Today, I set sail from Nassau to start my journey around the world!
Aside from going through the huge ordeal of almost losing my passport and not being able to be a part of the voyage, I am now settled in and am now having a great time!
My advice to travelers, is when going to multiple destinations and having to bring all of your belongings with you at each stop, make sure that you thoroughly double check that you have ALL of your important documents! I really can’t stress this enough after failing to do this myself. My suggestion is to make a list of all the important items/documents that you brought along with you to your destination and make sure and check off everything that you physically have upon departure. When traveling in foreign countries, your passport and visas are as important to have as your eyes, being that without them you go nowhere see nothing.
If I had not been able to be a part of this experience because of my carelessness, I would have really been let down and disappointed. What happened today has already made me so much more organized. Having gone through this, I appreciate being on the ship so much more!
On a different note, I was fortunate enough to be placed in an outside deck 3 window cabin, and have a really nice room mate who is from Dallas Texas.
All of today has been focused around orientation and meeting new people and getting to know our faculty and crew members. I got to meet some really inspiring staff that we are very fortunate to have on this journey.
In one of our meetings with our Dean of Students, she presented a really great speech that evoked a lot of questions that I want to explore thoughout my journey here. “Who am I?” “What are the things that I value now?” “Who will I be after this experience is finished?“ and “How will I respond to and interact with the people and cultures I encounter throughout this voyage?” I can tell you what I think now, but I realized that so much of what I think is going to significantly change, and the real answer is that, I really do not know. I hope to grapple with these questions throughout my journey to find meaningful ways to articulate and interpret these answers to myself once my journey is done.
I feel like being on the Semester at Sea boat alone is a cultural experience in itself that is already starting to change me. Being so far away from home and sailing with such a diverse group of people is really forcing out there to meet new people and adapt to a completely different lifestyle of living on a ship, something that I am still in the process of getting used to.
I hope that tomorrow I will get a better idea of what to expect on this journey and meet people who I can explore with when arriving in the countries.
I’m still trying to adjust to the time difference and am exhausted from today. The ship has finally settled down and is quiet from a crazy day! I hope to have a great orientation tomorrow
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