Mirror

My father, Theofilos, was born in a tiny village of Corfu called Zygos (in English is the same as Libra). A very poor village full of traditional and nevertheless conservative habitants, my father was born to this lucky family where they could enjoy eating meat once a week (while others could never afford eat meat). A very good student and an athlete, he was sent at the age of 14 years to live in Corfu town alone and after a couple of years in Athens, so he could go to high school. At the same time he used to train to become a professional footballer. My grandparents were so poor that when my father went to Athens he had to work in the mornings at a patisserie and bakery and go to evening school after work. Despite that, he still managed to be one of the best students of his school and be accepted to University of Athens to study Philosophy and Archeology. He was inspired by his landowner’s daughter who managed to persuade him to give up sports for the shake of education! She was the first student to get into law studies in the whole of Greece, what an achievement!

When he got his first job, he was landed on the island of Paxos, a very small but beautiful island south of Corfu island. He absolutely HATED every minute of it! He felt isolated and lonely and could not wait to return to Corfu. One of his colleagues, working in Corfu town at the time, was dating a very smart and beautiful young doctor who had just been employed at Paxos. They decided to mutually ask for job exchange so my father could return to Corfu and his colleague to spend a romantic year or two with his love at Paxos island. When the application was accepted my father was so happy that he decided to send his colleague a box containing 500 packets of condoms as a thank you!

This a new category I have decided to do for this post. My (very optimistic!) plan is to update it every Monday. It will include stories from my life and my family’s life as I was growing up. This is a way for me to keep these alive somewhere so they are not lost together with memory and life events. I want to share this with my family now, my friends, my readers and to summarize with you, you and you. I hope you enjoy it!

Love and bubbles,

Katerina xxx

My dearest friends…the time has come! We are officially in 2013! Woohoo! I feel so excited and I am not really sure why. I just feel so positive about the days coming ahead, I am full of excitement and I am dancing along to the songs on the radio. It is so great feeling content and grateful with everything you have, everything that life has offered you until now and also the relief that comes with the realisation that your choices brought you to the path you were dreaming of.

During the new year, I will be starting in a new job, enjoying a happy family, spending fun time with lots of dear friends and continue learning French with passion. I also want to start dancing more, take piano lessons and do some amateur drama. And I certainly do not have the time to do them. But life is about dreaming and having pure excitement about things like that. And I refuse to give up dreaming…as there is always time to do that! :-)

So Happy New Year everybody out there and remember to be true to yourselves!