I arrived today full of anticipation and excitement. First last few days in Athens have been rather dull apart from seeing my cousins and visiting very briefly with a friend who was using my apartment as a jump off point for her Greece travels.

Part of my reason for signing up to be a volunteer was to meet more Greeks and Greek hyphenates. I don't hang with any Greek people at home. It used to be by choice but now it's just by chance and I wanted to meet some Greeks and get closer to my roots.

I arrive way too early, sign in, receive my arm band that identifies me as Spectator Services and join the myriad of other people waiting for instruction. I quickly realize that everyone around me is speaking Greek...even people that don't look Greek to me....and my heart sinks. I wonder if I'm the only volunteer who doesn't speak Greek...I mean I can order a meal and find the bathroom but beyond that my Greek is worthless. As my name badge clearly declares my very Greek name and practically overwhelms the USA country designation beneath it, everyone naturally assumes I speak Greek and I stand there feeling a fool for not having paid more attention in Greek school as a child. I'm in a room full of people and feel so lonely.

The head of our division, Kelly, calls me over and tells me they are short of staff in the support division and would I be willing to help out there for the day. Of course, I'm happy to do whatever it is they wish me to do, but I'm also disappointed because I know from our orientation that Support is a behind the scenes job, not a place to meet a lot of people. But I don't want to be an uncooperative American on my first day, so I agree.

My team leader is Maria...easy enough for me to remember and my teammate is Socrates. Maria is an easy-going, friendly girl with a beautiful classic Greek face and a quick smile. Socrates is also the smiley sort and very gentle in manner...and hardly speaks a word of English. For the first hour we are together we hardly say a word. He, I'm sure, embarrassed to struggle with his English; me terrified to destroy my mother language. But soon we have no choice but to speak to each other when Maria assigns us a paper coordination task and leaves us.

We soon find that for some strange reason if he speaks in Greek to me and I respond in English we understand each other. Granted we understand only about 50 percent, but combined with hand gestures and facial expressions we get to about a 75% understanding and spend the rest of the day having our strange Greek and English conversation.

Maria I warmed to immediately. She was a light hearted person and was well aware that some of the seriousness being expressed by our group leaders was over the top. They had certain rules and concerns and she was quick to recognize some rules didn't make sense. For instance, why should a person go on a break one hour after they arrive when they haven't done anything to tire themselves out? Maria had her own, more efficient way of doing things and I liked that about her. She was a doer and a thinker and didn't just follow rules regardless of if they made sense or not.

But as much as I enjoyed their company, I'm a mass people person. I like crowds, I like being in the thick of things. The Support role had me fetching water for the other volunteers, coordinating daily files for the team leaders and really not much else. We finished our work very early in the evening so with nothing at all to do, Socrates and I went to watch the game.

Socrates knew nothing of baseball, as is the case for most Greeks, so I tried to explain to him the rules of the game. We finally reached an impasse in our communication skills when I tried to explain that at "strike" does not mean the batter hits the ball but rather that he misses it or doesn't swing at all. An explanation of "strike zone" was an exercise in futility. But I think he grasped some of the basics and he enthusiastically tried to figure out the game as it went along. Unfortunately, it was a particularly bad game to be watching to learn baseball because both teams were playing like grade school athletes, complete with the classic Bad News Bears move of the ball going between the legs of the shortstop as his head ducks past his knees to watch it roll past. After four scoreless innings Socrates hesitantly asks me, "But how do you know who wins?"

After I stopped laughing, I explained, to his amazement, that eventually someone would make it around all the bases and score a run. At the rate this game was going, it was going to be a very long time before that happened. I'm sure that evening, I did not make a baseball convert.