Omilo Newsletter January 2012

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    Dear OMILO friends, Happy 2012!

    Hope you enjoyed the last days of 2011 and are all full of new ideas and energy for 2012!We thank everybody for the nice cards, emails and calls. We are also very happy to hear that manyof you keep contact with other students you met in an OMILO course and many times visit eachother in your home countries. Keep up the good spirit!

    After the many family gatherings, big meals and parties, you can now start thinking of your good

    intentions for 2012! We hope one of these intentions will be continuing your Greek studies!.

    Greece made it into 2012 and we all hope things slowly slowly will get better. As mentioned

    already in December, it is not an easy period, but it remains an interesting period, as well as aperiod with new opportunities and different ways of thinking.

    As usual, we will cover news from Greece as well as an OMILO update. And as usual, we will stayoptimisticMost TV-channels and newspapers choose to concentrate only on the negative news,

    but completely hide the positive newsLets try to change that. Of course it is also a set ofmind ! Most news has a negative as well as positive side.

    One of those examples is this one:

    The artistic workforce of Athens gave an emphasis on giving life to

    the commercial center of Athens. Due to the financial crisis, manyshops in the center of Athens were running out of business andclosed down. During the Christmas holidays, artists and students ofthe academy could use the empty shops of the city to showcasetheir artistic work. They turned the windows of empty shops to"Windows of Art". A double target was set: to revive the city center

    by giving a chance to Athenians to see artistic work, as well as togive young artists the opportunity to expose their work. So thisChristmas season, Athens was reviving. Young people took actionin bringing a sign of hope and participation to the City. The festive

    program that the City of Athens had prepared this year,

    concentrated on solidarity and joint efforts.

    This newsletter will have the following chapters:

    www.omilo.com

    Greek Language and Culture

    January 2012 OMILO Newsletter

    http://www.omilo.com/cms/http://www.omilo.com/cms/
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    1. OMILO-news2. Australia seeks skilled labour from Greece3. Selling Greek islands?4. New ideas and voluntary work5. Mysterious Mastiha

    6. An OMILO experience (written by an OMILO student)

    1. OMILO news

    We thank everybody who has registered already for a Greek course in 2012 and we are also veryhappy to see many ex-participants again. OMILO is doing fine, the teachers as enthusiastic as everand we are proud to say that in 2012 OMILO exists for 15 years. A reason to celebrate!

    However, financially things are not easy this year. With a government desperately looking formoney, the taxes going up every month, as well as a new implied solidarity tax, every extraregistration is a blessing!

    We would like to emphasize that Greece has not changed at all for tourists and holidaying in Greeceis still as nice as ever. Everybody regularly traveling to Greece knows that every year there arestrikes and organizational problems with public transport. Those strikes are not only related to the

    ongoing crisis, but always existed. Its a way of life!So turn on your computer, look for cheap flights to Greece and book your course with

    OMILO!! . We will make sure you will not regret!

    Our 10-week courses just started from January 16th in Athens, with many non-Greeks motivated tocontinue learning Greek and investing in their future life in Greece.For all other courses in Athens, Nafplion, Syros and Andros, our website is completely updated for2012. All information can be found online and any other questions are welcome [email protected]!

    Thinking of new ways to attract foreigners to Greece, we decided to also have a cultural week inAndros, emphasizing on Greek dancing lessons, Greek cooking lessons and/or Greek privatelanguage lessons. For all your friends or relatives in love with dancing and cooking, we wouldappreciate to let them know about the extra program of OMILO from 29/7 till 3/8/2012 on theisland of Andros.

    2. Australia seeks skilled labour from Greece

    Greeks know how to survive..even if they need to leave their country! More and more youngpeople with higher education or university degrees fear for their future in Greece and are looking

    for other options, across the borders.In response to a high demand of young Greeks with lots of qualifications, looking for a more

    promising future abroad, the Australian Department of Immigration organized a seminar in Athensexplaining the procedures and restrictions of relocation and employment to emigrants. Details aboutthe procedure, which remains rather complex and costs around 2,900 euro, are on the website ofAustralias Department of Immigration.The ministrys website also featured a list of professions for which there is high demand inAustralia, including occupations ranging from doctors, dentists and social workers to sociologists,engineers, plumbers and geologists. Home care workers are also reportedly in demand as Australias

    population is rapidly aging and the birth rate dropping.Melbourne is very known to Greeks, since it is the 3rd biggest Greek city, after Athens andThessaloniki! Many Greeks do have family members in Australia.

    3. Selling Greek islands?

    mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]
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    On a constant search for money, the governmenttries to sell many public companies. However,since this program does not have the hoped resultsyet, the government might be thinking of sellingsome islands to wealthy individuals?

    One island seems to have an interested buyer..The Prince of Qatar and the royal family arefrequent visitors to Greek islands and haverecently shown greater interest in acquiring twoislands off the Ionian Sea, one of which isScorpios Island which was once owned by Greek

    billionaire Aristotle Onassis who bought it in1963 from the Greek authorities.Two years ago, the granddaughter of the well-known Greek shipping magnate, Athena Onassis,revealed plans to sell the family owned Scorpios Island, which once hosted the wedding of Onassisand Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of the late US President John F. Kennedy.

