Greece in Hindsight!

BigRed60

     When i first applied to the Greece trip, i was only told about the chaos of the Greek lifestyle. I assumed most of what i had heard was an exaggeration, and that it couldn't possibly be that bad... I couldn't have been more wrong...

     While in Greece, i saw more locals that i thought were going to kill each other, than those acting peaceful... It seemed as though the morning cafe's were the place to be for the older gentlemen to discuss EVERYTHING! This picture above was probably the most extreme conversation i saw the entire trip. The gentlemen in the middle was having some sort of conversation with what felt like the whole cafe. And it seemed as though he would be damned if he didn't get his point across.

     Although it took me some time to figure out the chaos within the Greek culture, it was always meant there was something going on and that there was never a dull moment. I feel not knowing what i was getting into made the trip that more of an adventure. And after a little bit of time, you begin to get connected with the chaos. When things seem frantic and they feel as though the whole world is coming down, you know it will all work out. It's just the lifestyle of the chaotic Greek, and i wouldn't want it any other way. 

Greece In Hindsight

Brian Barbero

(Photo taken by, Eric Gross)

What I'll remember most fondly about Greece is the connections I've made with people. People are what make me long to come back to a place. To have someone witness with you the experience we had in Greece is a rare blessing. The "People!" make all the difference and it would be quite a different experience if there were no one there to share it with. I think we were lucky to have this mix of students on this trip. Other J-term abroad groups weren't as lucky and were clawing at one another to get home and away from where ever it is they were. Not this group. I get the sense this group wants to go back. I hope someday we find ourselves again in Greece and with good company. The withdrawal of being back from something spectacular will eventually wear off, but the desire to travel again never subsides. Beautiful moments like the one captured above will always make me want to come back to Greece. However in some small way, I don't want to relive it again, not so soon at least...for fear that it won't be as fulfilling as these last few weeks . I'm grateful with how we discovered Greece; and I think we did it right the first time around. Reminiscing is still bittersweet, however. Class today will be interesting debriefing and bringing closure to such an amazing trip. I still think we should have a little Greek pow-wow....what do you say, Dr. Finitsis?

Greece in Hindsight

Ted Charles Literally the moment I was off the plane I was on the way to the hospital. I had chest X-rays done under suspicion of pneumonia and was prescribed antibiotics to fight an infection in my ears and sinuses. I have begun the slow climb to recovery after a month of being sick but have no means had a chance to process my experience. I cannot wait for the chance to head home, go through my pictures with my parents, and reflect. I have been so mentally exhausted over the past few days that I do not know what to think besides I know that I had a wonderful time. The finer details of how I have changed as an individual is still lost to me through sleep deprivation and medication. I have spent the last few days cordoned off in my room, attempting to contemplate and complete my paper and final presentation. I am really looking forward to hearing what people have to say in their final presentations. One thing that I can say with confidence is that I really loved getting to know the people. I went into the trip knowing no one besides Professor Ihssen and came out with true friends. Thank you for a fantastic sojourn to Greece!

Greece in Hindsight

Jessica Reiter

Today was one of those mornings when it takes you a while to figure out what your alarm clock is and why it is making noise. At least for me it was, anyway. When I finally came to, my first semi-coherant thought was, "No! I don't want to leave!" before snoozing my alarm and trying desperately to return to my dreams of Greece. But, dream as I may, I have already left. For me, going away to travel is the easy part. Coming back is hard. It's not that I'm not glad to return to my family and friends, my room, my bed, to PLU. It's just that change is hard. And what's changed, more than anything, is always me.
It's a good thing, don't get me wrong, but the process of recalibrating is never an easy one. As my mom would say (and we have already established in this blog that moms are always right), life is always moving; flowing; changing. It is not made up of fits and starts so much as swells and currents. It is constantly flowing from one thing to the next; each wave connected to the one before and after it. I find this thought comforting. My life after Greece is not, nor does it need to be, totally disconnected from that unique experience. After all, as Dr. Finitsis reminded me, the life we are returning to is the life that brought us to Greece. And, inevitably, we will bring it back some things as well.
What is it that I want to "take home" from Greece? How can I both see and create continuity between the mountaintop experience and my everyday? I have brought pieces of Greece back with me. My dad now walks around the house clicking and swinging his worry beads, but it was not worry beads that made Greece meaningful. My brother insisted that we make crepes with nutella and banana for dessert yesterday, but it was not crepes that made the trip profound. I listened to some Greek music over dinner, but it was not the music that impacted me most. While all of these things contributed to the charm of my travels, and can help me to seek and see similar charms here in my everyday, they are not ultimately what I want take with me. Here's what I do want to carry with me from my time in Greece into the semester ahead (and beyond):
*the people- it was you who made my trip both meaningful and fun
*what I've learned about myself
*awareness of the vastness and smallness of the world we live in
*a value of and desire for travel
*an appreciation for both the comforts of home and the excitement of new experiences
*a better understanding of the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity and of the context of the New Testament
*a sense of belonging to and of responsibility toward a global community
*a renewed commitment to seek out the beautiful and meaningful wherever I am and whatever I am doing
*a sense of potential... for learning, for friendship, for "success," for contentment, for happiness

