Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Global Kindness

My husband and myself just got back from a 2 1/2 week trip to Greece. We were invited to an authentic Greek wedding in a small city called Larissa, about a 3 hr. drive north of Athens. The week before the wedding the bride-to-be's family hosted dinners at their house every night. This Greek family lives outside Larissa in a small farming village named Agia. We meet my mother and my cousins at the Greek families house when were arrived from Athens. My cousin was a foreign exchange student with the family 20 years ago and has keep in contact very well. As we sat at the outside big round table after our initial welcome, we saw dozens of villagers coming to the families home to pay their respects to the bride and to welcome us.

Traditional Greek meals were prepared for all of us and the families friends which totaled about 40-50 people every night! Most of the villagers couldn't speak English and we all tried our best to speak a little Greek, but we could all feel the genuine connection between us. I can still picture in my mind little tan older faces with big smiles and missing teeth. But the love, the warm kindness was conveyed in such a pureness of heart, that I can't forget it.