GREEK LANGUAGE (ΕΛΛΙΝΙΚΗ ΓΛΩΣΣΑ)

These are some Greek words that I wrote up that I thought you might want to know:

These are the Greek capital letters

No – όχι (ohi)

Yes – ναι. (ne)

Sweet dreams – Oνειρα γλυκά. (Onira Glika)

Good night – Καληνύχτα. (Kalinihta)

What is your name? – Πως σε λένε. (Pos se Lene)

My name is……….. Με λένε………….. (Me lene………..)

Back – Πίσω (Piso)

Forward- μπρος. (Bros)

Where is?- Που είναι; ( Pu ine?)

This is the order that you write the small Greek letters

This is how to say the Greek ‘alphabeta’

By Kiki – more lessons to come soon

Interesting expressions

Emilio to mummy when he was in one of his gorgeous moods on the beach.
‘Your tummy must have been very beautiful to have such beautiful kids like us. And then there would have been gold and jewels on the outside of your tummy.’

At the beach Zoi was playing with and wobbling Christos’ ‘taut’ tummy.
Zoi – ‘Have you had a baby in your tummy?’

When we were in our first tiny accommodation in Agios Nikolaos – when the cupboard door was open it would hit the light fitting and it would swing around everywhere. The kids would run for cover thinking it might fall and Emilio would have his arms out following it around in case it fell and said…….
Emilio – ‘Come to papa’. (Kids wanted me to put this in but I think you had to be there!)

Emilio – while walking home from school and seeing a postcard of two bare female bottoms that had just sat in the sand.
‘Mummy can we buy two of those cards to send to Wirra and Judd.’

While walking back to Kritsa Village from Kritsa gorge
Christos: ‘That sign says Agios Nikolaos that way but we came from the other way.’
Yasi – ‘This is Greece!’

On the way to Primary school #3 passing a woman cleaning her concrete
Toby – ‘Baba, Greeks sure do love to water their concrete’.

Baba helping Yasi with her homework
Baba: ‘Yasi you don’t cross your t’s (τ) in Greek. There’s enough crosses in this country already.’

While sitting at a cafe on their day off (due to the prep teachers strike) – only a metre or two from a woman.
Emilio – ‘Baba is that woman who’s smoking really poisonous.’ (Must give him a lesson in tact)

German tour leader on a bus on the way to Samaria gorge
‘When I say 15-20 minutes, I mean 15-20 minutes because I am German, not Greek!’

While swimming off the boat going to Spinalonga – Cara talking to Yasi

Cara – ‘ Oooohhh! Your parents are kissing…….Yuk!’

Man in shop

Meri – ‘Are these Ice watches real?’

Shop owner – ‘Yes of course they are real………copies!’

While watching Mamma Mia:

Toby: ‘Mummy, what does ‘dot dot dot’ mean?’

Moochie & Kalika: ‘You know – it’s what they used to do in the olden days’.

(Moochie loves saying this repeatedly now)

Kalika usually uses the stairs to get to our 2nd floor apt. Today she bought a new top with some money Giagia sent her as she had no long sleeves at all – and she loves it.

Kiki: ‘I’m going in the lift so I can look at myself in the mirror.’

Kritsa Gorge

Today we went to Kritsa Gorge. We got there by bus to Kritsa and then used our legs.

Kritsa is really hilly and steep

It was only a short bus ride and on the way to the bus stop I carried Toby’s backpack which had all our picnic lunch stuff and I didn’t think it was that heavy, but baba thought I was being very brave.

Heavy backpack

‘Φαράγγι Κριτσας’ means ‘Kritsa gorge’

Today is a sort of special day because it is mummy’s and baba’s anniversary. They have been married 12 years. They were only married for two years when they first had kids.
At the gorge there were lots of cliffs and overhangs. We did a lot of rock climbing which we really love to do. I made it up all the steep parts even with the backpack on.

The Miliking kids just love rocks

At one spot the gorge was only 90cm wide

Once there was a rock and there were metal things to hold onto on the sides.

Hang on!

There was like a passageway almost like a slide cause it was so slippery. I wouldn’t dare anyone to use it like a slide cause it lead into a hole. This hole was a rock hole that looked like a well and it had some water in it. I would not use the water to drink cause you could die and it was black water with a goats skull in it.

