1st trip to Athens, Greece

We visited the Acropolis today and also went to the museum which was very interesting.

The Parthenon

Above is the Panathenaic or Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece. This was really cool to see and listen to different stories of the olympian games that went on here. The street in front this stadium has a river underneath it that they used to overflow into the the stadium where naval battleships would fight to the death (like Gladiator kind of) as the whole stadium was filled with thousands and thousands of people watching for entertainment. Now that river is covered by a road, but our guide, James, said that when it rains everyone then realizes there is a river underneath the road because it overflows.

This is Mars Hill. The 1st picture shows the stone that reads Acts 17 in modern greek. The 2nd is me standing on Mars Hill. This was an incredible experience. Once I could get past the below freezing weather, which was easy to do considering the things I was seeing, I was able to sit on Mars Hill looking over Athens as Dr. Edwards read Acts 17. It was incredible. This made it so real to hear Paul's words where he most likely actually said them to the people of Athens, extremely smart people that had to be intimidating to Paul. For Paul to have the courage to do that really inspired and deeply reminded our whole group of WHY we are on this earth. WHY Jesus came to die for sins and WHAT we are supposed to be doing with our lives. We need to stop trying to be successful by the worlds standards and try to hold each other up to GOD's standard. Over the next couple of months I have the most awesome opportunity to go back to Mars Hill whenever I want just to talk to God and reflect on Paul's life and the fight he fought on this earth for the Lord and the church. I want to have zeal like Paul so Lord willing, I can focus on that the next few months praying for courage and wisdom to do the work of the Lord, worrying only of the Kingdom of God and the lost souls around me. Today was so inspiring, uplifting, convincing, and ...real. It made the Word I was holding in my hands that I have based my entire life on, REAL. Paul was a REAL person. Everyone knows that, there's no trying to deceive people of that fact, you see "St. Paul" everywhere in Greece. He made a 180 turn in his life for only one reason, only one thing can do that to a person, THE LORD... just really proving and making it real that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God and I am walking on the same grounds HE walked. There aren't words for the experience and the reality of it. I'm so excited to see what else God has in store for this group and I can't wait to visit more places that we read about in the Bible.

There are dogs everywhere in Greece!!!! I mean EVERYWHERE. Now in Athens the government has put colored collars on them to tell whether they are male or female, fixed them, and gave them shots to make sure they don't over popularize or harm the people of the city. We have dogs in Porti Rafti that sit right outside the Harding doors and act as guard dogs for us -- we haven't done anything special for them or anything, they just like us.

The same thing happened in Athens today with our group -- it was hilarious. These dogs in the picture along with about 3 others flocked to us and chose our group to follow and hang out with all day. We would go in a museum for hours and come out seeing them there just waiting to greet us. As we walked through the street they would walk in front of us and literally bark everyone else out of the street chasing them so that none of those random sweet people would even get near us. I mean we laughed so hard we cried. 3 of the dogs saw this man in front of our group on the side of the road with a hose and they ran after him and chased him 30 feet scaring this man half to death. I mean he had the most frightened look on his face because these dogs would bark and growl at the people, but they never tried to bite, thankfully. It was so funny because they weren't meaning any harm but they were serious about protecting us. I honestly felt like royalty the way the dogs treated our group and cleared the streets for us. I mean I felt bad for all the people they were scaring half to death, but the dogs thought they were doing good. They chased this one lady in front of us to her car... she was so scared that she sprinted to her car and got in and locked the doors. Again, they weren't meaning any harm just mostly the barking was very scary. The way they barked reminded me of somewhat of trumpets announcing a king coming throughout the street, clearing the road for the king.

These guys were really good! Fun music to listen to while walking around the market place after lunch with the dogs in Athens. :)

Airplane Ride

This is Katie and me in the airplane on the way to Athens, Greece.

Devin's first plane ride! Woo hoo!

Neysa and I on our way to the Harding campus from the airport! :)

I am so thankful to be going to greece with great friends! I really appreciate these 3 and also Jared, Tay, Gretchen, and Luke. It's going to be a great next couple of months getting closer to this group as we grow spiritually together. More pictures to come of the rest of the group!

<3 Greece!

