Day 90. 2 Days til Hawaii (Japan blog forthcoming)

Hey all

Today was great. After the talent show last night, we ended up staying up til about 4 AM, talking, playing and hanging on the top deck (it was so nice up there). So this morning, I slept in real late, grabbed lunch and just relaxed all day before going to class.

I did an interview with Jerry, the ship's videographer about my thoughts on SAS and the impact it's had on my life. I'm sure you'll read more about these two things in the coming weeks as I'm forced to put my emotions into words, but I'll share with you what I told him. Semester at Sea has put the world into focus in my life, and in many ways, its effects on me won't be seen until long after I'm off the MV Explorer. Since I've been experiencing this voyage with 700 other people, it's hard to measure personal growth or change... since we're all changing with eachother at the same time. It's when I get home, and can look at myself in comparison to things that have more or less remained the same, that I'll realize how different I act, think, perceive the world over which I traveled. In summation, NOT having these amazing people to talk to and de-compress with- the people who have been with me from the very beginning- is terrifying to me.

We had a very emotional discussion about war in my media studies class. My point of view was that if the people who have waged war were fortunate enough to see the world like we have, I doubt the war would have been waged in the same way. In my optimistic opinion, from the crusades to the holocaust, agressors had to view their victims not as human beings, but as a virus- a non-human problem to be wiped from the world. It's my opinion that nobody could do the atrocities our history speaks of if they considered them fellow human beings. I can only hope that's true. In that reasoning, if these people were able to see the smiling faces of the Vietnamese, the bustling steetcorners of Hiroshima, I doubt they would have been able to make the decisions they did. If we lived in a world where people saw eachother as people, it would be a very different world indeed.

We also shared an interesting program this evening at 2000. We participated in something that was designed to show us how different each of our backgrounds were, and how different each of our upbringings are. The moderator would read a prompt, like "I worry about holding hands with the person I love in public" or "me or one of my immediate family members have used food stamps" or "I worry about paying for my college education" ... and we were told to stand or sit according to how the prompt applied to us.


We broke into small groups and discussed what we saw. Les McCabe, the executive dean and president of ISE was in my group, and our discussion was really interesting. I think that there is a large stereotype about SAS that only affluent white Americans participate in the voyages, and yet, tonight's activity showed me that is untrue. Our shipboard community is made of people from different walks of life, different ethnicities, backgrounds and customs. It was a good insight to the community with which I've traveled the world.

Tomorrow, I'll post the Japan blog, write some FDPs for class, and get ready for HAWAII. I can't believe that our ship will be flying the US colors in just 2 days! It's crazy!

Talk to you tomorrow.

PS. Time Change tonight. We are now on Hawaii's time zone, EST -6