Demetrios not Demetrius… spelt Δημήτριος pronounced …..tdih-mee-tree-uhs. MY GREEK GOD

Today was the beginning of the two day orientation for the NUin Students at ACT and of course as staff we had to go. It was so much fun ( i hope you can hear my sarcasm). I mean it wasn’t as bad as say a NU freshman orientation but that didn’t mean i still wanted to be there. Especially since it was still shark week and i would have preferred to be in bed.

So on they went about housing rules, field trips, student activities, cultural rules and differences and interesting group activities. Then there was the survival Greek class where we were essentially given 45 minutes of essential Greek. Those few phrases and sayings like

hi – ya sou
good morning- kalimera
thank you- efharisto
sorry- signomi
please- parakalo
yes- neh
no- okhi
okay- endaxi
excuse me- signomi
you’re welcome- parakalo
my name is- me lene

were actually helpful and the other ones would have been more helpful…….if i could have stayed awake. I’m pretty sure i nodded off so many times during the lesson and to think that i was responsible for making sure the students didn’t fall asleep. yeah  fail!!!For the life of me, even though the orientation was two days i can’t exactly remembered what happened on which day. The only thing i can remember happening on was meeting Demetrois  on the first day. Demetrios…..my two day crush. sigh.

Here’s what happened. We were split up into groups for campus tours and i lead my group outside. Who should join us to lead the group but this cute boy Demetrios. I looked around to all the girls around me and they are all smiling and giggling. Then he speaks and anyone who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for an accent and boy did he have one. I mean it wasn’t very distinct like a British accent or sexy like an of the accents from the romance languages but it was enough.

So here we are going all around campus and here i am being deliberately chatty, asking questions and making side comments to the girls in my group about boys in general. Sure it wasn’t professional but who cared at that point, the prospect of male species was too interesting to be professional. Then at one point i ask a question and i swear that he winked at me!!!!!!!!!!!!! I thought i was hallucinating but then we got to the library and he searched me out in the group and proceeded to introduce himself and give me a one minute lesson on how to properly say his name….the deliberately way. I didn’t actually learn it despite his teaching. Then we joined a group with my friend Diana and randomly at some point when we are alone together she turns to me and says “OMG he just checked you out hard core”. I didn’t really believe her until he came up to us, and asked for my name. I told him and Diana introduced herself because he seemed to have forgotten to ask her name (maybe it was my charms. lol)

Then he asked if i spoke patois…….mad random but no i don’t. I told him i was Nigerian which set him off on this spiel about an African dance which he showed me and i hid my face because i haven’t seen that type of dancing ever!!! Then he started talking about his Nigerian friend with a name so hard to pronounce it seemed like he was going to vomit when he said it…. his attempts at saying the name were exactly that and not attractive. Then he asked me about dreads and how he used to have dreads ( i couldn’t really picture if but since going around the city I've seen the European dread mullet and its as gross as it sounds. ugh). We were getting to the point where he mentioned numbers and us hanging out but he had to return to his tour. The moment was gone and i figured I'd just see him around campus (which shouldn’t be hard since there were only 600 students)

There was a tour of the city which wasn’t mandatory for staff and i was considering going only if i could confirm that demetrios would be there. And i could hopefully catch him and exchange numbers but afterwards we had a staff meeting which was fun….as fun as staff meetings are. I lost my chance again

The next day there was a scavenger hunt and as staff we were required to come downstairs and help organize the students into groups. Demetrios wanted us to come along but despite his cute face and accent i chose to nap instead  of walking around the city of Thessaloniki. That made me happier than seeing any boy would have anyway. I was relaxed and on my way to well rested.

I saw him later that evening at the ACT dinner with all the study abroad students and that was where my mini crush on demetris ended. He was a flirt, very big flirt and it turned me off demetrios. I mean he’s still pretty to look at and listen to but it was over….the relationship that never actually started. When we got up to leave and walk back to the dorms we stopped by his table to say bye to some friends and he came up to me, calling me “dread girl”.  I politely told him that my hair wasn’t dreaded at which point he offered to dread my hair for me. I declined and that was that. No way was i going to let some strange Greek man near my head not to talk of dreading it. THE END. On the plus side,  at the dinner though i met a girl I'd lived with in West F my freshman year and we made plans to hang out. It was so nice to meet the other study abroad students because they presented us ISAs with potential friends that we could go out with since we couldn’t go out with the students. More so, they weren’t freshmen.

My new thing now though starting next week is I'm going to do a Greek word of the day so i can actually learn more and maybe you guys reading can learn some Greek too.