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TRU students' big, fat Greek adventure

Rebekah Hammond - Science & Tech Editor

In Greece, you can study for your midterms while suntanning on the beach.

TRU students Aliah Shindler and Kelsey Mackay-Smith spent last semester taking donkey rides on Santorini, visiting Skopelos where Mama Mia! was filmed, exploring the Acropolis in Athens, dropping purses into the Aegean Sea and choking down complementary glasses of 'raki' - a strong Cretan alcoholic drink made from the skins of grapes.

They even managed to fit in a semester of school.

"It was five months of careful paperwork, but once you're there, it's like four months of vacation," said Mackay-Smith, who's graduating this year with an event and convention diploma. "We did all our studying on the beach and we have pictures to prove it."

Shindler and Mackay-Smith were the only Canadians to go to Greece on school exchanges last semester.

They'd met a year ago during the Tourism Industry Conference in Vancouver when they were on the same team.

"We've been together ever since," they joked in unison.

The two TRU students applied through the TRU World student exchange program and took a semester at Minoan International College located on the Greek island of Crete. It's a smaller, private Greek school with an enrollment of about 70 to 75 students.

"It didn't have that campus-y feel that TRU has, that's for sure, but it's a newer school, still trying to find it's place," said Shindler, who's in her third year of tourism and hotel management. "The students themselves are very hospitable, so were the teachers."

"There were four of us [international exchange students] when we were there, so four out of 75 students is pretty good," Mackay-Smith said. "They're pretty used to it. A lot of the students aren't from Greece, a lot of them are from Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia."

Before classes started, Shindler and Mackay-Smith toured Greece for about a month taking in the sights. One of their favorite stories came from a trip to Mykonos when Shindler dropped her purse into the sea.

While wheeling their luggage up the steep and slippery ramp of the ferry, drizzle coming down, Shindler's purse fell off her shoulder into the water. It contained her two passports, iPod, camera, wallet and sunglasses.

"Aliah, very calmly turned to me and said, 'Kelsey, I just dropped my purse in the ocean.' And I said, 'Are you joking?' She looked straight down and looked at it bobbing around," Mackay-Smith said.

One of the ferrymen fished it out for her, but everything except her passports were ruined.

"We poured my purse out and the whole Aegean Sea poured out of my purse," Shindler said.

The ride wasn't much better, turning out to be rough and wavy.

"They had Greek Winnie-the-Pooh on," Shindler said. "We were staring at it trying to calm down, but literally, we were trying not to cry; trying not to throw up."

Fortunately, they had a warm welcome on the other side from the woman who worked at the pension where they stayed.

"She was the best possible person we could've been staying with on that island," Mackay-Smith said. "We got off and were both ready to cry. She just gave us both big hugs, said welcome and treated us just like family."

All-in-all, Shindler and Mackay-Smith enjoyed their semester in Greece and would go back in a heartbeat, though as tourists next time, not students.

"I enjoyed all of my experience, but my favorite part of it was the month before of travelling around," Shindler said.

Though arranging for the exchange took a lot of organization and planning, all the work paid off.

"The hardest thing of the day was going, 'Kelsey, do we go to the beach, or do we lay by the pool?'" Shindler said. "You can't beat going out and seeing the ocean from your balcony and seeing the palm trees all around."