children, teachers and parents of Katarraktis, showing them what we already did in Vrontados and offer them our help in the schools in any possible way.

 We also created summer activities for the local children during the summer holidays, so we took photos with them of the village and then showed them how to use photo programs on the computers and how to make videos out of them. Because Katarraktis is much smaller than Vrontados, we were not sure if the locals would accept us but turns out we didn't have to worry about that at all:

Greek culture!

 The whole community and most of all of course the parents and children welcomed us with open arms and hearts! It didn't take long until we felt accepted and at home in Katarraktis because everybody was nice and seemed interested in us and our activities. I noticed pretty quickly that the Katarraktis kids are lovely and open children with really good english skills!

 As I have two little siblings in Germany that are 11 and 12 now, I noticed some differences between German and Greek kids but they are mostly general cultural things: first of all are the Greeks a tiny bit more noisey but as I said thats a cultural phenomenon and is present at every age! :-) Besides that the little Greeks are very outgoing, joyful, active and open towards us foreigners.

 No wonder that especially the presentations about our different countries at the primary school of Katarraktis seemed to be very interesting for the kids! Another very obvious differents for me is in genereal the school system. Compared to the German one the Greek one seemed to be much more flexible. But both seem to work because both nationalities have happy, nice and very tolerant children!

I enjoyed every second of working in Katarraktis and learned so many things there, especially about the unique and amazing Greek culture. That was the main reason why I chose beautiful Chios Island instead of Thessaloniki or Athens for my voluntary service in Greece:

I wanted to get to know the original Greek culture unfilteres just as it is. And that's exactely what I got: name day celebrations, national holiday parades and of course the impressing rocket war at Easter! Because we volunteers all lived together like a big multicultural family, I also learned much about cultures from all over europe.

 We had volunteers from Spain, Norway, Austria, Poland, Italy and Germany and it is a beautiful experience living in a multicultural environment like this. That way in every day live I learned about their cultures, languages, habits and traditions and I will never forget all the awesome people I met! I was so impressed by the amazing hospitality of the Katarraktis people and the passion that the parents have for the activities for their kids

. I felt very welcomed and enjoyed meeting the children durng the day and the parents in the evenings over a glass of ouzo. ;-) I miss these times and I still think about all of the people I met there all the time! I can't wait to come back and visit everybody and I wish Katarratis village all the best because you kind, generous and open people truly deserve only good things!

 Φιλάκια, Melanie

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