TravelStream™ news feed for member tiara316 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/tiara316 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:51:12 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1207890660/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1207890660/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1207890660/tpod.html Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:51:12 -0400 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Medford, Oregon, United States

          By the time I step on the plane, I will have worked for two years for this trip to Greece.  From the first information session where I learned about the opportunity to bring college students from Oregon, Washington, and Alaska to study abroad through the AHA International program, to the summer I spent preparing my application to teach persuasion and rhetorical criticism in Athens at the Athens Centre, to the interviews in Portland and the training in Bellingham, to the year I've spent reading every book with the word "Greece" in the title, it's already been the first steps on the journey of a lifetime.          Every day preparing for this trip is a learning experience.  For instance, I had never heard the term "Schengen Group" before last month.  The Schengen Treaty is a collection of European countries whose borders are open to each other.  American visitors can spent up to 90 days anywhere in the Schengen Group without a visa.  Beyond that, you've either got to leave the Schengen Group, try to get a rather expensive and uncertain visa, or risk fines or prison by praying you'll slip past the border officials.          Yesterday I booked the plane tickets and the hotel reservations.  This was a bigger deal than it might sound because it involved the decision about whether I would return home after my 90 days in Greece or whether I would leave Europe after 90 days and explore a non-Schengen Group country such as Turkey or the UK.  (Praying to avoid border fines was not an option!)          Ultimately I decided on the path of least resistance, 90 days abroad and then home.  As the travel guidebook writer Rick Steves would say, you have to approach your trip with the mindset of "I will be coming back some day" so that you don't fall into the trap of trying to do EVERYTHING in one trip.  Like doing Istanbul and Ephesus and Cappadocia or London and Dublin and the Irish countryside after three months in Greece... all of which I considered.  [sheepish grin]            Yesterday also marked the arrival of the passports, complete with ultra-flattering photo of me looking zoned-out and unhappy (the photographer made me take out my gold earrings -- the noive!).          This has also been a good week for students joining the trip.  MT was the first to hear she's been accepted.  HH has her interview on Monday.  CB introduced herself to me a few days ago as having applied.  SB announced today that she's applying too.  J asked me after class for a flyer and more information.  I completed a recommendation for MF.  I would congratulate myself on being a recruiting machine, except that the phrase "Athens, Greece" sort of sells itself.   I think I'll use initials or nicknames to refer to students to respect their privacy.          I need to get back to practicing my Greek language.  I left off on learning how to say, "The yellow rectangle is shorter than the green rectangle."  Very useful stuff.  A guy on the bus ride home today had a sentence tattooed on his arm in Greek letters, but I couldn't read it.  It must not have said anything about rectangles.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228484400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228484400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228484400/tpod.html Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:25:20 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Athens, Attica, Greece

It's amazing the symmetry in beginnings and endings. Mary Lou and Wedding Belle cooked the very first laundry meal in my apartment, and this morning they cooked the last. They made "one-eyed pita," or what I grew up calling a framed egg, for breakfast. It was great to talk with them, but they were clearly exhausted from a long night of working on their take-home final exam in Indy's Monuments class. The other students were exhausted from a long night of dancing and drinking in celebration of their final days in Athens.I joined a crowd of students who gathered at lunchtime at the Red Door for a gyro eating contest. The contest didn't actually materialize -- the most anybody ate was two gyros. But for dessert, Papia ran up the road to the farmer's market and bought some pomegranates for all of us to share.As you'll remember from Greek mythology, the goddess Persephone was abducted by Hades into the underworld. Her mother Demeter rescued her, but was horrified to discover that Persephone had eaten six of the pomegranate seeds Hades had craftily offered her. Consequently, Persephone was permitted to stay half the year above ground, but then she had to go back to the underworld for six months out of the year.The modern legend is that if you eat the seeds of the pomegranate while you are in Greece, like Persephone you will have to come back. So we each ate our pomegranate seeds and talked about when we would be able to see each other again.Somehow Kyria also found us there at the gyro shop, and she brought me a Christmas present and a card. I was surprised and touched. I'm so proud to have a Greek friend.If we all ate pomegranate seeds at the same time, does that mean the gods will arrange it so we can all come back to Greece together?
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228571700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228571700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228571700/tpod.html Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:23:39 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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New York City, New York, United States

I'm astonished at how the luggage I took months preparing and days on end to pack up in September could get repacked for home in December in a matter of hours. The plane out of Athens I shared with Black Belt was rescheduled at least four times in the past week, so we had to do some fancy footwork to get to the airport. Black Belt explained the delays with the joking accusation, "It's because you ate that pomegranate!" One more time Famous George's taxi service saved the day, and we made our eleven-hour-long flight.We touched down in New York and the passengers applauded the pilots for a safe landing. The woman across the aisle pinched the tips of her thumb, index, and middle fingers together to symbolize the Trinity, and crossed herself three times in the devout Orthodox prayer of thanks. This is the last Greek thing I'm going to see on this trip, I thought. That was of course until we got to baggage claim and all the yiayias were shoving me and each other to get at their luggage. Achhh, Hellada! :-)I have a two-night layover in a hotel in New York in the hopes of sleeping off some of the jet lag before heading the rest of the way home to Oregon. I'm not going to try to put into words my terrible grief at leaving Athens, the program staff, and the students. The sadness is equal only to my joy at going back home. Sing the truth, Iris...And you know the sun's setting fastAnd just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.Go on now and kiss it goodbyeBut hold onto your lover 'cause your heart's bound to die.Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town.I can see the sun has gone down on my town, on my town,Goodnight.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228521600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228521600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228521600/tpod.html Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:21:55 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Athens, Attica, Greece

