Tanya the RA

My RA, Tanya, is the coolest person I know. She’s from the UK but spent the last year living on an olive farm outside of Thessaloniki, and took the job as our RA in order to live in the city. She’s lived on her own since she was 16 and has been all over the place. She has a great accent and a great vocabulary of British words. She’s a sound engineer and makes the most amazing food that I always get to try. The other day she whipped out sun-blushed tomatoes (no, they’re not the same as sundried, they’re pretty much roasted over low heat for 6+ hours) that she made herself and let me have one, and it was an explosion of amazingness. She has been saying for weeks she was going to make cheesecake, and every time she brought it up it would be literally all I could think about.

The Thessaloniki documentary film festival is going on this week, and in her capacity as a sound engineer Tanya worked on one of the films. It screened last night, but it was sold out so we didn’t go. Because she worked on the film, she got a bag of goodies that included a book describing each documentary and another with the times/locations of each. I had no idea what a big deal this festival was—there are hundreds of films and apparently people come from all over to be a part of the festival. There are films made in Greece, the US, Canada, Mexico, Britain, Poland, Italy, Turkey, all sorts of eastern European countries, etc. Tonight, as I sat with Tanya and the building eating the most delicious cheesecake of my life, I went through and picked out some of the films I’m going to try and see in this upcoming week. There are a lot of films about autism, Asperger's, down syndrome, etc. There also seems to be a lot about the Middle East, abusive relationships, and past wars. In fact, most of the films look pretty depressing, which is why I’m being sure to hit up one called Love Etc near the end, otherwise I don’t know if I’ll make it through. They all look really interesting; there are some made in Greece about the economic crisis and the debt crisis specifically as it relates to Greece, which I think would be so fascinating to watch, not just for the content, but for the perspective. There are also some relating to Greek history that I’m currently learning about.

Speaking of, it is really so fascinating to be taking classes over here. The perspective is completely different. We just reached World War II in my history class, and it’s just so different to be learning about it from the perspective of an occupied country. Yes, we all know Greece was occupied, we’ve seen Guns of Navarone (thanks Mom), but it’s different. It’s personal. We watched archival footage of the Nazis invading Thessaloniki, and I discovered that the Nazis actually used Anatolia College (ACT) as their main base in the city during occupation. It’s just so intriguing to think about; it’s the same series of events in history, but the perspective is just so different. That aspect of study abroad is as much a part of education as any of the raw content.