“When I was a college student, I traveled around the world on this thing called Semester at Sea for a hundred days. We started in Vancouver and ended in Fort Lauderdale. So I went to 13 countries along the way and spent like seven days in India, Turkey, Greece, Morocco, and other interesting places around.
Every port had something different to offer. So one of our ports was Malaysia. Beautiful country, very clean country too. We were in Egypt while our ship was going through the Suez Canal, and when we were off we got to see the pyramids at sunrise. That was really cool too.
It’s really hard to pick your most favorite place because they are so different. For example, Japan versus Egypt. They’re completely different places! Probably the thing that fascinated me the most was that one of our ports was Istembul. And if you’re on the European side of Istanbul, which is the smaller portion versus the Asian side, you cross over a bridge and the culture is very different between the two. So that was probably one of the most fascinating things that I experienced.
For transportation, we were on an old merchant marine ship that had been converted into a cruise ship. But it was fun. It becomes your home. Like, you know, you’re in an important port for like four or five days, and you’ve traveled away to visit different parts and you come to the port and you’re just like: “oh, I’m home, I can relax and do whatever.” But it was old. You would wash your clothes and sometimes they would come back with rust stains. But, you know, we didn’t care. You weren’t worrying about how your hair looked or things you’d normally worry about. Yeah. There was no one to cut hair on the ship and at one point, a girl who did hairstyling decided to make some money by cutting people’s hair.
The impact that probably all of us would say that have gone on these voyages is just, your view of the world is completely different when you come back. When you return, you just look at things from a very different global perspective. For example, when I started the voyage, I was not very into religion and things like that. And as you experience different countries with different religions, and all of the believers and a higher power, you think: “maybe there’s something I’m missing in life.” It opened my eyes to the world of religions more than I’ve ever experienced before.
And then there’s the bond that you form with all those people. You’re so disconnected from everybody that you’re forced to kind of become a community on the ships. We’re all in the same boat.That bond is really tight, because it’s so tiring and it’s so emotional and you all experience the highs and the lows together.
Ultimately, the whole trip is really just a special experience that can’t be summed up in even an hour of talking.”
