Arcadia Greece

Michelle Desien as she was browsing some of the photos from her Spring 2016 in Athens, she stumbled upon ones that really sum up her experience from her study abroad in Greece.

I think this photo (me and 2 co-students in Sparta shot by some distance) accurately describes my trip to Athens. In this picture, a few of us had walked ahead of our class on our tour of ancient Sparta and were standing at a point in the trail where we got an incredible view of the modern town below us in addition to the surrounding mountains. While up there it was hard not to feel small. Time and time again while I was abroad I felt small. At first this feeling scared me; feeling small during an economic crisis and a neighboring refugee crisis that was spilling onto your doorstep was absolutely terrifying. But then I started to realize that being small had its advantages, you could witness the greatness around you. My abroad experience was being a small piece of the puzzle that was Greece in the spring of 2016. While I didn’t change the large trends that were occurring around me, I hope I did make a small difference to those I met. Whether that is the barista at the coffee shop I went to every week, the local choir that I sat in on for a rehearsal, or the refugee children I played with for an afternoon. Now that I am back in the states I revel in the moments where I get to feel small but keep in mind that I still have the power to make a small changes. Changes that I hope will only get bigger and bigger as time goes on.