Being Home

Adjusting to life back at home was tough. We were warned that the worst culture shock of this trip would be returning home, and it is true.

The scariest person that I saw on this whole trip was in the Houston airport, while I was transferring flights on the way home. He was wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, denim jeans and a red flannel shirt covered by a Bud Light/Nascar jacket. He had a huge cross on his belt buckle. This was a 250 lb “Cowboy for Christ” type of guy. I don’t mean to slam Christians, it is just that hicks scare the shit out of me. I actually got up and moved to the other side of the terminal. Overreaction? Probably. But the fear was real!

I have heard stories of people going into deep boughts of depression after returning from SAS. I didn’t have anything that bad, but I definitely was lacking motivation for a lot of things. It was a real struggle to buckle down and learn about “maximum shearing stress theory” and other engineering curriculum. It just seemed very insignificant after what I had just done.

Having a cell phone and a constant schedule was also a shock. The computer and television are constantly trying to suck me in, and it is hard to resist.

The hardest thing for most people is not being able to be understood by people back at home. After such a powerful experience, everybody comes back very different, but things at home are still the same. People ask me about my trip, and they listen for about 40 seconds. Then their eyes glaze over, they start looking around, and change the subject to Paul and Suzan’s breakup or the new computer. It is hard when you realize that you are different now, and nobody gets it. I have been a bit of a lone wolf for most of my life, and I don’t need to constantly be understood, so it is not that hard for me to keep it to myself. I am also lucky to have met great friends on the ship that go to UCSB that I can talk with when I need to.

I was worried a bit when I saw how quickly I started to fall into my old habits. But after a while I realized that I will not be the same person I was. The old routine is so easy to follow, but it isn’t the end of the world. I have a new idea of who I want to be, but it doesn’t change over night. I don’t care how many new episodes of Lost or Sopranos you put in front of me, the flame that is in my belly is not going out! Things are good, and will only get better.

It Really Happened!

Look at the route. Unbelievable.

Why You Need To Go On Semester At Sea

This trip changed me. It has been the most significant event of my life, and I will never be the person I was before I left. I still have a twisted sense of humor, love burritos and all that stuff, but the way I see things is different.

My lifestyle on the ship was completely different from back at home. I had no phone, no television, and limited access to the internet. Besides planning for our next traveling adventure, I didn’t think much farther than my next meal. My daily routine went something like this: wake up and go to breakfast with Tyler and Taylor and partake in our daily iron colon challenge (we ate 5-7 boxes each of All-Bran which has 50% of daily fiber, you do the math), then I would go to class for a bit, and then spend about four hours laying in the sun by the pool. Then I would work out, and partake in whatever activities where going on that night or watch movies with some friends. It was so relaxing, and my mind really was at ease. My life was centered around friends and simple pleasures like reading a book and laying in the sun. Everyday I would wake up excited to go lay in the sun. Life was so simple, and so enjoyable. It is amazing what life can be like when all distractions are completely gone. Shedding all of the garbage of daily life makes you realize what really is important and what is not.

The community on the ship was amazing. When you go through experiences like these with other people, you become very close, very quickly. Even people that I didn’t travel with felt like close friends. Though we couldn’t really explain ourselves, we all understood each other. Every person I passed in the hall I shared a big smile with. The vibe on the ship was so awesome. This family we created and the way people treated each other was incredible, and something that I want to apply to my future relationships.

Every country that I passed through gave me a completely new way of looking at the world. My perspective changed and grew week to week. I was a very different person Between Egypt and Turkey than I was between China and Vietnam. Truthfully, I can’t even remember how I used to think before this trip. My whole world was a little bubble in Southern California, where I had my social life, and spent my time racing motorcycles and going to school. That was it, and those were the only things that I thought about. I knew there was a big world out there, but it wasn’t real to me. I feel like a chicken that has just hatched from an egg. Really, my world has grown that much. And it has made me think about big questions, about my place in the earth, and who I am. I won’t find my answers anytime soon, but at least I have started looking, and I am truly grateful that my eyes have been opened like this.

At the core, people are all the same. Once you get beyond looks, customs, religion, language, when it all boils down to it, I shared the same laughs and smiles with people in Burma and Egypt that I do at home. We are all humans and we are all in this together. I also learned that it is the relationships between people that matter, people and things on their own are nothing. To be able to connect with people that live completely different lives than me has given me faith in humanity. Things may look bad sometimes, but there is a tremendous amount of good going on everywhere.

