real life.

     When I first returned from my adventure, I was overwhelmed, disappointed, frustrated, annoyed. I don't know the best word, but some combination of all the above. I felt like no one understood me. In the same way that I had felt a culture shock when I got on the boat, adjusting to living in a confined space with 500 college students without cell phones or internet, I experienced a reverse culture shock returning to land. Even being on a boat with 500 students, who had had nearly all the same experiences as me, I felt isolated at times. But, that was nothing compared to what I experienced when I got home, begin surrounded by people who, I thought, could never begin to relate to me and what I had done.

     I dubbed myself bizarre, weird, peculiar, unusual, odd. The past four months were all I could think about but NO ONE could understand. And, I embraced this. I was proud of it. I was not even close to normal. I was nothing like the next person on the street. The only other people who were even worth explaining anything to were the people who had experienced it with me. Even my friends who had studied abroad on other programs couldn't completely comprehend. People may have said they "wanted to hear about it" but were they worth explaining it to? Would they really want to listen past 3 minutes when I knew it would take hours to just explain the first day?

     I played with this circumstance. When people I had just met started asking about me, my life, I would blurt out within the first 2 minutes, "I just travelled around the world for four months." Most times they shut down. They didn't want to begin to understand what I had experienced and I didn't want to begin to help them. I was angry that they would never completely understand yet too haughty to let them try.

     Between moments like these I interjected moments of complete honesty and I would answer people's questions with the 15-minute-long answers they deserved. Most likely, they didn't want to hear all that I had to say about the four hours I spent in Mauritius or that cab driver I had had the first day in Vietnam, but I didn't care. I had travelled around the world so I had the right to talk. They they had an obligation to listen, even if it made them hugely regret asking the question in the first place.

     Adjusting to things after SAS is something that I think will be going on for a long time to come. But, I now realize, and am continuing to realize, how wrong I was to take that strong, uncharacteristically arrogant stance when I initially came home. 

     I am no different than the next person on the street. For all I know, they have been around he world 10 times and back to tell about. I am weird, bizarre, whatever you want to call it. But, isn't everyone? We all simultaneously lead very different lives that affect us in very different ways and make us our own sort of unusual, weird, and odd. So, maybe the next person walking on the street did not travel around the world. They may never have left their Podunk little town in suburban America. But, they may be able to understand in some way in the same way I may be only be able to understand their life to a certain extent.

     There is something to be said for being one of the thousands of backpackers wandering the streets of Hong Kong looking for a hostel and for getting taken on a wild rickshaw drive in a country where you don't speak the language. There is something to be said for sharing an experience with 500 people and for being out of your element with people you don't know. But, that is just one story. 

     So, what am I getting at? What is the punch line? The fireworks at the end? The happily ever after?My story is just as worth telling as the next. But, it IS worth telling! Even to those who haven't left their Podunk town in hickville Florida. And it might seem hard, overwhelming, daunting to try tell it. Becuase, no, not everyone has been to Accra, Ghana. But, you try, because you should. In the same way, your life is a story to write. And, no, you don't have to tell everyone about it or write a best selling autobiography. But, don't forget that it is yours to do with it what you want. It has a greater strength than you may ever know until you tell it. You are the creator, the author. It is yours to tell.

come and face the strange...ch, ch...

     It was some time during the awkward getting-to-know-you conversations of the first week that I found myself in a conversation, which went a little bit deeper than “Hi! What’s your name? Where are you from?” I was sitting at a table with Thomas and Sam on the 7^th deck and Thomas said something along the lines of, “I’m scared I won’t change.” Sam and I both knew what he meant because we both kind of sat there in silent understanding after he spoke. I think almost everyone on SAS had the same fear at the beginning. You worry that you will get off the boat in San Diego, the semester will become a memory of “that time you went around the world,” and you will slip back into your life before, the same person you were when you left.

     “Because if I haven’t figured it out after this, there is no hope,” Thomas continued. I remember feeling like he took the words straight from my mouth. When you go around the world, you expect, and others expect you, to come back with something to show for it. A profession. A clearly mapped out plan for the rest of your life. A husband. A wife. A soon-to-be best selling novel. A discovery of Buddhism. Something. And, so, you worry that you won’t “do it right” and will come back with nothing to show for it. 

