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.