May 29

We are on our second boat trip in twenty-four hours. This eight-hour voyage will put us into Athens in just a few minutes. Everyone has a berth in a cabin, so hopefully we will be rested and ready to begin touring the city
We are crossing out of the contemporary Muslim world and into the world of Orthodox Christianity, a tradition that most of our students seem to know less about than Islam, and less about than ancient Greece.. I was pleased that many of them responded to their awareness of this lack with eager questions, some of which went beyond my mediocre knowledge of the history and theology of the Eastern church. I became keenly aware one of the most important aspects of a trip like this. Our students are spending nearly three weeks in constant contact with people who look and sound different, but I am sure they expected this – they encounter ethnic and linguistic diversity pretty regularly in the United States. Now they are not only surrounded by this difference, but they are moving through worlds shaped by these different ways of being. They have responded as they should – with exuberance, bewilderment, frustration, and curiosity.
When I think of what I do at Belmont University every day, interacting with students for four years on our Nashville campus, I am always grateful for the opportunity to find my place in the world in such a way. A trip like this with seventeen students and another colleague takes that work to an entirely different level. As we make our way through strange and beautiful places, I am grateful to be their companion, to learn from their reactions and responses, and to see them beginning to become citizens of a much larger world.
- Mark McEntire