Quite slippery

This is the end of summer so there’s not much water around. Now do you see why you shouldn’t use it as a water slide?
We stopped for lunch after about an hour of walking in the gorge and we had a picnic – veggies and homemade falafel tuna patties and homemade professional tzatziki made by Sandy King (it’s the best) and feta cheese and olives. I found the the top two – well the only two really- relaxing rocks at lunch break.

Ah! I need a rest

I also found the best rock to climb. I love finding climbing rocks. Nobody else (who tried) could get up and down with no help. Of course before we left from that spot we had some of mummy’s delicious home made apple and banana and chocolate cake. We also had a chubbachup- mine was a lemon lime and watermelon. Mine was from El Questro which I got for my birthday in May from a girl that picked us up hitching from Amalia gorge back to our campsite. I’ve had it so long cause we only keep them for hiking when we really deserve them and we haven’t really done any real hiking since China.
Climbing Kritsa gorge was really fun except at the end when we went out of Kritsa gorge it was a nightmare cause we couldn’t find the right path and it was hot. I had to give the big kids the backpack for about 4mins to give my shoulders a rest. We kept walking up a path which was the wrong path then mum found a small goat path down the mountain – I slipped twice on this goat path and one time I got blood on my knee – we followed the path until we found a made road and then a man was walking who pointed to the road that lead back to the village.

I just want to go home – it’s hot!

Kids: ‘Are we lost?’ Mummy: ‘No just geographically challenged’

Pushing through on goat tracks

Plumbing nightmare

The road back to Kritsa

However it was 3-4km away but at least we knew where we were going. When we were walking into the village we were carried away by some dogs that were in someone’s yard – there was no way out but dogs find ways – the biggest dog of the two little ones was squashed behind a cushion half against the wall and half against the cushion. They were just adorable especially the smallest puppy. The mother was worried about us hurting her little pups but she couldn’t stop us because she was on a lead, she just barked and jumped. Now we are sitting at a cafe in Kritsa because the next bus back isn’t for another two hours – because it is Sunday. I got a Calippo – a lemon-lime Calippo which was yummy. All the kids except Emilio had a Callippo cause it makes you cool – Emilio had a vanilla ice cream with chocolate on top. Baba had a frappe like he always does cause he loves them and mummy had an iced-choc and they got a baklava to share but us kids ate most of it.

School
This week we had our second week at school and I have figured out how to spell ‘Ελα’ all by myself. In English it would be spelt epsilon, lambda then alpha. The word in English would be ‘ela’ which means ‘come’. I’ve also got some other words that I typed up which I’ll put into this blog if you would like to learn some. Actually I was thinking of putting that into a separate blog so I’ll do that next so its easy to look up.
My teacher is named Kiria Soula. She is a good teacher cause she just is. She checks if I’m ok.

This is my finished homework

My ‘Γλωσσα’ language homework

My ‘Μαθεματικα’ Maths homework

Every single night I get so much homework. Two pages. One of Greek language and one of maths. Mummy mainly helps me cause she’s learning Greek too but sometimes baba has to help with the words.

My favourite subject at school is English cause it is really easy and our English teacher is a super doper fantastic teacher.

I just finished school but PE was last so I was so hot

I also like Sport stuff we do outside but it makes you really ζεστη (hot). I have to carry about 16 books in my backpack and it is really heavy.

Acqua Pool – Water Park
Last weekend we took a bus to Hersonissos which is on the way to Heraklion which is the capital of Crete. There we had to wait half an hour for the Acqua pool’s shuttle bus to come pick us up. It was worth the wait. We loved the tsunami slide lots.

Woohoo – what a drop

Scary when you first come down

Wow

‘That was cracker licking awesome’

It was like a vertical drop but we were on a donut. Then you go right up the other side and you keep doing this but you eventually slow down.
There is also a racing slide which is an ordinary racing slide with four separate slides like normal slides and you can race each other.

The girl up top who checked if everything was safe made a secret handshake with us which she did each time we went down.

Yipeeeeeee!

Splash

We love racing

I also beat Toby

Toby never beat me in the races. I was skilled. He kept pushing me as we ran up the stairs because he doesn’t like losing. He thought that his shorts created more friction.
There was a covered slide and when you came out you went into a bowl – it looked like a cereal bowl and the slide lead to this cereal bowl.

