Grecian Odyssey, A Student's View (Day 5)

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 Raegan Schafer, a sophomore Biology major; Branden Barber, a junior majoring in Computer Programming and Management Information Systems; and Mikayla Gypton, a freshman Political Science major.  We hope you enjoy reading about our journey!

Today we woke up to get breakfast at around 7:00 AM. We left the hotel and went to the ruins of the stadium at Olympia. We learned a lot of interesting facts about the place as well. One of the first structures we saw was the gymnasium, which was used for last minute training by the athletes. One term we learned was a stoa, which is a column row that had a ceiling on it. Some of the events that were being held at the Olympics were wrestling, jumping, boxing, and throwing. These events were similar to the ways that men would train to go to war. The Olympics were a symbol of peace despite this. Wars were temporarily stopped for the Olympics because they were so important. It is also important to note that married women were not allowed to see the games because the men competing were all naked and the women would become an adulteress upon seeing the men. We also learned that athlos meant excessive bravery and Agon meant sort of agony.

We had a chance to stand on the starting line in the original Olympic stadium (and learned that "stadium" actually comes from a length of distance, and that helped standardize stadium sizes!) and run a race against our fellow students. Dr. Swanson managed to start a bit ahead of everyone, and we decided that he needed his name listed along the other ancient cheaters who were posted for public display!

Probably one of the most interesting things for me was Phidias and the statue of Zeus in the temple of Zeus. The sculptor, Phidias, was asked to come create the statue for Olympia and agreed to do it after being promised he would have his workshop at Olympia close to the temple itself and the same size as the room it was going to be displayed in. We also saw Roman baths, which I thought was neat because I had learned about them in my Art and Ideas class.

During this time there was also a dog that started following us around that we had already seen the night before in town. This dog was named Doug and he was a good boy. Christiana told us that the dogs there sometimes, but not always, follow around younger groups to protect them until they feel like there is nothing to harm them. Doug followed us around for most of the time we were there. There are many stray dogs and cats in Greece, and they’ve all been sort of “adopted” by the tour guides and others who make sure that they have been to the vet and are healthy, and bring them food and treats.

After seeing the ruins, we went into the museum onsite and got to see ancient artifacts as well as the decorations that were recovered from the temple of Zeus among other buildings. The most interesting thing we encountered there is why Christiana told us how statues were deliberately made headless so that the heads could be swapped out when a new emperor came to power instead of the time-consuming process of remaking all of the statues from the ground up.

We ate lunch at a buffet which was pretty good then set out on our three to four-hour drive to Delphi. On our way, we stopped to do an Olive Oil tasting, and learn more about the process of making Olive Oil, which was really neat, and we also had a gorgeous stop at the Aegean Sea, where many of us found shells and rocks and put our feet into the water while enjoying some delicious baklava. A trip where we were able to touch both the Ionic and Aegean seas was pretty neat! We spent a good deal of the bus ride playing twenty questions, which was so fun and frustrating all at the same time!

Delphi was a very interesting place. It has narrow streets and is entirely on switchbacks. We are going to get up early and go on a hike tomorrow morning up into the mountains at 6am—I can’t wait to see the sunrise over the mountains!