While a brief two-week trip to France and Spain during the summer of 2014 introduced me to the world of possibilities that lies ahead of me, this “school vacation” only uncovered the depth of cultural exploration that is out there still for me to find.
After a year of hard work through applications, scholarship requests, and preparation to go out on my own, my latest adventure will take my the Athens, Greece.
Perhaps, all you might associate with Greece at the moment is a poor economy, money troubles, or the 2009 financial crisis. But regardless of their financial state, a University of Michigan course I took last year taught me that the Greek people are a strong, integrated nation, with very rich culture and a history that thoroughly connects them to the rest of Europe.
In addition to having declared Sociocultural Anthropology and Arts & Ideas in the Humanities as my two UofM majors, around the same time, this class showed me how culture-rich Greece is, and how much I could learn about anthropology as a discourse as well as the relations between cultures and people, in a country currently labeled with such strife and crisis.
It has taken me a long time to get through the details of preparing for this trip, but now that it is in the final stages of packing and getting ready, I cannot wait to head out on my own, and start my own life adventure, studying art, culture and everyday relations between peoples, individuals, practices, and customs across the world.
For the next four months, I will be studying anthropology, ethnography, religions of the Middle East, Middle Eastern history, and art/archaeology at the College Year in Athens program in Athens, Greece.
I will be documenting and photographing my adventure on my travel log, so if you want to tag along, you will get to join me as I travel through Greece to Delphi, Peloponnese, Crete, Meteora, Metsovo, Ioannina, and the country of Cyprus, among other places.
Thank you to all who have donated to help fund my travel and education. You are in my thoughts, and I hope you enjoy keeping up with my discoveries.
Let’s get to it!