By now you have probably spent a great deal of time reading over materials that describe the CYA program from an academic point of view. This section is meant to give you a glimpse at student life: the experience of joining the CYA community and getting to know Athens, a remarkable, historic, contemporary, energetic, intriguing, changing-by-the-minute city.

Whether you choose to spend a semester or a full year at CYA, you will embark on a truly extraordinary journey in which you will step out of the world of the familiar into a culture both exciting and new. Depending on your degree of curiosity, courage, and enthusiasm, you are giving yourself the chance to embrace a way of life remarkably different from your own.

Greeks, you will discover, have their own ways of eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, communicating and teaching, worshipping, working, shopping, dressing, relaxing, and having fun. CYA student life is about making the best use of every opportunity to see how you react—and who you become—when you try new customs, a new language, and a broad new learning environment on for size.

As one student wrote at the end of her semester at CYA, “I have learned that the best things happen when we have no expectations and when we make the best of whatever life throws our way. I have learned…never to pass up an opportunity, even if you have no idea what it will bring.”

Making the most of CYA student life is a question of attitude: the one you bring with you and the one you acquire during your stay. So take courage. Step out of yourself. And never pass up an opportunity to learn something new.