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.