Today, Oct 26, Thessaloniki celebrates its patron Saint Dimitrios and the liberation of the city approximately 110 years ago, in 1912.

 

On Friday, Oct 28, Greece celebrates OXI day, one of the most glorious moments in the country's recent history. It is the day that the Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas rejected an ultimatum given by the Italian dictator Bennito Mousolini. Metaxas refused to allow the Italian army free passage to enter and occupy strategic sites in Greece. The Greek people took to the streets all over the country and cried loudly "OXI" – NO to surrender.

Our Elementary Greek teachers worked hard for this year's OXI celebration. The theme was World peace, a concept of an ideal state within and among all people and nations . 

 

Through their songs, our students showed us that ''Peace is the best way to cope with the challenges that we face in our world''. If we keep that in our mind, that “all it takes is... to hold a kid’s hand to realize the beauty of life”, as the song goes, then we can make a difference.

 

A special thanks to our Greek teachers and the masters of ceremony Mireya Santos-Tsolis and Anna-Danai Charalambidou.

Our international community has taught us not only to celebrate our heritage and national pride but also to find those things that bring us together as humanity and are common, regardless of ethnicity and country.

For this year's Secondary celebration we decided to focus on the concept of Home and look at our OXI Day celebration through the lens of Home as a place, but also as a community of people. Grade 10 students presented the work they produced through doing research in their own backgrounds. It was their attempt to empathize with the idea of Home as part of the OXI Day, the idea of protecting, losing, leaving, and rebuilding your Home after an enforced uprooting. 

 

Special thanks to Mr. Pavlos Kalemkeris for the beautiful pictures he has so generously shared with us.