My family had the honor of accompanying 16 college students to Greece this summer for HUG, Harding's travel abroad program. This was the second time we've had this opportunity; twelve years ago we took our boys, ages 2 and 4, to HUG. It was a whole lot easier this time with 14 and 16 year olds!
We absolutely loved living in the Artemis, Harding's hotel in Porto Rafti, along with the college students, directors Daniel and Meagan Adams, assistant Lacey Bortell, and the wonderful Artemis staff. The students acted as 16 big brothers and sisters to our boys and genuinely reflected God's love to our family.
My wife Becky thoroughly documented our trip on Instagram, but I'll include a few photos below. Our HUG experience can roughly be broken up into these parts:
- Athens (including church in Elliniko)
- Life in the Artemis (including teaching and classes)
- Egyptian trip (Aswan, Nile cruise, Nubian village, Aswan, Cairo)
- Northern Greece trip (Mount Olympus, Meteora, Thessaloníki)
- Peloponnese trip (Corinth canal, Acrocorinth, Ancient Corinth, Olympia
- Free travel on island of Aegina
- Island of Crete
- Israel trip (Tiberias, Sea of Galilee, Jordan river, Dead Sea, Bethlehem, Jericho, Jerusalem)
The trips were amazing. We enjoyed so many beautiful and historic locations and ate some wonderful food. I especially enjoyed being in Israel and seeing the places mentioned in the Bible and where Jesus actually walked. Our time in Israel coincided with the passing of a new law that curtailed the Supreme Court's power. We saw lots of protestors out demonstrating and even had to alter our trip to see the Dead Sea Scrolls because protests had shut down the museum.
Besides the travel, there were a few sports-related things I got to do. I played Padel for the first time. It's a mixture between tennis and racquetball, and it's the number one growing sport in Europe. I enjoyed playing it even more than pickleball! I also played pickleball on the oldest pickleball court in Greece, which is just 10 minutes from the Artemis. And finally I played tennis twice on clay courts.
