Onto the Next Adventure!

Told you I had the travel bug! This summer, I'm headed to Scotland for 2 months and I couldn't be more excited. While last summer's Semester at Sea was the adventure of a lifetime and I'm not sure anything will be able to top it, this summer's trip will still be tons of fun! This time, I'll actually stay in the same place for a majority of the trip- I will be a research student at the University of Glasgow, living in the city & diving head-first into the culture.

As I'm attempting to fit 2 months worth of my life into one 50-pound suitcase (unless, of course, someone's willing to pitch $100 for a second bag!), I'm starting to realize how much I'm going to miss! In case you aren't aware, in Glasgow there is virtually no sun. Oh, and it rains almost every day. Ohhhh, and it's COLD! During the summer! And me, Miss California Girl, is going for 2 months. No sunny beach, no California burritos & late night taco shops, no SeaWorld or Disneyland or 6 Flags. No puppy dog. None of my family & friends from home.

Okay, it sounds like I'm complaining now. I'm totally not. I'm just getting it all out because the truth is that I am SOOO excited (and a weeee bit nervous) to throw myself into a new country and culture where I know nobody. No one. Zilch. Nada. Zippo. I guess you could say I'm JUMPING of my comfort zone again. But if I grow even a portion of how much I did last time I did that, two thumbs up! Plus, I'm going to be learning so much in the lab and hopefully helping improve the quality of life for paraplegics. That's even more awesome!

Oh, and anyone wondering what my school looks like? Harry Potter, to me! Take a look. :)
This is the screenshot I just took on Google Maps & if you Google it yourself, you'll see many more awesome photos I'm sure.  Hopefully, I'll have some of my own soon!

The Voyage Ends But The Journey Continues

There was a couple on our voyage this summer that was just phenomenal. Everyone loved them. I went to Karyn’s photography seminars many times. They were just a great, lively couple, and were leaving the ship in Morocco to travel on their own some more. They gave every student on the ship a little Greek “evil eye” to keep us safe while we travel. It was so sweet! They also left a big book on the ship for us to sign and write a message about how this voyage has impacted us, and tape in a picture or two of us. I accompanied mine with a picture with Ana, the little girl I met in the tiny Bulgarian village of Donchevo. Here's what I wrote- I thought I'd share it on my blog.


I loved my comfort zone. I lived in it. It was safe. It was familiar. The unexpected rarely happened when I was in control. It was my little bubble. Safe, sound, secure.

And then I JUMPED out of my comfort zone. I’m not talking about peeking out of it, or slowly warming myself up to the idea of the unfamiliar- I threw myself into it all at once. I signed up to live on a ship for the summer with 1000 people I didn’t know while traveling halfway around the world. It was quite the crazy decision, if you ask me! Tijuana housebuilds, a Niagara falls visit, and 2 family cruises to the Bahamas was as far from the U.S. as I’d ever been. And now I was going to Europe, virtually alone, on a ship…all summer long.

And let me tell you, without a shadow of a doubt—it was the best, craziest, most insane decision I ever made. I have learned more than I ever could have imagined—about myself, about my peers, about my world. I had heard that “Semester at Sea will change you” and “expect to come back a new person.” Yeah, yeah, I’d be more cultured, and hopefully have a couple better characteristics. Maybe I’d even view the world in a different way.

But this voyage completely changed me. I’m still Julia. I still have an abnormal chocolate addiction, I still use hand sanitizer ten times more than I should, and I am always cold, no matter what. I’m still the same person. But I’m a changed person.

Now, I love being out of my comfort zone. I think it is the best way to learn and experience what there is to experience. How can you learn if you don’t ever do what you’ve never done, thought what you’ve never thought, and live like you’ve never lived? Growing as a person is all about trying new things, seeing what there is out there, and letting your experiences shape you. Get exposure. See the world. Visit a population 950 village in the rural countryside of Bulgaria, and make a (little ) best friend simply through smiles, dancing, and patty-cake games. Hike a volcano; see the lands below that it once destroyed, and the enormous crater; feel the volcanic gases coming out of it, then get the heck off of it! Go to the Grand Bazaar, and let Turkish men call you Charlie’s Angels and the Spice Girls as you learn how to bargain, drink apple tea with them, and slowly start to understand their culture. Experience complete culture shock at a Turkish bath. Strip down. Throw yourself into the culture. Experience it. Live it. It’s the only way to understand.

