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When I was at uni one of my highlights was doing New Testament Greek with a guy called Vras. He was nothing short of a mind blowing experience! He was brilliant, challenging, obtuse and hilarious. This is an article that a good friend of mine Alison wrote about him. It is written brilliantly and really captures some of all that Vras is. You may remember Alison from when I interviewerd her back here, if you haven’t read the interview you definitely should. Anyway on with the show…
“You are freaking me out!”
Vrasidas Karalis
I’m going to say right out that Vras pretty much got me through my degree. My liberal studies degree required me to pass 5 semesters worth of a language. That sounded pretty straightforward after 5 years of Japanese at high school. I chose to study Modern Greek, because it would keep my grandparents happy and get me in touch with my cultural heritage etc, etc. I would not have passed Greek without Vras.
In first year I enrolled in beginner’s Greek. We had two teachers – Martina, a lovely gentle but cool young teacher, and Vras, who appeared to me to be the pinnacle of insanity. Our first week was terrifying for me. Martina and Vras stood at the front of the class room trying to weed out the fluent speakers who were too good for beginners. I don’t think they got them all. It felt like most of the class, even though they weren’t fluent, could still understand Martina and Vras when they accidently slipped into complicated Greek. I spent that year sitting with my friend Amanda. The four hours with Martina were fine. She would give us worksheets, explain grammar to us, ask us questions that were at our comprehensions level. The last hour of the week was with Vras. He would charge into the classroom like a whirlwind, single out one of the girls:
“My, you’re looking very radiant today!”
and then sit on a desk and proceed to rant about the evils of university bureaucracy, the politics of the local Greek community or the shortcomings of that year’s Eurovision contestants. Vras never seemed to have a lesson plan. He would just tell outrageously hilarious or disturbing stories about his life and occasionally link them into our language study by translating the odd word into Greek and scrawling it across the chalkboard. Then he would ask a ridiculous question that was way beyond my Greek knowledge. Amanda and I would cower in the back row, hoping that he wouldn’t call on us for an answer.
“Tell me you love…”
After about six or seven weeks of uni, Vras decied to teach us the verb agapo. which means love. Vras wondered around the room pointing randomly at students crying out “Tell me you love your mother!” “Tell me you love your father!”. He got to me and paused. That day was one of the first days I had been brave enough to wear my EU shirt. “Tell me you love God!” I wasn’t really sure whether he was mocking me or giving me a chance to share my faith with people. Vras was proving to be a little bit obscure with matters of faith. He would tell very obscene stories and then turn around and talk about the New Testament Greek course that he ran after our class finished. He would tell stories about the time he went on a cruise and did lots of things that he found very pleasurable, and then tell one of the boys in our class in all earnestness that he should really read the book of Matthew in the bible, because it would be good for his soul.
“Forget about it”
At the end of the year I followed him up about the New Testament Greek course and summoned the courage to ask him if he was a Christian. Vras looked at me with suprise.
“Of course!”
“Oh. Why do you tell all of those stories?”
Vras paused and then answered (I think he was trying to be cryptic)
“Sometimes a dog’s bark is worse than its bite”.
Whatever that meant.
We talked for awhile and it turned out that Vras was potentially some kind of amazing heretic. He had been excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox church a couple of years beforehand and was struggling to renew his Greek passport. He sent me a copy of an article he had written, a very scathing history of the Greek Orthodox church. At the time he had decided instead to go the the Anglican church near where he lived in Glebe, although I’m pretty sure he has moved on from there. He doesn’t like Calvinists, and most Anglicans in Sydney fall squarely into that category.
“Do you have a friend called Zoe?”
New Testament Greek the next year was an absolute scream. I started realising that Vras had different personas depending on who he was teaching. He still liked stirring people up and freaking people out, but this time, in front of Christians, his weapon of choice was not explicit sex stories but outrageous heresy. Most of what he said went way over my head, but Matt was in that class with me, as well as our friend Ryan and both of them are very keen amateur theologians. They would push back on every point they didn’t like, and also some that they just enjoyed arguing over. My friend Dan was also in that class with me. He would try to speak up too, although is preferred method of voicing his opinion was to try and answer every and any question that Vras asked of the class.
Vras’ favourite method for teaching vocab was to help us link the Greek word with their English words. So, classes went something like “The word for light is phos! Do you know any English words that come from phos? Yes! Photography”. Or like “The word for earth is ygis. Do you know any English words that come from ygis? Yes! Geology, Geography.” Or “The word for life is zoe. Do you have a friend called Zoe?”. No, I didn’t. And I didn’t have any friends called Thanatos, which means death.
What a difference a year made. Instead of hiding at the back that year, it was a real joy to answer Vras’ questions. I was much less self conscious. Dan kept a score sheet of who volunteered the most answers or comments. If you answered a question really well, Vras would reward you with
“Ryan, you are a star.”
It was the highest compliment you could receive, until one day, after a very intense round of questioning, Dan was rewarded with
“Dan, you are a constellation!”
