Concordia CMLL Study Tour

By Matt Buell

~That’s me in 2002, second from left (the one with the chinstrap, wearing the Green Lantern shirt). This photo was taken in the old city of Nicosia when I was a participant on a summer study program run by Brock University.

In May 2002 I set off to participate on my first summer abroad program. The destination was Cyprus. For me the experience was transformative. Not only did I meet a number of lifelong friends, both fellow field school participants and Cypriots, but I fell in love with the island’s landscape, its villages, towns, and cities. While there, I consumed everything that I could – music and food were primary indulgences. For me, it was these things – people, land and cityscape, food and music – that created a sense of place. I have not looked back. Every year since that summer, I have travelled to the Mediterranean to spend my summer months conducting archaeological research. Along the way, I’ve met many new friends, and have experienced many new and different things, all of which have changed me, influencing my values and beliefs in profound ways. In short, my travels and the experiences accumulated along the way have become fundamental aspects of my identity and my own sense of self.

This year, I along with my colleague, Jane, will take 20 students to Greece, most for the first time. There, we will travel from Athens to the Peloponnese, to Boeotia, and, finally, to Crete. While our destinations, our Ithakas, are certainly important, it is my hope that our journeys are just as fulfilling.

Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Cavafy, C.P. “Ithaka,” in C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems, trans. E. Keeley and P. Sherrard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).