I have been in Kryoneri for 7 months now and the summer is approaching, so the hard winter and springtime are coming to an end. We have already witnessed the Greek autumn, which was filled with a lot of warm sunny days and work in the fields.
In the first weeks after our arrival, there were several groups that came, so we helped them and participated in activities a lot. When the groups started becoming less frequent, we started helping out with the olive harvest on the olive groves. I loved this work. Every day we would see exactly what we had accomplished and the amount of olives we had harvested. But not only that, it was a lot of fun. We were throwing olives at each other, trying out different harvesting tools, enjoying our midday meals and climbing the trees to get to the olives at the top no one else could reach. It was tiering work but one of the most fulfilling jobs I have ever done.
As the olive harvest was coming to an end, so was also the good weather. Slowly the winter was seeping in, and we were doing more and more work in the office. Although that was a lot less exciting, it made sense because the temperatures were sinking. In the office, we would work mainly on websites. I have done a lot of translating in the past weeks, putting the posts on the websites from Greek to English or the other way around. But not only that. I have also done a lot of translating for my personal project I am doing with Renée. We are working on creating a cookbook with recipes by the villagers, so I have done a lot of interviews and then translated them into English.
When spring finally started and the march came around, I was ready for warmth, but was violently betrayed by the weather. These past two months we have gone from warmth with a lot of sun to cold and heavy hail in the course of one day. While the weather has been going crazy, our everyday life hasn’t changed a lot since winter though. With little to no groups, we stay a lot in the office working on our computers, which isn’t that bad anymore, as I have grown accustomed to it.
But I cannot wait for summer. I am very excited about meeting new people during seminars, going to the beach and soaking in the sun. This will be the last season I experience closing the year I have spent in Greece.
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