It was during that year that Matt and I started going out and eventually got engaged. Matt used to tie my shoelaces to the desk during Vras’ lectures.
The outrageous stories kept coming. His favourite one to retell was about the time that he was in Iceland and was so very depressed that he wanted to kill himself. But then he went for a walk and found a little Greek Orthodox church in the middle of nowhere, with some monks or priests inside who talk to him and made him feel better. My favourite story he often told was about his days as a student in Germany. He studied under Joseph Ratzinger (you may know him now as Pope Benedict XVI) and he would recount the theological arguments that they had. I thought it was sweet being taught by a man who has fought with the pope.
“This is off the planet.”
Now even the smartest of men must have his point of weakness. For Vras it was powerpoint software. He didn’t really start using it until I took the New Testament subjects, and once he started there was no return. Every week he had learnt a new function or found a cooler template. Every week there were shouts of frustration as, once again, the powerpoint slides had mangled his Greek text into a whole lot of boxes and squiggles. I think to this day he still hasn’t realised that it is not powerpoint’s fault but teh fault of the university computers that don’t have his Greek font installed. But I digress. One week he had discovered the transition technique where each letter comes up one by one and every letter spins a cartwheel before settling on the screen. It took a while to get through the slides that day. We would score extra marks for including the maximum number of pictures during our tutorial presentations.
“Now I know most of you were only born a few years ago, but some of you might remember what happened in 1396.”
And so it went on and on. Matt got a short gig being his research assistant, and I enrolled and enrolled and enrolled in Vras’, eventually passing enough MGRK courses to get my degree! Plus more to spare. Byzantium: Between East and West. Greeks in the Diaspora. Greece and the European Imagination. They all rocked, and we would spend countless hours watching B-Grade Greek films, reruns of Acropolis Now and video clips from ageing Greek film stars.
“How very Freudian!”
This year one of my classmates took two hours to get through her presentation. She was analysing the representation of Greece in the musical Mamma Mia. Each time she showed us a section of dialogue of the movie, Vras would insist that we continued watching to the next song.
“Ooh! I love this one! Gimme Gimme Gimme a man after midnight! Madonna sang this one too you know.”
So I will really miss being in his classes. Even though I have absolutley no memory of a structured class with Vras, he has been one of the most influential and interesting teachers I’ve had. I may not know how to speak Greek and I may have forgotten a lit of information about Justinian and Homer, but I have really come to appreciate the things you can learn when you question things that are assumed. Vras was very good at getting us to do that. One of the people in his appreciation group on facebook put it this way:
“He knows full well that the best way to teach someone is to get them laughing.”
To sum up, I thought I’d leave you with some of the hilarious quotes that have been collected on Facebook. Enjoy!
——————————————-
15 min into our exam, Vras says “Are you all finished yet?” then pushes clock forward – “Don’t ask me any questions I’m conversing with Plato…”
“Those Egyptians were very nasty people! They killed and raped and ate the human flesh and blood! They were cannibals! Have you tasted human flesh?” [to an Egyptian student]
“Have you read ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy…? You haven’t?! Oh my goodness people, we don’t live in a vacuum!”
“You have to be nice to me because I’m writing my magnus opus on violence so I need affection people!”
“The purpose of an institution like university is to produce intellectual disability”
“When are we two going to have sex?” (often said to me, once in front of a whole group of visiting professors during the Biennial Conference)
“Look at your shoes…you can jump to your death from them” (said to a student with high heels).
Student (vehemently): The Greeks gave the light of civilization to the world! (ta fota tou politismou).
Vras (deadpan): Was it Philips or General Electric type lights?
“Justinian loved building walls around things…no doubt as a psychological reaction to his wife who was having sex with half the Empire”
(while talking about sex, Vras stops and looks at me)
Vras: How old are you?
Me: 19
Vras: You look 14.
(someone tries to start up the sex topic again)
Vras: please, not in front of the minor.
“Elate paidia. Sit closer. Konta! Konta! I don’t bite, I don’t eat human flesh anymore!”
“Don’t you have a friend called Theodora or Zoe?”
“Do you have a friend called Thanatos?”
Thanks go to Ryan for showing me this video
This is amazing! I think my favourite is the 3pm bells.
Enjoy…
It is now time for a regular(ish) segment here at Micaiah Sells Out called:
“4 Quick Questions and 1 Strange One with…”
Well it has been a while but I thought it would be good to get these back on the agenda and what better way to get back into it than with an interview with Ryan Smartt. Ryan spends his days as a teacher and is Head of Christian Studies at my old high school. About six years ago he married my sister Fiona and I finally had a brother! Ryan loves running, goes to CCIW in Ashfield, regularly eats handmade dumplings, is colour blind, writes his own bio blurbs and had recently started a terrific blog about youth and schools ministry at A Light on A Hill.
Ryan Smartt
1. So, Ryan, You’re a teacher at a school in the East of Sydney. Tell us a bit about your job.
In a nutshell I teach high school boys about Jesus.
