My Moment in Greece

My moment in Greece took place in Symi.  The island of Symi was beautiful with its picturesque houses, turquoise water, and welcoming people.  We awoke early in the morning, traveled the treacherous sea by ferry boat, walked miles along the ocean, swam, ate a traditional Greek island lunch of seafood, and returned to the mainland after a full day.  

Everything about the trip was positive except for my mood.  It was an exquisite place and there were many adventures had.  I learned from my time abroad in Ecuador that you don’t want to regret anything and so I went along with everyone and the exploring that we went on that day.

The previous day something surpassed that had put me in a bad mood but I didn’t want to miss the once in a lifetime trip to Symi and so I decided to go along just as I had planned.  The ferry was quite fun despite to rocking back and forth like a roller coaster for most of the ride.  When we arrived on the island we split up and mostly wandered around for a bit looking at all of the brightly colored houses and admiring the sights and winding roads.  There were many animals that we encountered and of course we pet and played with them before heading to search for the beach that the large sign in the middle of the town was pointing to.  It took us a bit but we finally found a way down to the water and some of our group stripped down to their swimsuits and began swimming in the water.  Apparently the water wasn’t cold however the wind was a biting temperature and whipping wildly throughout the day. 

We sat by the water for a bit, my hair windswept as the air came off the water, and we mostly sat in silence for an hour or two, some of us taking pictures and others just lounging, enjoying the experience.  We decided to take a suggestion from a man that we had passed on the way and head further down the beach to a small town.  That ended up being a nice walk, although long, but then there didn’t end up being food there so we had to trudge back to the main town where we had gotten off the ferry.  After an impeccable lunch in which I got to eat giant garlic prawns a few people wanted to go to the top of the hill.  Now this hill was more like a mountain and we probably walked up at least 500 stairs to get there.  The group I was with had really wanted to go up there so I went for it as well.  Throughout the entire climb I was regretting my decision to go to the top, my calves burning with the walk, but after finally reaching the summit I was glad that I had made it to the top.

Andrew’s gorgeous picture from the top made it onto the PLU homepage advertising for our blog-posts.  The view was of course breathtaking and we could see all the way across the island to where we had walked just a few hours earlier in search of food.  Despite my emotional state being somewhat fragile that day it is still one that I will never forget.  There are so many things from this trip that are memorable that I think my brain will have a hard time choosing which ones to forget.  This experience has been truly amazing and I feel so blessed that I got to travel to Greece with such a great people.  We left PLU as 18 students and two faculty and staff members embarking on a journey together and we will return as 20 friends that spent a month together in Greece with an experience that has forever changed our lives. 

This was my moment in Greece.