First Day in School

Hello dear friends,
The school year began for us yesterday.
Education in Greece has five levels:
-Kindergarten.
-Primary School. It lasts 6 years, from 7 to 12 years of age. This is obligatory.
-Junior High School runs for 3 years.
-Senior High School , 3 years by which time one is about 18 and sits the University entry exams.
-College/University, 4 years+ on average.

F is now in the first year of Senior High School, D is in the third class of Junior High, and J is in the 4th year of Primary School.

Traditionally, the new school year begins with the blessing of the water.

It is quite odd, given the current political trends that the blessing of the water has not yet been suspended as anachronistic or insulting. Thankfully, both in the girls' school and in J's school the blessing took place yesterday. During the ceremony a bowl of water is blessed by a priest and it is then sprinkled onto the congregation with a branch of basil.

 I am going to show you the books and courses the kids will do this year in a following post. May God bless all of you and your families and lead us all on His way of Light.

Back to School snack

Now that schools are officially running (wait, it is us rather, running around. Today D refused to wear her pink track trousers, as she thought they were too childish for a high school 1st grader. She eventually had to wear them because I have only found two of those so far, one for her and one for F!). Back to the subject, since we are at the beginning of the school season, I thought I'd post a yummy recipe I found over at Helen B's. She calls them Magic Bars.

They look easy to make and they can be made using products and ingredients of our choice which means that the end result may be as organic, sugar free and low fat as we would like it to be. Which cannot be said of the E-something ladden lot in the supermarket. So I'd better roll my sleeves for this one. To view the recipe for what will be from now one called The Happy Wonderer Bars can be found here.

Mom species at play

Hi!
I have fallen behind on posting about the interesting things in life. But as I was unloading my Casio for tonight's school play, I thought I'd post some photos from J and D's school fete. So, last week we went to see our little ones at the end -of- the- year fete. As we waited for everyone to show up, I did some trend spotting. Here is a look at the mother fawna around our playground.

An Asian mom. Pride of place to a rare sighting (yet!). We are still very white and largely indigenous in this part of the world.
A total Burberry mom. Burberry's was definitively a hit this season.
A Burberry bag mom. (A shop assistant at Lancome, if you may).
A Louis Vuitton mom. Because French is best.
A Missoni mom at rest.
A Dolce and Gabbana mom. (This one is a really nice person).

After the parade of fashionable breeds of moms, we could finally concentrate on our offspring.
There was running and jumping and all sorts of funny things to do, that make you want to be a child this time round!

Happy summer, highly fashionable or not!