Dear partners, friends and visitors,

I welcome you all to this new issue of the HelloNet Newsletter which is available on line today.

Our project is progressing within its time limits. We have installed units ‘One’ and ‘Two’ as well as the ‘Alphabet’ unit. Also the ‘Grammar Reference’ and ‘Lexicon’ both including the material introduced up to now.

The first ‘game’ has also been installed. The game is based in the myth of Icarus a popular story taken from Greek mythology.

Icarus was the son of Daedalos. Daedalos was the master who built the great palace of Minoas in Crete the years before 1500 BC. This palace was the largest ever built, it was as large as two football fields if put side by side. It had more than a hundred rooms on the ground floor and most parts of the building consisted of several floors. It contained lots of corridors, stairways, bathrooms, wells, storage rooms and more than one courtyards. The labyrinth was also part of this huge palace. After the palace had been built, Daedalos wanted to leave Crete and return to his home in Athens but the King did not allow him to go. So he decided to escape! He was a bird watcher and kept noticing how the birds were able to fly and how they used to move his wings. So he had this marvelous idea to build two pairs of wings, one for him and one for his son Icarus so they could fly away. He used a kind of wax to fasten together the feathers of the wings. So one day, early in the dawn, they fastened the wings on their shoulders and off they went into the sky. But Icarus was just a young man, he was so enthusiastic by this adventure that he flew higher and higher. Unfortunately, he flew so close to the sun that its heat melted the wax of his wings and so he fell into the sea. The sea was named ‘The Icarian Sea’ after him and the nearby island was called Icaria.

So our first ‘game’ is based on this story. Use the arrows to move Icarus in the sky but help him not to get near the sun. If you are not careful enough, he will get near the sun, his wings will melt and he will fall into the sea!!!!!!

On March 22-23 Jose Antonio Costa de Ideias from Lisbon and Lucia Marcheselli from Trieste visited us. They took part in a large Symposium organized by the Greek Ministry of Culture to gather Greek language professors and scholars from all parts of the world. Their part in this symposium was with presentations of the Greek studies in their countries. 

The ‘Hellonet” project took part in the international conference ‘Promoting the use of lesser taught European languages’ which took place in Dijon, France from 7-9 April. You can read more about it in another page of this newsletter.

I wish you all Happy Summer Holidays!

Regards to all from Greece,

Roula Kartali