Greece In Hindsight

KL

My return to the states was bittersweet. Of course at that point I was going on 30+ hours without sleep and essentially stumbling through the fog of fatigue, but it felt as though absolutely nothing had changed. Time here had stopped while I was in Greece, and was forced to slowly get back in gear when my plane touched down. Despite America's traditionally breakneck pace of life, the world around me plodded onward as if attempting to run underwater, drowned out by the brilliance of life in Greece.


Since I've been back, everyone with whom I've spoken has offered the same answer to the question, "so what'd I miss?"
"Nothing."
Many websites were viewed, many movies were watched, many meals were thoughtlessly swallowed. Weeks were wasted on nothing. I'd sit there listening as my friends recounted with arduous detail how utterly uneventful the past month had been, and I kept thinking, "so this is what you're doing with your life?" 
I just got back from a world-altering trip to Greece. My next step is to move out of the dorms into off-campus housing for the first time and kick-start my life by recording an album for iTunes before I graduate and figure out where I want to end up. In the words of Dan Millman, there's never nothing going on. 
It's said that only people who want everything done for them get bored. Opportunities are there to be seized, and if you're sitting alone in your room mindlessly browsing meaningless websites indefinitely, what can you expect from life?


It just reaffirmed my suspicion that no time had passed since I left. But since I've been back, I got news that Eυγενία visited the Acropolis Museum for the first time in her life. She posted pictures, and I saw places from the other side of the globe where I had been not two days before. This was a strange feeling: time was still flowing there. The Acropolis Museum was still open, and other tourists were flocking to the place and snapping photos of the Byzantine village underneath the glass panels, even if I wasn't there to be a part of it.
Back in America, I'm virtually surrounded by stagnation. The ruins of the Byzantine baths felt more alive than PLU does.


So what are you doing with your life? 


When I started this blog, I wrote about Erikson's stages of psychological development, and discussed my current stress in the crisis of Intimacy vs. Isolation, in which you ask, "Am I loved and wanted? Shall I spend my life with someone or live alone?" Now that I'm back, it seems telling that the first thing I thought was that the world is stagnant. Erikson's subsequent stage is called, "Generativity vs. Stagnation," in which you ask, "Will I produce something of value?" (This stage is typically associated with middle aged adults, but we often dabble outside of our current crises). Have I grown up so much in a month that I should be concerned with an altogether different life process than I was when I started?

What's the takeaway, here? Aside from a wonderful romance and a bacterial present from some goddamned stray that's eating my face and won't go away, I've come back with a sense that life is doable. This strikes me as a fairly valuable mindset. If you only reap what you sow, then one must be certain to sow as much as one can at any given moment. As we've seen, seizing these moments makes the moment yours. When your reaction to opportunities is not, "no," but rather, "why not?" the world opens itself to you. Should I hop on the metro and visit some section of the city to which I've never been? Why the heck not? Let's do it! Should I order the bizarre dish that involves lamb entrails wrapped in intestine? Sure! Want to arrange a meeting with a Greek girl and see where it goes? Do you even have to ask?

Things from Greece that I will miss:

Eυγενία

Crossing the street whenever I damn well feel like

Authentic souvlaki

Looking up and seeing either Lycabettus or the Acropolis and instantly knowing where I am

"People!"

