How to Melt a Heart in 30 minutes

Ingredients:

20 Greek 10 year olds
A moderate knowledge of Greek
1 village elementary school
Yourself

Instructions:

Place self in elementary school, preferably in the classroom where the children normally have lessons. Have the appropriate adult figure (commonly a teacher) announce to the class that they have a special guest from America and that they can ask him/her whatever they wish. Let the interview roast for about 30 minutes, at which point the adult figure will have to insist that the children go to recess instead of continuing to ask questions. Take melted heart out of classroom and serve immediately.

Tip: If your heart freezes over during recess, have adult figure allow the children time to draw you pictures, which will remelt the heart instantly (and for quite some time).

The girl who drew the tree is the first ten year old, officially, to tell me that they LOVE physics.

From top to bottom: "Thank you very much for coming and seeing us and talking to us! Thank you very much!!!"--"Thank you very much for coming. We hope we will meet you again through Ms. Yianna. We are EXCITED!!"

Can you tell the gender of these two as opposed to the preceding two notes? I love how handwriting styles are so universal. Anyways: "My name is Antonis and I thank you for the questions that you answered for me."--"Thank you very much for coming to our school and we are honored to have met a person from abroad."

Other highlights included:

• When their teacher said, who do you think this is, one of the boys nearly ripped his shoulder out of his socket and when called on said "Your husband!"
• One of the girls was obsessed with Jon Bon Jovi and had written his name in the walls of the school. A budding graffiti artist no doubt.
• I won the boys over by luckily picking the right soccer team to say was my favorite. The eruption of the class was rather imposing.
• During recess I was basically the Fonz, with about 10 girls quizzing me about all kinds of cultural stuff.

And finally...