Deborah Cunningham Hellenic Legacy Scholarship recipient

Hi, I'm Deborah Cunningham, the first recipient of the Hellenic Legacy Scholarship and I am a senior at Wheaton College studying ancient languages and this semester I'm here at DERI, the American College of Greece. Hi Deborah, so why did you choose DERI, the American College of Greece, for your study abroad experience? I chose to come to DERI because, well, as soon as I knew I wanted to study abroad I knew I wanted to come to Greece ever since I started studying ancient Greek. My freshman year I really wanted to come and just out of all the programs I looked at this seemed the most accessible to Americans and at the same time offering the most Greek experience I guess. A lot of other programs felt kind of like a extended tour of the country as opposed to actually living there so I just I like the idea of getting to actually hang out with Greek people. How has the Hellenic Legacy Scholarship affected you? The Hellenic Legacy Scholarship has been a huge help to me and my family. I found out that a lot of my financial aid or really all of it from my home school wasn't going to transfer and so it was going to be pretty tough to pay for it but the scholarship has been a big support and in addition to that just the fact that I have to do a blog for the scholarship I feel like makes me want to make the most of my time here and just have as many adventures as possible. What has surprised you most about Greece in the short time you have been here? I would say there have been a lot of things about Greece that have surprised me but maybe one of the biggest ones is just the amount of variety and diversity in this country which sounds funny since I'm coming from America but I guess I just didn't expect it here but with the different ages and beliefs and opinions and ethnicities and all that it's been really interesting to get to know. What do you see as the advantages of GRE the American College of Greece? There are definitely a lot of advantages of ACG. It's 30 minutes from downtown Athens so I could literally go downtown every day if I wanted to which is awesome and then just in addition to that like I said before the fact that I'm at a Greek university but the classes are in English is wonderful. I would be in a little over my head if the classes were in Greek so I'm just really enjoying that experience.