Submitted by Ashley Steele on the 2022 winter session program in Greece sponsored by the Department of English…
Today, we had a bit of a scare. We were responsible for making it to the Panathenaic Stadium, the iconic stadium that hosted the first ever modern Olympic games, on our own. My roommate and I joined up with some girls to head over, and we got a little lost as we have only been here for a few days and we don’t fully know our way around yet. Unbeknownst to us, we ended up at a back entrance to the stadium and we were able to get inside the stadium without our group. We were relieved – we made it on time! Almost immediately, a guard came over to us to tell us that without tickets, we were trespassing through this historic site, which would result in two years of jail. We were mortified. Luckily, Professor Satran was able to tell the guard that we were with them and that we had gotten lost, so we were able to exit accordingly and go back through the streets of Athens and into the proper entrance of the stadium. Talk about breaking and entering!
Ordering at restaurants is our biggest struggle for sure right now since we usually dine in large groups without our professor, and we do our best to order food in what little Greek we know and English. There have been a few mishaps, like a waitress not putting in my order or someone getting the completely wrong meal, but we take it with a grain of salt. Greeks have a habit of moving and dining in small groups, so the waiters and waitresses never write down food orders. When our group of fifteen walks into a restaurant, they often get a bit overwhelmed! Things like this are bound to happen when you travel to a foreign country and don’t fully speak the language. I weirdly haven’t felt any sort of homesickness, and I think that’s due to us being rushed around and having over twelve hour days – I don’t even have time to miss home! Time moves really weirdly here, and I was discussing this with my classmates. It somehow feels as though we’ve been here a lot longer than we have been, even though these three weeks are going to fly by. I’m trying to soak it all in as much as possible because I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to travel here again!