Can you see me in the bowl?

…….and there I fall out!

You kept going around this bowl until you fell into the opening which was quite scary but the only way out of this slide. You fell head first into a pool that was 2.75m deep.

There’s also a Black covered slide which is completely dark and you came out on a curve not straight. When I was in the middle I saw tiny lights and I said in my head ‘Oh oh, who turned the party lights on?’ It was about 10 seconds later and I dropped into the pool.
There was also the blue water slide and it was a pool at the start of it which you hopped into the pool and you got yourself into the water slide by pulling on a rope.

Here we come

We love water slides

It can get crowded

This water slide was not covered. After a bit you would find a pool and then you would have to keep trying to get back into the current to keep going – it was hard cause we were on this huge donut. Then you went down on the water slide and reached another pool which always had a person to help you – the person made us do donuts on our donut by pulling our legs and spinning us. Then we got to this third pool after which it was really hard to get back to the water slide. Once I was almost on the water slide again when I got stuck on the edge but eventually I got back onto the slide and soon after that I dropped into the main pool where all of those water slides drop into (on that slide lots of people lose their donuts and I was one of them – I went on the water slide again bare bottomed but Toby saved the donut by catching it by its handle and we all went down the water slide to the main pool.)
We also went on the ‘Lazy river’ which was way too lazy so we had to do things like donuts, walk, swim while mama and baba where being lazy and just lying on their donut floating along. They were lazy enough not to notice us coming up to them. I gave baba a big surprise by sneaking up to him and not making a sound.

We played in the little pool for ages

Down they come

Zoi comes down the slide

Weeeeeeeeee!

There was even a little kids area.
I went on every single ride and it was awesome. We went to the water park cause it was on the weekend after our first week of school and we were lucky kids and mama and baba were really proud of us on our first day of school.
By ΚΑΛΙΚΑ

Start of school…….Start of work…….

As I sit on this bus and on the right I see the beautiful blue sea – more beautiful and blue than a precious gem, many tourist hotels, villas and beach umbrellas dot the coast.

The crystal blue sea

The coastline can be quite dramatic

On the left side of the bus a rocky landscape, scenic, gorgeous and simultaneously harsh as it has been basked in the sun and heat year after year. Small villages of white homes dot the landscape.

Rock on one side, sea on the other

Crete is very very rocky and mountainous

Today the kids started school or at least they went for an hour to attend the official blessing by a priest (I so feel sorry for them having to wear a long robe in this heat) – right outside in the courtyard of the school on basketball court – all kids decked in their finest clothes, hair gelled up or in fancy braids and not a single hat in sight.

Lining up for the official blessing to open the school year

Entering school on the first day

No sun smart policy at Municipal school #3. Though admittedly the sun is very different here in Greece – it is hot but doesn’t seem as harsh – the ozone layer above possibly much more intact than in Australia. None of us have been burnt the whole time we have been away (even Sandy) – though most of us are certainly quite tanned.

Anyway – at the official blessing and the following address by principal and parents’ association head, many of the children where talking and not listening – I think if I was the teacher – many a detention slip would’ve been given out. When I was a student teacher at Salesian College – Rupertswood I was always told by my mentor George Toth – ‘don’t smile, give them clear instructions and boundaries and make sure they know you mean business’.

The principal addressing the school

They all had to stand in their class lines (Thankfully Yasi and Toby are together and in a small class of 16 kids though their teacher was absent today and Kalika is in grade 2B with a lovely teacher called Ms Soula) and then they were lead upstairs to their classes to get acquainted etc. I was so nervous for them but also so proud of them for just waltzing up and going with the flow. There school is a concrete jungle though at least they have a view of the sea.

