During their time in Florence, students stay at the Villa, Harding's campus in Italy where students live and take classes during the semester. They had many opportunities to visit the Duomo and other local attractions in Florence, Italy, during fall 2017. II Photo courtesy of Grant Schol The Parthenon is located in Athens, Greece, and is a main attraction of the Greece leg of the HUG/HUF fall 2017 semester. Students visited the Parthenon on the Acropolis which overlooks the entirety of Athens during their time in Greece in fall 2017. II Photo courtesy of Silas Heffley THE BEST OF B TH WORLDS · WORDS Emi!J L'r?'heeless I I PHOTOS Grant chol 6 Silas Heffley In fall 2017, 40 students embarked on a new study abroad program, which combined the Harding University in Greece (H G) trip and the Harding Univer ·ity in Florence (H 'F) trip. This allowed the students to see what made each program so special. Sophomore Coleman VanBrunt wa · one of the student on the first H G/ H F trip and felt the exrenence was similar to other study abroad programs, simply because of the traY ling. ''A rule [I] had on the trip was to try eveq thing at least once," anBrunt said. "I was nervous about the big change of lea ing everything at home, but having friends who I admire and can always keep me laughing made any one of the multiple sites , e visited feel like home." When the students started their time in Greece, they were able to follow Paul's missionary journey throughout the country. In addition t tho e trips, the group went into thens and visited the Parthenon, Mars Hill, Olympic location and other well-known tourist sites. ne weekend, students were allowed to pack their bags, fly and free-travel wherever they wanted to g . Clay Beason, director f the HUG program, spoke about the affordability of traveling in Greece. "Students can fly in xp nsivelyin and out of thens," Bea on said." ome flight are as low as 50 round trip." The fir t half of the trip wa focused on th H G porti n of the trip, and the second portion captured the highlights of HUF. The transitional trip between HUG/HUF was a week-long trip to Israel where the students visited many Biblical historic ites. fter leaving Israel, Robert Shackelford, director of H F, took the student to Rome and then to Florence, where the student stayed for the remainder of the trip. The H portion of the trip " as filled with visits to many historic museum , churche and cities including aples, an Girnignano, iena, Pisa and others. The students were able to have cultural exchanges all across Italy. "We were super happy to work with director Clay and Loren Beason on this new idea and program," hackelford said. "I followed their progress on lnstagram, prayed for them and was excited when they joined us after a little over a month." During the three months a'-i ay from Searcy, the students also took part in classes. While at HUG, the students studied and visited sites for their humanities course, fir t ancient civilizations and then the Greek and Roman history. When they got to HUF, they continued their study of Roman history, art, philosophy and moved on to the Medieval and Renaissance periods. " oing to either program, or in this case combining the programs, really gives tudents and visiting faculty a gl bal perspective," Beason said. " tudents come inc ntact with different cultures and religions. It is definitely an impacting experience in pursuit of integrating faith, learning and Ii ing." I C G) :e C '"Tl ::::::::: c., co
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