Hello, I am your Teenanimator!

I have been here for about 3,5 months now and so much has happened again. Time goes by really fast and I have seen loads of people coming and going.

Right now I have been in quite some different positions. Before I was a sport animator and one day a week I was in the mini club. But since the first of July I became Teenclub animator. That means that I am taking care of all the teenagers between 13 and 17 years old. I do not have a set programme, so I can do whatever they would like to do. The only things that come back every week are the Bananaboat and the trip to the Lido Aquapark. These are really nice activities. I also try to do a bicycle tour every week, which is going to a cafe where they can take a swim and have a drink. It is just an afternoon activity, so it does not take up the whole day.

When I was sports animator I did several different activities; boccia, volleyball, tennis, basketball, mini-golf, darts, sjoelen, morning gymnastics, aquagym, waterpolo and table tennis. So every day my activity could change.

Now my activies vary a lot, I can do all of the previous named ones, but I also did other activities, sometimes we do board or card games, or ball games. Together with the teenagers I even came up with a game called "Pumba ball". The name comes from one of my teenages which was called Timo, later I called him Pumba and not much later everyone knew him as Pumba and not as Timo anymore. That was actually pretty funny.

But at this certain moment a lot of the teenagers which came back every day left, so I have to start up with another group again, which is not always easy, but I will not give up.

Of course I also participate in the shows, we have got a lot of different shows, but my favorite one is Lord of the Dance, it is really nice! Almost every night I also do football with the teenagers which is from 11 pm until 12 am. This is nice for them, but sometimes also pretty tiring for me, after the shows.

I have had a lot of good days, but also a lot of bad days. It is not always easy to do this job and sometimes it is very tiring as well. You do not always have enough time for yourself to just put your mind on zero again.

But I also did quite some nice trips in my days off now. I was with a friend of mine one day, she was here on a holiday and we met up on my day off. Then I also went on a day trip to Bodrum with one of my collegues and I went on a 3 Island tour, which was the most relaxing day I had here. But overall these days where really nice. Usually on my days off I try to do some nice things and leave the hotel. Because by then it is much easier to get your mind off things.

So now you know what all I have been doing here. I am half way already, now we will have to see what the other 3 months are going to be like.

Kaliméra, Kos, Eláda

Time flies when you are.... working

I have been here for over a month now and so much has happened. I wanted to write a blog more often, but unfortunately I have not been able to realize that yet.
The hotel is open for about 3 weeks now and lots of people have been coming and going already. I have met so many nice and helpful people, it is amazing.

I have to admit that the days are rather long and pretty exhausting sometimes. This is because we work from 9.45 am until 12.00 am. Ofcourse we have got some breaks during the day, but these vary from 1 hour up to 4,5 hours a day. The good thing is that we have got one day a week off. My day off is usually split up in two. On my day off I like to do some nice things, but also just relax on the beach and do nothing at all.

At the moment we already finished one round of our two week programme and started with the second one. I like most of the shows we have and slowly you can see that we are improving aswell. It is always nice to see that people like the show and that they are enthusiastic about it. The activities during the day are also very nice to do and it is so good to see how much fun the people have while joining. One day a week I am also in the mini club with the kids, for me it is pretty easy to communicate with most of them because I speak Dutch, German and English.

Unfortunately the internet is still not working properly here, so we try to manage with the internet possibilities we have got. That is also why I am a bit behind with replying to messages and emails.

In my second week I got the most amazing surprise ever. We just finished our Lord of the Dance show in the theatre and we were dancing our club dance when I saw a group of people standing out of the theatre. I was looking who they were and while I was looking I once saw my sister and her boyfriend standing there and I was looking again, because I thought I was not right. How could they be here? It was so nice, I tried to spend as much time with them as possible. In total I had two evenings and one day until 19.50 pm sparetime. So we went away and saw parts of the island and the city. The sad thing is that time passes by really fast here and before I knew it they had to leave again. It was not nice to see them leave again, but I was really happy that they came here to visit me.

I will give it another try to upload a new post very soon. But as you all know, I do not make promisses. Thank you for all the nice responses and to answer the questions, I work here as an animator and I will stay here until the hotel closes again in October.

Kaliméra, Kos, Eláda

Here we go again!

April 6, 2013: 12.50 pm: I am at the International airport of Düsseldorf at the moment. It all feels a bit unreal and I have got some mixed feelings about leaving again. But then again, it is not the first time that I am leaving for a longer time and it is a new adventure coming up. I am lucky that it is not too busy at the airport, so when I am wandering around here it is not too hectic. Although I am always sceptic about the prices at the airport, I decided to visit Starbucks and treat myself with a nice cup of coffee and a croisant with a bottle of water for the rest of the day. I am curious what is waiting for me in Greece, but I will try to stick to my blog writing again and keep you all up to date. Now I only have to wait for my flight and trade this rainy and cold part of Europe for warm and (hopefully) sunny weather down south. See you there!

05.10 pm: The actual time here is 06.10 pm, but for now I will just stick to the Dutch time. I just arrived in the capital city of Greece. I just got reminded why I am so sceptic about airport prices, because when I arrived I had to go though the customs again and had to trow out half a bottle of the water I just bought. I drank half of it, because I did not want to throw it all out, but what a waste. I had a good flight and luckily it was not a busy flight. The seat next to me was not even taken, so no one was sitting in my so called "personal bubble". The weather here is already warmer but it is very cloudy. Within less than an hour I will be leaving to Kos.
I was happy to see there was free internet at this airport, until I realized I cannot make it work either on my tablet or mobile phone, so that is a pity. Now I need to keep busy for the next half a hour and then I will be up in the air again!

April 15, 2013: I am here already for a week now and so much has happened, people arrived and left again. But I will stick to it because I like it. It is quite exhausting because I do not have any days off yet, but I will hopefully manage. I already know a lot of dances (in my opinion) and people who did synchronized swimming with me know that remembering them was not always my strongest point. But now I am able to, so I am proud of myself.

The weather has been good and bad, but mostly good, I already had my first sun burn, so that proves that the sun has been out there. Next to dancing I have also done some cleaning and painting. Yes, I did a painting job, for the first time ever and well... I might not be the best painter but I did it!

We do not have internet at the hotel yet, so whenever I want to get online I have to head to the city which is about 5 km away from the hotel. But it is nice because they have got a lot of places with free WIFI here. People already start to recognize us and I think that is funny. The people here are pretty friendly, but there are also the people who are "fake-friendly". But ah well, you always have that at touristic places.

And ofcourse at night we are able to have a nice drink as well!

I have learned from my earlier blogs that I should keep them shorter, so I will try my best!

Well this was my first update and hopefully I will be able to write you all some more!

Kaliméra, Kos, Eláda