I’m not saying I didn’t feel uncomfortable—most of my experiences started that way. But just giving it a chance always taught me something. I learned to open my eyes and see the world through those I met in the many different places I went. Old age often brings wrinkles, and I see each little wrinkle as a token of wisdom. I love talking to older adults and hearing how they view the world and why; it was incredible talking to the wise and wrinkled halfway across the world- Bulgaria, Spain, Turkey, Croatia, Greece, and so on—and hearing about THEIR worlds and what they experienced in their lifetime. Seeing the world through their eyes in incredible.

My impressions of this journey and voyage can’t be condensed to words. I can’t even portray them in pictures—though I do try. Those who have experienced this journey with me—my ship family—understand what I mean. It has been such an incredible and unique summer living this dream with 1000 other people who I know can understand my experience—and that’s our special bond, all 1000 of us. And even though this voyage is too quickly coming to an end, I am taking from it more than I know. The lessons I learned, the way I learned to see the world—there are no words. It’s something that is going to stick with me for life. I have learned that life really is about living and loving, and laughing and dreaming- and making those dreams come true. Semester at Sea has been a dream come true for me, and I am thankful beyond words for this incredible experience.

STEAK and A1 for dinner?! (August 6)

This was quite the confusing morning for me. Last night we were supposed to set our clocks back an hour, so I did- I went around my room and set my iPod dock, my alarm clock, my iPod, noticed that my phone had already changed time zones. Perfect. I set my alarms for the morning- 8 am, so I had time to eat and cram before my test- and went to sleep.

When I woke up, 2 things happened. First, I had 2 text messages. From the UCSD Emergency alert number. GREAT, I thought. The dreaded, terrible, dangerous earthquake I’ve been learning about for the last 2 months finally hit. At least I wasn’t there for it, but HOW is everyone back home!?!?!?! I began to panic. I was especially worried about my Syd and Michelle—we have some earthquake history from our freshman year suite…and let’s just say I ran out of my room during earthquakes to check on the two of them! WAIT. A thought crossed my mind. I should PROBABLY read the text message before jumping to this pretty big conclusion. “VIEW MESSAGE.” Waited, waited, my phone is so slowwwwww, waited…”UCSD Emergency Alert: Campus wide power outage…….”…..Oh. Whew. Okay. In those few seconds after I woke up, and before I saw the actual message, SO many worried thoughts crossed my mind! Whew. Comprehend. Calm down, Julia.

…Wait, huh? 8:02 am is what my phone read. 6:59 am is what my alarm clock read. CON-FU-SION. I knew they were a few minutes apart…but…not an hour. As if I wasn’t already thrown off enough from the emergency alerts…and now…what time WAS it? By this time I had so much adrenaline running through my body from my wake-up texts that there was no way I could go back to sleep. I checked my other clocks and yep, it was definitely 6:59 am. Well, I decided to go up to breakfast early and get an extra head start on the morning cramming. Now that I look back, I’m glad that happened- it gave me a lot more time to study!

In Global Studies, a music professor did a presentation that was really fun. We got to listen to samples of a bunch of music for it! Then a Religious Studies professor spoke about Islam, and told us at the end that we now knew more about the Islamic religion than about 80% of Americans…and I believe it. To be honest, I was completely clueless about Islam and Muslims before I came on this voyage, and—as embarrassing to admit as this is—I always got confused what to call people who associated with that religion. I mixed up when to use the terms Islamic and Muslim. Well, I guess that’s one thing I learned! I’ve really learned so much, starting from when I was in Turkey. Being there when Ramadan started was so interesting and such a great experience, and having a Muslim tour guide also was very helpful since he was able to answer all of our questions. It was a very interesting lecture, but the microphone was very loud so by the end I had a pounding headache right in my temples.