Tonight's farewell dinner was an "emotional bloodbath," as Class Clown put it. The closure ceremony began with Yiannis, the owner of the program, making a speech about how you think this is the end of a journey but really you're just beginning; just as he had opened the semester with a speech about how you think this is Greece but really Greece doesn't exist (it's Hellas or Ellada, you know). He handed certificates out to each student, and then presented me with a beautiful little watercolor painting of the local monastery with Byzantine domes and a white marble column from his mother's private collection.Then we all had dinner, and after dinner the students hooted and applauded during the slide show of goofy, embarrassing pictures from the term that Groom and Fingers had assembled and put to music. I was expecting at some point that the music would turn from upbeat to nostalgic and the crying would start, but they kept it light and funny throughout.Sunshine composes her own music, and she sang five of her original songs for the group. Then the students initiated storytelling time, each recounting their favorite moments with each other in Greece. Again, they stuck to funny stories to dam the pressing flood of mass tears.Finally it was time to leave, and the doorways became clogged with students hugging and taking pictures of each other, the program staff, and the professors (Indy and Gina showed up too). Bellingham invited everyone, including me bless her, back up to the Penthouse to hang out in our last hours together. Some of the students went out, promising they would be at the bar for just an hour or two and would come back (but they hadn't returned by the time I left at 12:30). Some stayed in, sitting in the Penthouse living room with the group or breaking off in the dyads of romances or special friendships to say private goodbyes.The first of the students left for the airport at 2 and 3am. They took a part of my heart with them.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228053360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228053360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228053360/tpod.html Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:46:32 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Athens, Attica, Greece

I took Godiva through the most famous sites on the Acropolis, including the Theatre of Dionysos, the Temple of Aesclepius, the Odeon of Herod Attikus, the Propylaea, the Parthenon, and the Erechtheion. Since I've already been here twice, I'm just posting the pictures of the two of us as we went on our Acropolis adventure today.What Godiva really wanted to see was the Areopagus, or Mars Hill, where the Apostle Paul's speech about the Altar to the Unknown God before the Council is recorded in the book of Acts and reproduced on a bronze plaque sunk into the rock.Godiva was amazed at the profusion of marble everywhere. Athens has so much marble that all the informational signs, the curbs on the streets, and even the water fountains are made out of marble. We continued our shopping adventures below the Acropolis in Plaka. Godiva had to change some more US currency to Euros, and she thinks a thief watched us leave the exchange booth because she discovered when we got back to my apartment that night that she had been pickpocketed. The pickpocket didn't get all her money, only what was in her purse, thank goodness. Nor did the thief take her camera or anything of mine, so at least we're left with the pictures of our day scrambling over the rocks of Athens.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228308000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228308000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228308000/tpod.html Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:40:52 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Athens, Attica, Greece

Students are doing their final loads of laundry in preparation for packing for home, so I'm booked with dinners every night this week, and even a breakfast. Tonight Jackie O and Click made sautéed zucchini and spaghetti with meat sauce. As soon as the dinner was over, they started studying for their Greek final exam, which eventually turned into avoiding studying with a conversation about where marriage and children might or might not fit into their future plans for their lives. I hope they both eventually find life partners like the one I have. My conversations on the phone with Bear are growing more and more pleasant as he starts counting down the days until I arrive. How do you thank a man who agreed to saw off his right leg so it could go off climbing mountains on its own?
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228307880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228307880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228307880/tpod.html Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:39:31 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Athens, Attica, Greece

So you're on a long, narrow cushioned ledge. You're stretched out on the ledge on your left side, propped up by your left elbow. With your right hand, you grab the food coming round on platters, and drink your wine. You spend hours conversing with your friends, who are similarly reclined around the room. Sometimes the dialogue gets deep and heated, and sometimes it just gets drunken and debauched. You are at an ancient Greek sumposion, or as it was later called in Roman times, symposium.The last assignment of the term in both persuasion and rhetorical criticism classes was for the students to honor the spirit of dialogue at the Greek symposium by presenting their term projects to their peers, and sharing some food and drink. Contrary to what it might look like on the blog, I really have been working this whole time in Greece, and today was the culmination of all the learning the students have done.We met in the Penthouse, the student apartment where six of the young women live, because it was the largest space and I wanted a more relaxed atmosphere for the non-communication majors who were anxious about public speaking.We heard fifteen speeches, alternating rhetorical criticism and persuasion projects. I was impressed by the creativity of the persuasion campaigns and the depth of analysis in the rhetorical criticisms. For example, some persuasion students created a movie on turtle-friendly beach etiquette to be shown to tourists just as their flights touch down on the Greek islands, a holographic bookmark, and a cartoon t-shirt gently satirizing Greek overdevelopment where once were forests.The rhetorical criticism students conducted analyses of films like 300 and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, paintings like The Judgment of Paris and The Birth of Venus, Aristophanes' ancient comedy Lysistrata, and Constantine Cavafy's modern poem based on the Odyssey, "Ithaka." After the speeches were over and they all handed in their papers for me to grade (a little light reading for the plane ride home), the students immediately turned their attention to their upcoming final exam in Greek language and their final paper for Indy's monuments class, and we all had pizza. Who knew Dominos delivered even here in Athens?
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1227963600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1227963600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1227963600/tpod.html Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:49:26 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Corinth, Peloponnese, Greece