The courtyard where school starts with prayer every morning

The concrete school – with a view

They will obviously learn language incredibly quickly though I’m sure it will be a struggle for a few months. Fingers crossed. Emilio and Zoi on the other hand are in the compulsory prep year of kinder (Kinder is one optional year at 4 yrs old and then a compulsory year at 5 years old followed by Primary school which is grade 1-6), though in a different direction to the primary school so Sandy took them and they were very happy to be in separate classes and since they are used to a school environment they just went and played while many of the kids who were going to kinder for the first time clung to their parents or had to be peeled off them. So that was a relief. My children love me telling them the story of my first day at school – Merri Primary School in Nth Fitzroy, Melbourne. I was just over 5 yrs old and didn’t know any words of English at all (I had moved to Australia about a year and half before though was surrounded in a Greek environment and my parents didn’t know any English) and I just clung onto my mum’s skirt and cried my head off, lovely Mrs Finger (my Prep teacher) had to drag me from my mum and I was so nervous and shy that I didn’t know how to ask to go to the toilet so I wet my pants – it was horrible. My kids always giggle at the wetting my pants scenario!
Tomorrow is the first full day of school where they’ll get their school books etc and start classes – they seem pretty ok about it at this stage. We’ll see – and their school experience will definitely be the marker we use to see if we can stay here in Greece for a year.
Getting close to Heraklion now – I had to come to the big city today to buy my massage table (tried to find a second hand one but second hand stuff doesn’t often happen in Greece – they don’t like using other people’s stuff – which explains why my mum cringes every time we tell her about our humongous savings at op-shops that we love to frequent.)

School teachers’ protest signs

Managed to find a man bag in my shopping – don’t know how I survived for 6 months without!

Tomorrow I have my first Bowen client and I’m quite excited cause I really love treating people with Bowen and the € much needed as these Miliking kids eat so much food and despite Greece being cheaper than Northern Europe it still is quite an expensive country to live in.
Have an awesome day.

By Christos

This blog has been a bit slow in coming up though Kiki just wrote another and we realised we have been so busy with getting into school and activities etc – oops – sorry -so this blog was written by Kiki before school even started –  Baba Miliking

Today is Thursday, me and mummy are having a girls day together. We picked some photos to print off and went to a cafe to wait.

Dolphins by the sea

This is part of the Venetian wall

We had a humungous waffle with strawberry, crunched up oreo biscuits, ice-cream and nutella of course because it was called a nutella waffle. I had a caramel milkshake and mum had a frappe but she couldn’t finish it because she was too full from the waffle.

The biggest Nutella waffle you’ve ever seen

So yummy!

We went to a dinosaur museum, it had what an earthquake feels like and what to do during an earthquake and we experienced some pretty bad earthquakes in Japan and Taiwan.

The Crete Museum of Natural History

This map shows you all about the plates everywhere in the world

This is what to do if you’re in an earthquake

We went in a discovery centre and put on a hard hat and saw a pretend cave that looked like real crystal.

Explorer Kiki

Inside the cave

There was a handle to turn in a tsunami making display. You could see if a tsunami is safer when a house is on a cliff top or a gentle slope. I thought the cliff was safer but the cliff also could be damaged.
I also rode on a dinosaur!

I’m a dinosaur rider

You should have seen how big a tyrannosaurus’ mouth was. Isabelle Christison could fit lying down on its tongue or use it as a blanket.

Such a big mouth

It’s so big

I was given some dinosaur stickers, i got two of each one, then I lost one. After the awesome museum, we went to the Nike factory store and I got some really groovy pink runners.

By Kikibelle

This is our school sign painted on the wall

Today was my first day at Prep which is called ‘nipia’ in Greece. Guess what – my teacher’s name is Katerina. I was a bit sad when mummy left because it was my first try at Greek school. We played this awesome game – trying to beat my friends racing – I won.

This is the yard with all the parents on the first day

This is the playground outside

We had a break for some food and I had a hard honey toast sandwich which is called a ‘paximadi’. I also ate some pistachios and a choccie bikkie that mummy made.

There are some fun puzzles and games

Some other boys and me played a trick on our teacher – we knocked on the table like someone was knocking on the door and she had to go to the door and no one was there – she didn’t see us knocking. It was funny.

By The Pirate bear

I liked the kitchen toy at my class and there was a pretend computer and a pretend phone. My teacher is called Lefteria and she’s really really nice.

This is on the first day but I’m not normally in Moochie’s class

I walked in and was a little bit brave – I wasn’t scared of the teachers but scared a bit of the other kids. When I came to little school – it’s called ‘Nipia’. I did puzzles and other people in my class did other games and things.

These are shapes with lots of Greek words

I had two really hard breads with butter and I had grapes to eat. We went out to play and the teacher read us a book and my mummy picked us up.

By Zoi

We took this photo just before we all went to see the apartment for the first time.