As Head of Christian Studies I lead a team of Chaplains and other Christian Studies teachers in developing curriculum and teaching classes in a way that tries to communicate the gospel with as much clarity, engagement and relevance as possible.
There are other bits and pieces that I do as well, such as teach a year 12 Geography class, and co-ordinate and teach the Studies of Religion HSC subject. I also look after the community service of the school and see that as a real opportunity to get boys serving and seeing Christianity in action.
I also coach a rugby team that has fluctuating results. One week we won by 50 points, the next week we lost by 50 points.
2. What are the best things about your job?
I love so many things about my job and I find it incredibly rewarding Specifically there are five reasons I really enjoy coming to work each day:
i) COUNTLESS OPPORTUNITIES: The best thing about the job would have to be the constant opportunities to read the Bible with students and be a witness in a community. Answering boys’ questions about life and God is a constant challenge and real joy.
ii) FABULOUS TEAM: I work within a team of committed and like-minded colleagues and I am daily humbled by their wisdom, skills and love for the boys. They are a real encouragement as is the support we receive to conduct Christian ministry from the school council and executive of the school.
iii) STRATEGIC: 70% of all Christians make a decision to follow Jesus before the age of 20 (National Church Life Survey 2001). Ministry in schools is incredibly strategic and important!
iv) FAR REACHING: I really believe the Christian Studies faculty can be a light not just to the school, but also to the local area. My prayer is that through this ministry many will come to Christ and that students will continuously flow into local youth groups and play a key role in strengthening the witness of many churches and ministries. You can read more about this vision here
v) GOING SOMEWHERE: My position is new and is part of the school investing more resources and staff in chaplaincy and Christian studies. The team has grown from two chaplains in 2008 to a team of five in 2010 that includes chaplains, Christian studies teachers and youthworkers. This year we are teaching Year 11 Christian Studies for the first time ever and next year will extend that to include Year 12. It is exciting to be a part of this growth and development that I pray will bear much fruit for God’s glory.
3. What are some of the challenges?
The school I’m at is a very very busy place. Sometimes the pace of things can take its toll. More significantly, the spiritual ambivalence and hard-heartedness of some of the students can be really frustrating. Some of them believe in cheap grace. That is, if they generally do good things they are saved. If they stuff up occasionally, that is ok, because God needs to forgive them. There is no real fruit of their faith and they don’t see this as a problem. May God soften their hearts!
4. You’re a big cycling fan. What is your prediction for this years Tour?
My heart says go the Aussies! Cadel to dominate.
But my head says he doesn’t have much of a chance. I can’t see anyone apart from Contador or Armstrong getting the glory in Paris.
5. What is the best trick/excuse a kid has ever tried to pull on you to get out of something or get out of trouble?
“I was stuck on my island resort in Fiji due to a cyclone!” Rich kids – got to love them!
So this is my brother in law Ryan.
He runs marathons, loves the Tour de France, is colour blind and teaches Christian studies at Scots.
He has just started a blog called: “A light on a Hill“
He plans to blog about:
- tips for teaching and engaging boys
- using film creatively
- reviewing current resources for high schoolers
- general reflections on schools ministry
- building a senior Christian Studies program from scratch
- and other bits and pieces that come up in my life
He has already started posting about mental health and Slum dog Millionaire.
You can check it out here
You may also recognise the cool looking woman in the photo. That is Fiona, my sister, I have interviewed her before here at MSO. You can read that here
Some people have asked me recently why I really like Lance Armstrong! Lots of people seem to just not like him for some reason!
I guess that it is true that most people either love him or hate him, he has regularly been the subject of unfair accusations of being a drug cheat – a fairly ‘out there’ claim considering that he has never missed a drug test and never had a negative result! Others think he is too showy or that they’re just sick of hearing about him!
I leant my brother in law Ryan my biography of Armstrong, and I was reminded why I like him so much. Lance Armstrong has always been and always will be the underdog! Even when he was racing for his 7th in a row Tour victory, and he was the clear favourite, his history and his story always make him the unlikely winner – the one who beat the odds. Armstrong should not have been able to survive the Cancer, he did. He should not have been able to make a return to professional cycling, he did. He should not have been able to set an unprecedented 7 Tour victories in a row! He did.
Anyway, I dug up this video on Youtube, it says it better than I can. You should watch it as a first step… and then borrow my biography once Ryan is done.
Answer: They have all donated money to sponsor me for the 2009 MS Gong ride!
You should do it to!
“MS is the most common disease of the central nervous system and affects more than 18,000 Australians.
Did you know?
* The average age of diagnosis of MS is just 30 years
* MS affects three times as many women as men
MS Australia aims to minimise the impact of multiple sclerosis on all individuals affected by the disease, as well as their families, carers and the community, by offering a wide range of services, equipment and support. MS Australia’s goal is to assist everyone affected by MS to live life to their fullest potential and secure the care and support they need, until we ultimately find a cure.”
Its a long way and so please support me and/or Liz as we do this!
You can sponsor us by clicking here
If you go there you can also see the encouraging messages that all these people left me!
