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.
