Doggie Days

Every year, people usually make a list of things to do during the dog days of summer.

For example: go to the beach and get a tan. Go on vacation. Read alot of books. Take the kids to the park. Keep the kids occupied so you don't go crazy. If all else fails, some parents send their kids to summer camp - sleepaway are day is dependent on parental preferences and location. In New York, parents CAN keep their kids occupied without sending them to sleepaway camp.

I for one have never been to summer camp. My summers were filled with chilling with my childhood group of friends and our mothers while the dads were at work (most of our moms by the time we were in the tweenie years worked for the public schools, so when we were off, they were off) - mostly running amok in my old neighborhood every day during the summer from about 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Our mom's would collectively gather in front of my apartment building and the one next door (because 3 families were concentrated between those two buildings so it became a focal point). One mom would make frappe - Greek iced coffee - the others would sit and chill and make sure that none of us got hurt. When you put together the kids that lived on my block plus the "fringes" (lived in the neighborhood, not on the block but came most of the time) there were about 20 of us, ranging from 18 to the age of 3 by the mid-1990s. And we made ALOT of noise. Today, my old block is quiet. Everyone got older, my family and two other families moved away from the block, and there isn't a new generation of kids to take our places. It's a bit sad in a way because my old block had such a reputation for being kid-central in the summer. We got creative; we would play manhunt or hide-and-seek. One time, one of hte older kids hid my little sister in a trash can. We would ride our bikes around the block till we were red in the face.

Sometimes, however, our summers were spent in Greece as opposed to the front stoop. In Astoria, Greek parents ship their kids off to Greece to stay with grandparents or other relatives. For the entire summer. Some of my family friends have gone to Greece the day after th public schools finished (around June 25) and don't come back till Labor Day weekend or the day before school starts (first Thursday after Labor Day weekend). If you have a sharp memory, recall that my parents did that to me in 1995 as a "graduation gift" from elementary school. For the entire summer. Yep, I did the "whole summer in Greece" thing.

I have done it twice actually; first in 1995 and the second time in 2002. Both times I stayed with family and had to deal with relatives that I have never met before (like a third cousin from my dad's uncle's side[?]). However, in 2002 it was a bit more fun; although I lived in the village outside of Sparta with dear ol'grannie, my mom and my sister for about 5/6 of the summer, mom sister and I did go into Athens and Thessaloniki and visited the other grannie in Florina (way up north, about 18km from the Greek-Yugoslavia border. We actually went to the border; it was a bit of a highlight). but when we were back in Sparta, my yiayia would take us around the other villages in the mountains and other little towns - one was a beach town called Yitheio, another time, we took the ferry with my mom's cousin to a small island for the day called Elafoniso. Whenever the old biddies from the village would come to call, my mom sister and I would make fun of them afterwards or in hushed voices - but in English of course.

And now, the dog days of summer are here upon us again and the summers of 2-month+ vacations away from home are long gone. For now at least. In the future, I plan to go a month here, a month there and I know I can drag Mel along at least because if we do something like that in Europe there is internet connection. Plus the time difference is such that if I fulfill my dream of renting a house in Tuscany for a month, Mel works during the mesimeri/siesta/naptime.

My other future summer goal is to go to Greece, pretend I don't speak Greek and island-hop like a tourist for a month or two. I told that to my dad - he took one look at me and started laughing. He said I still had to visit yiayia ALL THE WAY UP in Florina. It's an eight-hour bus ride between Florina and Athens.

But this summer, I have academic pursuits to accomplish. All of which revolve around Japanese:
1) Get up to 1000 Kanji
2) Get through "Le Petite Prince" (in Japanese)
3) Get through my "Breaking into Japanese Literature" reader
4) Review all my grammar
5) Record vocabulary and put onto iPod

and other little things. In June I did nothing at all - I needed a little bit of a break from school, especially after this past semester. I was exhausted. I also have other little miscellaneous things that I want to complete:
1) London scrapbook
2) Small vacation with Mel
3) And yes...get a tan. I am a pasty freak. Not to the point of leather but a nice little glow.
4) Get DVD's for Japan (when I was in London I only had like 5 movies which bored me to tears after watching them twice when I had the flu. This time I am going to be prepared, although there is a DVD rental store in Kyoto that is bilingual.)

and other things I forgot at the moment.