My Experience with Wanderlust

I can remember how beautiful the Mexican city looked as the ship began to sail out of the harbor. How dark the sky was and how bright the stars were. The MV Explorer was buzzing with the excitement of over 600 students as we embarked on the most amazing journey of our lives. Over the course of four months we would experience the different cultures and ways of living in 12 different countries, while studying on a ship that would circumnavigate the globe.


Exactly one year ago today, I began my study abroad experience through Semester at Sea. Words always fail me when it comes to describing this voyage. How could I possibly portray the essence of my experience with enough brevity to not annoy friends and family? Thinking back on this time makes me so very nostalgic; this was an incredible trip that I wish I could live over and over again.

Studying abroad truly changed my life. I thought that I was a very independent person before I left, but after travelling alone in a 3rd world country, I feel empowered to do anything. I learned to just go with the flow of things when my group and I were almost stranded in Vietnam. I gained experience with intercultural communications in Japan where almost no one spoke English. The list continues.

It also had some negative changes, including the fact that I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life anymore. I had been so set in my ways and then the things that I saw unraveled everything. While I love my hometown, I will never be truly happy here. There will always be that desire to get out and experience what the world has to offer. I often question whether I will ever be able to settle down in one place. What can a person do to when they have lived out their biggest dreams before they even turned 20?

I am certain that I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure this out.

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Life after Semester at Sea

While I still have posts on Spain, China, and Japan to write, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the four months that changed my look on the world.  At the end of this trip, I was so ready to come home; I missed it a lot.  Seeing my boyfriend waiting for me at the airport, brought me a joy that I'd never felt before, and knowing that I would be seeing my family shortly after made me ecstatic.  I couldn't stop staring out of my window to see what had changed of my own world during my time away.  Not much had changed, which was a relief for someone who had seen many places completely different from home.
I haven't gone through my pictures yet, and I have avoided my blog.  I think because I don't want to think about how great it was and how much I miss it.  I have fallen back into my old routine, which was very comforting after being thrown out of it for a third of a year.  The question I have is what do you do after you have lived out your biggest dream before you even turned 20?  I know it is time to come up with new dreams.  None of these new dreams are as exciting as Semester at Sea was.  The planning and the saving for this trip made it seem like it would never happen, never come.  It did though, and it was truly incredible.  What can I do with my life to top that?  Someday I want to get married and have a family, working a job as some sort of scientist, but I want and need something to do that is exciting before I settle down.  I need to get out and travel more.
In a year, I will be traveling England for a little while with my sister and grandmother.  That will be nothing like SAS was though.  It wont involve backpacking through the whole country.  I will probably see the major sights and that will be it.  That isn't a problem, but SAS taught me a new way to travel.  One where you see more than just the extraordinary.  I got to see how people lived their lives in places completely different from America.  I want to get that back. 
I would very much love to travel around Europe like I did with SAS.  I would also like to see Central and South America.  I want to see the world, and while I did travel around the whole globe and saw a variety of places, I do not feel like it was enough.  There is still plenty more to see.  Maybe my next dream should be one similar to SAS.  I will plan out a whole trip to see these places that I have not experienced yet.  I am so grateful for SAS, what it taught me, and what I saw, and I want to take what I learned and live it again.

The Beginning and the End

This day was a sad one.  It was my last on the ship.  We woke up early, finished packing and waited for the announcement for our sea to get off of the ship.  We got all of our bags out and headed for a cab.  The line was so long we waited for half an hour with all of our bags.  I only had 2 bags, but Heather had 4 and Ayla had 3.

          The emotions on the ship were all over the place.  So many of us were ready to get home, while others were anticipating another month of traveling.   Heather and I were in the group ready to get home, but my feelings were so conflicting.  I wanted to see my family, but I also wanted to be able to keep living my dream.  I ended in Europe, and I just wanted to be able to see all of it before returning to the States.  Throughout the whole voyage these feelings were changing from wanting to keep going after SAS or just returning home.

While this was the end of my time on the ship, it was the beginning of my life after Semester at Sea.  This is the part where I have to try to integrate all of the things that I've seen and learned into my life at home.  I would love to make a change in the world.  SAS has made me more passionate about going into a genetics career.  There is so much that I could do to help the world with it.  At the same time, SAS has opened many new doors to what I can do with genetic research, making me question what part of it I really want to get into.  I just hope that I will be able to use my new knowledge to make a real difference.