     A few things happened between now and then, and I don’t mean just to me. For one, we were picked out of our lives at home and transplanted onto a floating dead zone of communication, with no Internet or phones. We learned to have conversations with each other rather than responding to that text we just got or updating our Facebook status. We bonded over things like traveler’s diarrhea in India and eating piranha in the Amazon rather than remembering how drunk we were last night.

      We swam in the Amazon, danced on the Taj Mahal, fed hungry children, and got lost on the subways of Tokyo. We met parents and children, friends and enemies, the wise and the dishonest. We literally saw the world.

      The things we won’t tell you about are the fleeting moments when we went for it when we never would have before, or when someone or something surprised us. Or, those moments when we felt like hugging everyone because…I don’t know, maybe we realized the world really must be a good place. But, also, those moments when we felt disappointed, angry, and lonely because we were let down by the people around us. And, in the end, that is what changed us. What we did not realize at the beginning was that we really did not have a choice.

      I have been home for 3 weeks now and have struggled to pinpoint how I am different. I have felt like no one understands me, I have felt like no one cares enough to listen to my stories, I have gotten angry when my friends and family complain about things like their food being cold. But, all of those things were expected. How is this Sara different from the Sara that stepped on to that boat 4 months ago? I still don’t have that answer for you. Maybe you know better than I do.

      I guess you will just have to take my word for it. I changed. Some things I do know, for sure. I know that years, maybe decades, down the road, I will still be feeling and realizing the gravity of what I have just done. I don’t know what I am going to do this summer, next year, or when I graduate college that will make a difference to my life and the lives of others. But, I know I will figure it out and do it, if it kills me, because it will be what I love and am meant to do. I know that I will meet many more amazing people who understand the beauty of this ball that we live on. I know I have left the boat with brothers and sisters for life, whom I can call upon and rely upon forever. I know I will go for “it,” whatever “it” may be, with everything I have, because anything less isn’t worth it. I won’t let anything hold me back.

      I guess, that is all I’ve got for you, folks. Sorry there's no husband or best selling novel to go with it. Thank you so much for following me on my journey. This world is yours as much as it is mine, so I challenge you to take it on, with everything you have, NOW. I am not a huge fan of ending on a quote but I really think Ayn Rand was onto something when she wrote in her book Atlas Shrugged, "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.” So go for it people. It's yours.

conquering the world.

      A few years back, I stumbled across a quote that read something like, “I feel the need to conquer the world yet I have no clue how just yet.” I aptly posted this in the quotes section of my Facebook and told everyone I knew about it, thinking it was the bees’ knees. It made so much sense. For one, I was an angsty teenager, who wanted feel lost in the world, and, two, I genuinely felt like I had the potential to do something awesome but that I couldn’t, for one reason or another. Years went by, I went to college, met a few people, got a job, became more of a person. Yet, I still felt that, though I had everything I needed, I couldn’t get to that mountaintop, wherever it may be. There was something missing.

       In one sense, you could argue that I conquered the world. I have literally been around the block and back to tell you about it. But, in the sense that my quote means to say it, SAS showed me that the world is ours for the taking. I don’t know how to “conquer the world” any better than I did before I left 4 months ago, and, even if I did, I don’t think I would be able to do it or define it, per se. What I do know is that there is nothing stopping me from trying.

      I met a farmer in Dominca who was in the process of writing a book, a 75-year-old man in Brazil who walks through the Amazon without shoes and climbs trees for fun, a reporter for a radio station in rural Ghana who developed a show based on ‘The View’ because he felt the need for a strong woman’s voice and so many more that I could not name them all. They are “conquering the world,” their world, and, if they can, why not me?
      Maybe Lewis Carroll said it best when he said, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Maybe I should just leave it up to the professionals.

rock me mama like a wagon wheel...

Tomorrow morning, we arrive in San Diego. It has been a slow crawl to the realization that this is coming to an end. The final weeklong stretch has been one big “goodbye.” And, then, tomorrow at around 11 A.M. it will all be over. And we will spread out about the country, back into our lives before SAS.

            It is bittersweet. But, bittersweet in a way that I have never known anything to be before. Bitter because this fantastic voyage is coming to an end. And, I can already start to feel it turning into "that dream I had once." For awhile, it was the real world, my life back home, that seemed so distant and far away that it could have been a dream. Now, as home gets closer, the past four months feel like the dream.

always remember to dance.

