Ten countries in 104 days! Your classroom: the world! Sailing around the world! That is the general idea of Semester at Sea.
Our itinerary for Spring 2004 included The Bahamas, Cuba, Brazil, South Africa, Tanzania, India, Vietnam, China, Korea, and Japan. The stay in each country varied between four to six days, and the sailing time between each country varied as well. The longest was 12 days and the shortest was a single day. There were approximately 1000 people on our ship: 635 students, 17 senior adult passengers, about 35 faculty members, usually two or three interport lecturers and students from the country we were headed to next, and crew members on the ship.
We attended classes
while at sea and then were let loose in each country to experience it
in any way we wanted, be that with Semester at Sea organized trips or
independent travel. Every student is required to take a core class called
Global Studies, where we were taught about the countries (history,
customs, geography, politics, and current issues) before we arrived. The
other classes had assignments that required research, observations, interviews,
or visits in countries that pertained to what we were studying; however,
the entire focus of the program is to allow the students to flourish under
their own learning experiences and reflections while in the countries,
so the course work is designed to be a supplement rather than the core
focus.
The Bahamas (Jan): Spent a few days at Atlantis before boarding the ship.
Cuba (Jan): Went to Varadero Beach on an oceanography field practicum, toured Havana and drank mojitos with our new friends from the Universidad de Habana, and saw Fidel Castro when he addressed Semester at Sea students and gave us a reception party to welcome us to Cuba.
Brazil (Feb): Toured
around Salvador, watched a capoiera demonstration (a dancing/martial arts
form), traveled into Lencois, a tiny village surrounded by jungle, waterfalls,
and natural granite water slides, went caving and on a tour around the
area of Lencois, and took a ferry to Itaparica Island for the
last day.
South Africa (Feb): Explored Cape Town before taking a tour down to Cape Point (the southwestern-most point on the African continent), saw the jackass penguin colony (one of two on the mainland), traveled to Stellenbosch, the famous vineyard region of South Africa, and did a wine tasting tour at several wineries, went diving with Great White Sharks off of Cape Agulhas, went to a township and watched a Xhosa music presentation, and climbed Table Mountain outside of Cape Town.
Tanzania (Feb/Mar): Traveed into the interior of the country for my safari at Mikumi National Park (spent three days doing game drives where we saw elephants, gazelle, giraffes, lions, warthogs, hippos, crocodiles, jackals, wildebeast, water buffalo, baboons, monkeys, vultures, and many other species of birds), went to Udzungwa Mountains National Park and climbed to the waterfall pools near the summit, and then took a ferry to Zanzibar (an island off the coast of Tanzania) where I went to a spice plantation, the former slave-holding complex, and the local markets.
India (Mar): Explored Chennai by rickshaw (a moped with a cab mounted on it) went to the Mother Teresa Orphanage to play with the children, flew to New Delhi and saw the Gandhi Museum, the Qutub Minar, and Peace Arch before taking a train to Agra, saw the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri (the massive sandstone palace), the Tomb of Saleem Christie, and the Agra Fort.
It would be impossible
to sum up all of the experiences from this semester, but it made me reevaluate
the things that I considered important in life and helped me determine
where exactly I fit in the global scheme of things. I would do it over
again in a second!
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