    The 80-hectares island is estimated to be worth $200 million, according to British news reports.Qatar is listed as one of the largest parties involved in the rescue of the Greek economy from itsdebt crisis as it has big investments in the country. Greece is also a popular destination for Qatarisfor tourism and business opportunities.However, somebody else is interested to buy the island as well: Bill Gates!The Microsoft founder visited the island in July 2009 reportedly with the intention of buying it.Then, Greek authorities were not willing to sell it as they viewed Onassis island as nationalheritage. But times changed

    There is only one problem! Theodoros Varikos, the mayor of the region where the island is located,said: Athena Onassis (the granddaughter) cannot sell the island because Onassis has specified in

    his will that it cannot be sold. Ti na kanoume!4. New ideas and voluntary work

    In times of crisis, usually new ideas pop up. The same happens inGreece. People become more and more creative to make their

    businesses attractive. The last months many shops closed, but alsomany new shops opened. We see a new fashion of various shopsselling traditional Greek products, from bread (the way ourgrandmother baked it), traditional baked cookies, wine (Greece hasexcellent wines), olive oil (from every corner in Greece), honey(from bees enjoying the different wildflowers in Greece) to mastiha

    shops (see below), Korres naturalproducts (a Greek success story incosmetics, shampoos, etc),woven baskets and muchmore..Its a pleasure to see allthose products coming back, givingGreeks their proud again.Apart from the shops, we also see

    more and more organizations doing voluntarily work. Not onlymany people volunteer in various soup-kitchens feeding homelessand immigrants, but also other ideas find their way.

    Two examples:

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    SAPT Hellas www.sapt.gr

    (Stray Action - Pet Therapy Hellas, a Non Profit Organization) It has the following main goals: To inform children, the future citizens of Greece, both in theory and in practice - about the right

    behavior towards dogs (stray or owned) To offer social/community welfare services to disabled (mentally or physically) people of all ages

    by bringing them in physical contact with cross-bred, former stray but now adopted and trained

    dogs by volunteers.

    SWAP NOT SHOP

    Three young women have set up the Swap not Shop project, a clothing exchange. What started asa friends initiative, grew in 2 years into events which more than 1000 women and familiesattended. Various Swap not Shop clothing swap events are organized all over Greece.Their Facebook page has already more than 3000 members.

    http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/132292216551/

    5. Mysterious MastihaDuring our 2011 summer courses, two of the questions in our afternoon quiz were:

    1. Which is the name of the ice-cream that has mastiha in it? (a. kamaki, b. kaimaki, c. kalamaki)

    2. Which island is famous for the production of mastiha?(a. Kos, b. Lesbos, c. Chios)

    Some students were very familiar with mastic, other students never had heard of it. We willexplain you a bit more about this Greek success story!So what is mastiha? It just looks like globs of tree sap the color of old wax (similar to retsini

    (resin) ). People on the island of Chios love their cryingmastiha trees and see a golden opportunity for profit.The sticky secretion mysteriously found only oncertain trees in a few areas of Chios has become asuccess in a world hungry for new products. Mastiha,also known as mastic, was traditionally a naturalchewing gum with a woody-resin flavor. Now, it isused in products from food to cosmetics to

    pharmaceuticals.Mastiha production rose 25 percent to 130 tons last

    year. Almost two-thirds of the 8 million euros itbrought in was from foreign sales, said the head of

    the Gum Mastic Growers Association on Chios, an island in the Aegean Sea off the Turkish coast.The price of mastiha has remained constant since 1998 at about 48 dollars per kilogram.The reason mastiha is becoming more and more popular abroad are reports supporting thetraditional belief that mastiha can ease digestive ailments such as some ulcers. Locals on Chios haveused mastiha for centuries to treat stomachaches,lower blood pressure and aid digestion. Also someforeign pharmaceutical companies are now starting totake an interest. In Japan tests are under way tocompare mastiha to Japanese green tea as a natural

    treatment for stomach cancer or gastric ulcers.Mastiha also has a presence in Greek cuisine andnearby kitchens. A very popular Greek ice-cream,

    http://www.sapt.gr/http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/132292216551/http://www.sapt.gr/http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/132292216551/
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    called Kaimaki has mastiha flavor and can be found all over Greece. Turks, who use mastiha indesserts and drinks, call it sakiz, the Turkish name for Chios. In Egypt, it is used to add flavor tosoups.A big part of the marketing pitch for mastiha is its uniqueness. Chios is the only place in the worldthat produces it. While mastiha trees can grow anywhere, sap production is only confined to trees in21 villages on the southern part of the island. Locals say that if a mastiha-producing tree is

    replanted in the north, it wont cry. Also efforts to produce Mastiha outside Greece were all invain. While no clear scientific explanation exists for why this happens, researchers speculate themicroclimate of the crying area or nearby underwater volcanic activity could be factors.You will now be able to answer the two quiz questions and next time you might buy an originalmastiha gift from the many Mastiha Shops all over Greece (Also in the Athens airport there is anexcellent Mastiha Shop. A good idea for last-minute gifts before leaving Greece!).

    6. A student describes her OMILO adventure!

    Margarita Beiner from Switzerland attended for the first time an OMILO course on the island ofSyros in September 2011. She enjoyed it, she made friends, she learned a lot and she explored theisland of Syros.

    Margarita wrote a nice article about her experience (in German).For all the German speakers among you, have a look at the following link:http://www.omilo.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/margarita_artikel_syros.pdf

    For those not understanding the German language, an Australian student also described her OMILOexperience of a course in Syros in September 2010. Have a look at:http://www.omilo.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/omilo_athens_news.pdf+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Time to start working again and concentrating on the needs of our students.We wish you all an amazing 2012, but first of all, in good health and spirit!

    Hope to see or hear from you soon,

    The OMILO team

    OMILO, PO Box 61070, 15101 MAROUSSI, ATHENSTel. (0030)210-612.28.96email: [email protected]

    http://www.omilo.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/margarita_artikel_syros.pdfhttp://www.omilo.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/omilo_athens_news.pdfmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.omilo.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/margarita_artikel_syros.pdfhttp://www.omilo.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/omilo_athens_news.pdfmailto:[email protected]