Again, long post coming your way... Details on the classes we took in Athens.
I’ll start with our language and culture class. This class only lasted for the first 4 weeks. Basically we spent 2 hours a week learning the basics of the Greek language and 2 hours talking about culture. We now know how to read Greek! Which actually really doesn’t mean anything because we don’t know what the words mean. But we knew enough basics to get by. παρακαλο (parakalo)- please and you’re welcome. φραχηστο (ef-ra-he-sto)- thank you (we got real good at this one). απο που εσαι (ahpo poo ee-say)?- where are you from? τι κανεισ (tee kah neece)?- how are you? καλα (kah la)- well. ναι (nay)- yes. οχι (oh he)- no. Luckily, due to the Olympics in 2004, most signs have English translations and quite a number of people speak at least a little English. The phrase “It’s all Greek to me” takes on a new meaning though when you’re staring at a Greek menu wondering what to order and you have no clue what anything is. The culture part was pretty interesting. We started by talking about the history of Greece, which was actually pretty awful. Greece has a pretty long history or conflict, war, dictatorship, debt and corruption. Which kind of puts their current situation in a bit of a different perspective. We also talked about modern culture: family, eating, education, employment, etc. The Greecian education system is definitely different. School is mandatory through high school. At the end of high school people can choose to go to university, but they have to perform well on the PanHellenic Exams. These are basically huge standardized tests that require a considerable amount of studying. If you score well enough then you can attend university for 4 years. And all of this is free if you attend the public school. Due to lack of employment, there is a brain drain in Greece. This means all the young people leave Greece to obtain masters degrees and find jobs. Greece also has a much later life than the States. Some businesses don’t open until 10am. People usually don’t eat dinner until 8 or 9pm and bedtime for adults can be well past 12am. Lida (pronounced lee-tha), our prof, was a character. Like many Greeks, she had a definite personality: loud and expressive. Our favorite catch phrase for her was Ma-maaaaa! (while wagging her hands in front of her) Taylor does a pretty good impression.
Next we’ll tackle art history. Probably my least favorite class here. Basically we learned about ancient Greek art from 3000 BC to 100 BC. We spent half the time reviewing pictures in the classroom during lecture and the other half walking around a museum learning about pieces. Pieces ranged from pottery to sculptures. Most of them were only half there or in terrible condition (as one would expect being thousands of years old). It was interesting to a point, but I quickly became bored. There’s only so much I can hear about kouroi (basically rigid sculptures of nude men). But as Nick would constantly remind me, I have to try to be open to the material. And there was a lot of material. This class lasted for half a semester: 7 weeks. In that time we had to memorize 2.5 pages of terms and 140 slides of pieces. We had to know the name, year, artist, and description of each piece. Pretty difficult. Anne Stewart was our prof. She studied at Berkley and came to Greece for her classes and then just never left. She’s been here for like 25 years or something (and doesn’t have a valid passport by the way). If you had to define her in one word it would be hippie. Quite liberal and was apparently arrested for protesting in the Nixon era (although she refuses to expound on this period in her life). She definitely knows her stuff though. She’s excavated several sites and clearly done research, but she wasn’t great at communicating that knowledge. She often got words confused, which wouldn’t be a big deal if she acknowledged it, but she didn’t. Try memorizing years when one time she says it’s 450 BC and 2 min later the piece was made in 350 BC. Not easy. She was also slightly subjective in her information conveyed. Sometimes we would find ourselves listening to Anne’s opinion presented as fact. Not a fan. I just found her hard to learn from.
Anne also taught our lit class, but I found her slightly more bearable in this context. Probably because I enjoyed the material infinitely more and had experience with it (thanks Mrs. Falvey!). We read The Iliad (and consequently may label ourselves educated) and several Greek tragedies: Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Bacchae and Hippolytus. Side note, if you ever read the Iliad get the translation by Robert Merrill. It’s terrifically hard to find, but the best translation I’ve ever read. The English is almost entirely in meter. The other plays were fairly enjoyable to read as well. Probably the best thing that came from this class was getting free wine and cheese out of the deal. Anne had us all over (there’s only 15 of us in the class) to her apartment one night to discuss the Bacchae over wine and cheese. I think I can safely say none of us got anything out of that lecture, but we definitely enjoyed ourselves!
We have a study abroad seminar class taught by Greg, our CSB/SJU program director with us. This class never really had a lecture, and actually really didn’t meet that often. When we did meet we just discussed our impressions and travel experiences with each other. When we didn’t meet in the classroom we were out at a museum or a performance. Definitely awesome. Highlight of the class was seeing Carmina Burana at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. Check out my facebook page to see a video clip.
Saved the best for last! My absolute favorite was theology. Really not that surprising coming from a theology major, but I have to admit that I was a little hesitant going into it because I’m really not interested in church history (which was the title of the class). This class focused on the eastern church, specifically the Greek Orthodox church, which I knew nothing about. We covered the history of the Christian and talked about the Schism and then covered modern Greek Orthodoxy. It was super interesting to learn about these things from a different perspective. We also had the opportunity to tour several Greek churches. Probably the best part of the class though, was the prof. Stephanos is a Greek Orthodox priest, husband and father. He was super knowledgeable and open. He also wasn’t afraid to challenge us, which was awesome. I feel like I learned a lot about the eastern church, but also more about my church and how we’re similar and different. It also brought up some interesting ideas I’d never thought about before. I might post some of them later. My favorite memory from this class was the day a group of us (theo majors and Nick) had dinner with Stephanos. We spent 2-2.5 hours talking about Greek Orthodoxy and religion in general. Super interesting and enlightening.
And I think that about wraps up Athens! Next post, hopefully soon, will have info about our week break travels! Thanks for reading everyone and I miss you all!
