Ancient Athens: The Big Olive

The Parthenon

Saturday was an early day.  We all had to be on the bus by 8:00 a.m.  (that’s midnight for you central timezoners) to begin our trip into Athens.  We picked up our guide James once we got close into Athens and began our guided tour.  It was great having a guide.  He really knew his stuff, especially from a biblical perspective.  He was able to relate how Daniel foresaw the rise of Greece and who exactly Daniel was referring to.  

The day started with a quick stop to the 1896 Olympic Stadium.  1896 was when the modern Olympics were first revived.  From here we went on to the Acropolis.  We started our trek up the mountain, stopping at the theater on the way up.  We eventually arrived on top.  It was a beautiful morning.  We could see all around Athens from up there.  It was great getting to see the Parthenon up there (a third time for me).  I believe much of the scaffolding was down from the last time I was there.  

Looking onto Mars Hill from the Acropolis

After spending some time on top of the Acropolis we traversed down just a little bit to Mars Hill or the Areopagus, where Paul may have spoken.  The Areopagus was the name of a place as well as the body.  It’s like how you could say Congress and mean the body of people or the building they meet in.  So, there is some scholarly debate as to whether Paul actually spoke on the Areopagus or somewhere else to the Areopagus.  We sat up there and sang a song or two, then Dr. Thompson talked a little, followed by Dr. James reading Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill.  This was my fourth time to sit up there and read the sermon on Mars Hill and it’s still as amazing as the first time if not more. 

Dr. Thompson and Dr. James speaking to us on Mars Hill.

After that, we began to walk the entire way back down the Acropolis to the ancient Agora.  This included the best-preserved temple in Greece, the Temple to Hephaestus. 

We then continued into the Stoa and the museum inside.

The Temple to Hephaestus

Once we finished looking at the Stoa we continued to walk through the Plaka a ways to our lunch stop.  After lunch we went to the New Acropolis museum which opened during the summer of 2009, when I was here as a HUG student.  We went in it when I was here but we had to wade through a crazy amount of people so it was nice to not have such a crowd.  Plus, this time we still had our great guide, James. 

This ended our first day of touring.  It was great!  And, it was great to be a part of it again.  I am truly blessed to be here again.  I’ve learned so much more even this second time around.  I'm glad to be on this adventure again from another perspective; I'm loving every second of it from this perspective.  

90% of Life is Just Being Confident

Yes, I am still a little behind, but we are getting there.  Friday was another big day for the students.  They were allowed to sleep in, but we advised them to get up by about 9 or 10 so they could start adjusting to the different time zone here.  Many were awake at 8:40 when I came down to show breakfast crew how to do their job and to go with them to the bakery where we buy the breakfast pastries.

The day carried on and it began to rain.  I checked the weather and it looked like it was going to rain much of the afternoon.  This posed a dilemma.  We were going to take the students to Cape Sounion, a cape  where a temple to Poseidon sits that is known for its sunsets (it also has an interesting mythological tale linked to it, pertaining to the Minotaur).  However, there won’t be much of a sunset if it’s raining all day.  So at lunch, about 1:40, we decided to postpone the trip to Sounion for later and do something we were planning to do a few days later.  We decided to take the students into Athens via public transit so they would know how to do it on their own.  This made me nervous because I only did it 3 or 4 times when I was here and that was 2 years ago.  And now they wanted to teach the students a different way into Athens, a way that I had not done before. 

I had literally about 15 minutes to change, get ready, get the directions, get the money from Dr. James and get half of the group to go with me to begin the odyssey (see what I did there) into Athens.  Dr. James and Mrs. Beth were going to take the other half of students.  The visiting professor, Phil Thompson, and his wife went with my group.

We began our journey by walking about 50 yards up the street from the Artemis to the bus stop.  We all got on the bus and bought our ticket to the Koropi metro station.  The bus from Porto Rafti took us to Markopoulo.  There, we waited for about 20-30 minutes for the next bus to pick us up and take us to the Koropi metro station.  By the way, the place we waited wasn’t the town square like we used to when I went to HUG.  The town square is having a nice big fountain installed so I guess buses can’t wait there.  So, they had us wait on the edge of town beside a building and an empty lot. 

A short bus finally came to take us to the Koropi metro station.  Once again, when I was at HUG it was a full-sized bus.  This bus could only carry like 20 people, or less.  I had 13 of the 31 students with me, as well as the professor and his wife.  So a few of our group had to double up, while myself and another guy or two just stood since some local Greeks were taking up the other seats. 

We got to the Koropi metro station where we got tickets and finally got on the blue metro line.  This is a different way that what I was used to.  We used to get on the suburban rail (yellow line), ride to the Athens Mall that overlooks the 2004 Olympic Stadium, switch to the green line and then ride all the way into the Plaka.  We taught the students to take the blue line all the way in from the Koropi metro.  I had to make sure we were on the correct platform and on the correct end of it.  (Yes, even though it was the same track, different metros pull up to it on different ends.  You have to make sure you are on the correct end for your metro, otherwise it eventually splits to a different track.)  Here we got on and rode it all the way to Syntagma Square at the base of the Greek parliament building.

Athens Metro Map

After two hours of public transit we finally made it.  Did it take us this long when we were here (this is to my fellow summer 09 HUGer’s)?  I didn’t remember it taking this long.  We took a different route and since it’s winter the buses and metros may not run as often.  Anyway, I took my group around the Plaka and positioned them so they could see a little of the Parthenon, since it was right above us on the Acropolis.  I let my group roam around and told them to meet back at the three-story Starbucks at a certain time.  I then had to run back up to Syntagma Square an hour later to pick up Dr. James and his group and show them how to walk to the Plaka from there. 

