vlog – Lessons I learned after I turned 30

Updates (back in action again!)

I haven’t made a video or written a blog or even just sat down with my own thoughts for a while and I’ve really missed it. So I started devoting time to myself again, in an effort to feel in charge and do things I love and not only work (although I do love my job!).

I made a short video and details and you can find details of what I mentioned below.

1. I’m planning to restart my Love to Learn English videos. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list… Any requests/suggestions on what to cover are welcome!

2. I’ll create a short series of videos with useful expressions in the Cypriot dialect, as requested in a comment. In the meantime, if you need to learn Greek fast, you can use freely available material here: https://www.volutoring.eu/EN/

http://e-mploy-me.eu/log-in/

3. I will try to create more material on my Kopiaste social media https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtcl…

https://www.instagram.com/kopiaste_/

As always any recommendations, suggestions, comments are welcome!

Stay well and safe.

Namaste

Eleni

Flying in Corona times

It’s been a while since my last post and video but I’ve been busy since I came back to Cyprus.

Travelling from Italy to Cyprus was exhausting and complicated. It took about 34 hours, 3 flights (after an Easyjet cancellation they only offered a replacement flight to Athens and I had to pay for another flight from Athens to Larnaca), an overnight stay in Milan and endless time spent at airports, forms to fill, wearing a face mask for two days, tested for Covid-19 at Larnaca airport.

So travelling in Corona times is not easy. There are still cancellations due to various reasons, most countries require to fill in a form and then email you a pass to enter the country (a document was required to travel to other Italian airports and for Cyprus and Athens a pass was emailed to me after I filled in the forms).

Food/drinks were not sold on Easyjet planes and that’s the case for other airlines as far as I’m aware. Wearing masks were mandatory for the airport and for the whole duration of the flight (except for eating/drinking).

There were delays at different points, during check in and boarding especially. Still, I had missed flying and I can’t wait to be able to fly freely again. I sincerely hope that will be possible soon.

Here’s the video of my little adventure.

Eleni

Gorgeous Tropea (last post from Italy)

Wow, I can’t believe this is the last video I’ve made and last post I wrote in Italy. Well, for now. Who knows what the future holds.

But it’s a great one. With wonderful snaps and videos of gorgeous Tropea. If only I had more free time during the year to discover it sooner!

Thank you to my lovely colleagues and friends for an amazing day.

Italy, it’s been a pleasure. Ci vediamo.

Eleni

Beautiful Scilla

I’m not quite sure what’s going on or how I feel these last few days. Ever since work finished I’m going through a whirlwind of emotions, happy, sad, anxious, confused, it’s a bizarre rollercoaster I’m not sure how to get out of.

I will take some time to think about it and reflect, but for now I’m trying to enjoy my last week in Italy (for the foreseeable future).

So… last Friday I finally made it to a graphic, gorgeous little village near Reggio where I live, Scilla. And this week’s short and sweet video is all about my daytrip there. Thank you to my fellow teacher friends for an awesome day and special thanks to Fanni for the comic effects!

Eleni

Endings, beginnings and change.

This week’s video it’s all about endings, the end of my first year of teaching English as a foreign language, new beginnings, which at the moment I have no idea what those would be, and change.

I hope significant change. I hope the black lives matter movement keeps going on until we all finally realise our white privilege, our implicit racism as well as racism deeply embedded into every layer of our society, justice system, the world and our responsibility to change that. And the first step: educate ourselves, as sad and uncomfortable it might feel. Imagine if we feel uncomfortable reading and seeing this injustice, how much worse is for the people living it.

I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries lately, at the moment I’m watching Kalief Browder’s story, a poor kid who at age 16 was sent to adults prison. He spent three years at Rikers Island, two of those in solitary confinement for a crime not only he didn’t do, but was never convicted for. After his release he was so scarred from all the abuse he suffered, he committed suicide.

So here is this week’s video

Namaste

Eleni

My tips when booking flights in Corona times

At the moment I’m learning the hard way how incredibly, frustratingly difficult it is to book a flight out of Italy and hopefully back to Cyprus.

So I thought I’d share my top tips from my experience so far to help fellow travellers. I explain in detail on the video below but here are my top three tips:

Check whether any flights you’ve already booked are still available on the airline’s website. If with Easyjet, be aware they mark flights as ‘sold out’ but in reality they are probably cancelled.
Check refund policies. For Ryanair customers it make take up to a year to get their refund, if you manage to claim for refund as even when you do, Ryanair offers you a voucher and if you’d still like a refund, you have to speak to a customer assistant. Good luck with that. All lines and chats are occupied and you have to wait for hours. On the other hand, Easyjet claims they will refund you within 28 days and up to 90 days. Thousands of customers who had flights cancelled since March are still waiting for their money.
Do not trust third-party companies. Check the airline’s page directly. Understandably with all the constant changes, sites such as Skyscanner are finding it difficult to keep up to date at all times and third-party companies e.g. Gogo gate offer flights which have been altered and don’t run anymore.

If you have any tips to add please comment, the more aware we all are, the better. It saves all of us money and trouble!

Eleni

My favourite Italian everyday food

I’ve been living in Italy for nine months now and naturally I’ve adopted new eating habits with Italian food I’d rarely or never had before I moved here.

So here’s my top 5 Italian snacks/food I eat the most!

What’s your favourite Italian food?

PS A lot of taralli were consumed during the making of this video.

5 minute mindfulness activity

Wow.

What a week. One of the most stressful of being a teacher. New classes with a small business group, formal observation, trying a dogme lesson, my birthday I couldn’t even celebrate because of work, a conversation club on Friday evening.

I also managed to book a flight back to Cyprus for July, but whether it will materialise it’s anyone’s guess.

To cope with all the stress I’m trying to focus a day at a time and try and enjoy the present as much as possible (sometimes it’s not that possible).

So I thought for my weekly post and video to put this little activity I wrote about a while ago into a little video.

The rest of the details is on the video. Skip to 3:04 for the activity if you wan’t to go straight in.

Eleni

The Lockdown Diaries- The Last One

Well here we are. Most of the lockdown measures have now been lifted in Italy and it makes this the last video in the lockdown series.

It starts with a song, it includes tears and decisions, the whole lot.

It hasn’t been an easy decision, but I decided not to stay in Italy after my contract. It’s been an incredible experience but way too stressful and exhausting, mentally and physically.

I’m not quitting teaching, I will give it a go again at some point but I need time to figure out what I want to do next.

I’ll finally take the break I meant to have last year but got too scared. I’m terrified but also excited!

PS- I will still try and post a video every week 🙂

PS two- I don’t own the copyrights of the gorgeous Kodaline song I attempted to sing.

Eleni

Finally out- the Lockdown Diaries

What at week.

I’m not sure if anyone other than fellow teachers would understand just how exhausted I feel today, on a Sunday after a week of 6 new courses (on top of my existing ones), using a platform that doesn’t allow pairwork or groupwork, 6 hours of pure pain, mainly just talking for the majority of the time, soul-destroying, plus invigilating and marking and lesson planning and anything else that comes up on a normal week.

But at least we are now allowed outside and I managed to go for a walk by the beach on Friday, which was awesome.

So this week’s video is mostly footage of the outside world that I almost forgot it existed! I can’t wait to go home, enjoy my summer and seriously consider if teaching is for me. 40 days to go.

Enjoy!

Eleni