Purposefully walking through Athens

Athens in general

Freezing cold nights huddled up on a park bench

Ben & Jessica's totalitarian government

Stray dogs joining our pack

"6:00 at Evangelismos?"

the Herodian Hotel jacuzzi

Ελληνικά

This blog

These people

Greece

Things I will not miss: 

Smoke

European showers. Good god.

This rash

Goody's burgers

Being an outsider

Trashing rather than flushing toilet paper

Surprise oranges for dessert

Not being able to understand people who need help

Goodbyes

Things I really don't want to think about right now:

Everything.

Parting is sorrow

This is the best kind of exhaustion -- fatigue after a month of the most fulfilling traveling I've ever done. I'm sorry to see it end, but I am so happy that it happened. 
Now, for fear of diving into the redundant, inane, or cliché, it is time to end this post, conclude this experience, and prepare to seize the next moment.

Greece In Hindsight

Megan Corbi

This picture sums up the trip for me.  History, crazy weather, and a lot of laughter.  There were many times where I cracked a joke about the weather in Greece being like the weather in Washington; completely bi-polar.  And then there were times when I knew the two just couldn't compare.  I mean, Meeker Mansion is cool and all, but the Acropolis in Athens is much better!  There's so much history wrapped up into one place that I was constantly reminded of just how small my world at home is.  No matter how much education I receive, it can only provide me with a fraction of the history the world holds.


Though the picture above sums it all up, there are better pictures to show what I remember most when I look back on my time in Greece.

  Family

If you take a look at our many blogs, the one thing we all have in common is the fact that we bonded to at least one other person in the group, if not the group as a whole.  When we left for Greece, we left as a group of 21 people who didn't really know each other.  When we came home, we arrived as a group of 21 people who wondered what it would be like to live life again without the 20 other people surrounding them.  We came back as a family.  We're still in the process of uploading our many pictures and tagging each other left and right, but that will soon slow down and Greece will begin to fade away.  We'll stay in contact for another semester or so, and then maybe every once in awhile we'll make a comment about Greece and we'll all have a good flashback together.  I know this sounds depressing and sad, but the thing is, our family in Greece will never be replaced.  Some of us will stay friends for sure, but others will find their life taking a different path; that's okay.  What I find so incredibly awesome is the fact that my memories of the people on the trip are all positive.  I'm on the blog and I'm on facebook and I see that we already miss each other.  We are realizing what a great thing we had; we realize that this group was rare.  You can't often throw 21 people together for 3 weeks and expect them to bond the way we did, but we beat the odds.  We made history all on our own.  We took a scary and exciting experience and made it one that none of us will ever forget.  Thank you, everyone.  My memories are priceless, and it's all because of you.

Greece in Hindsight

Ben Fox
We have reached the end of our class and I am not to sure where to begin. Now that our seemingly brief time abroad has come to an end, I find my self asking "Whats next?" For me and several others in the program, this was our last J-term at PLU and with the coming Spring semester, our tenure at this institution begins to wane. Among the many questions beginning to flood my head as I near the end of my college career is "Will I be able to go abroad again?" I don't think that there was a single person that shared this experience with me that did not fall in love in their own way with Greece and now harbor a deep desire to return at some point. In my life, I have been extraordinarily blessed with travel. But this trip was unique. It was the only time that I have traveled under these conditions: in a larger group with a set curriculum of travel and learning, with a local Greek leading us. All of my other travel has been in much smaller groups, with my family, with my brother, with one or two close friends, and plans are very loose if present at all. We seem to move for movements sake, letting us stumble into things we otherwise wouldn't. Almost a year ago, when I first learned of my acceptance into this program and got my first taste of what it would be like, I must admit that I was fairly apprehensive. It would be very different from that which I had done before in my travels. Looking back now with 20/20 vision, it all seems silly. Why should I be concerned about trying something in a new way? This trip was beautiful and unique, and now that it is over, I feel sad. Part of this sadness stems from the acceptance that the structure and community that made this trip so enjoyable will no longer be part of my travels. This too is silly. I should know better then too think that first joy can be recovered. Instead of fearing that I will never be able to recreate this experience, I should be eager to try new ones. What I take away from this trip is personal growth, many new friends, and countless memories and moments with which to fill my head. Any regrets I have are of my own doing, and I can live with that.