EC EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SUMMER PROGRAMS

Friday, June 23, 2017

It's my last real night here in Crete and I couldn't be sadder.

An older Greek lady came up to me and told me I had beautiful hair. As someone beaten and battered by the system hearing such words had me on the brink of shedding tears, but the chains of masculinity refuse to allow such things. The ocular canals stay dry for the sake of preserving the sediment necessary for staying steadfast.

But here, in Greek Night, or rather, this celebration of women, I've seen a beautiful thing of these beautiful people of Alikianos. A subset of culture seen differently from their own people in mainland Greece. People never heard of. But their stories and sense of community lives on, and will always live on here within this small town of the hellos and goodbyes of nostalgia with the furrowed brow of "where are we going, where do we think things will go, will things be safe in the next 20 years???".

My time in Greece has brought me to an odds end. Do I know where I'm going? Time will tell, as my Uncle Petros says; it's really all up to the ebb and flow of the galaxy. But like, how many times will I get this level of kindness and hospitality outside of my homeland of Ghana? We all love to share. I think the periphery has this tendency to be one in the same in some cultural things. Auntie Eva, Auntie Clio, Auntie Anastasia all one in the same being kind and wonderfully beautiful people with the steadfast and stubborn attitudes needed to continue to live on; to live on year after year while preserving that necessary flow.

The Greeks are some of the most beautiful and perfect people I've ever met. Some of the most brilliant, some of the most passionate (it all feels like home), some of the most in-control, pureveyors of slow yet efficient living, and some of the most hungry people I've witnessed. They don't settle for less, they grasp life by the sultry tongue. Alikianos, I'm going to miss you dearly. Some of the most subtly poetics live here without even knowing. Every *phoenetically typed out* "yasas" will be remembered within these memory banks, and once again be witnessed in due time. This is a new home to me. A home struggling in a world enamored with international relations. Slow living. We live life and drive slowly. Much love.

I love you all.

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EC Eastern Security Studies Program

In the summer of 2011, as the "Arab Spring" was unfolding and the "Eurozone Crisis" was entering its second year, the Emmanuel College Eastern Mediterranean Security Studies Program was established in Crete, as a way to make the location the classroom. Beyond the grand theoretical, historical and political understanding that can be achieved through reading and classroom discussion and exchange, a more immediate, intimate and truer appreciation of the complexities can only achieved by experiencing the cultures, languages of personal interaction.

Since 2012 students have been able to combine an intensive curricular study, with the experience of immersion and living in a local setting. The geopolitical and geoeconomic forces that have acted in the region for centuries, can be identified in the classroom, but they can only be understood by being there. This year's EC EMSS Program will add a fourth week of study, experience and exploration and will also travel to the islands of Rhodes, and Cyprus. In Rhodes we will be partnering with the Prefecture of Southern Aegean and the Aegean University, while in Cyprus we will be hosted by the University of Nicosia.