Grecian Odyssey, A Student View (Day 1)

The Honors Program just completed its Grecian Odyssey tour, where thirty-five students and two staff members traveled to Greece from May 6th through the 16th. We asked our students to blog about the journey, so each day is written from the perspective various students.  Today's post includes contributions from Sara Ludwig, a junior and English/Creative Writing double major; Megan Alfieri, a junior majoring in Forensic Chemistry; and Julia Newberry, a junior Nursing major.  All three of these students also traveled with the Honors Program on the Irish Heritage Tour two years previously. We hope you enjoy reading about our journey!

Today was the day our adventure in Greece began! Actually, strike that, technically that would be tomorrow because of the time difference, but for the purposes of this entry we are going to ignore that fact. Anyway, the day was all about planes, planes, and more planes. Starting from Columbus we left early in the morning (I had to leave my house at 5:00 am just to get to the airport on time), to prepare for our first flight to Chicago. I had fun catching up with some friends I hadn’t talked to in quite some time, and eventually joined in some of the card games. Eventually, we did board the flight to Chicago, which, much to my dismay, I realized was an hour and twenty minutes, not just twenty minutes as I had previously thought, due to the time change. These time changes would take some getting used to!

It was a fairly rudimentary flight, but it geared us up towards the rather long one to Munich, Germany, and boy was it long. Luckily, we had in-flight entertainment so it wasn’t too bad. It was really cool being in Germany for the first time, even if it was only the airport, especially since my ancestry is mostly German. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have minded a layover if that meant we could have explored more, but that is for another time. It was also nice to get a jump on navigating the language barrier seeing how I know pretty much zero German and even less Greek. As overwhelming at times as it was, it was a good preface to Greece and figuring out how to communicate with non-native English speakers.

The 8-hour flight was overnight, but so many of us were just too excited to sleep and our bodies hadn't adjusted to the 7 hour time difference yet. We did enjoy a hot dinner and a breakfast on the plane and as we flew towards Munich, we saw a gorgeous snow-capped mountain range. But the real excitement came when we started to see the gorgeous mountains and beautiful water in Greece out the plane window!

Speaking of Greece, which I remind you was our final destination on this whole odyssey, we finally made it to Athens! And we did it without losing any luggage, which is another feat in and of itself. Being too pumped up with adrenaline to feel jetlagged, I was ecstatic to officially begin our tour. Greece, here we come!