Girl Gone Greek

by Hall, Rebecca

  Author’s Note/Disclaimer

  This book is a combination of facts and embellishment about a period of my life in Greece. While the events are based on fact, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved, and some parts have been semi-fictionalized to varying degrees for various purposes.

  Copyright

  Copyright © Girl Gone Greek by Rebecca Hall, 2015

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editor: Perry Iles

  Artist: Simon Avery

  Interior Book Design: Natascha Maria

  Printed by CreateSpace

  Available in paperback and Kindle versions

  First Printing 2015, ISBN 978-1512251883

  For my dad

  Summer

  I gazed at the wall, gritting my teeth. My sister Kirsty was in town on a visit.

  “Let’s face it Rachel,” she said, “being the youngest you always did have to be that bit different. At least I’ve had children and secured a serious job.” She tapped me on the knee, “Mark my words, I’ve got ten years on you, and the way you’re carrying on is unsustainable.” She settled back in her chair with a smug grin.

  “Don’t forget you’ve got a divorce now, too,” I shrugged, dipping a Digestive into my tea. We’d never really seen eye-to-eye, my sister and me.

  “Well, you managed to last out a whole degree course in your thirties,” Kirsty said. She got up and strolled across the kitchen to switch on the kettle, either failing to hear or choosing to ignore my comment, “and we never thought you’d finish that, just like so many of your other fanciful ideas. I guess why not do a TEFL course?” She shook her head, “It’s just the sort of thing you would do.”

  I exchanged a look with Dad, who was busy preparing dinner for us. Even in his 70s, he loved to try new things, and cooking was one of them.

  “It would be nice if you could offer some support instead of finding fault all the time,” I suggested. “You’ve always been the naysayer of this family, Kirsty, especially when it comes to me.”

  Leaning against the kitchen counter, she smirked. “Ha! Well, what do you expect, Rachel? You were the only one to fail your Eleven Plus exam at primary school. Looking back, that should’ve been an indication of how you’d continue through life. And what about the time you were one of two people in your class, out of how many—

  thirty, wasn’t it?—to get the lowest grade in your Maths GCSE. Is it any wonder I can’t take you seriously?”

  “I volunteered with young kids in Sri Lanka and Cambodia,” I hated myself at that moment for allowing her to drag me to the point where I felt like I had to make excuses for myself. I could either rise to her bait and start an argument, or respond with dignity and grace and say nothing. I chose the latter option...but felt like I was grinding my teeth to a fine powder. I kept the visions of sororicide to myself.

  Kirsty clearly had a certain view of TEFL teachers, and the double whammy was that one of them was now going to be her younger sister.

  Is she jealous? Her long brown hair looks particularly greasy today and judging by the way she’s wolfing down those chocolate biscuits, the Atkins Diet isn’t working out. I reached over and took another biscuit, fleetingly smiling at the fact that I could eat them to my heart’s content without having to strike up a relationship with Mr. Atkins might not help sibling bonding.

  “You just love being the Little Miss Victim of this family—assuming no-one loves you,” said Kirsty.

  You think? With a sister like you, is that any surprise? I tried to tune her incessant nagging out, humming women-empowering Aretha Franklin tunes in my head—R E S P E C T-Find out what it means to me.

  “Besides,” Kirsty continued, “how hard, really, can a one-month TEFL course be? It’s not like it’ll lead to a proper career, unlike my teaching degree. You’ll bum around for a few years like those other TEFL hippies. Never saw you as the Jesus-sandal-wearing type, always thought you saw yourself as above all that.”

  “Dad, can’t you say something to her?” I pleaded, once again hating myself more than anything for the fact I allowed myself to feel—and act—like a three year old in my older sister’s company.

  “Not fair for me to get involved sweetheart.” Dad, as much as I loved him, was quite a weak man when it came to family emotions and took the usual male route of avoiding conflict where and when possible. He offered a sympathetic smile and turned back to concentrating on the task of peeling potatoes.

  So, holding my breath, lest I say something I’d regret, I kissed him on the cheek before bolting for the door. I needed fresh air, fast. I ignored Kirsty’s barbs and tried to focus on the positive; at least on one point we actually agreed with each other, even if she was being malicious: how hard, really, could a TEFL course be?

  What’s everyone thinking? We sat in the classroom, ten strangers who were due to take up a whole new set of challenges and responsibilities for a month. I’d chosen to study in Cornwall. (It’s only an hour and a half’s drive each way…I can be home before it gets dark.) This is an ideal place to study, I reassured myself, growing increasingly nervous as the silence dragged on. Jeez, when’s this going to start?

  Gloria, the trainer, swept into the room some ten minutes late, just as the quiet was becoming deafening, and after polite introductions broke it to us:

  “You will be teaching from tomorrow. You’ll be expected to undertake five written assignments over the duration of this course, the first to be handed in by the end of this week. That’s right, this Friday. You must plan for the lessons you teach and show them to me for approval before you teach them.”

  A young man who looked to be in his twenties shot up his hand.

  “So if we’re teaching tomorrow, we’ll need to plan a lesson tonight and hand it to you tomorrow morning?” He looked as panicked as I felt.

