So shall begin a trip that will undoubtedly change my life and the way I view culture and religion and all the other facets of humanity I'm dying to explore. Monuments will be toured, cities navigated, food consumed (oh hey Italy), legal drinking enjoyed (everywhere! THANK GOD), money spent, pictures taken, and personal belongings hopefully not pick-pocketed. And oh, this is all reoccurring 9 times. I'm not studying abroad in one country - I'm studying abroad at sea.
Semester at Sea, for those who aren't familiar with the program, is essentially a floating campus for college students from universities all over the country to pick up a few credits and see a massive chunk of the world. You take classes on the boat in between ports (I'm taking Global Studies, Christianity, Judaism & Islam, and Astronomy) and then continue your studies (aka go wild and do/see everything you possible can in the measly 4-5 days you're given) in port. They have voyages for both the Fall and Spring Semesters, and a Summer Voyage (the one I'm about to embark on).
Our itinerary:
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (boat departs from here)
Barcelona, Spain
Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy
Naples, Italy
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Piraeus (Athens), Greece
Istanbul, Turkey
Alexandria, Egypt
Casablanca, Morocco
Norfolk, VA, USA (boat returns here)
Hence, I'm seeing some of the most stunning and historic destinations on the planet. I'd always had Barcelona in the back of my mind as my future study abroad locale but when the opportunity to see not just Barca but also ALL of those other countries I've only dreamed of presented itself, it was too intoxicating to pass up. I mean Greece?! I literally dream of whitewashed buildings and impossibly blue skies on a nightly basis. I don't know how I'm going to have the emotional capacity to finally see all the subject matter of my adolescent daydreams manifest to reality.
Last night I had dinner with my cousin Taylor who is now out of college but studied abroad in the tiny town of Cortona, Italy as an undergrad. She was an art major and basically spent an entire summer in Cortona painting sunflowers and eating gelato. Hell yeah. Anyways, she was reminiscing about the trip, including the sole horrible club in the town called Route 66 that only played 5-year delayed American pop, and remembered a specific routine she and her friends developed. Each night after dinner they would hurry over to the gelato shop, make their purchases, and haul ass up the huge hill to where the village was situated, sit on a big stone wall and watch the sun set over the fields of sunflowers in the distance. Taylor remembered literally breaking down to tears at how unbelievably stunning the sight was. She always tried to capture it on film but it never did it justice.
I think that's the mentality I'm going to enter this trip with. I'm going to be bearing witness to things I will never again see or experience in my entire life. Yes I have a good camera and yes I'm going to want to immortalize every last cobblestone path and goat I think is cute, but there are going to be some things that will be simply too untouchable to capture. And those will be the things I keep in my heart; little mental snapshots added to the reel in my head that plays every undocumented moment that has defined my life over and over again.
Are my expectations high for this trip? Yes. Do I know every last image I have of these countries in my head is going to be entirely shattered by how beautiful they are in real life? Also, yes.
The countdown begins: 6 days till anchors away. And a whole summer of lame nautical references. Bear with me.
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