Greek Note 2: It’s just an emotion. I am inordinately in love with the way Greece Greeks (as opposed to Diaspora Greeks) use gifs and emojis on Facebook.

Where I may use a 💝 a Greek relative will use a

Where I may indicate that I am dancing 💃 they will post a dance

Where I may show sweetness with flowers 💐 the will send flowers

And it is always something cute and daggy and animated. It is over the top. It is sunshiney happy. I love that in their morning, all it takes is someone saying “Have a good day” and all of a sudden, the good morning gifs are sent back and forth.

Observation Note 83: Loud. A PhD friend of mine came over today. Where I met many lovely people at university, this friend was the only one in a similar situation to me; we both were in our mid-forties, we were married, we had mortgages and we had kids who were the same age. We also both had a Mediterranean background and could at times forget ourselves and get very loud at student conferences, meetings, workshops, nights out, in a midst of often very contained and quiet people. My friend told me today that someone said she was bringing a lot of attention to herself. And we had a long talk about how being loud and shouty in the university settings can sometimes not be seen as proper behaviour. I remember being so exasperated by one particular student when I was an undergraduate that I raised my voice, not in anger but in expressiveness. The non expressive person I was addressing was not impressed. I remember her face looking at me as though I was a pleb.

The thing is, I like exuberance.

I like excited and loud conversations where people are practically shouting to be heard over each other.

It’s fun.

Though at the end of the day, I do like the counterbalance of some lovely quiet.

PS: My Alt-Text on this post may not be existent. I always use alt-text in my images but WordPress hasn’t provided me with my usual edit tools so I can do this. I am guessing that these are already part of the uploaded gif. Please let me know if you would like me to list them in the comments.