Amie
Name: Amie Williams
Lives in: Athens, Greece and Maries, Zakynthos Greece
From: I am from Los Angeles California, but I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. 🙂
Works as: I am a filmmaker and journalist and a nomad by nature. I have lived and worked all over the world from Japan to Kenya to California and now Greece!
Tell us your first three jobs (ever!): My first job was scooping ice cream for 31-Flavors, a chain of (pretty awful) ice cream in the U.S. I gave away a lot of it to my friends and was fired. My second job (and throughout college) was working as a waitress which taught me humility and the grand, fascinating diversity of the human race. My third job was out of film school when I was hired as a filmmaker to follow the journey of a condom and a birth-control pill from where they were manufactured to their final destination. The job took me from Puerto Rico to Bangladesh to Zimbabwe!—it was for a family planning NGO working in developing countries and teaching health practitioners about the importance of warehousing so they would not distribute birth control that was out of date! To say the least, this was
an amazing experience and one that kind of determined the lovely weirdness and global nature of my work to date.
Zodiac sign?: Libra
What do you love about Greece? I love the smashed bitter oranges on the street, the way the beauty is fallen or hard to find, but when you do find it, you are smitten. I love the call of the gypsy peddlers roaming the streets and the millions of cats lounging in eponymous abandoned buildings or empty lots. They are alive because Athenians feed them, the way they feed each other and welcomed thousands of refugees even in the midst of their own crisis. I run on Filapapou hill most mornings to drink in the view but also to remember whose footsteps we are following, the way the stones are worn so smooth on the road that circles the Acropolis that you often slip. I love the light here, intense and blinding during the summer but softer and gentle in winter, like an old, familiar sweater.
Athens to me is a city also very female, both ancient and modern, the curved hills surrounding the city to the well-dressed grandmothers on the metro, so elegant and poised, the crumbling neo-classical buildings, referred to as “the coming soons,” by the locals, standing so proud in all the decay.
When I think of Greece and how I arrived here, I think of the poet Cavafy… “My life has been awaiting you…your footfall is my own heart’s beat.” I’m blessed to call Greece my new adopted country and even though I am still ever the nomad, I love coming home here.
Tell us something most people don’t know about you: I love doing headstands in strange places, and I have done headstands all over the world including: The Great Wall of China, Tsukiji fish market in Japan, edge of a cliff in Yosemite, the Kalahari desert in Southern Tunisia and the Acropolis!
Where we are most likely to find you in Lynn’s Kundalini Yoga (i.e. SUP Yoga, night yoga, etc.) : Night yoga
First time you tried Kundalini Yoga (where/when/with whom)?: In Los Angeles, and I didn’t like it at all, it seemed like too much breathing and it made me dizzy! It is an acquired practice and one I hope to get better at with Lynn!
Tell us your top tip to combat climate change: recycle, recycle, recycle. And bicycle whenever and wherever you can. Recycle. Bicycle. They even rhyme!