Reflection

Some of you might have noticed the first reflection that went up before i decided to take it down for sometime to really reflect on that. I was told that it seemed a bit negative and so upon rereading it i pulled it completely and spent time contemplating how i was going to rewrite this piece. I realized a few things.

1. there really is no perfect way to really reflect on something that takes a lifetime to reflect on
2. This piece that i am going to write will never be the tip of the iceberg for me.
3. I lived this trip for me and no one else

There are a few things that i have noticed since i have been home. First off is all the lessons that I already or will learn over the course of my lifetime will be put to use when the time comes to be. I have had friends and family ask me about what i learned and to be honest, i am still even now soaking in the whole trip. This trip is not something that can be fully taken in an instant. It goes over the course of your lifetime from work to things you do at home. You begin to adopt new behaviors that you liked while abroad. A chunk of my lessons will probably not take place until I start classes in the Fall. I don’t even think that my end of the year reflection will really put this whole trip into perspective. There are far too many ends to it. To write this reflection now well being home and away from my home university at USD (U. of San Diego) still to me seems a little well....I can't even come up with exact words for it or even something close so I will let you fill in the blank with the word you think best fits. This reflection might seem a bit brief but honestly it’s what I feel is best and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.

Starting this trip was a lot for me. A lot of stress, a lot of trouble and certainly some things that were best to have not happened but they did. I did have good times going up to the trip as well despite the troubling bad times. Packing and getting to the airport was only the beginning for me. I met army people at the airport heading to Miami. I even met a old man while i was in Dallas who asked me if i was just going to go get drunk. While i found that appalling i knew there was negative connotations that came with Semester at Sea   Moving on from that, I was wearing my SAS sweatshirt that my parents gave to me for christmas in addition to things that i would need for the trip. I was content though with finally being able to say i could travel by myself and manage what i wanted to do. I was not able to do that before and I was excited to be able to do this myself now.

Getting to the Bahamas was tiring and exhausting and i was glad that the first night just went well. I had an amazing room (courtesy of my mother helping me get the room since THANK YOU MOM!!). For me i did want a vacation before i went on this trip to do whatever i wanted when i wanted to. While i love the beach, i was happy to not be there. I wanted to explore the Bahamas for what it was and i did with extra. I got to be there during the elections and listen to people talk about voting like it was the normal thing to do. I even got a lot of questions on if i voted and i felt slightly embarassed to tell them that i haven't however i felt inspired enough to vote in every election when i got home and that stayed with me for the entire trip. I even wrote a paper on voting for Global Studies later on in the semester but i am getting ahead of myself here. For me the Bahamas was an amazing place to be and i wish i could have stayed longer to get more of a feel for it.

Getting on the ship was exciting because it was finally happening for me. I was finally on the ship (not boat. There is a difference and onboard, it was common to get teased if you said boat instead of ship) that would take me across the world. I remember that day that a Disney ship was parked next to us and we were busy laughing about how we should’ve been on that ship for all the Disney characters but we knew that wasn’t the point of the trip but we had to have a little joke about it. We left a day late but it was nice to see the 24 people who had to visa issues make it to the ship in time. Everyone on board seemed so excited.

Since we were running a little late, the ship hauled like crazy to get to Dominica. I have to say that Dominica was naturally beautiful but it also felt like a vacation to me. The seriousness of the trip hadn’t really set in for me yet. I didn’t know what would happen after the fact. It was just the beginning for me but I had a good time for the brief time I was there but I wish I could have learned more about the culture and food there. Things just are though.

Brazil initially I liked and I had a good time.  The only negative thing I really had to say about the place that I was in was that to get tourists to pay they torture animals in the amazon. I am not saying that all of them do it. Just some of them (not anyone that is a professional tour guide of any sort) and it depressed me a bit to see that happening. I unfortunately got sick on the last day though so I didn’t get to do as much as I liked but I still liked what I did and I admired the architecture so much in the city.

