General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
The second episode of Mission…To Australia spotlights the city of Melbourne and includes a beautiful two-hour journey to see the Philip Island Penguin Parade at one of Australia’s most beautiful natural beauty spots, and a most popular tourist attraction, home to our little friends…the penguins.
More than 700,000 tourists visit the island every year to watch the famous parade of the little penguins who, keeping excellent time, return daily at dusk from the depths of the ocean to their ‘golden sandy home’, the shore.
You – like hundreds of other visitors – could be sitting on the platform with your gaze lost in the angry face of the ocean…with impatience etched into the nervous movements of your face as you await the “first little shout and the first little appearance.” You are amazed at the sudden extravaganza: It’s not one…it’s hundreds and then thousands of penguins!
They ‘magically’ emerge from the water in small groups, parade across the sand like little children who have just learned to walk with their little trunks swaying left and right…and in a triumphant march…head for their home in the dunes!
Returning to the heart of the city with our dear friend Christos Sikavitsas (a member of the Board of the Hellenic Community of Melbourne), we continued our acquaintance with the animal and plant kingdom in the historic 160 year-old Melbourne Zoo, which in addition to the 320 species of animals, also hosts 70,000 species of plants from all over the world. And there is also – the Greek Museum!
Our face to face acquaintance with the gastronomy of ‘wild nature’ was not to be missed, as we managed to taste the taste of… Australian Crocodile!
If one wishes to attach an identity to Melbourne, one could describe it as a Greek city since it hosts 300,000 Greek expatriates and Greek-Australians!
It has an extremely charming, intense, cultural, artistic, commercial, aristocratic, and moody personality, with incredible mood swings since in one twenty-four hour period its weather changes from rain to sunshine, from spring to autumn, and from summer to winter!
The ’sporting attire’ of its residents also characterizes it since every year, at this time, among the major sporting events, it hosts one of the four Grand Slams of professional tennis, the famous Australian Open at the luxurious facilities of the Albert Reserve Tennis Centre!
On January 29, the grand final of the Australian Open 2023 wore the colors of Greece – the Blue and White – as well as the colors of Serbia… our ‘neighbor’ Novak Djokovic won the title for the 10th time against our Greek boy, Stefanos Tsitsipas – the world’s number three ranked tennis player.
GREEKS DOWN UNDER
The history of the Hellenic diaspora in Australia is long, fascinating, and multifaceted.
Nowadays, on the famous London Street, the great Hellenic Festival of Melbourne is held every year with thousands of people attending and is a living example of our strong traditions, customs, and culture. Fitzroy, the oldest Greek neighborhood of the city, which is adorned by the first Greek Orthodox church, evokes many memories among Greek expatriates and in the busy and bustling area of Oakley, the pulse of the Greeks beats loudly!
See a pedestrian street full of Greek shops! Restaurants, cafes, cafeterias, pastry shops, stores… all with “the spirit and taste of the homeland,” making you think you are in a purely Greek neighborhood!
To these expatriates…who were deprived of the embrace of our homeland…and with tears in their eyes talk about Mother Greece and their uprooting for a better life, waiting to return…. we can proudly say that they are worthy ambassadors our country!
Our chance meeting there with the Greek-Australian Chrysoula Sklirou and her touching story about her two heart transplants and the expected complications was the occasion to penetrate into the soul of this heroine and gain an appreciation for the the value of organ donation.
As she says, she owes her life to Greece, to the Greek medical scientists, to the excellent Australian legislation on organ donation, and to faith…the Archangel Raphael, her long-time protector, whose name means ‘The Lord heals’, appeared before her smiling at the moment she suffered a cardiac arrest during her heart transplant surgery and she immediately recovered.
This hope-filled dialectic between life and death, faith and science, nature and tradition and art… are the treasures we carry in our luggage every time we travel and meet new friends.
Dr. Nicolas Lolatzis belongs to the new friends who welcomed us together with Dr. George Patoulis – regional governor of Attica in Greece and president of the Global Doctors Hippocratic Institute, Dr. Konstantinos Pantos, Antonis Polydorou. We were at the Monash Surgical Private Hospital in Melbourne where we had the good luck to “hear the stories and see with our own eyes the children of Australian and foreign infertile couples” who traveled “thousands of kilometers, and expended effort, time, and money to reach our country” in the hope of successfully undergoing the method of assisted reproduction.
Their effort and their hopes were finally rewarded by… ‘bringing life into their lives…!’
Joeanne, 47 years old, is now in her 8th month of pregnancy, is the heroine who, on the recommendation of Mr. Lolatzis, managed to travel to Greece and return with two daughters thanks to the magic hands of Dr. Pantos – despite a history of Type 1 diabetes, two liver transplants, and other major health complications.
Her story is a shining example for those on the verge of losing hope.
Such shining examples are part of the world science…all the more so when there are people who have dedicated their lives to their fellow man by ‘creating families’ through their work.
Lina Evgeni, reproductive biologist and director of the cryopreservation bank ‘Cryogenia’ is among the unsung heroes behind the microscope of the success of many infertile couples who come from all over Greece and abroad to undergo the IVF procedure. In this way, from thousands of miles away, on the other side of the world… foreigners learn to love Greece through the Greeks who excel in medical science, even before they reach its shores!
Let us bid you farewell after this wonderful journey into the depths of another Greek expatriate community with a few words in Greek, the poetry of one of Australia’s most important figures, the Greek expatriate from Melbourne, Stathis Raftopoulos:
Δεν με φοβίζει ο θάνατος εμένα,
ούτε μια ζωή που ’χω να χάσω,
τρέμω πολύ τα χώματα τα ξένα,
στην ξένη γη δεν θέλω να πλαγιάσω.
Και ήθελα ετούτο το κουφάρι,
όταν ο δρόμος της ζωής τελειώσει,
το χώμα το δικό σου να το πάρει,
στο χώμα που γεννήθηκε να λιώσει.
Special Thanks to:
– Lina Evgeni
– Global Doctors Hippocratic Institute (and George Patoulis, Konstantinos Pantos, and Antonios Polydorou)
– Mr. Antonakis
– University of Patras professor George Antonakis
– The Greek Community of Melbourne (and its president Vasilis Papastergiadis, George Menidis, and Christos Sikavitsas)
– Τhe Greek Community of Oakley
– The Football team Hellas Melbourne
– LENOVO
– RENTPHOTOVIDEO
– PEUGEOT KALLIANTASIS
– NOVA RENT A CAR THESSALONIKI
– HOTEL ANERADA KALAVRITA
– SEAJETS
Clelia Charissis is dressed by:
SHOP&TRADE
SAUCONY
FILLA GREECE
ARENA
LIU JO
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
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