Yet, still, it is sweet. Sweet because, let’s face it, I have been on this boat for a week since our short pit stop in Hawaii. And, it was 11 days before that that we departed from Japan. Psh. Am I ready to get off. But also sweet because I know that life at home will only be a continuation of the adventure. It sounds cheesy. I know. But, it’s true. It will be hard not to treat weekend and day trips, and days or afternoons, like ports, squeezing everything I possibly can from each second I have there, in that moment. In the same way, it will be hard not to engage with the people around me everywhere that I go, after months of asking about and listening to people’s stories. This semester is over, but the experience is not leaving me anytime soon.  

-->

huh why eee!

Two days ago, we left our last port of Hawaii. If I could sum up my experience there in a sentence it would be, "I am definitely back in the United States." Ford F350s dotted the roads, American flags were everywhere you looked, and stores like Walmart and Target stood there for us to marvel in the middle of a sea of parking spaces. These were the things that told me I was home, even if I am still essentially on the other side of the world from my little ole' golf course community in Oldsmar, Florida and my "Animal House" college house in Ann Arbor.
During our day in Hawaii, I had a FDP to a volcano. It was not exactly what I had imagined a volcano to be, with lava spewing from the center. It really was just a large hole in the ground with some smoke rising from a recess in the middle.  It was cool though and I am happy I'm able to say I have seen a volcano. People don't need to know it wasn't erupting, right?

a volcano. no big deal.

when it rains in tokyo...

            Leah, Nick, and Alexis had been researching hostels for that night while they were waiting for me at the station. They had found another capsule hostel in a prime part of town. They booked four beds for that night and we headed straight there to check-in and drop off our bags.

            At the hostel, we met a group of Danish people who were going to a baseball game that night. We had heard that baseball games in Japan were quite the experience. And a night of baseball would not do us any harm after a crazy day and night of travelling. After we bought our tickets, we went to the Harajuku district. Yes, as where the Gwen Stefani's Harajuku girls hail from. Stores were filled to the brim with those fun, funky outfits, and accessories you see in her music videos. It was too much fun. We all, kind of, split up and explored in smaller groups.  There was too much to see for us to worry about sticking together. We met back up for dinner and then headed to the game.

baseball game at the tokyo dome! go giants!

            The game was a lot of fun! I am not sure how much the fans actually cared about who won and who lost (from what I gleaned, the competition aspect is not really there, there is kind of a “You’re all winners in our hearts and we're gonna have fun anyways”-attitude). They are definitely serious about showing their pride for their team. I don’t know about many other teams but certainly the cheers of Yokohari Giants and Chunichi Dragons fans sound more like harmonized chants than raucous cheers you may encounter in the United States. Not to mention, these fans can scream until they are as blue in the face as the average college-football fan.

             The next morning I had a FDP (essentially a class field trip) to a Kabuki theater play. I am not going to lie. It was brutal. Four hours of play completely in Japanese with slow motion dancing. Afterwards, I met up with some people at the hostel we had stayed at the night before and we got sushi at a place where the rolls go by on a conveyor belt.

I was really excited about this because I love sushi! Being the sushi lover that I am, I had imagined        Japan could be like the Candyland of sushi. Everywhere you went there would just be sushi and you would always have chopsticks to grab a roll or two as you walked down the street. Not so much. Sushi is a delicacy in Japan. It took us awhile to even find a place that served sushi. But when we finally found this place, it was totally worth the search. The sushi was so good.

Our last day in Japan, it was rainy outside, which definitely limited what we could do.  It was kind of nice, though, because I was able to hang out in a coffee shop that morning, which, though it sounds crazy, is something you have to plan to do on this trip. It is one of my favorite ways to get to know a city and I really enjoyed the opportunity to "take it all in"when I feel like my mentality has constantly been, let's see how much I can squeeze into the time I have.
That afternoon, I went on an adventure with my friend, Brandon, to find the Japanese version of a Best Buy so that he could get an external hard drive. We were successful, but it was definitely an adventure. Picture a Best Buy on steroids, six stories tall, with every tech accessory and device you could imagine, all in the Japanese, and no one that works there speaks English. This is where I chose to spend my last hours in a foreign port.

my roommate, alexis, and i at the cherry blossoms.