It was such a god send finding this apartment really – there is lots for rent and lots of apartment buildings that are empty though not many that are over two bedrooms and also furnished. It would’ve been a crazy amount of cash to furnish a place and a bit of a waste as nine months rolls by pretty quickly sometimes.
Anyway – we started our journey in Agios Nikolaos in a small studio apartment right in the centre of the crazy tourist hub but oh such a gorgeous view.

Our first little studio apartment was on 3rd floor of red building across the water.

It was definitely the smallest place we have stayed in and there was only room for 3 of us in beds – we stretched that out to 4 with Sandy and I sharing a single and then had three on camping mattresses on the floor.

This studio is perfect for a couple but we managed to fit in.

The small ‘kitchen’

There wasn’t much more room to move once everyone in bed, the shower was tiny with no screen though we were used to that from China, and when it was bed time it was bedtime for all cause you couldn’t have any pottering about etc. No space. Though it was an excellent introduction to Agios Nikolaos because it really was such a good location and it made everything else we saw amazingly big!

The lake at Agios Nikolaos is just beautiful.

We stayed there for 5 days as we nutted out our new life here and tried to find accommodation, school spots etc. There was one woman who we thought would be very helpful who was the representative of ‘Crete Now’ but seriously – we tried to visit her a few times and email and call to see if she’d heard anything and all she said is ‘I’ll call you when I hear!’ All she was interested in is looking gorgeous, drinking her frappe and looking at the sea outside her window. Not sure how she made any money from commissions. To this day we still haven’t heard from her. We even tracked down one of the apartments on her list ourselves and rang the owner ourselves (who answered straight away) and had a look so I’m not sure why she ‘couldn’t get onto them’.
Luckily, our good Cretan friend in Melbourne, Leonidas put us onto his cousin who’s a real estate agent in a nearby town and he found us the place we are in. In the end we only had two options. The other place we tracked down was €150 cheaper rent per month and had a bigger balcony though the bedroom for the kids wasn’t very flexible with beds so Sandy and I would’ve had to have the kitchen or lounge as our bedroom which was fine but also the clincher was that there was no lift, it was on the 3rd floor and the stairs were quite steep and the door down the bottom opened up to a busyish road with a very thin footpath. Therefore after our family meeting over dinner writing down the pros and cons it seemed that I was the only one who preferred the other place but purely financial reasons really. So, here we are opposite the beach in the only other option we had. It is great though.

Our promenade

The apartment isn’t that big but it has two quite big bedrooms and one of them is big enough to have three beds out, a mattress under a bed and a fold out bed so there’s still room to play  in the day time.

The kids’ room

Then there is Sandy and my bedroom which is also big with a bed, cupboard and small desk – the room opens to a small balcony where you can see the beach.

Quite a big bedroom

The lounge- entrance room which just has a couch (as we used the couch for another bed in the bedroom) and it also doubles as my Bowen Treatment room.

The lounge -ala Bowen room

I got this wall map of our travels for Father’s Day

The kitchen is also big but pretty sparse. The landlord put in a fridge and an oven (the place was used by students previously who obviously don’t cook so are happy with a plug in toaster oven) which was really the clincher for this place as we would not have moved in here without those.

The kitchen with not much bench space

Lunch boxes waiting till the morning

There’s also a four person table which we manage to squeeze around for meals.

Our cozy table

We could get a bigger table though its kind of better to just make do and spend money on other things. We can’t take a table with us.

Enjoying having our main meal at lunchtime

The bathroom is also our laundry (we had to buy a cheap washing machine as apparently landlords don’t supply those in furnished apartments – that is something we definitely couldn’t live without) and is ……..well quite functional – if I wasn’t going to have a whinge about how I hate shower curtains clinging to your legs in the world’s smallest shower.

Our functional bathroom

So the apartment is very comfortable and functional and the best part about it is the location. It is so easy that our closest beach is a mere 28 steps away and we can even see the kids on the beach from the balcony. We all go down there most afternoons – sometimes we try to go to a different beach but that is easier to do in the morning cause in the afternoon the kids generally want to go local and not walk a kilometre or so in the heat. The local beach is all sand and along side the marina and it is quite beautiful. Of course the water is very clean and clear. The kids love to build sandcastles and come in and out of the water. Their swimming is getting stronger and stronger.

By Baba Christos