Everyman's Harbor

Pulling myself out of bed that first morning in Greece was slightly miraculous. I was thankful for not agreeing to get up even earlier for breakfast, and quickly swallowed a granola bar on the way out the door. Day two was here. We were going to spend the morning being briefed on Moria, and the afternoon touring it. For orientation, we walked the few blocks from our inn to the small harbor around which the town of Paniouida clustered. There we "entered" a coffee shop, which was really just cafe seating by the water across a two lane road from the real restaurant (a common and charming practice of Greek restaurants). Slowly people began to trickle in and started forming a clumsy circle of rearranged chairs and tables. They were from many places and many walks of life. Some were students traveling on their summer break. Some were professionals, like me, taking time off to spend a week in Greece. Some were retirees, using their free time to selflessly serve. Others were in...

This has been an unprecedented week. I am sitting in my second coffee shop of the week on my fifth day off in a row (yay colds!). Don't worry, I'm not spreading germs by coughing on anyone and I'm going back to work tomorrow. Thankfully, the break has provided extra time to write, especially since I fully intended to struggle posting regularly (which is still a definite possibility). At the beginning, though, it is nice to maintain some momentum. Alright, day one... Flying into Athens and setting my feet on European soil for the first time was surreal. Also, I was very sleep deprived. We arrived in the morning, met up with our group, and rode the subway into the city center. There I was first introduced to salad (a.k.a. Greek salad), and my favorite thing of all time... fresh, wonderful, Greek feta! (Ten days and five pounds later I guess you can say I was a feta expert!) After lunch, we hiked to the top of the Acropolis (the giant, flat-topped hill on which the P...

The way I ended up in Greece for ten days is pretty much a miracle. It began two years earlier in the summer of 2016 when I was visiting my dad in Vietnam.  For several years, my dad had been traveling back and forth to Southeast Asia, having loved that part of the world since the Vietnam War era that dominated his early childhood. By the middle of 2016 he had been living there teaching English for about a year. That summer I was between jobs, so I eagerly took the opportunity to do one of my favorite things (i.e. travel) and see my dad.  It was a full trip. My dad was on break from teaching, so we traveled from almost the top of Vietnam to the bottom and back again, with a slight foray into Cambodia.  The pertinent part to this story though, is a tour we took while on an island in the south. It was a snorkeling excursion. (Aside: snorkeling is totally amazing and you should definitely do it if you ever have the chance!). On the boat with a hundred or mor...

Who would have thought that the better part of a year after my week long trip to Greece to work with refugees, I would still not have published a single public word about it? Yet, here we are. In some ways blogging about it now seems much less pertinent. After all, how well could I possibly remember details from events that happened more than eight months ago. Nevertheless, I truly feel that these stories are worth sharing, not only because of how they impacted me, but because they still illustrate the plight of thousands of individuals in our troubled world. My plan at this point is to recount the events of each of the ten days I was in Greece, and then delve into some of the sweet stories of people I met. For all I know, the posts that follow will be nothing like that, but it can't hurt to have some sort of framework, however malleable. So I invite you to join me in the following stories. I promise they will engage your heart, your compassion and your spirit if you let them...