My dear friends, enemies, and those who find themselves somewhere in the middle, today I come to you to add some perspective to your lives. We need to talk about how Greeks (and maybe Europeans in general?) treat alcohol.<\/p>\n
Before this semester, I was one of those people who had never touched any kind of alcoholic drink. I never liked the drinking culture in America with kids constantly getting blitzed. Since I was in high school and my friends started drinking, I knew it wasn’t for me; I enjoyed Sober Jack way too much to want to meet Drunk Jack. However I told myself that I would at least try some wine with dinner while I was in Greece because that’s what people do over here. I wanted to immerse myself in the culture a little bit. Greeks do not get drunk in the same way Americans do. It’s not part of their culture, they believe it’s a very vulgar act and see drunk people as having little self control. I can’t express how refreshing this mentality is. <\/em>On top of this, they teach their kids from a young age how to drink responsibly by giving them sips of wine with the family, thus erasing its allure that draws American teens to stealing beers from their parents.<\/p>\n Tonight, a couple friends and I had dinner together at two of the kids’ apartment. I went to the grocery store, bought a bottle of wine to split between the 6 of us, and we all enjoyed a glass with our meal (Moussaka, a Greek dish that my friend whipped up, excellent stuff). In America, not only could I not legally buy this bottle of wine, but I would be carded until I looked well older than 21, but here drinking is such a non-issue that it’s as easy as buying a loaf of bread.<\/p>\n To drink like the Greeks, just a nice glass of wine with some friends, and not have to worry about babysitting those who get so intoxicated they can’t keep their heads up, is an unbelievable experience. For underage kids this would rarely happen at home because that’s not the culture we have, American teens\/college students think it more cool or fun to drink to excess .<\/p>\n I’m not here to stand on some soapbox to preach about lowering the drinking age, because that’s a complicated debate and I don’t have the desire for the law to change at all. Instead, I wish we as students could learn something from our European cousins and start to think more about what drinking responsibly is. Sure it’s plenty of fun to throw away inhibitions every once in a while, but is it not more enjoyable to enjoy dinner with some friends than to wake up every Sunday hungover? I know that when I come back home that I’ll be able to act responsibly as far as alcohol is concerned, but it will be weird coming home and not being able to legally buy something even though I’ll have spent this whole semester buying it.<\/p>\n With love,<\/p>\n Jack S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My dear friends, enemies, and those who find themselves somewhere in the middle, today I come to you to add some perspective to your lives. We need to talk about how Greeks (and maybe Europeans in general?) treat alcohol. Before this semester, I was one of those people who had never touched any kind of alcoholic drink….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14553,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9603\/revisions\/14553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}