It was time to work out, so I changed and headed up. I did elliptical then stairmaster, then Ab Ripper X. :) As usual, we got all kinds of comments from people walking by. That’s what you get when you do a workout video in the widened part of a cabin hallway! Oh, and I want to take a second to thank Sydney Adler for giving me that techno (that we usually don’t like) mix that was amazing for working out! 15 minutes straight, and time flew by. On repeat, I was able to go for 45 minutes in the gym without even realizing I was tired!

(Oh, during Global Studies I forgot to mention I was multi-tasking. I gave my pictures to the girls finally last night, and finally had room to get theirs! So in class, I got some of their pictures and filled my hard drive up…again…which is why prior to right NOW (10:14 pm) I was just going through pictures with a strict eye deleting all pictures that aren’t necessary. It was fun seeing pictures of us I hadn’t seen before!)

THEN…here comes the good part…I went to dinner and the first thing I saw was apple salad. Apple salad?! That sounded amazing! We’ve never had anything like that before! Then I went to the entrée table and there was STEAK…that looked good…and rumor had it that it tasted good tonight! I indulged a bit, on both the apple salad and steak. It’s been too long since I’ve had good steak! And GUESS what I got the last of (before it ran out)?? A1 STEAK SAUCE….yessssss! I’m sorry if I sound like a man right now, but a girl’s gotta have her A1! It. Was. Amazing. AMAZING! Delicious. And I didn’t even care TOO much about the fact that my steak was a little alive still (Dad…I ate meat that was medium-dark pink!). Okay, not alive…but to me! Needless to say, that was an amazing dinner and I think I’m going to dream about A1 tonight. Wow, and I apologize for really sounding like a man in this little blurb!

Since dinner, it’s been a lazy night. I have a couple things to work on, and I’ve been going through and deleting unnecessary pictures to make room for new ones…as I already said. I’m listening to nice relaxing music and thinking about possibly drifting off to sleep soon… :)

Learning Why We Skipped Egypt (August 5)

You’d think that with an extra hour of sleep tonight, and lots of protein at 2 meals (lunch actually had good meat!), I’d be energized today- but there is something about being on a constantly rocking ship that makes you drowsy! We’re all still getting back into the funk of school each day. My roommate and I decided we should get a weekend. :) Too bad that’s not happening!

I have a test tomorrow in Psychology of Learning and Memory, so I’ve been studying for that during most of my free time today. 

In Global Studies, we had a guest speaker from Africa lecture on the Arab Spring of 2011. I knew what had been happening in Northern Africa before I left from what I heard on the news, but ever since we’ve been sailing we’ve been completely cut off from world news. Side-note! That’s actually very surprising to me. I would think that on such a global, cultural, greater world-view-inducing voyage, we would be kept up-to-date on the major events happening on the world. But nope! We get no internet and no updates on world (or even American) news. Yes, we do have access to newspapers we could buy while in countries…but they’re all in different languages! While in Italy we found some newspapers in a café- we couldn’t understand any of the words, and we saw a huge picture covering the front page of a huge violent riot, and could make out that in was in Greece (from the Italian title), Athens specifically. Okay…so all we knew was that these riots were getting more intense in a place that we were about to go, but we couldn’t read about it. A little scary! Okay, I’m done with my sidenote. :) Back to the guest speaker. Anyway, this speaker talked about how the whole revolution started, and told us the story of Bouazazi. Bouazazi was a 26 year old college graduate who was selling vegetables on the streets without a license to get money for his family (and got harassed by police daily). One day, a policewoman approached him and he was ready to pay the $7 fine. She didn’t let him, and instead spit on him and cursed at him using his father’s name, also knocking away his vegetable stand. When he tried to file a complaint, the police wouldn’t let him. Bouazazi covered himself in gasoline, lit himself on fire, and in our speaker’s words, “there he went.” She told us that this is the single event that sparked the revolution- many things had led up to it, and many people had made previous demands, but this is what got people going. And it went from there. She spoke to us about Arab stereotypes, and how they are detrimental to the Arab people. Not all Arabs are the same, and she broke down these stereotypes for us. She showed us the different things the dictators had in common. She also told us the new steps both a new leader and the citizens of Northern Africa are needing to take. We also heard that the last leader is currently on trial, either yesterday or today. It was very interesting hearing about everything from a citizen who experienced it first hand, and studied the politics of it. It definitely paid off paying attention in Global Studies today!

