Teachers (again)

Cue the music, it's flashback time!  (The music I mean is the Wayne's World dooda-lee-dooda-loo sounds while we wave our hands -- I tried to find a clip of this on You Tube but wasn't successful.  I have tips on other ways to waste time, too, in case you're interested).  A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post about great teachers.  At the time you may have been wondering why the post was titled "Teachers" when I only wrote about 1 teacher (Andrea from the cooking school in Rome).  Well, I was planning on writing about Philip, Chantal and Mark -- other great teachers we'd had.  Now, I'm finally getting around to it.

Filip and Chantal are Belgian expats living in a small village in southeastern Crete.  Dara found them on the internet and they were the main reason for our jumping from mainland Greece over to Crete.  Their observatory/workshop, named Sasteria, seemed like the perfect mix of education and off-the-beaten-trackness for our travel cum homeschool adventure.  Chantal gives art lessons by day and Filip gives astronomy lessons by night (well, sometimes by day, too, as we were to find out).  We quickly discovered how right Dara's intuition about this was.

After arriving on the island of Crete, we spent a day exploring the ancient ruins of Knossos (home of the Minotaur - and pretty cool).  

This is one of the more famous fresco reproductions on display at Knossos.  We found Knossos, the almost 4000 year old palace of the ancient King Minos, really interesting due in large part to our good tour guide who brought to life the various layers of excavations that have been found, the magnificent wings and rooms of the palace, and various artifacts uncovered from the site.  Knossos is the mythical site of the labyrinth, where the Minotaur was kept, and eventually killed by the hero Theseus.  Evidence of pre-Greek languages have been found on inscriptions of different ages (as yet, undecipherable in some cases).  Sir Arthur Evans, who was in charge of excavations starting in around 1900 AD, reconstructed large parts of the site based on his "best guesses" as to how it may have looked...and, although controversial, it does help you picture just how extravagant and grand the palace might have been in its time as the capital of the Minoan culture. 

This throne room includes some reproduced and some original frescoes, along with the alabaster throne against the wall, the benches, and  the basin, all thought to date back to around 1000 BC. 

This is an original, found in one piece at the site, probably originally used to store liquid or grain.

Then, we headed off in search of Sasteria.  Chantal had told us that when we arrive in the small, tourist beach town of Makrygialos, look for the turn off that is marked with their little yellow sign.  Oh, and by the way, we may want to buy some bread or something for breakfast because there is no store in their little village.  Well, we found the turn off but when we went into a store to get some supplies, the guy there was sure we should take a different road -- much shorter.  So we followed his advice and, as visions of Monteverde, the mountain-top, cloud forest town in Costa Rica, filled our memories, we wound our way up a very curvy, very narrow (but paved, at least) road to the small village of Agios Stefanos.  Ellie, for one, did not like this drive.  (It turns out the other road is a little longer and much wider but still pretty curvy.)

Agios Stefanos turned out to be a tiny village of about 100 people tucked up on the side of the mountain range that is Crete.  It is composed, more or less, of one main road along its downhill side with narrow lanes zig-zagging up the hill.  Houses are stacked one above the next at all sorts of odd angles and gravity defying juxtapositions.  It would be the idyllic Greek island village if all the buildings were bright white with blue roofs.  It was pretty clear, however, that the village is in transition.

The houses of the village ranged from run-down (to put it charitably) to completely refurbished.  It turns out that gentrification doesn't just happen in big cities.  This village had been in decline as its inhabitants set out for greener pastures.  Over the past few years, however, there has been a turn around as expats have bought and fixed up some of the houses.  There is no doubt that the success of Sasteria, has played a big part in this.  As part of her services, Chantal arranges for her guests to rent one of these fixed up houses.  Ours was a quaint two bedroom vacation house owned by a family from Norway.  It was cozy with a great view out to the sea and just a short walk up the hill from Filip and Chantal.