After a while, it was time for my group to begin our journey back.  I don’t think it took quite as long because we took a different railway out.  We rode the blue line for a while and then switched onto the yellow line since it came sooner.  Either one would get us back to our original metro station, the Koropi metro station.  From there we had to do the bus thing again, including one transfer.  We finally made it back to the Artemis at 8 where we pulled out the dinner that Fofi, our wonderful chef, had left in the warmers for us.  Dr. James group stayed an hour longer since they were an hour later getting to Athens.

What I learned from this is that confidence is everything.  I never felt super confident about understanding the transit system when I took it in as a HUG student.  Now, I had to lead a group of 15 others on a route that was almost completely different than what I was even shakily use to and I had no time to prepare; I just had to lead.  I figured the best thing to do was to look confident, ask the right questions of the transit workers and use all of that to lead with at least the appearance of confidence.  Afterwards, I told the students that all that was pretty new to me.  I didn’t have much more knowledge or experience about this than they did.  However, if you do things with confidence then it usually turns out alright.  Usually.  This time it did.  We got on all the correct buses and metros (a quick shout out to my Rafina crew).  

Lesson of the day: 90% of Life is Just Being Confident.  I’ll let you decide on the other 10%. 

And So It Begins!

So I know I am terribly late at starting this, but then again, am I?

This is a blog about my new job as Assistant to the Director at the HUG (Harding University in Greece program). We live a little outside of Athens, in Porto Rafti, Greece. Each semester, spring, summer and fall, students from HU come here to study and learn all about the ancient world. We take tours all over Greece including areas around Athens, the Peloponnese (Southern Greece), a Greek Island Cruise and even trips to Egypt and Israel. This semester we have 31 students joining us in this journey. I was in their shoes during the summer of 2009. I also came with the Harding University Honors Abroad program for two weeks in the summer of 2007. Through this blog I want you to be a part of the journey as well.


I’ve been here for one week now. I was supposed to leave for Greece on Tuesday, January 11, but the crazy blizzard that hit the south kept me from leaving until Friday the 14^th. It was too quite for the first few days I was here without students. I arrived on Saturday and we got to work getting ready for the students’ arrival. Sunday we (The directors and I. Anytime I say we before the students arrive I am referring to the director, Mike James, his wife, Beth James, and me.) went to church at Glyfada (a suburb of Athens) at 6 pm at an English speaking church. We ate dinner with Dino, the preacher, and his wife. Dino is also the owner of Aristotle Travel, the agency we use to plan all of our trips. It was great getting to meet them and begin forming a relationship with them.

The rest of week we spent time doing work, fixing rooms, checking whisper sets (the devices students use to listen to the tour guides at stops), changing batteries, creating and printing booklets and cards of info for students, going to places so I could be familiar with the area and so much more. I loved every minute of the work, even if it seemed tedious, I loved doing it because I could see that everything I was doing mattered. It was important for the students, helping the program. I was in the office from 11 am – 2:30 am (yup both of those are am and they are in the correct order) and time flew. We had about a 1-hour lunch break and a 2.5-hour dinner break and that was all. Like I said, it didn’t even feel that long at all.

Wednesday came and a student came early because she lived in Europe. We went to the airport to pick her up that night and on the way there a bus passed us that was being escorted by police to the airport as well. We followed them in to see that it was a sports team. We went up to McDonalds to eat while we waited for the girl’s plane to arrive only to find some of the sports team up there. After asking one of them we found out that they were the Thessaloniki (a city in northern Greece, as in biblical Thessalonica) soccer team. That had played the Athens team that night and tied them 1-1.

We came back at 10 am the next morning, Thursday, to pick up the rest of the group. It was great to have students now. The Artemis (the name of the old hotel that HUG stays at in Porto Rafti) was never meant to be so empty. We (the directors, girl we picked up the night before and myself) all drove to the airport to pick up the group and the chartered bus met us there to bring the group home. This leaves a problem, how do we get the car we drove in home? Answer: I drove it all the way from the airport back to the Artemis, about a 15-minute drive. So I did. Fret not, that is a part of my job. I have a license that allows me to do this. I got lost for about 1 minute in Markopoulo, the town about 4 miles from ours. I knew I was probably lost when I made this one turn. I thought I made the turn early as I did it. The signs to direct you places are great here. They were set up for the 2004 Olympics to help people get around. I drove towards the center of town (Markopoulo) and eventually saw the sign pointing back to Porto Rafti. Now I know for sure how to get there as well as Glyfada and back. However, learning the Glyfada route is not related to my airport trip, I learned it earlier.

Once we got the students to the Artemis we showed them everything, introduced them to the staff and tried our best to keep them up and going until about 9 or 10 pm to help them adjust to their new time zone. This included a walking tour of Porto Rafti. We walked down the street and took a turn to the left at the “Y” and walked for a while hugging the edge of the Aegean. Then we came back and took a right at the “Y” and bought the students ice cream. Then I took the group on by myself on down to the point, another 25 or 30-minute walk and juts out into the Aegean. It was beautiful.

Students at "The Point"

When we got back I had to train the dinner workers, as I had trained the lunch workers earlier, on how to do their job. That’s one of my duties, training, paying and being in charge of the student workers. I also had to walk through the entire campus and show the RAs how to close down the campus at night. After a few more things to keep them awake, like playing a name learning game, we let the students go to bed, and they were definitely ready for it.

Thus the semester began. Trust me, it will only get more interesting. I’m just trying to start a habit of blogging. Today we went to Athens. I will post about that in the next day or two. Now that I got the blog started I will keep it up every couple of days. So, bookmark this, “follow” it or just keep checking in to see if I’ve posted something new. I’m glad you are taking this journey with me.