After Global Studies Michelle and I went to the gym again (yay!) and did our elliptical, stairmaster, and P90X abs. After dinner was the anticipated TALENT SHOW! We got there early to get seats and I brought my camera along, knowing I’d be leaning into the aisles to get any kind of a good view. It was so much fun! Before it started, it was like a dance party in the Union. Everyone had so much energy. It’s crazy how we’ve become such a family on this ship so quickly and we still don’t all know each other. Kids, college students, adults, lifelong learners…we all have SUCH diverse backgrounds but we all have something in common—we’re all on this crazy, unique, voyage halfway across the world from where we normally are! Anyway, the first half of the talent show was by the dependent children of families on the ship. They were SO cute! One little boy did a Justin Beiber performance…I was thinking about stealing him on the spot. Then for the second half, SAS students performed. I was so impressed with the talent on our ship! Piano, guitar, ukulele, singing, reciting poetry, dancing…the list goes on. We have some very talented people on this ship! There were a couple goofy acts too, which are always fun. The whole night was a lot of fun and I’m really glad I went!

ALSO, on another positive note, I checked my global studies grade and I think a miracle happened! Yay!

The rest of the night was a bit of a daze- I had a ton of studying to do for my psych exam in the morning, but my eyelids were just so darn heavy. We gained an hour, so I made sure to change all my clocks, but even with the extra hour I was exhausted. I read through a chapter until my eyes could hardly stay open, then powered through part of another. THEN my eyes were serious about not staying open…so I took a 15 minute nap. Yes, at 1 in the morning. Then I woke up, struggled through the rest of the chapter, then passed out for the night. I could cram the rest in the morning!

SAS Auction (August 4)

When I woke up, I grabbed my books and started cramming! I didn’t have time to get breakfast, so I ate a snack in my room before I left. I took my 2 tests, then went to the gym and did my elliptical, StairMaster, and P90X abs again. I wrote a paper then headed to dinner.

After dinner was the shipwide auction. The Silent Auction had been going on all day and was just closing, and now was time for the Live Auction! I don’t exactly have money to spare right now, but I did want to go watch. It was so fun! There were 20 items being auctioned off- everything from steering the ship coming into Boston, a week-long stay in China, a world map signed by Captain Roman Krstonovich, a PILLOW signed by him (everyone on the ship considered buying this…), a weeklong seaside stay in Nova Scotia…you name it! There were three different auctioneers and they were all quite entertaining. Some people really seemed to have money to spare- prices went so high for some things! But that's good, because it was a fundraiser and was to help make Semester at Sea possible for more people. Anyway, it was a really fun night and I’m glad I went.

And to make the day even better, we gained an hour tonight!!!!!!!! :)

Sunrise Again! (August 3)

This morning, I randomly woke up around 6. I went to the bathroom, laid back down, and just couldn’t get back to sleep. So, I decided to go up on deck and watch the sunrise. :) I threw on a sweatshirt and flip-flops, grabbed my room key, and headed up. It was perfect timing! After I was up there for about 5 or 10 minutes, I saw a flaming pink dot appear on the hazy horizon. It was gorgeous! I had my iPod and listening to some music and had some nice alone time with God. After spending about an hour up on deck watching the sunrise, breakfast was just starting so I had a nice breakfast. :) Then I went down to my cabin, journaled a little bit, took an hour long nap, and woke up for my 9:20 class. It was a productive morning! :)

In the afternoon, I went to the gym with Michelle. I did 30 minutes on the elliptical, and climbed 100 flights on the StairMaster! Then Michelle and I did P90X Ab Ripper X. After that, we felt great! I took a shower, snuck in a 15 minute nap, then made it to dinner with the girls. At night, I studied for my global studies midterm and natural disasters test the next day.

