The Concert
By Gerasimos Nestoratos, mayor of Katohi, Greece
June 11, 2004, Lycabettus theatre.
Evanescence with Amy Lee.
Musical searching through the fields of the soul notes like sweetening of hearing,
means of erotic approaching.
Atmosphere full of bubbles of melody moistening the summer feelings.
Sound fitting the rhythm of our own old routes,
Rock music, the alibi of our youth,
young audience, students, sweetening bodies,
colorfulT-shirts, sentimental sounds,
transparent, noisy hearing, pure rock.
Weak request from eighteen-year-old Xenia,
for me to be there too, at my fifties.
It was a difficult balance
with a mature soul as compensation.
A strange blend, unraveled labels
of my thought, which that night,
I tried to write clearly.
I looked like I wanted everything
and at the same time, in the endless evergreen fantasy, everything was uselessly flowing in a playful happy mood.
And what about me?
I did not know the lyrics
but I could feel the music flowing since in this ocean of love,
music and love are the two religions that, by touching them, you touch eternity.
I, then, asked myself what elevates me more music or love? But I could not answer.
- Coming down from Lycabettus theatre I was still fifty and my daughter eighteen. So let it be, just for two hours, as in illusion, I reach out for some of my own times, back then when I, like Xenia, was beautiful.
A page from Liz Morel's "trashbook" with mementos and notes from a lecture
Theatre, Culture and Friendships in Greece
Summer Eglinski is a senior majoring in Theatre and Film. Here she recounts her experiences abroad participating in the Theatre in Greece Summer Institute.
I like to tell people that the food is worth the ticket over; but honestly, Greece has so much more to offer than just its culinary delights. Greece, unlike any other trip to any other country, changed my life. The KU theatre program specifically made a difference. This program involves more than sightseeing and studying, you really develop a sense of being a part of the community where you live and begin to understand something about this foreign culture.
The program involves putting on an ancient Greek play in the ancient theatre of Oiniades, built in the fourth century BCE. Students stay in the near-by modern city of Katohi. This small, rural village provides the backdrop for the years of story-telling that come out of this experience. Children in the community serve to flesh out the chorus in the play so everyone gets to know the kids very quickly, and consequently their entire families. The best part of the experience is this sense of familiarity and friendship that develops so quickly. One of my friends there calls herself my "sister" and I am planning on returning to visit my Greek "family" this Christmas.
The program is not just for theatre majors, though. Anyone can take part and is guaranteed to have a wonderful time. We all have our strengths and the program can really be tailored specifically to each student's strengths. Musicians, actors, dancers designers, directors, classicists, and linguists will all find special niches here as will anyone who makes the decision to go. We travel to Athens, Delphi, Corinth Mycenae, Olympia, Nauphlion, and most recently the Greek island of Kefalonia (where Captain Corelli's Mandolin was filmed).
This program also serves to promote a more global perspective in all of us. It gives us an opportunity to promote the best parts of American culture while learning about Greek culture in its turn. Teaching, I have found, is one of the best ways to learn about something. By teaching others about our culture, we learn about it ourselves. By being immersed in the Greek culture, we learn about their culture and how our culture can fit into in on a global level. This opportunity is invaluable.
What I cherish more than anything from my trip to Greece are the friends that I made there. Three years later I still correspond regularly with the kids I met there. We talk about school, relationships, jobs, everything. We changed each other and my life will never be the same thankfully.
History and Archeology, Memories and "Trash" in Ancient Greece
Liz Morel is a senior majoring in Engineering. She participated in the Ancient Greece:An Archaeological Tour summer program.
I called it my journal; everyone else called it my trash book. When we went to the Sparta Acropolis, I carried crayons to make rubbings of the engraved writings on the temple stones. I carried glue to cement in sugar packets and old receipts from the tavermas we frequented in Athens, and a pen so I could frantically sketch all the layout and ornamental decoration of every temple, theater, and tholos that I saw and copy down notes of our professors. As an engineer, I wanted to document, in detail, every place we went, every person we met, and all the food we ate. Because of all the trash, I am immediately transported back to Greece when I look at it and I remember all the things that I valued about the program and how the program helped me develop as a person.
Though Classics was not my field of study, I had been interested in Ancient and Modern Greece since high school. I valued the infectious passion and expertise that the professors had about the subject material. Being abroad allowed for in-depth study that went far past the pages of any textbook. The professors valued our input as we attempted to postulate reasons for everything from color used in frescoes to unique rooms seen in palaces.
This teaching style acknowledged the ambiguity of some archeological problems and reminded us to question interpretations and historical facts, which made solving the mysteries of the past even more exciting.
I also valued having the opportunity to study abroad and explore new interests for it aided me in a career sense. Though we were not learning first fundamentals or mathematical methods to solve engineering problems, we were learning how to function in a different culture. We gained an awareness of how people who live outside the United States see us, and how we can act to be sensitive to cultural differences. This type of skill is essential in any workplace, international or domestic and was always something that was excellent to write about for applications and to talk about during interviews. Learning how to function in a foreign country can be a difficult task and accomplishing this task can be a rewarding experience that makes the person more confident.
Studying abroad has made me a more confident person, and by the end of my study abroad trip I was able to use the Irakleon bus system to travel by myself to the Crete Natural History Museum, and I was pretending to be Greek as I would buy ice cream from the vendors on the street since I could say, "Can I please have that ice cream?" and "Thank you" by that point. I don't know if I fooled anyone, but I like to pretend that I did.
JAYHAWKS ABROAD
6
SPRING 2006
Th
Kath
abou
Paris
What w de la m the stre e the war cla s your b company. S of the that I
The list week f sightse the wi just a percep traveli classes enoug all wa person
Or ex pr
Kelpa Gen Sum I'll s is pr loca wan seco in G Alm it w then of t perf in g serv