Saturday was an off day for everyone and seven lovely ladies of Global LEAD
thought what better way to spend a free day in the beautiful Santorini than to visit
the city of Oia (pronounce ee-ah)—recognized as the city with the picturesque
Greek domes.
The night prior, in order to prepare for the day off, a few friends and I watched
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, the movie. In case you didn’t know, parts of the
movie were filmed in Oia, Santorini. Like little schoolgirls, we squealed at the parts
where the main characters fell in love, road mopeds, and played on the docks. And
we made mental notes and maps in order to find the places of the movie in the
actual city the next day.
The fated off day arrived and the ladies and I took a short bus ride over to the most
beautiful city in the world. This is not an overstatement. When we all imagined what
our Greece study abroad would look like, this was the place of our dreams. Blue
domes. White homes. Pink flowers. Green oceans. The senses were overwhelmed
as we shopped, ate, and played in the most gorgeous place, hands down, we’d ever
seen. I think my cheeks still hurt from smiling at the beauty of it all day.
And needless to say we thought every other home we passed was the one filmed
from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Who can tell what building was more
beautiful than the next, or if one winding alleyway was the twin of the one in the
movie. But we had an adventure trying to find the sets from the film—I’m pretty
sure we found the correct dock though, which was shamelessly exciting for all us
girls.
In addition to our sisterhood thrills, the rest of our day went as follows:
Cliff jumping—Check
Impromptu photo shoots—Check
Donkey riding—Check
Jewelry shopping—Check
Sunset watching—Check
It was literally the perfect day. From the sites, to the friends, to the shopping (oh
my!), Oia could have been better. As the seven of us, all happily exhausted, rode the
bus home that night, I distinctly remember being in awe of the amount of happiness
I was feeling. My mantra this trip has been “Is this real life?” because I find myself
saying it in my head again and again in amazement of all the incredible stuff we’ve
been up to through Global LEAD. This was just one of those many times that I
thought life was too good to be true.
But this is real. We’re living the dream.
-Alyson Farzad & Sydney Anderson
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