I’ll start with our language and culture class. This class only lasted for the first 4 weeks. Basically we spent 2 hours a week learning the basics of the Greek language and 2 hours talking about culture. We now know how to read Greek! Which actually really doesn’t mean anything because we don’t know what the words mean. But we knew enough basics to get by. παρακαλο (parakalo)- please and you’re welcome. φραχηστο (ef-ra-he-sto)- thank you (we got real good at this one). απο που εσαι (ahpo poo ee-say)?- where are you from? τι κανεισ (tee kah neece)?- how are you? καλα (kah la)- well. ναι (nay)- yes. οχι (oh he)- no. Luckily, due to the Olympics in 2004, most signs have English translations and quite a number of people speak at least a little English. The phrase “It’s all Greek to me” takes on a new meaning though when you’re staring at a Greek menu wondering what to order and you have no clue what anything is. The culture part was pretty interesting. We started by talking about the history of Greece, which was actually pretty awful. Greece has a pretty long history or conflict, war, dictatorship, debt and corruption. Which kind of puts their current situation in a bit of a different perspective. We also talked about modern culture: family, eating, education, employment, etc. The Greecian education system is definitely different. School is mandatory through high school. At the end of high school people can choose to go to university, but they have to perform well on the PanHellenic Exams. These are basically huge standardized tests that require a considerable amount of studying. If you score well enough then you can attend university for 4 years. And all of this is free if you attend the public school. Due to lack of employment, there is a brain drain in Greece. This means all the young people leave Greece to obtain masters degrees and find jobs. Greece also has a much later life than the States. Some businesses don’t open until 10am. People usually don’t eat dinner until 8 or 9pm and bedtime for adults can be well past 12am. Lida (pronounced lee-tha), our prof, was a character. Like many Greeks, she had a definite personality: loud and expressive. Our favorite catch phrase for her was Ma-maaaaa! (while wagging her hands in front of her) Taylor does a pretty good impression.
Next we’ll tackle art history. Probably my least favorite class here. Basically we learned about ancient Greek art from 3000 BC to 100 BC. We spent half the time reviewing pictures in the classroom during lecture and the other half walking around a museum learning about pieces. Pieces ranged from pottery to sculptures. Most of them were only half there or in terrible condition (as one would expect being thousands of years old). It was interesting to a point, but I quickly became bored. There’s only so much I can hear about kouroi (basically rigid sculptures of nude men). But as Nick would constantly remind me, I have to try to be open to the material. And there was a lot of material. This class lasted for half a semester: 7 weeks. In that time we had to memorize 2.5 pages of terms and 140 slides of pieces. We had to know the name, year, artist, and description of each piece. Pretty difficult. Anne Stewart was our prof. She studied at Berkley and came to Greece for her classes and then just never left. She’s been here for like 25 years or something (and doesn’t have a valid passport by the way). If you had to define her in one word it would be hippie. Quite liberal and was apparently arrested for protesting in the Nixon era (although she refuses to expound on this period in her life). She definitely knows her stuff though. She’s excavated several sites and clearly done research, but she wasn’t great at communicating that knowledge. She often got words confused, which wouldn’t be a big deal if she acknowledged it, but she didn’t. Try memorizing years when one time she says it’s 450 BC and 2 min later the piece was made in 350 BC. Not easy. She was also slightly subjective in her information conveyed. Sometimes we would find ourselves listening to Anne’s opinion presented as fact. Not a fan. I just found her hard to learn from.
Anne also taught our lit class, but I found her slightly more bearable in this context. Probably because I enjoyed the material infinitely more and had experience with it (thanks Mrs. Falvey!). We read The Iliad (and consequently may label ourselves educated) and several Greek tragedies: Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Bacchae and Hippolytus. Side note, if you ever read the Iliad get the translation by Robert Merrill. It’s terrifically hard to find, but the best translation I’ve ever read. The English is almost entirely in meter. The other plays were fairly enjoyable to read as well. Probably the best thing that came from this class was getting free wine and cheese out of the deal. Anne had us all over (there’s only 15 of us in the class) to her apartment one night to discuss the Bacchae over wine and cheese. I think I can safely say none of us got anything out of that lecture, but we definitely enjoyed ourselves!
We have a study abroad seminar class taught by Greg, our CSB/SJU program director with us. This class never really had a lecture, and actually really didn’t meet that often. When we did meet we just discussed our impressions and travel experiences with each other. When we didn’t meet in the classroom we were out at a museum or a performance. Definitely awesome. Highlight of the class was seeing Carmina Burana at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. Check out my facebook page to see a video clip.
Saved the best for last! My absolute favorite was theology. Really not that surprising coming from a theology major, but I have to admit that I was a little hesitant going into it because I’m really not interested in church history (which was the title of the class). This class focused on the eastern church, specifically the Greek Orthodox church, which I knew nothing about. We covered the history of the Christian and talked about the Schism and then covered modern Greek Orthodoxy. It was super interesting to learn about these things from a different perspective. We also had the opportunity to tour several Greek churches. Probably the best part of the class though, was the prof. Stephanos is a Greek Orthodox priest, husband and father. He was super knowledgeable and open. He also wasn’t afraid to challenge us, which was awesome. I feel like I learned a lot about the eastern church, but also more about my church and how we’re similar and different. It also brought up some interesting ideas I’d never thought about before. I might post some of them later. My favorite memory from this class was the day a group of us (theo majors and Nick) had dinner with Stephanos. We spent 2-2.5 hours talking about Greek Orthodoxy and religion in general. Super interesting and enlightening.
And I think that about wraps up Athens! Next post, hopefully soon, will have info about our week break travels! Thanks for reading everyone and I miss you all!
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