The name: It's All Greek To Me

Guess what this is!?

You're right! It's a coffee shop! Was it the words or the pictures of animals that gave it away??

Seriously I rely on very poor pictures and unreliable facial expressions to figure out what in the world is going on around here. All the signs, labels, every word around here in written in Greek AND there is no english underneath it or anything since this is a smaller town it's completely greek. The adults here don't speak english either except some of the adults on harding's campus (not all of them though). So talk about culture shock?! This is craziness! I only had travel size shampoo, conditioner, and toothpaste this morning so I decided I better go ahead and buy more this morning. Well all the students from Faulkner walked down to the girzteck (the pronunciation sounds like that spelling I think but I have no idea how to actually spell it because it's written in greek letters) to get a few things and the only thing I could read in that grocery store was "Nutella." I'm not kidding. Every thing was written so weird. They had shampoo that were some of the same brands we have at Wal-Mart back home but I could only tell because of what the bottle looked like but they don't differentiate the look of the bottle between shampoo and conditioner so I never could figure out which one was which. Most of the brands did not carry conditioner but I ended up opening up the bottles and looking inside to see which looked creamier. Hahaha. I just did not think about the language barrier being such an issue but it really is. I just assumed it'd be like spanish kind of since some spanish words are readable and kind of make sense in english especially if you know a little spanish from high school like I do. Anyway greek is nothing like any other language that I am familiar with or even seen in my life... I guess I knew that from the bible majors at Faulkner, but it just didn't click with me before I got here. That language almost seems impossible for me to ever read because the letters are nothing like our alphabet to me. I have learned how to say "hello" "thank you" and "excuse me" but even those I can hardly remember in the moment that I'm supposed to be saying them. However, it is my first full day here so I'll practice and get better! This is exciting! :)

My roommate and room

This is my roommate, Katie! She is a great great friend and I am so happy to be able to be with her in Greece. We are standing on our balcony in Porto Rafti, Greece right outside our bedroom. That is our view from out huge window door. :) Mountains, beautiful homes, little bakery, coffee shop, dogs -- there are seriously random dogs that hang around everywhere, they follow us to the grocery store, to the beach, etc... they are so sweet (and dirty). Grecians don't eat dinner until 10 pm or later so around bedtime the streets are crazy... all night I heard cars honking and so so many "almost" wrecks. It's crazy. There aren't speed limits that I know of and if there is there is no one to enforce them so watching these people drive is completely scary!!!

We are here!

This is the group that rode in the Faulkner van to the Atlanta Airport. Dr. Edwards and his family, Devin, Luke, and Gretchen met us at the airport. We all arrived there about 3 pm and our plane left for Frankfurt, Germany at 6:35 pm. The flight was around 8 hours to Frankfurt, but thankfully the plane was half empty so we each were able to have a few seats to spread out and relax. I ended up sleeping for 3-4 hours laying across four seats in the plane. It was awesome. We arrived in Frankfurt in the morning and left Frankfurt for Athens at 1 pm their time. All of my times were so confused. I never really knew what time it was there or home. I didn't know when I was suppose to sleep or be awake. However, I did know my shoulders were hurting from my backpack and I was extremely exhausted and ready to arrive in Athens. We got to Athens around 5 pm local time. Everything went so smoothly, it was amazing. Both flights actually arrived earlier than was even expected so that all goes to God -- thank you for praying! The traveling was as smooth and easy as it could have possibly been.

After easily getting our luggage which took maybe 5 minutes we headed toward the exit and met Harding students and faculty who were there to greet us with hugs -- it was awesome. They had a bus going outside for us to hop on immediately. We were to Harding's campus in less than 30 minutes. We got here and they showed us to our rooms we were able to sit our stuff down and wash up a little then we walked down the street to this Greek restaurant owned by a man named Demetri, who spoke very little english so his young preteen daughter translated pretty well. :) They were so welcoming and nice -- everyone!!! The harding director had each Faulkner student sit at separate tables with a group of Harding students at each so that the group could integrate more easily. The Harding group has done such a wonderful job to include us into their family. We feel loved, wanted, and comfortable. God is so good! Continue praying please :)

<3 Greece