  “That’s right,” beamed Gloria. “But you’re all intelligent people, you’ll cope.”

  I looked around at the sea of equally shell-shocked faces. A small part of me had half-agreed with Ugly Big Sister that TEFL would merely be an opportunity to bum around a bit before making up my mind when to settle down and get a career; it’d be easy. But I had no intention of letting Kirsty know this, and taking the workload into consideration I quickly realised my three hour round-commute would be too much to bear. I decided that from tomorrow I’d find somewhere local to stay. Anyway, it might be pleasant to stay in Cornwall for a month over the summer. I envisaged myself lounging on the beach at the weekends. They couldn’t expect us to work non-stop, could they? But judging by Gloria’s announcement about daily teaching slots and weekly assignments, it appeared that the trainers did, in fact, expect us to do just that.

  So, with my visions of learning to surf on the beaches of North Cornwall banished I found a flat with two fellow course-mates…above the local tropical fish shop. Unfortunately, the gurgle of all the fish tanks at night prevented anything approaching a good night’s sleep, but the three of us supported each other well throughout our month of hell. Calling it hell was no exaggeration—it was harder than all three years of university put together. It was only when I started to get very, very tearful because I couldn’t remember the difference between present perfect and present continuous verbs that my fellow flatmates, Tom and Sandra, took me under their collective wing and dragged me away from my current lesson planning.

  “OK Rachel, time out. We’re having a night off and going to the cinema,” insisted Sandra. “You will come with us. Get out of your pyjamas, get dressed, brush that mop on
your head and stop looking like a local.” Sandra clearly didn’t rate the Cornish population very highly, and I had to admit I’d seen a few people wandering around the town looking frighteningly vacant—similar to my current state. My appearance, however, was study-induced and not a by-product of the shallowness of my gene pool.

  “But I have to teach the German teens tomorrow, and they’ll eat me alive if I don’t get this lesson right…their grammar knowledge is better than mine! Can’t you see their smirks in class?” I paced around the room, chewing my thumbnail.

  “I don’t care, it’ll do you good,” said Tom, prising the textbook from my hands and throwing it onto the couch. “Besides, you’ll love this movie, it’s a sing-along version of Mamma Mia.”

  I made my way to the hallway mirror to comb my hair. A mental health night was just what the doctor ordered; it’d refresh and revitalise me. Refusing to give up, I’d show Kirsty; English grammar hadn’t beaten me yet.

  We jumped into Sandra’s car and headed into town for some well-deserved entertainment.

  I met my reflection in the mirror as I got ready for bed after Mamma Mia, and a knowing grin crossed my face. I can do it: find my paradise in Greece after TEFL.

  I have a habit of labelling things, especially significant events that shape my life. The Mamma Mia evening was one such event. It helped me realise where I’d apply to go for my first English teaching job when I finished this course from hell.

  I’d visited various places around the globe, and the farther they were from home the better I liked them…a psychological side effect of the negative relationship I had with my sister. I always held the belief that there must be something unlikeable about me, due to Kirsty’s relentless animosity, so Greece would give me a chance to re-invent myself and be liked by others. Initially I’d intended to teach in a far-flung destination: Vietnam, maybe. My surface motivation for this was sunshine, swimming and a complete change of culture. When you’re conditioned to the wet, grey weather of the UK, the chance of a job in a different climate and country—a new life and new friends who accept you with no interest in who you were, but what you are—is certainly appealing. At first I’d thought anything in Europe was too near—both geographically and culturally. But there were things I wasn’t so eager to run away from (yes, I had a vague notion I might be running, but was prepared to). My Dad, for example. He’d never ask me to stay, but he was getting older. If something happened I wanted to be near enough to come at a moment’s notice. But why not go to Spain? If it was sunshine and swimming I was after, I could go to any Mediterranean country.

  The final push in the internal compass that pointed me towards Greece was the memories Mamma Mia stirred up. I remembered happier family times, holidays there when I was younger; blue skies, whitewashed houses and a laid back attitude to life. Dad had once had business contacts in Greece and would chuckle as he reminisced on his time there; “They refuse to wear seatbelts in their cars or crash helmets on their bikes, even though it’s for their own safety. It’s because it’s a law, because they’re being told what to do. You know how to get a Greek to obey the speed limit? Put a sign on the national road that says ‘Do not, under any circumstances, drive at 70km an hour’ and they’ll do it, purely because they’ve been told not to,” he’d joke. I liked the idea of living in a slightly anarchical society…a place where authority was looked down upon. Unconventional from birth and always in trouble for questioning too much at school, I figured if I was going to make an “awful life-plan,” I might as well make it in a country that would more readily understand this character trait of mine.

  In the meantime I had a lot to do: find a job, rent my property in the UK, promise Dad I wouldn’t meet—and run off with—some Onassis-type (although the money would be nice, I mused to myself). Dad had always been protective of me, probably because I was by far his youngest and while he never said much, he was mindful of the scorn Kirsty heaped on me. This protectiveness had mutated into the realm of believing that no man was good enough for his daughter. “And especially not a Greek man,” he had once said, based on his intimate knowledge of Greeks and their character traits. “They’re all mummy’s boys…you’ll always be second.”

