Rhodes

5/4/17

We arrived in Rhodes this morning and soon after met with several different hotel managers.  Something that amazes me about people here is that even though english is their second language, so many people speak really good english.  This “business visit” was definitely the shortest one that we’ve had, but there were still things that I found valuable:

1. Being an effective communicator is the most important factor in managing people
2. Being able to work effectively on a team is the second most important factor in managing people

Something that surprised me was how good the managers’ english was.  It amazes me that we come to their country and speak english to them and they understand a lot of what we say.  So many people seem to be bilingual here.  

We then all went to the beach and swam/laid out.  The water was freezing, but it was refreshing!  It was nice to just relax and do nothing but chill at the beach.  Then after dinner we went and walked around the old town.  The castle of the knights was spectacular.  It was HUGE!  It’s hard to fathom that people built this huge castle back a several hundreds of years ago, and that it is still standing today.

Takeaway/highlight of the day was learning from the hotel managers.  What they said really rang true to me, and although I’ve heard that multiple times, I think it was important to hear again.

5/5/17

Today we had a tour or Rhodes and LIndo’s, which is a older part of Rhodes.  We learned the the Colossus of Rhodes symbolized freedom and democracy.  It’s size was comparable to the size of the U.S. Statue of Liberty.  Another fact about Rhodes that we learned was that it was given to Apollo, the God of the sun and it’s said that Apollo send down golden rain and this signifies the fact that Rhodes has plenty of water (i.e. Apollo blessed Rhodes with water).  

One thing that I took away from this tour was just how much pride Greeks take in their culture and history.  You would think that maybe after thousands of years, maybe their pride about their country’s history might decrease over time, but our tour guide showed none of this.  She definitely made it seem that Greeks are still very passionate about their history which I thought was really cool.

Lindo’s was definitely my favorite part of the tour.  It was an older part of Rhodes where there was a castle on top of the Acropolis.  The houses/village there were built into the hill/mountain.  The white houses made the city look beautiful.  We walked down to the beach front and then walked out to this dock/pier in the bay.  When we got there, there was a bunch of kids jumping off of the pier.  Watching them combined with he fact that it was super hot outside, Calvin decided that he was going to jump into the water even though he didn’t have boardshorts.  Lets just say FOMO is real, because I ended up jumping too!  We also convinced Sarah and Lindsay to jump.  It was definitely the highlight of the day.  The water was crystal clear and so refreshing.