Submitted by Ashley Steele on the 2022 winter session program in Greece sponsored by the Department of English…
As week three of Greece comes to a close, I have so much to be grateful for including cats in restaurants, gorgeous ferry sunsets, and tiramisu gelato, to name a few. The way Greeks treat stray animals is so different to how Americans do! For example, when we went to an excavation site, there was a cat who the team called Nicholas who shows up to the site every time the archeologists are there, and he lays around sunning himself while they work. They have no idea who he belongs to, if anyone, but they always keep each other company. This week, when our group went out to eat for brunch and dinner on two separate days, there were cats in the restaurant cleaning themselves on chairs while the waiters and waitresses cleaned around them. They even told us at this one restaurant that they named the one cat Suzy! Instead of being annoyances, like they would be in America, stray cats are almost always welcome in most public spaces as long as they don’t bother anyone. Even dogs that aren’t service dogs can be found in cafes!
Something crazy that I never thought would happen in Athens is that we got six inches of snow! Greeks haven’t had this sort of snowfall in fifteen years, we were told. The locals have been joking to us about how it feels like Switzerland and they have been calling it “snowy Athens” – they keep telling us to come back in the summer when the real fun begins! Because Greeks are not accustomed to snow, it took them a couple days and a few impromptu public holidays for them to finally plow the roads and open everything back up. I have absolutely no idea how elderly people or disabled people were able to navigate the gigantic hills here in the snow – they’re tricky as it is!
We’ve had a bunch of great field trips this week where we have been able to talk to locals about the refugee crisis that has been happening in Greece for a few years now. I was really uneducated about it previously, and it’s been such a privilege to listen to the Melissa Network, an organization dedicated to aiding refugee and migrant women in Greece, and Oscar-nominated director Daphne Matziaraki. Both the Melissa Network and Matziaraki have really opened my eyes to the devastating effects of war and how thousands of people from Turkey, Afghanistan, and Syria flee their countries in hopes of a better life not only to Greece, but all of Europe and even America if they are able to travel so far. Discussing heavy topics such as these, really made me think about the privilege I have in coming here as an American tourist and made me realize that I have a lot of choice in studying and briefly living in Greece in comparison to these people who have such little choice in where they land – so long as they can live to see another day.
We have done so incredibly much in three weeks that I’m definitely looking forward to coming back home to relax for a couple of short days before the semester begins again! I miss my family and my dog so much! It’s been such a great time here in Athens and I cannot wait for all of the stories I’m going to tell friends and family back home. I have grown so close to so many people on this program and we are already planning get-together events for when we get back to Newark so we can catch up! The connections you make from study abroad truly never fade away.
