OOOOOO! I've found my favorite volunteer job! It probably has to do with the fact that I'm a big ham at heart or because I'm a Leo (we crave attention apparently) but whatever the reason, I've found the job I want to keep doing. Up until now I've done Support - boring and lonely, Response - filling in for other people on their breaks which gets you around to many positions in the venue but can be very dull when you're guarding an empty hallway, Access Monitoring - again, more guarding access points which I think is only fun in the press area and Ushering which has been great fun because I get to see the games, practice my Greek and try to get the crowd into the game. But now I've found my true calling as a volunteer.

Today I was assigned to 'Marshalling' again, meaning working in the common areas guiding spectators to seats, but this time I got to do the welcome announcements on the 'daduka' or megaphone as it's known in English. Now the idea of assigning this job to me was actually rather ridiculous because I didn't know how to make the announcements in Greek and everyone by this time knew that my Greek was very limited. But no one else in our group wanted to do it and it was a chance for me to sit the entire time in the shade! So I promised Nikos, our team leader, that I could learn how to say in Greek:

Welcome to the Olympic Baseball Center. If you are seated in section 301 - 307 please go to your left, if you are seated in sections 308-315 please go straight ahead.

Within the next hour I must have practiced this speech on 20 different people to make sure I was getting the pronunciation down correctly. I was really really bad at first but after repeating it about 100 times it was starting to sound reasonably understandable.

The seat of power...and bad jokes

I was to make the announcements in both Greek and English every time someone walked through the ticket entrance. Obviously the English didn't pose a problem but whenever I got stuck on a word in Greek I would collapse in a fit of giggles. I thought they were going to take away my megaphone for sure but the Greeks seemed amused by my efforts. Eventually a couple of them came over to ask me to say things about the volunteers and seemed to like when I suggested, via the megaphone, that spectators kiss or hug the volunteers on their way in.

After I became more comfortable with my speech in Greek, I started ad-libbing the welcome and shouting Greek and Aussie team chants at spectators at they went by. The Aussies were always up for their customary "OY OY OY" response to my cry of "OZZIEOZZIEOZZIE" but the Greeks where more reserved when I yelled out 'OLE OLE OLE"...huh, and Greeks are supposed to be so fun loving.

Bored by repeating the same announcement over and over I decided to explain the rules of baseball to spectators because I knew the Greeks had no idea how the game was played. So I helpfully instructed, "If you don't know what baseball is all about, don't worry - the object of the game is to drink beer and eat hotdogs!" I sang Take Me out to the Ballgame and cheered when I spotted a Cubbies cap. I even called out "OHIO" (welcome) when I spotted an Asian guest enter which had the startled Japanese spectator chattering at me in Japanese. Oops...ahrigato (thank you) what all I could say in response.

I admonished the Aussies and the English to wear sunscreen because none of us wanted to see them look like crispy critters and encouraged to Greeks to route for the home team. My goofing around eventually caught the eye of a couple of cameramen and I was filmed by an NBC affiliate from Los Angeles and interviewed by an NBC affiliate from Memphis, TN.

Countless mothers posed their kids in front of my chair for photos and one spectator even filmed me on his video camera making my speech. A few Greeks, I think mortified by my bad Greek accent, stopped by to ask me where I was from. When I said the USA, they laughed and said they could tell; to which I responded that I did not make fun of their bad American accents...

I had a grand old time up there in my chair, shaded from the heat, and started taking requests from volunteers on announcements to make and songs to sing. Eventually the Greeks decided I was just crazy as they found me highly amusing. I thought I was just silly, but hey there's no accounting for taste. If Europeans could find David Hasselhoff a great singer than I guess I could be a comedian...

Well the benefit of being such a "craa-zeee gurhl" as the Greeks put it, was that it served as the ice breaker I needed to meet more people. Demitri, a Greek American from Connecticut was meeting some of the other volunteers for drinks at the Heineken beer tent after the game, so I joined them. The group was a mixture of volunteers and team leaders. All team leaders were native Greeks who were paid workers for the Olympics for a couple of months. I had met a few of them, but not really spoken to them. But time and beer, and apparently shouting on a megaphone for several hours, worked their magic and I soon found them to be fun, warm, outgoing people.

When did Greek guys get so good looking?

I also met a few more volunteers, the majority of which were Greek hyphenates, all of which spoke fluent Greek. We spent 2-3 hours just sitting in the common area of the Elliniko baseball stadium, drinking 2 Euro Heinekens (that's $2.40 for us Americans) and discussing everything and nothing.

Finally. This is one of the major reasons I had volunteered. To spend some time with Greeks and feel more a part of my culture. And it was finally happening. Only little did I know at the time that this grouping of people would soon form a tight knit posse that would be the reason I end up exhausted and aching like an Olympic athlete after a marathon. But it will be worth every lost moment of sleep.