  My flatmates and I had undertaken the all-important task of holding the ‘End of TEFL Hell’ party. Taking a moment to ourselves in the kitchen, we pondered our post-TEFL futures that had taken a back seat during the last days of our course.

  “Why Greece, Rachel?” Brian asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.

  “She doesn’t want to join me in Japan, that’s why” called Richard from the sitting room, leaning over the arm of the sofa to throw a wink at me. Although Richard already had two years’ experience teaching in Japan, he’d been just as shell-shocked as I was on our first day. Due to his experience, he was the first one we’d all turned to when the verbs became too much, and he’d supported us all really well.

  “Yeah, I’m sure she’ll give up her life plans for a man she’s only known for one month,” said Sandra, pointing a carrot stick at him.

  “Huh! People give up more after ‘knowing’ someone for one night” Richard became defensive. I smiled at him, replying “I’m sure my sister wouldn’t be surprised if I did hop on a plane to Japan with you. I do, after all, lead an ‘irresponsible life.’”

  “You naughty rolling stone, Rachel” Sandra slapped me on the wrist. “Don’t you listen to anyone else. Just follow your gut instinct. Family can be full of good intentions, but they interfere too much—I should know,” she sighed, a slightly glazed look coming over her.

  Sandra was in her early thirties and about to head off to Finland to live with her new boyfriend (who she’d known for longer than one month). She was planning to teach English while she was there and from our conversations, it was clear her parents didn’t approve of her nomadic lifestyle and wanted her to settle down in the UK and provide them with grandchildren. It was nice to speak to someone who understood what it was like to have people criticise and disapprove of the way you lived, people who were supposed to be supportive. Blood ties weren’t guarantees of a great relationship and I felt lucky to have shared a flat with both her and Tom for one month, the intensity of the course and our similar backgrounds bonding us.

  I turned back to Brian. “I loved Asia when I was there and I certainly do like the idea of going further than Europe, but there’s something that draws me to Greece. I need to go and discover the real country and culture, not just what the tourists see, I need to be in a place that supports this anti-authoritarian side of me. What about you? Where’ll you go?”

  He seemed less enthusiastic about his TEFL future. “They need someone who’s TEFL qualified at my school here in deepest, darkest Cornwall. Winking he added “I might come and visit you in the land of Mamma Mia, as well as Rich in Japan…or Sandra in Finland. Who knows? I’ve got the whole world to choose from now, after meeting you fine people.” He motioned to the party in the next room.

  Brian was right—even though from different backgrounds, we all shared a passion to experience and understand different cultures, and we’d seen TEFL as a route to doing this. My other flatmate Tom didn’t really know what he was going to do with his qualification, but just felt it’d help him with his primary school career. Like Brian, schools were starting to see the need to have TEFL qualified teachers.

  “Cheers everyone!” I raised my glass just as Dancing Queen came through the iPod, and I smiled once again, knowing soon I would be winging my way to Greece.

  Arriving at Gatwick Airport, I fought tears as I hugged Dad goodbye. The gate for my easyjet flight to Athens had been announced, and now, after at least a week of packing, unpacking, re-packing and wondering if the Tetley teabags and Robinsons Orange Barley Water were really necessary (they were), I was heading to Athens after paying an excess baggage fee of £75. Why did airlines insist on punishing people who were brave enough to change their lives, yet still needed the occasional home comfort? It seemed it wasn
’t only Kirsty who disapproved of my life plan.

  Dad insisted on driving me to the airport, and was mildly OCD about not wanting to be late. The weather had been characteristically miserable on the drive up: dark clouds and drizzly rain. We’d arrived two hours before check-in had even opened, forcing us to make small talk...neither one acknowledging the massive elephant trumpeting away in the departure lounge—the fact that I was leaving and we’d have to say goodbye.

  My family isn’t particularly expressive. I knew that despite all his moaning about getting a backache during the long drive, Dad had taken me so that he could do as much for me as he possibly could—right up to the last minute. This even included arranging a hotel for my first night in Athens.

  At last, the PA announced the final call. I really had to go.

  “It’s only Greece, Dad. It’s not like I’m off to the South Pacific again, or that village in Sri Lanka,” (I’d kept the Love Match offers during my three month teaching stint there to myself). “And I know I’m your youngest, but I’m not young anymore.”

  But I seemed to be reassuring myself more than him; despite all his help and company, he looked less upset about me leaving this time. In fact, he had a look of affection that I suspected went further than his feelings for me.

  “It’s Greece,” he said, as he caught my inquisitive stare. “You’ll see what I mean when you get there. I’m convinced that this trip will finally cure you of your dromomania.”

  “My what?” I contemplated—not for the first time—the irony that it was Dad who was a walking dictionary, whilst I was the one who intended to be an English teacher.

  “Look it up on that Googly thing you’re always using these days, see if I’m not right. Now go and get that plane, I don’t want to have driven here two hours early—and get a bad back to boot—only for you to miss it.” I smiled inwardly…he still had to get his moan in there somehow.