Submitted by Collin Willard on the 2020 winter session study abroad program in Athens, Greece sponsored by the Department of English…
After a week in Greece, I can say that I’ve been thoroughly blown away. On our first day here, the director of the Athens Centre, the place where we hold our classes and organize our excursions through, commented on the quality of the light here, and that’s been something that has stuck with me. The sun seems to always be shining, and the light makes everything so beautiful. This past week, we had a walking orientation in Central Athens, we visited the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum, and on Friday, we took a trip to the south of Athens to visit an active archaeological dig site and a cultural center. Athens isn’t quite like what I’ve expected, and I’ve seen some very stark contrasts with American cities. There are far fewer chain stores—the vast majority of the restaurants and stores I’ve seen are small, individually-owned businesses. There are far fewer advertisements everywhere as well. There are also no skyscrapers like there are in America. And unlike almost every east coast city, Athens is extremely hilly. This is my first time outside of the United States, so these things are quite striking to me, and I find the differences fascinating.
The Acropolis and the museum were incredible. The most difficult thing for me to grapple with is the fact that so much of what I’ve seen is SO old. In America, the things we consider to be old are maybe 200 years old. Here, people see 2,500 year old structures every day and don’t bat an eye. It’s sort of hard to fathom, and it is especially hard to fathom how these structures were created. While we were at the Acropolis, we learned about the history of the Parthenon, and one of the things that I found particularly interesting is that it served as a temple to the Greek gods, a Christian church, and a mosque throughout its history, as Greece has been conquered by numerous powers. The Acropolis Museum was fascinating, and I was especially struck by how well in-tact many of the statues and pottery were. The detail on the statues that I saw also amazed me. It’s hard to believe that sculptors were able to create such beautiful pieces of art so long ago with so few advanced tools.
Our trip to the archaeological site and the cultural center on Friday was really incredible as well. We visited a site on the outskirts of Athens that was being excavated, and it was especially interesting because it wasn’t a place where wealthy Athenians lived, but instead some of the poorer people. Students from Australia were at the site working for college credit, and they showed us their dig sites and some of the things they found. Later in the day, we went to the cultural center, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at first. But when we arrived, I was mind-blown. This place had a massive garden/park area, several sports fields, a lookout spot on the top where you could see the Mediterranean and all of Athens, an opera house, a man made river, and a library. The total cost of construction was 556 million euros, and it was constructed and subsequently donated to the public using private money. The complex runs on 100% renewable energy in the summer and 25% in the winter. This was something unfathomable to me because I could never see this existing in the US.
In class, we focused on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Trial and Death of Socrates. We close-read portions of both texts and studied the dynamics of Ancient Greek society through the lens of those two texts. We specifically focused on power and gender roles, which were two prominent themes in these texts. All in all, my first week in Athens was incredible, and I’ve been utterly blown away by this place. Although I still have two weeks left, I know I’m really going to miss this place when it’s time to go.