Students will spend a week exploring the origins of the Olympic games and their connection to mythology in Greece. After arriving in Athens, we will begin our four-day adventure through Greece under the guidance of College Year in Athens Professor, Nina Papathanasopoulou. Highlights of our upcoming travels include visiting Delphi where we will learn about spaces for public gatherings, religious worship, and athletic games. We will then travel to Olympia and learn about the importance of the Olympic games and the origins of them as linked to mythical gods and heroes. From here we will go to Mycenae to learn about the myth of Agamemnon and how it connects to the myth of the legendary founder of the games, Pelops. Amidst these travels, we will also have overnight stays in Patras, Nafplio, and Athens, giving us further time to explore Greek culture and understand connections across time and space.
Day 1: After leaving NHS at 12:45PM on Monday, our crew embarked on a seamless but long journey to Athens! We are grateful that our flights were on time and we even enjoyed some French food in the Paris airport during our layover. We finally arrived in Athens at 1:45PM on Tuesday and were greeted by our guide for the week, Demi, who works with College Year in Athens. She told us about Athens while we were driven to our hotel. We then had a bit of downtime to explore the neighborhood and then went to dinner at 6:45PM at Cross Restaurant. We sampled different types of Greek salads, appetizers, and main courses, while sharing stories about our childhood and making each other laugh (or maybe we were just so tired from our travel and the 7-hour time difference). Everyone was tired by the time we finished dinner at 9PM, so we went back to the hotel to catch-up on some needed sleep before our adventures at the Acropolis tomorrow, complete with lectures from Professor Papathanasopoulou at the site and museum.
Day 2: For our second day in Athens, we traveled to the Acropolis and learned about the building of it from Professor Papathanasopoulou. She explained the architecture and how it was created to appear even larger from far away, further ingraining the importance of Athens in Greek culture. We discussed the role of mythology as portrayed on many of the artifacts and how they tied into Greek culture. Not all pieces of the site are in Greece, though! We also learned why some pieces of the Acropolis are not in the museum on site and rather at the British Museum--this was an interesting discussion of "who" owns archaeological findings and a current debate in that realm today.
Day 3: After an early wake-up, we hit the road for Delphi where we learned the role of the oracle in Greek life and how some people were able to skip the line when waiting to speak to the oracle. We discussed the role of mythology as portrayed on many of the artifacts and how they tied into Greek culture. Learning more about myth and the role of the Gods in Greek life, we began to understand how the Olympic Games were not just a contest for athleticism. After our view of the archaeological remains, we went into the museum to see more of the artifacts and understand daily life in Ancient Greece. A late group lunch after in the village rounded out our day (it's been an adjustment to eat lunch at 2-3PM Greek style from our normal NHS lunches!!) before we went to Patras for the night where we dined together in town and went to bed early before our next adventures!
Day 4: On the road again! After breakfast together in the hotel, we hopped on our bus to head to Olympia!!!! We were so excited to finally see the site where the games took place! It was so much to take in and so beautiful there. After a few hours at the museum, we then viewed the site for a few more hours! It was really amazing to see how the Greeks incorporated the Gods into the games and to see how they viewed cheating--there is an entire row of statues with names engraved of those who cheated at the games. You can see this as you enter the stadium as a reminder to not cheat! We definitely did not cheat when we then held our own race in the stadium: Gavin was our gold winner with Santi in 2nd and Izzy in 3rd. After working up an appetite there, we headed to town for lunch together and then a bus ride to the original capital of Greece, Nafplio. We had a wonderful dinner together and enjoyed gelato before walking back to the hotel together for the night.
Day 5: Our final full day in Greece meant one more site to visit along with a bonus one that we were surprised with by our professor and Mrs. Aronson to see the Isthmus of Corinth (it was pretty freaky to stand on that bridge!!). The site we saw today, Mycenae, was older than all of the other sites we visited and located at an amazing and strategic spot for protection and warfare in Ancient Greece. After visiting these spots, we had lunch and then went back to Athens for an early dinner before our early night due to a 2AM wake-up call for our flights back to the USA!