An Idiot Abroad

Being in Rhodes has been a struggle for me. This island is so beautiful and welcoming, but everyday I get more and more frustrated with myself. There is a huge part of me that is feeling sentimental about the fact that I have now entered into my final two weeks of being an undergraduate student with no immediate plans to pursue more advanced degrees. Combined with this sense of nostalgia is an equal level of anxiety: what do I do now? Being a student is one of the few things that I feel like I have really excelled at, and been good at. What am I supposed to do after this? What’s going to happen when I go home and have no set plan in place? One of the things that I have constantly struggled with is focusing on living in the present instead of being plagued by my internal worries on the future and the things that are not in my immediate control. So, I decided to be easier going and really invest myself into my immediate surroundings and the overall experience that has presented itself to me.

But now I am faced with the problem of feeling like an idiot. Every day I am learning so much and experiencing so many new things here but at the same time I am so frustrated with myself for not knowing more; more of the history, more of the significance, more of the facts on the grounds, more of the local dances, more of the Greek languages, more of the songs….the list is endless. And I am trying to take it all in and I am trying to not allow my own insecurities and shortcomings to prevent me from experiencing it all but I am so frustrated from my own limitations. I knew that this program was meant to challenge me across the board but this is where I have felt more challenged than anywhere else so far.

There is a part of me that believes that the reason why I am feeling like I am struggling so much to connect here is due to the fact that Rhodes is almost like an alien culture compared to Alikianos. The people are just as friendly and welcoming, but Rhodes is completely dominated by tourism and feeding into tourists’ thirsts and hunger. I feel like you have to search more to find a true sense of culture here-you have to dig through all of the tourist memorabilia and all side steps all the tourist traps just to catch a glimpse of the real Rhodes. And it makes me sad. Yes, tourism has become the main economic supporter for this island and of course it has immense benefits for the economy and various individuals, but at an extreme coast. Asides from the historical aspects, I feel as though almost everything that I am seeing in Rhodes I could see if I were walking down the main strip in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Tourism is an extremely taxing form of monoculture, and it makes me sad to see that Rhodes way of life and culture in and of itself is now rooted to an industry that demands a false perception of reality from the people who serve it.

I know that this post is all over the place, and my thoughts are jumbled and I am trying to make sense of them by writing them all down. I’m chucking it up to an aspect of this overall experience: we are meant to be overwhelmed and be forced into an a place of discomfort. So, hopefully I am doing this right? I don’t know. That’s how every one of my reflections end: I don’t know and need to experience more.