Last Night On The Ship

Our last night before landing in Florida, we had a pub night and a dance on the seventh deck. Right as the music was about to shut off around midnight, the sky opened up and it started pouring rain. Hundreds of us ripped of our shirts and started dancing in the rain. When the music shut off everybody just started yelling and jumping in the rain. We stayed out there for at least a half hour, in the rain, yelling at the top of our lungs. We were letting out all of the pent up energy from everything that we had been through in the past three months, things we did and didn’t understand, and the power of what we had just experienced. That kind of experience can never be fully expressed; the only way you can let it out is by jumping and screaming until you lose your voice.

After things settled down, I went and sat down alone on the back of the fifth deck. It was still raining and I was just watching the water go by, at 20 miles an hour, as it had for the last 100 days, all the way around the whole planet. This is the first time that the magnitude of the journey hit me. I had being greatly affected by every place I had been, but until the end, I had never taken a step back and looked at the trip as a whole. Picturing our planet floating in outer space, and knowing that I had traveled around the whole thing by boat, I realized how few people get to have that experience, and I realized how huge our planet really is.

The next day we landed in Florida, and just like that it was over.

This Is What Happens To My Enemies

Towards the end of the trip Tyler and Taylor started barging into my room at random times to “body-rock” me. Basically they would burst through my door and punch me in the stomach/ribs/kidneys until I started crying and screaming, and then they would run back to down the hall to the safety of their room. One particular night, they came into my room while I was out and changed the background of my computer to a fish-like rendering of a phallus that was composed on Microsoft Paint. I had only just discovered their artwork when they came bursting into my room and gave me a brutal beat down, which they filmed. And then again five minutes later they returned to pound on my bruised ribs even more. At his point I said enough is enough. I had over-packed big time, so I had multiple tall cans of shaving cream stashed under my bed. Locked and loaded, I marched down the hall, kicked in their door and emptied both cans into their room as they scattered and screamed like scared little girls. The whole time I was yelling, “How you like me now? Bitches!!!” I felt like the Terminator, it was glorious. That was the last I saw of them that night, as they had a big mess to clean up. Here is a picture of a demoralized and defeated looking Tyler, shortly after payback has been served.

Ambassadors Ball

Ambassadors Ball was the big prom night on the ship. It was another chance to dress up nice, eat well, get drunk, dance, and have a bunch of fun. There was a huge chocolate Taj Mahal, which was missing a lot of pieces by the end of the night. Bottom is me after a few drinks with my favorite crew member Adrian, perfecting his shocker technique.

My Take On Europe

Before I traveled, I never understood the term “the West.” Even after taking a history series called Western Civilization, I still didn’t get it. This trip gave me the unique perspective of hitting Europe from the backside, after having spent two months in the Far and Near East. Coming into Europe with an Eastern perspective was very strange. I finally saw why Europe and the United States are lumped into the category of “the West.”

Back in America, lots of ignorant people couldn’t tell you the difference between Japan, China, and North and South Korea. “They’re all the same” is something most of us have heard. These countries are extremely different, but they are all so different from America that they can’t be distinguished by people who haven’t taken a closer look. As I learned, this can also work the other way.

Over the past three months, I had gradually transitioned to an “Eastern” way of thinking, mostly out of necessity. In most places I visited, buses don’t run on time, life goes slowly, and plans change quickly. People think collectively and place importance on family, and people for the most part seem satisfied with their lives. I learned to chill out, be flexible, and appreciate the small things. Being back in Spain was a sensory overload. I was not ready for the rampant consumerism. My first day in Barcelona I saw a designer T-shirt in a store window for 100 Euros and I got nauseous. That is more than most people in Burma make in a month. Truthfully, Spain felt like I was back in the U.S. The language was different, and there are small cultural differences, but the lifestyle is the same. Everything is developed, clean, expensive, fast moving, and not as personal. People are only worried about themselves, and there are all the symbols of status: clothes, watches, cars, and all that stuff. Not a single local was interested to see us in Spain, they just wanted to steal our stuff.

I do not dislike the “West” or America, it is just a completely different way of life and a different way of thinking. It is how I have lived my whole life and how I will live back at home. My point is that you are not going to learn much about the world or yourself by traveling to Europe. I had one hell of a time there, and it really was the perfect ending to this voyage. The Europe backpacker circuit is cool and really fun, but is mostly centered around partying. Did it shift my perspective on life? No. Just keep this in mind, if you want to travel and learn you should check out some place really different.