EC EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SUMMER PROGRAMS: New Pals

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

New Pals

My favorite thing about trips like this is how quickly you get to know people. Unlike a lot of friendships, which are spaced out over weeks of awkward interactions and half-honest conversations before you really get to know someone and be on a real honest level with them, trips like this break that awkward wall down by confining you to the same 100 ft by 100ft plot of land, closed in class room and even the same bunkbed. You spend so much time together that there isn’t really room for dishonesty or shyness, and everyone quickly gets to know people they never thought they would in ways they never thought they could.

Last year I didn’t know any of these kids names. Last week I couldn’t have told you a single significant detail about most of them. Today I feel like I know more about some of their families and lives than my own and I think that is really beautiful thing. I know that no one reads these and I don’t want to put him on blast but if you are ever bored together you ask Faarooq about his connection to the Kennedys because its the cutest shit I’ve ever heard in my life. I am excited to see how these new friendships develop over the next 3 weeks in this Hellenic Breakfast Club.

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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.