Happy New Year from Symi Dream
December 31st, 2009 Posted in Day to day | 1 Comment »I’m sending out the message today as I will be away until Sunday, so I will miss the festivities that take place in the village and will share them with the good folk of Nimborio instead. I’ve rambled on a lot here and put in some photos taken during 2009.
At this time of year it’s traditional to look back and think on what’s happened over the last 12 months, and I’m one of those people who prefer a quiet night in rather than a wild party. I always end up remembering people who are no longer with us and I’m not usually wonderful company… but I shall be making a special effort tonight. It’s been an interesting year; we’ve had various exhibitions in the Symi Dream gallery: Haycox started the year off with one night of his ‘one night stands’ trilogy, the season started off well with over 100 people coming to celebrate our new shop sign, and even more coming for the opening of Diversity In Symi Art, the season-long exhibition we held. ODAS were in for a couple of weeks with more work from local people, and we finished off the year with the Symi Gallery housing itself with us for a week of workshop work on show.
Strange weather in January
As for me, I managed to finally finish my latest Symi book, the collection of articles etc., and almost managed to finish the family history book – there is one more task left to do and it’s done and ready to go out.
I’m not going to say anything about broken bones as it was two years ago tonight that…
February 10th (name day in church)
I just took a quick glance at the Symi Dream blog stats and was a bit surprised at the number of visits and hits it’s had over the year. Considering it’s here simply to keep friends and family up to date with what we’re doing, advertise Symi in a positive way and advertise our business, I think the amounts of hundreds of thousands is quite warming. Bless the blog! You may know that we’ve recently started adding videos to the blog via YouTube, and we aim to carry this on in the future, when we have something to video, and when there’s time to make up the clips and post them; we’ve also started twittering (see the top right list of links) so people can more easily follow us that way, and Neil’s started putting up some photos on Flickr (click here to see his page).
Summer at the beach
And I just found some interesting information about New Year in Greece, in case anyone was wondering what happens. (I was looking at this as our neighbour passed by outside playing his accordion.) According to www.explorecrete.com
“After Christmas, the children impatiently await the New Year (Protohronia) because that’s when St. Basil (Ayios Vasilis) delivers their gifts.
In Greece it is the custom to exchange gifts on the New Year instead of Christmas. The presents are delivered by Saint Basil (Agios Vasilis). Agios Vasilis is the Greek Santa Claus.
On New Year’s Eve in Greece it is customary for most people to gather in the town’s center, or plaza, for last minute shopping or just a pleasant stroll. On the main roads, teenagers and other young ones create a maniacal scene by declaring a bloodless war on each other, using plastic clubs, giant plastic hammers, foam spray and whistles as "weapons."
Later, all the friends gather at one of their houses to ring in the New Year together.”
Thanks to Explore Crete for that paragraph, there is more information concerning traditions including the Vasilopita (New Year’s Day cake), the Kali Hera (New Year’s Day money given to children) and there is a video of NYD fireworks too. Click here to open the full page.
July
So, here we go into 2010. ‘You never know what’s around the corner’ has always been one of our sayings since moving to Symi and it’s true, you never really do. (Yes, there is an ancient square with a few ruins around it. An author, several local families and a mule or two, but that’s not what I mean.) We will probably set ourselves various unmanageable tasks and goals, then quietly forget about them, we’ve got various musical instruments and languages to learn, things to write, a shop to run, a new exhibition to organise and of course your Symi Island blog to keep up. But before we start on all that we’d like to thank a few people, well a lot of people actually.
August
Particularly all the visitors to the blog, everyone who has left comments (washing line and oboe jokes included!), everyone who has sent in supportive emails; everyone who has visited the shop and gallery and particularly people who parted with hard earned cash while there. And also our friends on Symi, Adriana for her links from her blog and the moderators of the Symi Chat pages at The Symi Visitor – links always welcome. (See our links list for links back and get involved in some fun Symi Chat.) The talented folk behind Symi Art for posters and book cover designs, the Symi Gallery for working closely with us, SAW for help with the alarm cat from time to time, the people who stole our shop sign for giving us so much free publicity, our neighbours for putting up with the music lessons, everyone who came to the party on boxing day, sang, played, cooked and washed up – there are so many talented people around here, and everyone else I’ve forgotten. But I’ve only forgotten them because I am rushing to finish this before you get feed up with it.
Right, big ramble over, I must go and pack for my couple of nights away. I’ll leave you with my final thought: book early for your Symi holiday 2010 – it’s going to be a great year. Happy New Year to you all.
November
