The Mediterranean breeze through the apartments near the top of Mount Lycabettus, the tallest point in Athens, allowed for all the American students in my program to wear flip-flops all semester long. The 150 stairs to the base of the hill was the only deterrent to such footwear – that, and the fact that everyone in the Kolonaki district looked like they had popped out of a page in Vogue. This was not the Athens in which I thought I would spend my semester. It was not the same dirty Athens I had visited in 2000, filled with the noise of jackhammers and bulldozers as Greeks desperately readied their city for the Olympic Games. Instead of scrambling around the city, locals strolled between storefronts and sat outside at cafes all day (and night) long.

I was the only one running: my program’s academic center was located a solid twenty-five minutes from my apartment. Only in times of tardiness did I turn heads in this Mediterranean metropolis. Running to class in my sweatpants-sneaker combination –the sloppy American stereotype – I made my rapid descent into the clusters of Lego-like buildings that fill the valleys and hills of Greece. I grew accustomed to the locals’ stares and customs, but I never adapted to the oddities of the kids in my program.

Meeting someone from Kalamazoo College who did not believe in global warming was worse than having every cab driver refuse to take me where I asked them to go merely because it was their prerogative to drive around Greece picking and choosing where to go. Getting yelled at in Greek by a shriveled old woman after my housemates and I spent the better part of an hour clacking around in high heels before going out did not throw me into a heap of homesickness. Talking to some prepubescent dweeb from Oklahoma about EpiPens, however, sent me deep into my wallet for a ten-euro call home to Mom. After learning to consider these awkward interactions as a bonus of the whole abroad experience, I was able to apply my attitude to the Greeks as well.

There is nothing like taking the bus to the boondocks in Kanza for a little wine-tasting with the locals…who turned out to be pack of rip-roaring anti-Americans. Fortunately, I could rely on my Greek heritage (or imaginary Greek heritage, as my friends Shari and Rachel quickly came to embrace) to back me up. Try defending America to a drunken woman who does not speak a word of English and has all her insults translated by her male partner/brother/uncle. As she swilled more wine by the quarter-glass (or plastic cup), she began to pull each one of us up to dance to the bouzouki band, inviting us to match her traditional drunken Greek style and sway. By the end of the day, I was flaunting my broken Greek and she was asking me to marry one of her sons at her summer home on the island of Corfu the following summer. I accepted, fondly remembering my last weekend trip to the islands.

Super Paradise beach in Mykonos provides great views of turquoise waters framed by jutting cliffs dotted with charming white houses – along with a wide array of naked people. Fully stocked bars line the beaches in order to ease tourist anxiety about nudity and appease the Greek local custom of drinking ouzo all day on the beach. After a mojito or two, I decide I’m comfortable with the scene and take a dip. I was wading around in the water for a mere ten minutes when Holy Zeus with a lightning bolt, I stepped on a ball of spikes. The spikes lodged in my foot turned out to be a sea urchin – which made me happy about the mojitos lodged in my liver. After hobbling back to my beach chair and refusing many offers from Speedo-clad Euro hunks to pee on my foot, Stavros came to my aid. He was no shipping heir, but he was a certified lifeguard with a pocket needle and a knack for plucking out shards of urchin.

That night we headed for Club Space. Think of every nightclub you’ve ever seen and think of the way they were decorated; now think of all of those elements in one place. Whoever designed Space must have been out there. The Saturday Night Fever light-up floor was nearly as dizzying as the strobe lights and lasers that sporadically highlighted the walls of TVs showing random images and tacky posters. After ten minutes inside, I sought refuge in the bathroom. This is where I found the gaudiest poster of the all: huge pouting, iridescent lips stuck to and blocking the full-length mirror I needed to use to impress the Aussies we met. There was only one solution: rip down the lips and check myself out. Little did I know that the large unassuming woman to emerge from the stall was Space’s head bouncer. Unfortunately for me, her uncanny resemblance to Shrek was not accompanied by the kind ogre’s attitude.  She proceeded to chase me throughout the entire club before cornering me to tell the owner what I had done. As she yelled about me in Greek to the club’s owner, I geared up to deploy a universal defense: puppy dog eyes and shrugging shoulders.

Many hours of dancing later, we decided to celebrate my victory with late-night lamb gyro binging at a nearby eatery. As a group of us stood around outside with our snacks in the narrow streets of the island, a Nissan rolled through and crushed my bad foot. I started screaming, my friends taking videos, but I remembered my gyro and got over it…until a Mercedes with tinted windows rolled through and stopped on top of my good foot. I yelled and pounded on the window and the driver did not understand or see (nice tints, man) the commotion. Finally, he got it, laughed and continued into town.

I continued on my trip to see the Acropolis, the oldest road in Europe, the agora, and the “Navel of the Earth” in Delphi – all impressive artifacts of the ambitious ancients. But I made sure to have enough interactions with the modern inhabitants in my four-month stay. It is difficult to tell a story about the remnants of an archaic drainage system – unless, that is, you’ve seen a tourist stab a German flag into it before falling into the precarious well…