Submitted by Jasmine Pennington the 2024 Spring program in Athens, Greece…
My whole study abroad journey was the best 4 months of my life. I was in the study abroad program in Athens and while studying; I was able to travel through Europe. When I was young I told my mom I’d be the daughter who would get on a flight and text her later when I arrived. I dreamed and hoped for an opportunity to travel and when the study abroad program for Greece was shown to me; I knew it was now or never. I want to see the whole world and have even planned on Spring break 2025 to head to Lisbon and Barcelona. My top Destinations I visited were London, Milan, Rome, Venice, Chania, Heraklion, Santorini, Aegina, and exploring the city of Athens. I simply cannot thank the University of Delaware for this opportunity. I have so many pictures of my adventure and want to be able to share the incredible essence of nature’s beauty across Europe. These photos are from my Film camera which I developed recently and wanted to share them with others who share the same dream of studying abroad. I think Athens was the best city for me to truly learn more about myself. It showed me that a simple walk to clear my head made me more productive later in the day. Towards the end of my semester in Athens, I chose to take the last two weeks to truly explore the islands in Greece and one solo adventure; I walked the entire coast of Aegina and it was an 8-hour trek there and back with limited water. I could’ve easily ubered from one side to the other but chose to walk and enjoy nature and see amazing views i couldn’t have imagined in Delaware. I can attach some photos from this walk and it will show why I stopped so much. I’d say in that aspect Greece is truly breathtaking in comparison to the city of Newark. Then I had to run to the ferry because I am a poor planner of time and kept taking stops to just sit on the benches along the way to truly take in how blessed I was to be the first in my family with a passport and first ever in three generations to travel across Europe.
Then fast forward to the friends I made who were also from the USA, we planned to take a trip to the cities listed above. My favorite city overall would be Chania. The whole Island of Crete which apparently is pronounced Creet-ee and not like saying CreTe. We explored Heraklion and went to the Palace of Knossos, and then went on a 2-hour bus ride to the city of Chania. While we were there we went to a couple of beaches but one truly brought me to tears. I knew I wanted to go as soon as I researched Greece as a whole. It wasn’t even possible for me to go there because the bus routes weren’t fully running when we were there in April. So, my friends all surprised me and said that they booked a Taxi online and booked one back to the airport because this beach had no service and once there you need to have a plan to get back. The beach was called Seitan Limania and it was a trek to get to the bottom and getting back up was a whole other story. My friend took a couple of pics of me climbing it and we took rests because there were no safety ropes, a literal string was the guide to take the trail down the mountain correctly. I wouldn’t change a thing about the ways I traveled in Chania, the food I ate and the people I met. I was there for 5 days and during that time I got to eat fresh seafood and watch the sunsets on the beaches that were truly different from sunsets in Delaware. Every experience in Greece had me in awe of how Cretians wake up everyday and can go swimming in crystal clear waters. I live in Delaware where the closest beach is 2 hours away. I’d say my traveling experience while going to these cities showed me how to be more independent and gain more knowledge on how to properly pack a bag in 30 minutes when your group wants to go to Santorini when you have a final 2 hours before the flight. I really love the people I met, the Greek students I studied with and the local grocery store worker who weighed my kiwis and a single apple I got because I ate it on the way back home. I truly had a routine being in Greece and leaving there was bittersweet but that doesn’t mean I don’t love Delaware just as much. I truly love being here on campus and able to pursue another dream of mine which is graduating and being able to check another thing off my bucket list. I was so in love with the nature there and how their trees, grass, and animals look different. I did miss the campus squirrels because I saw zero while in Greece. My film camera weighed 10 lbs but in my heart, it weighs a ton with all the memories and nature that was captured. It is simply more precious to my heart when I use my film camera to capture a feeling and a specific point in time where my eyes light up to be able to see it in real life. It’s a reminder that studying abroad actually happened and that those places I visited will be a part of me. (Submitted on September 15,2024)