Ghana, well…I had a lot of mixed feelings about Ghana and I still do. I felt for the first 3 days of being in the country that I hated the place like no other. I was being treated like commodity and always being pulled to buy something to the point I really just wanted to stay on board the remainder of the trip. It wasn’t until I visited the non-profits that I actually had a better view of Ghana and I think it just depends I guess on how you take it. I knew people on board like Courtney who just fell in love with the country and then there were others who just absolutely despised the country. I fell in the middle. It was a love hate thing for me with Ghana.

South Africa was amazing because I got to see the best and worst of two worlds however I am disappointed that there has not been more incorporation of color but I should expect that with the whole deal with the apartheid. I went to a play the first night that really gave me a glimpse into the horrors of the apartheid. I also have been touched immensely by the story of Amy Biehl and the creation of the Amy Biehl Foundation that works at all the schools in the townships outside of Capetown. To me that was the most powerful story that I ever heard and much was learned from it. It was one that I would never forget which was the power of forgiveness. I remember a quote that my mom and I talked about at my grandpa’s house one morning it was the following:

Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk.  If you twist it into something it was never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator.  Forgiving seems almost unnatural.  Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do.  But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule.  ~Lewis B. Smedes

I was really grateful when I went wine tasting for the first time that my teacher was able to show me how to properly drink wine. I had never done it before (well I was under 21 at that point but in Cape Town the drinking age is 18) and I had was with the class on a trip to study how certain concepts in Operations management applied. I did learn I dislike red wines and I don’t mind the white wines as much but I had a good experience

Mauritius, we only stayed there for like 4 hours and still there was an incident but moving on from that, I would have loved to stay longer to try the food. But we were in a rush to get to India so I felt like we missed out a bit.

I initially was not interested in India and I had hopes that going there would change my mind about India. India well was hot like Ghana was. I remember just being constantly hot all the time but to see the sights in Kochi was quite nice. I did try some food there and it was pretty good but it just wasn’t anything that I necessarily liked to begin with. I heard all the horror stories of some of our ship board community getting taken in a taxi out to these homes in the middle of nowhere and just being bombarded by people to sell things. It felt like that when we would get off the ship and try to head to the buses. The taxi people kept trying to drag us elsewhere and we would have to like change our routes to get to the buses. The culture and traditions of India are truly unique especially when visiting the Jewish Synagogue for the first time. India was not my favorite place but I see it a little bit better than I used to see it.

Before I go on, I did a lot more independent traveling after India as I wanted to play it a bit safe in the beginning but a fitting quote would basically sum up my experiences into a single sentence for Singapore, Vietnam & China:

Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.  ~Ray Bradbury

Singapore! Oh the many things I could say but it was so much fun just to wander around with my friend Josh and purposely just get lost for part of the morning before the trip in the afternoon and even then I left the trip early to go get lost for a bit longer before I had to go back on the ship. I had so much fun. Singapore is so amazing that I pretty much had a good time. The subway system is so easy to navigate too!

Vietnam, well I spoke a lot about Vietnam and the whole experience being sober to me. I really don’t need to go too further into it but I do have to say that being able to learn about the Vietnam war from the perspective of the Vietnamese was definitely something to remember for the rest of my life and even from Senator Rob and Linda Rob’s point of view of how the war really affected them. I was thrilled to have learned so much in Vietnam and get lost in the streets let alone cross them. It’s a real trick to crossing the streets but a good word of advice: continue going forward and do not go back. You are likely to get hit if you go back then you are to go forward. So many people on motorcycles but it was fun crossing all of them!

