Semester at Sea

Ours was the Millennium voyage, the Mr. MOB voyage, the CNN voyage, or otherwise known as the voyage that changed my life.   We were going around the world, literally. A fact we reminded ourselves of in every port as we posed for pictures in front of the Great Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, with our arms above our heads in a circle; clearly the universal sign for ‘going around the world.’ 

 I knew it was a significant time of my live, I’m sure I had an inkling that it could be life changing, but I was 21 years old.  There was no way to know how truly significant it would be then. I’m not sure, even now, I fully understand the impact taking that voyage has had on me. If I had known, would I have done anything differently?

  I’m not sure how many countries I had visited when I stepped foot onto the ship, but I know I added 10 more in those three months and gained a desire and zest for travel that cannot be quenched. I am now at 43 countries and all seven continents. My ultimate goal is to travel to every country in the world.  It’s lofty I know, but so was my goal of going on Semester at Sea, and that happened.

 After Semester at Sea, I moved to Chicago for a few years after graduating college. Then I took a TEFL course and moved to Santiago, Chile, where I taught for a year and a half. I returned to the states to get my master’s in education and then was off again; this time to Comayagua, Honduras for a year to teach high school.  I never wanted to teach before, but after Semester at Sea I knew I wanted to travel, and teaching became the way I could do that. I continue to teach ESL as CSU and remain in an international community while residing in the States, something I didn’t know was possible.   All of this, I am certain, is not a path I would have chosen were it not for one particular voyage.

 And so, when a good friend from the ship, Ron, recently posted a video of our semester around the world, a compilation of our time on the ship, which we affectionately called The Great White Mother, and our time around the various 10 countries we visited, I was in tears remembering the incredible times we had. I became so nostalgic it hurt.

 On the ship and in the months and years that followed our arrival back in the States I vowed that I would one day return to The Great White Mother, this time as a teacher.  It was pretty hard being back in the States and setting another goal of returning to the ship made things a little easier. Before disembarking at our final port in Miami, I learned that this difficulty returning home had a name, reverse culture shock. I had never heard of such a thing, yet it was something I would become very familiar with with every journey I would return ‘home’ from. It never gets easier.

 It is no longer a possibility to return to The Great White Mother, as she has been put to rest wherever it is great ships go.  But there is another ship and another voyage, isn’t there always? Ron’s video and perhaps the new year has let me return to that goal.  How did I ever get away from it?

 Directly after watching the video I got on the Semester at Sea website, well that’s not true, directly after I went outside to smoke a cigarette and compose myself. I was at work after all.  Directly after that cigarette, I came back in and got on the website. I looked at the different employment opportunities. I applied to one. I found four others I could also possibly qualify for. 

 It’s funny the way tiny reminders can bring you back to giant goals.  For me, seeing all those old friends, dear countries and the ship brought me back to a time in my life that I can now, 15 years later, say was perfect. It will always be the time in my life to which everything else is compared, and generally pales.

 I know I cannot recreate it. I’ve thought that before about returning to Chile.  And as another good friend from that time in my life pointed out, when I texted him to tell him I wanted to return to Semester as Sea and therefore needed to get my Phd, “Would they really let a PhD student go? It wouldn’t be quite the same.” I had to clarify for him, that getting my PhD would be the means by which I would become a professor on the ship, not a student.  And no, it wouldn’t be the same. Of course it wouldn’t.

 If I had known, would I have done anything differently? Probably not.  That’s the problem, isn’t it?  We’ve no way of knowing exactly what this moment or that journey is going to be for us.  We can only hope that some day, long after it is all over, we can look back and remember it the way we hoped we would before we ever started.