A Year Later.

Well it's been months and months. I've finished up at CNU, moved back home to Northern Virginia, and now... I'm not totally sure. Semester at Sea was the most life changing thing I've ever done (and quite possibly will ever do. What's it mean if you've peaked at 20? Ouch) and I really do miss it nearly every day. I have some regrets like not spending a little more time researching where I'd go and what I'd do in each port, never finishing the 3rd blog for Japan (whoops!), and maybe even spending a little less time going out with friends and partying. Honestly though, I can't imagine it any other way; I met most those locals at bars and impromptu spots I'd never have planned to be. I saw the heart of those countries in the faces of the drag queens in Cadiz, in the wandering hungry kids in Guatemala, in our bartender Chuck Norris in South Africa. It's corny but I'm so thankful for every single person I met along the way - the best and the worst - because they paved the road wherein I circumnavigated the world and somehow found myself.

This blog was my means of writing down every detail as it occurred to me at the time (hence some of the frustration and foul language and more risque exploits) but it was all a part of my journey. And thank God for this blog because this completely amazing and impossible to explain time of my life is preserved should some of those faces begin to fade.

For anyone who found this blog because they're interested in Semester at Sea and want to know what they're getting into: it is the singularly most terrifying, unfathomably beautiful, insane, and life-changing opportunity. And a hundred thousand other adjectives. You won't understand or ever prepare for it before or during but if you can make it across the globe you'll find yourself returned an entirely different person. A world traveler capable of truly anything, and a person to be reckoned with.

If that sounds like something you can handle, or even if it doesn't, take the plunge. You won't regret it. https://www.ise.virginia.edu/asp/onlineapp.asp