          The first day in Spain was very uneventful.   It consisted mostly of getting acclimated to our new hostel and figuring out some plans for the next couple of days.  Heather, Ayla, and I found a restaurant, which happened to be a Chinese restaurant (go figure), that was full of Korean people!  They definitely were not Chinese.  Maybe that’s just how they look after years of life in Spain.  Our hostel was located in the section of Barcelona known as Badalona.  Here they speak a dialect of Spanish known as Catalan.  It resembles Spanish a little bit, but not enough for me to understand it.  We ordered our meals – I had a Catalan pizza, which was just pizza with some cheese and vegetables on it. 

Alumni Ball

As of today Semester at Sea considers us all alumni.  We had the Alumni Ball and Dance.  Dinner was the best that I had ever had on the ship.  I had shrimp cocktail, salad, soup that had too much vinegar in it, and delicious salmon.  It was definitely the best fish they have served.  Along with it was a glass of champagne (international water drinking age is 18).  Desert was about 3 hours later, and it was seriously a buffet of chocolate.  There were chocolate balls, cake pops, chocolate cake, chocolate covered nuts, white chocolate covered recees, chocolate éclairs, and so much more!  I definitely had too much to eat of it, but the dance was right after.  For dinner I wore my sari, and for the desert buffet and dance I wore the dress made in Vietnam.

In the second picture is Jackie, Mike, myself, and Heather.  The third picture is at the dance with our psych. professor!  The other picture was blurry so I had to put up the embarrassing one of him. 

Tips for Camel Riding - From an Experienced Rider

1. Do not scare the camel. It will get up while you are in the process
of getting on.
2. Make sure you sit on the correct part of the camel. There should be
an area with padding that will let you know where to sit. If you're
sitting on the wrong part, you will know it. It will be painful.
3. Bring extra padding! It will help to keep your butt from hurting.
4. Try to relax your legs as much as possible! Your inner thighs might
be sore afterwards if not relaxed.
5. Try not to bounce around too much on the camel. That will also hurt
your butt.
6. You can hold on to the handlebars, or let go. Either one is fine!
7. Look around and enjoy the sights of the desert!
8. If you are looking for an ab/oblique workout, then try to hold your
torso as stiff as possible! If you aren't looking for that, then just
let yourself rock back and forth!
9. Don't worry if the camel is wobbly getting up or down; that's
normal! If the camel also decides to just put the front half of its
body down, then just wait. This is also normal!
10. Remember to have fun!

Saharan Camel Trek

        This morning a group of 41 of us were going to take a camel trek.  We thought that it was only going to be a three hour drive, so no one brought anything to do, but the tour company failed to tell us that it would be a 12 hour drive to the camel trek.  We drove through the Atlas Mountains, and it was gorgeous.  The contrasts to the environment there were very obvious.  There would be sections of just mountain or sections where the Berber people live.  They had their homes right in the hills of the mountains.  There were fields of rice and grass along with tall trees. 

          When we finally got the camel trek at 7pm, we were ready to go.  I rode my camel incorrectly the whole time, because he got up in the middle of me getting on.  I was holding onto the handles with one leg on top of the camel while hanging from him.  I wasn’t on far enough to pull myself up, so someone had to push me up.  My butt is still unhappy from that ride.  It was an hour long trek to our camp.

          The camp was very nice and had multiple tents for four people.  It actually had real beds, and they served us dinner and breakfast.  Dinner was soup and bread, potatoes, chicken, and carrots.  Desert was the most juicy, flavorful honeydew melon I have ever had.  After this we sat by a campfire and listened to the Muslim men there play music on their drums.  There was plenty of dancing and singing.         

        I slept rather well despite the camels groaning all night and the cold.  In the morning we had a quick breakfast of bread, butter, and tea and then got going.  We took the camels back another hour, and then made the 12 hour drive back.  The camel ride was much better when you sat on it correctly, and was rather enjoyable. 

        The second picture is of a turkey sandwich we had on the way back.  It was great!