Well, I did warn that they'd speak slowly -I could theoretically find a link with the same words pronounced faster, but I wanted to be certain you'd understand the pronounciation...

Glad you had understood it in the 1st place-I just assumed you didn't like the sound of the singular of the noun because you had misunderstood the pronounciation. And on the internet it's pretty easy to forget that the other person isn't a native speaker of English either...

Well, your education sounds quite different from what I considered "normal" -"normal" being being taught at a public state (non-church) school. Our own professors of Ancient Greek weren't sticklers for anything (heck I had barely learnt Ancient Greek before the preparation exams for entrance at the university, when I just learnt all the stuff I should have learnt while at school in private lessons (me and other children preparing for said exams went to a retired old high-school teacher and she taught us in 2 years more than what the entire school system had taught us in 4 years!). I personally took up Latin in the last 2 classes of lyceum, but the professor of it (the same who taught Ancient Greek during the same time frame) was so incompetent that he went through the material very slowly, if he went at all, as most of the time he just talked about irrelevant stuff (such as what play he had watched at the theatre!) -so I again learnt Latin outside school, from the same woman that taught Ancient Greek I just mentioned... Anyways, my schooling woes are probably of little importance. Anyways, in Greece and Cyprus Ancient Greek is pronounced like modern Greek (nobody bothers with erasmic pronounciation) and Latin is read pretty much the way we see the letters arranged on paper (wonder if that is the modern way...). Back to the monks now -my point is the only-church person teaching us was a priest for a single year of Religious Education (the rest of the years we were taught by non-clerics that graduated from Theology), so I didn't encounter any of those old-school methods (I didn't encounter the "every kid is special" either, but this trend is slowly coming in our schools too from what I've heard...)
Now regarding the heresy story, I have no idea what you must have done as a kid/teen to be considered heretic (!)(most probably asked questions about religion which the monk didn't like), but it does sound weird that he'd turn against a teen for a couple questions (a stickler indeed!). As for the witch burning, I had heard about it before, but not from a person in whose village "witches" were actually burnt -the witch burning didn't exist as a thing/custom in Greece/Cyprus, so I've only read of it from books regarding west medieval times.
Anyways, sorry if I were too chatty again I just wanted (tl;dr) to say that I'm glad you had understood the pronounciation of the aforementioned Christmas sweets correctly, and I also mentioned btw (since you mentioned the monks) my own, very different education...