Since the sky was clear, we decided to jump right into our lessons on the evening of our arrival.  It was obvious right from the start that Chantal and Filip both had the necessary qualities of excellent teachers -- they certainly knew what they were talking about, they were enthusiastic and they were great at making their enthusiasm contagious.  The first night, we were mesmerized as we bounced back and forth between Filip's two excellent telescopes looking at Jupiter and Uranus (we were lucky!), the moon and deep-sky.  As we were able to observe nebulae, twin stars, star-clusters, red giants, a galaxy, and more, Filip's explanations of the life-cycle of stars (including how that affects their colors) and other astronomy lessons were brought to life.

The next morning was our art lesson with Chantal.  For the first lesson, we all decided to participate.  With the deft guidance of Chantal, we were soon all sketching different still-lifes in their garden.  As she taught us techniques to make sure we keep the subjects in perspective and properly proportioned, Chantal was able to switch each of us to the medium that made sense for our abilities.  Ellie's eye for color got her into pastels while my abstractness (that's what I'll call it, anyway) got me into charcoal.  After some warm up drawings, we were unleashed into the village.  While Chantal floated amongst us, her insightful, constructive comments and quick instructions help her hone our rough artistic skills.

Chantal and Filip were not only great teachers, they were great hosts, too.  They were warm and welcoming, always inviting us to sit and chat with a drink and a snack after each lesson.  Because of them, we got great lessons in astronomy and art and a real feel for village life in rural Crete.

On the way to Sasteria, we stopped for lunch in Agios Nikolaus, which is a hopping hotspot in the summer but was absolutely dead when we happened by in early January.  The most action we saw was at this fishing boat, where the cats were waiting to "help" this man get rid of any extra bait or fish he might have had (also notice the heron on the neighboring boat). 

We found a nice little lunch spot in Agios Nikolaos, right on the water which is a pretty, quiet little inlet.

This was the picturesque little porch at our apartment in Agios Stefanos, up the hill from Sasteria...

...and this was the view down to the ocean.

We jumped right in, learning from Chantal about picking a subject to draw, "measuring" it with your pencil, and sketching the general shapes and shadows. 

In the next few pictures, here's my attempt at a tour of  "the doors of Agios Stefanos"...I hope I captured the quaint, traditional character of the town in my pictures.

Filip doesn't only teach astronomy.  He also led us on a peaceful and informative hike down the gorge to the town of Makrygialos below.  Even though it's winter, we saw wild spices and flowers, lots of olive trees (some being harvested as we walked by), waterfalls, goats, fruit trees, and more...it was beautiful and Filip's enthusiasm definitely extends to a love for his adopted homeland...we had a great time.

The nature walk went down, down, down along the river all the way from the village in the mountains to the beachside town.  Fortunately for us, Chantal came and picked us up so it was downhill all the way.

We ended up staying in this little village for 3 days and had a great time.  Ellie took 2 more art lessons and Ari one more.  One of these was a painting class from Chantal too...

...amazing works of art!!

A traditional Renaissance man, Filip is also learning (teaching himself actually) to play the traditional Greek instrument, the Bouzouki.  He played a few tunes for us before we headed out for an evening of "cafenion-hopping". 

Even though the village had no store, it did have 4 cafenions (small neighborhood restaurant/bar).  We hopped from one cafenion to another.  When you order a drink, you get a mezze -- a tapas-like little appetizer -- too, for free.  We moved from one cafenion to the next to get enough food for dinner, and to get more of a variety...but that meant we had to get a drink at each place...oy vey, we're not as young as we used to be!  Good thing just the kids were doing art the next morning!!

Unfortunately, it was a bit overcast the next morning, but the guys still got in an interesting lesson on sun observations and documenting sun spots and solar flares.  Filip does these everyday and sends his observations in to headquarters at the Royal Society in Belgium.  They compile the data from thousands of astronomers around the globe in an effort to catalog the effects of the sun's activity on earth.

Ellie really enjoyed her art lessons with Chantal...she would have stayed a lot if she could have!  Thanks for everything Chantal and Filip!!