We eventually made it on the flight to Athens. I ended up sitting at the very back of the plane in the middle row on an aisle seat. I sat next to another college girl studying abroad who was a Kappa Delta at Villanova! It was nice to be comfortable with who I was sitting by. I slept in thirty minute intervals but the plane was very turbulent so it wasn’t too easy to fall asleep. I was fine until the last three hours of the flight I got very dizzy and nauseous. I ended up powering through and not throwing up which I was bracing myself for.
We ended up getting into Athens an hour early and had to wait on the tarmac for a while which was miserable because we all felt like crap. We got off and were stressed about the questions they might ask us in customs, but they ended up not asking anything so it was super quick. We had quite a bit of time to kill before getting on our flight to Chania, so we just hung around the airport for some time.
The air in Athens was pretty hot and clammy, so we were ready to leave by the time our flight arrived. We got on a teeny tiny airplane and I fell asleep the entire way, but apparently looking over the water and islands was breathtaking. The flight was only 35 minutes. We arrived into a very broken down tiny airport that looked like a war zone. The air was breezy and cool and felt amazing after traveling for about 24 hours. We took three taxis to get to MAICh where we are staying in dorms.
The taxi ride was beautiful driving by the water! The driving was absolutely terrifying, however. There wasn’t really a speed limit and the drivers continuously cut each other off and would tailgate, so I just focused on the water outside my window. We arrived at the beautiful campus that looked very Greek and ancient. All of Crete looks like a very old desert-y California. We were all surprised that it looked browner than we imagined.
Campus was surrounded by beautiful orchards and botanical gardens. We got situated into our little dorm rooms that consisted of two levels. The first with a teeny tiny bathroom and twin bed, and the lofted bed on the second where I stayed with Morgan. We then went to our first lecture and we were all struggling to pay attention. I kept thinking I was awake and then my head would bob up and down and wake me up. I felt really bad because I didn’t want to offend her and it was really interesting hearing about the island.
We then went through a tour of the botanical gardens where we got to touch and smell all the plants, as well as hear all the Greek mythology behind the plants. Our tour guide, Electra, had a very interesting Mohawk like haircut, and it was fun listening to her trying to pronounce our words. Greek sounds like a mixture between Spanish and Italian with the phlegm from German.
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Read more from Kyre at https://kyredeniceingreece.wordpress.com/blog/
Find our more about the U of A Faculty-Led: Food, Agriculture and Sustainability in Greece program at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/aggreece