My grandmother was very ill, and a friend was talking to me about how difficult it was to see my grandmother like that.A little girl, one of my students, was listening to the conversation. Once my friend had left, she asked me, "Miss, what happened to your mother?""Nothing happened to my mother," I replied, smiling."Then who was Auntie talking about?""My grandmother."She looked at me with big, round eyes. "Your grandmother is still alive!?""Yes!" I replied, surprised. "All four grandparents are alive." Realising that I was lucky in this respect, I asked, "Are yours alive?""Of course!" she said with a puzzled shrug. "But I'm young!"I, on the other hand, was 24 years OLD. … [Read more...]
How do we go to Olympia, please?
My sister and I stood at the little kiosk on the little platform at Patras station. We had our passports, as always, and our Eurail passes and all our money. We knew how to say 'thank you' in Greek, but that was it. We had not heard of Patras until we tried finding cheap ways of getting to Greece.We were seasoned communicators, though, having travelled through Italy with just a few words of Italian. So we went quite confidently to the ticket booth at the station to find out what our options were. We wanted to go to Olympia and to Delphi, but as students on a crazily low budget, we needed to consider carefully.Armed with clear speech and hopeful-friendly smiles, we asked the gentlemen at the kiosk, "Hello, how do we get to Olympia?"Utter silence.My sister and I exchanged glances. Non-communication was not new to us. How could we ask it better?Before we could figure it out, the … [Read more...]