It was a good day! :)

Silhouetted Goodbye (August 2)

Today was my last day in Istanbul. We decided to go to the spice market (since I hadn’t been) to get some apple tea to bring home! The girls had scouted out the best tea in the whole spice market the day before, so we knew right where to go. I got my apple tea, and also some pomegranate tea after I tried it. The other girls wanted to go back, but Brittany wanted to stay a bit longer and eventually go back to the Grand Bazaar. We hadn’t gotten enough of it! We split off and attempted to leave the spice market…instead we got SO lost in the outskirts of it, and eventually realized that we were the ONLY non-Turkish men wandering the crowded alleyways. Nobody spoke English…we would ask if someone spoke English, and they’d just stare at us. Not to mention the feeling of every pair of eyes staring at us as we walked down the alleyways. There were some shops and goods being sold, but it was just different. Very different.

Now, I think it’s important for me to explain that we were on a MISSION. I had seen these hand-hemmer/sewing machines a few days earlier. And I had a need. I had three pairs of linen pants that were about 5 inches too long, and they needed to be the right length by Morocco—in a few days. This little device looked like a stapler and was about that size, and you pretty much used it like you’d use a stapler over and over again. The thread was all a part of it, and you just click, click, click, click…I’d been shown on an earlier day but was in a hurry and wasn’t seriously going to buy it. Then I slept on it. And realized I could really put it to use. So, here we were on a mission to find it.

I swear it was a miracle. We were starting to panic and mumble back and forth to each other about how we really needed to find our way out, even though neither of us knew. THEN I SAW IT! The hand-hemmer!!! I saw a man with a little table and mini hand-hemmers spread out all over. You would have thought I won the lottery, I was so excited. I had a little celebration party with Brittany (quietly, of course) then had to compose myself enough to walk over and pretend I didn’t want it. Long story short, it started at 20 and I got it for 5, and I probably could have gotten it for 1 if I wanted to. He didn’t speak English, but he was so sweet. He was just so happy someone was buying something from him. I picked out a pink one, and looked confused. He taught me how to use it, and even made me practice on a piece of material he had to make sure I really got it. Then I gave him the 5 Turkish Lyra and took about one step away, then stopped…and turned back. He understood. We had NO idea how to get out. We’d been wandering for awhile, turning turns and getting all turned around. He simply pointed his arm down, bounced it the number of streets we had to pass, pointed his arm to the right, bounced a number of times, turned it left, bounced it, and we were off! We got out of there SO quick!

By that point, both of us had our fill of Turkishness and decided we didn’t need to go back to the Grand Bazaar. We went back into the spice market (thanks to nice hand-hemmer-man’s directions) and spent our last Lyra there. Then we headed back to the ship!

We went to Starbucks with our laptops to get some internet, but it was really not that good. Actually, that’s not true. I bet the internet was great. However, with the entire ship sitting all around Starbucks, all 700 of us students (not really ALL, but seriously a lot), the internet slowed down a bit and I definitely noticed. So I didn’t get to put as many pictures up on my blog as I wanted. I think I did get through Croatia though, maybe? Don’t take my word on that!

Then we REALLY got back onto the ship to stay, ate dinner, and headed up to the top deck to say goodbye the Istanbul as we pulled away. It. Was. GORGEOUS!!! There was a bright pink sky behind the beautiful silhouetted mosques all along the skyline. I wish I could describe it better, or at least post a picture! Soon enough. Anyway, you get the idea that it was beautiful. Istanbul is such an enchanting city, and seeing it all silhouetted against an amazing sunrise made it just stunning, and even more enchanting. And so we were off, leaving the beautiful Istanbul to disappear into the sunset!