Hi I'm Gwen Jones I'm a junior here at Smith studying Anthropology with a minor
in Archaeology and Museum Studies concentration so since I've known since
I was like 4 years old I wanted to be an archaeologist what better place to go
study abroad than Athens Greece. So when I was in high school I decided to start
teaching myself Modern Greek just as an independent study all on my own and then
at the end of that semester I had to start planning what classes to
take at Smith so I saw Greek 100Y: Continue learning my Modern Greek. I
signed up for it I ordered my textbook super early because they were on sale I
got my textbooks and I saw that they were for Ancient Greek and I had signed
up for Ancient Greek which was stressful but I was like you know what I already
bought the textbooks I'll do it I will take Ancient Greek. So I didn't tell the Greek professor of this
until the end of the year and he was like are you kidding me
So there was accidentally taking Ancient Greek 100Y and I became really close
with a lot of the professors in the department like an honorary member of
the classics department unofficially and so I went on and I took Greek to 212 and
Greek to 213 last year and started doing an independent study with the professor
Thalia Pandiri who teaches the more advanced Greek courses to actually keep
learning Modern Greek like I originally intended so through the Five Colleges
and Thalia I started studying on my own Modern Greek while also taking Ancient Greek
which was simultaneously an amazing experience to learn how this language
has evolved but also mixing them up all the time. Thalia and I would meet up
before Greek 212 every Tuesday and speak Modern Greek together before class
we'd get in there and next thing you know we're mispronouncing our Plato all
over the place like saying modern instead of ancient words but because
I knew the Ancient Greek basis for the grammar and the structure of the words
it made it so much fulfilling to learn Modern Greek because
then I had this foundation and I understood how the language had evolved
over time and I started to become fascinated with how in Ancient Greek
words what was a 't' sound is suddenly the same word but with 's' in it it's
like why does it do this and so because of that and also because I was
learning Modern Greek I came at Ancient Greek from a different direction than my
friends who were there who know Latin because I also know no Latin so everyone
else in Greek 100 knew Latin and had done like Latin competitions in high
school and then there's Gwen who knows nothing about classics and because of
that instead of coming at it from the direction of oh this is a dead language
it's not spoken I was looking at it as a language and just a completely different
way of looking at it that made it so interesting alongside my friends who
knew Latin. So last semester I went to Athens and applied all this Modern Greek
I'd been learning and it was really interesting how so all of my friends did
not know any Greek there were three students in the entire program it's an
American program CYA there were three students out of about
120 in the program who came to Athens already knowing some Greek .They were
myself another student who had taken two years of Ancient Greek and a student
who grew up speaking Greek in the household and so the entire school knew
the three of us because whenever they heard one of us speaking Greek they'd be
like oh you speak proper Greek because all of the students
had to take Greek 100 but we were in Greek 220 and because of that I was able to
form stronger connections that I expected with a lot of the faculty at
the program I was that because my second day there I was trying to change my
Greek cell phone from Greek to English and I could understand how to get all
the way to the last couple options but I didn't know which ones to click so I
went up to this random guy I was in the academic building and I asked *speaks Greek*
and then whatever it said he was like wait you speak proper Greek? We
started speaking Greek and about why I learned it
he was the president of the entire program and there he was helping me
change my phone to English I'm like ah 'δεν ξέρω τίποτα' I don't know
anything and so even throughout the city I would
then have these same experiences I would go out to eat with my friends and they
would order to the best of their ability in Greek at restaurants everything but
the waiters would respond in English we all always got English menus and they
come up to me and I'd order and I'd use I'd say basically the same thing but I
would instead use like a potential verb like 'tha íthela' I would like instead of
I want and they'd be like oh you speak proper Greek and in a Taverna in Crete
this old man who owned this Taverna he was pouring my drink first he gave me my
menu first he's speaking to other people in the restaurant and everyone at the
restaurant he's like her she speaks proper Greek she's my favorite I got
like free dessert and everything and I was just able to make these such
fulfilling interactions and relationships between myself and locals
because I had taken the time to learn Greek beforehand and it was also helpful
for my friends and roommates who we'd walk in somewhere and oh no the owner
doesn't speak English and they stare at me like deer in headlights like Gwen
what does this mean but it was wonderful taxi drivers
every time you get into a taxi they ask oh where are you from from America what
do you think of the president and whenever my friends and I had to take
the taxi back when class was in a museum they'd be like oh I want to drive with Gwen
because I was in the taxi speaking to the taxi driver in Greek they would take
the shorter route and it would be cheaper whereas the others he would take
the long route and it would be six euros instead of three but if they were with
me we let the short route we would get a discount and so all of these things
together made for a wonderful experience in Athens and I really look forward to
someday hopefully returning there as I said before I study archaeology but
unfortunately it's colonial archaeology in the United
States not Greece but I do really hope to go back there visit Ydra again my
mom came to visit me it was for both of us it was the first time leaving the
country and it was just such a wonderful experience thank you.