When I make the list of the top ten days of my entire life so far, today is going to make the cut. Godiva and I had both tried to no avail to find a tour group that would be able to take us to Corinth so she could see the building of the Bema where the Apostle Paul was brought to trial as told in the New Testament. Finally we decided to hire a private taxi for the day through Famous George's taxis, the same company that helped twice with the logistics of the BibFem Four visit. This decision made all the difference in the world. Famous George sent one of his best drivers, who I'll call Papou ("grandpa" in Greek) for his gentle, kind style of tour guiding.First Papou took us to the Corinth Canal. We watched a tug boat slowly dragging a bigger tanker through the canal, and Papou took pictures of us on the bridge. On Sunday, a handful of students came back to this bridge to bungee jump into the canal!Then we made the stop Godiva came for, ancient Corinth. Godiva marveled that we could walk right up to the carved marble of the ruins on the site and touch it. So we took pictures of ourselves posing on a fallen column capital. Before we even reached the Bema, the rain started. First it sprinkled. Then it showered. Then it poured. But we were undaunted, and Godiva got her shots of the Bema to take back to her church group.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228226340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228226340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228226340/tpod.html Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:00:40 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Athens, Attica, Greece

Indy was in fine form today in Ancient Greek Monuments class. Perhaps he was in such a good mood because the students did well on their second quiz. Or maybe he was happy about the topic of today's lecture, naked people in ancient Greek sculpture. In illustrating how sculptors could carve marble so finely that the dresses of the women seemed transparent, he titled the slides "wet t-shirt contest." Then the sculptures progressed to one breast covered and one exposed as in Amazon costume, which he titled "wardrobe malfunction." Then finally the sculptors got away with depicting totally nude women. He showed us some slides of Aphrodite in various poses, including the famous Aphrodite Kallipygos, where she's looking over her shoulder at her own exposed rump. "The title of this statue," Indy said archly, "could be translated as Aphrodite Funky Butt." Oh dear. I'm on a quest to use the phrase "Aphrodite Funky Butt" in one of my own classes some day. Scout, Papia, and Traveling Pants came over after class to do laundry and discuss Indy's hilarious lecture, which also included the line, "The Getty Museum has more illegally looted Greek vases than you could throw dead dogs at." I invested a few hours working with the three young women on their final papers for persuasion and rhetorical criticism classes. The dining room table was full of laptops.For dinner, Scout and Papia made Chop. It was supposed to be Chop Suey, but Scout forgot the soy sauce, so it was just Chop.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228136400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228136400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tiara316/1/1228136400/tpod.html Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:59:26 -0500 You Get a Lifetime: The Chronicle of a Semester in Greece

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Athens, Attica, Greece

Godiva pointed out that although we have known each other for fourteen years and I have been teaching college for twelve, she has never seen me in a classroom. So today she sat in on my persuasion and rhetorical criticism classes. I didn't have the sexiest lesson plans to show off to her because it's the end of the semester and mostly we talked in class about the upcoming big Symposium where the students will hand in their final papers and make oral presentations of their work to their peers. But she did get a kick out the way I taught Bloom's Taxonomy of Intellectual Development through the example of penguin shaving. Half my job is dancing on tables to keep the students awake.After class, we joined the daily parade of students down to the Red Door gyro shop. Godiva tried both a chicken and a pork gyro, declared them delicious, and bought two more to take to the airport later.We were scheduled to have dinner with Scout and Papia, but Scout got delayed on her train back into Greece from her weekend trip to Istanbul and the dinner had to be postponed until Tuesday. Instead, Godiva and I walked back to Plaka (that's three times in four days, if you're counting) to eat crepes and do more shopping.Godiva bought two shirts and two dresses, and when we got back to the apartment she modeled all her finds before she had to pack them away in her suitcase, ready to depart obscenely early Tuesday morning.The taxi was scheduled to pick her up at 3:30am, but we stood on the porch of my apartment waiting until 3:45, growing more and more anxious as the taxi failed to arrive. I ran back to the computer and grabbed the phone number of the taxi service, woke up Famous George on the other end of the cell phone, and within five minutes he had corrected the mistake and dispatched a driver. The driver picked up Godiva around 4am, and I have no reason to believe she didn't catch her 6am flight back to Colorado. I'm so glad she was able to come to Greece. Thank the Divine for dear friends.
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