Wow at China already, my original plans to go to Beijing then shanghai went to the wayside as my friend had a family emergency and had to go home so I traveled China pretty much on my own and I was pretty happy to be able to do that. Hong Kong was fun to be in and I wish I had stayed there longer and I wished I could have stayed longer in Macau but I had to catch a flight and that was fun. Staying 5 days in Shanghai and getting lost was the best thing I ever did. I got to see so much in a given time on my own. My mother did tell me that the entire time that I was in Shanghai on my own, she was pretty nervous but I kept assuring her that I was going to be alright. I still think it is funny to this day on how I stayed in a Japanese hotel in Shanghai. The toilet in my bathroom that I put pictures up on the blog about has been a hit with everyone I showed it to because it does more than American toilets do. I do have to say that traveling on the east coast of China is fairly easy and not too bad to do.

Japan had a little bit of its down points but I overall enjoyed my time there. I could have easily stayed another day at Fuji-san and at least 2 more days in Kyoto in the pouring rain. I loved learning about the temples and the history behind them. I also loved learning about the gods and how the gods are similar to some of the Hindu Gods. I have such a better understanding of how religions can be interconnected and I would wish that some people would see that. Even if the beliefs are slightly different, I think all religions are connected some how and therefore one will not always be right. Moving on from that, the train system in Japan is a bit confusing to me which made things a bit difficult to me but other than that. I could have easily lived in Kyoto. It made me feel so much at peace to be there and especially at the peak of the Sakura (“cherry blossom” for those who don’t know the translation) trees.

            Heading home was definitely a surprise and I couldn’t realize how fast everything went but it did and it was time to get serious with work. It was also getting to the point where people on board didn’t necessarily get a long as well as they used to in the beginning but things change as I have always been told and I only did my best to do my work and enjoy my time as I was hitting the tail end of things. There were some negative aspects of my last days but I don’t really like to remember them as such because it changes the experience to be something negative when it wasn’t. We all learn lessons and that is really what made my last days at sea that much greater. I remember when we got to Honolulu we were so frustrated that we were there for the entire day but we couldn’t get off the ship but I do remember one thing. It was so relieving to be able to call home and say hi to my mother for the first time since the Bahamas. I really didn’t do much in Hilo so I never really did a post on it since I didn’t do much. It was just a break right before finals and I still had a lot of work to do. I got off to go get food but that was it.

            My biggest change to happen was the last days from Hilo to San Diego. Events, hanging out and everything that you could imagine and it happened in the last 5 days. I was ready to go home and I felt it was time to really put a lot of what I learned to work. A lot of my lessons were school related but there is a good chunk that will be life lessons that I might not understand initially but I know later in life, those lessons will be a reality to me. The day we got in, I literally cried when I saw my home city of San Diego but I cried even more when I had to tell my best friend and lifelong SAS friend Kadian good bye and to tell her that I hope to see her again soon It was crazy getting off and to see my parents again was shocking. A lot of things happened on this trip. Some things that I didn’t mention like deaths in the family and other members getting sick not to mention my friends who got injured in life changing accidents. All of that has changed me in one way or another. I know in time though, a lesson will come from that.

           

Being home during the summer time gave me time to create a photo book with my experiences put together the way I wanted to remember what I did. I story I tell will be something I will tell over the course of my lifetime and I decided to get more involved with Semester at Sea as an Alumni because I felt a sense of belonging to that group. The think the biggest feeling though that has really kept me going for a while is the feeling of restlessness. I really want to get back to my university and be able to put what I learned to work. I keep getting asked questions like, “what did you learn?” or “Did you learn anything?”. To answer those questions, it’s yes I did learn in my classes. I learned a lot but a lot of it I can’t put into words. It can only be put into action. I see some of it coming out especially in my love for working for Non-profits like San Diego Foundation because I find myself becoming more efficient when I like to communicate with others and see success come out of non-profits. There is more for me to show and for me to even try to explain what I learned is completely pointless. Writing the reflection made me think about the trip but at the same time. I have already thought about it and what is not only done for me but what it has made me. 

This is my reflection on the trip. questions and comments please place them on the site or email them to me.  aqmirenstories@gmail.com