Semester at Sea - Spring 2007 (Alex Song)

1. Perspective - I am ashamed to say it, but I’ve never really paid much attention to the international section of the news unless there was a major disaster or event affecting the U.S. I mean, who cares what’s going on, on the other side of the world if it doesn’t affect me? After this journey, I can now count myself as one of those people that does care about the rest of the world. I’ve been there, I’ve met the people, I’ve made friends there. I’m connected to them now and I want to go back to each and every single one of these countries to see how they’ve progressed, what changes have been made, and how my (and our) visit has impacted them.

2. Identity - Before, I saw myself as a 2nd generation Korean-American, a citizen of Seattle, Washington and a citizen of the United States of America. Now, I truly understand what it means to be an American and a child of immigrants.

3. Personality - This is a big one for me. Semester at Sea did wonders to boost all the positive aspects of myself. The things I did here are things I never would have imagined myself doing if it weren’t for the trip. Things like hiking a mountain for 6 hours in the Chapada Diamantina in Lencois, Brazil, or bungee jumping from the top of a cave from that same third-world country, or jumping out of a plane at 9,000 meters in Cape Town, South Africa - things that get my adrenaline pumping. Or other things, like dropping myself into the middle of a country where no one speaks English and somehow getting by, armed only with a green sheet and cultural packet. And the people! The students on this voyage are probably going to be the group of people I have gotten along with the best in my entire life. Never have I felt so accepted and so loved by a school community.

I’ll be off the ship in less than 12 hours. I unfortunately did not have time to say goodbye to each and every person on the voyage that contributed to my life-changing experience, so if you’re one of those hundred people, I apologize. And to all of my fellow shipmates: I consider you all to be my brothers and sisters. I hope we all keep in contact, and I hope to see all of you in a summer semester, reunion voyage, or any stateside (or international…that means you, Dave’s Lencois group!) reunion. I hope to see you if you ever pass through Seattle, and also if I ever pass through your neck of the woods. I know I’ll definitely be hooking up with some of you professionally (yeah politicians, lawyers, and law enforcement officials - that means you!) in the future. You’ll all forever be in my heart.

To all of my readers and commentators: Thank you for joining me on a journey of a lifetime. Your thoughts and readership are appreciated. I know I’m missing recaps from Vietnam onwards, and pictures from..everything after South Africa. In the coming weeks I plan to post a final recap of the entire voyage - the same one I’ll be screening for my friends at home.

10 hours and 40 minutes to go until my sea’s scheduled disembarkation from my new home. I’m gonna go spend them with my shipmates - peace out!

Having finished all of my classes days ago and having nothing to do, I’ve been moping around all bored and depressed (due to the boredom).

Now, having absolutely nothing to do, I’ve started to pack a few days early not only in an attempt to keep me occupied (and therefore not bored and not depressed), but to also beat the mad rush of students trying to get boxes from the crew on the Packing Day (I’ve already gotten 2…I may need more).

Like it was plucked straight from some sappy movie, each item I handle and pack opens the floodgates to a sea (no pun intended) of memories - strong, happy, significant, and life-altering memorable moments of my 100 day journey that has helped me discover the world as well as myself.

I’m reminded of the words of alumni, how no one will understand when you get home, how you’ll have changed so much in such a short span of time, how differently you’ll see the world. And you know what? It scares the shit out of me. I will not be the same Alex Song that lived in Seattle, Washington, but Seattle will be the same. Everything will be the same, but also at the same time, everything will be different.

How appropriate. As I paused from writing, the cheesy song playing on channel 1 is composed of the chorus “You’ll never have to say goodbye again.” It’s a great point - I will never have to say goodbye again to any of these people. I know for some, this will be my final goodbye as life will take its course and we’ll drift apart until we’re nothing more than people in a photo or fragments of some lost memory. For others, I know I’ll be seeing them again. The ones that live in my state, I’ll definitely be running into them again soon - maybe we’ll have lunch, or a little Washington reunion. For the really close friends I’ve made on the s/xzAqhip and in my voyage, I know that my travels will take me to wherever they may be - Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, California, New York, North Carolina, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, Canada, Montana, Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam …you get the idea.

Anyways, I’m not sure exactly how to end this entry. I guess I’ll have more to write in a few days, so we’ll leave it as..

To Be Continued

I can’t sleep. All of the kids with Verizon cell phones have had service since late afternoon last night, and the rest of us with Cingular/T-Mobile/other cellular providers have been patiently waiting for our phones to start working again. And as of 4AM local time, we now have coverage! A lot of the ship’s population have been up all night, and we’re now all chatting away with friends and family back home without fear of being charged $4 a minute.

This, combined with being on United States soil for the first time in 80 or so days and being in a port where everyone speaks English…

We’re almost home!

We passed by Jeju Island (South Korea) earlier today…that was probably the only exciting point of my morning, only being beaten by an early dismissal from my field research class.

I’m currently sitting in the China post-port session, which has been turned into post-VT shooting time. A few speakers have said their words about it, and I’m confused as to some people’s reactions to the event. One girl is visibly very disturbed and crying, earlier having lead the Union in an ‘our father’. I’m observing about 3-4 more people (all female students) with some tears in their eyes. I don’t really get it - school shootings happen every few years, hundreds of soldiers have died in the middle east, and thousands of people die daily around the world - what’s with the emotional reaction? Do these people cry everytime one of these happens? If so, they’ve got to be depressed as hell - tragedies happen on an minute-by-minute basis in our world.

Or maybe it’s a religious thing. I’ve always considered religion the “opiate of the masses” -

Also, the East China Sea is not treating us well. We haven’t had rocking this bad since pre-Mauritius - even I am starting to become nauseous. Many people have their seabands and patches on, and we’ve almost run out of meclazine (only 5 packets left when I got mine at the purser’s desk).

It’s nearly 2am here, and I just read about an hour ago that the worst campus shooting to date occurred at Virginia Tech.

Normally, not a big deal. If I was at home, I’d glance at the TV, shake my head in disbelief, and move on. Being a law enforcement junkie and having an interest in school violence (from a psychological viewpoint), I might even read a few articles about the whole incident, and that would be the end.

But this is Semester at Sea. We have 3 students from Virgina Tech onboard, 2 of which I have hung out with on trips and 1 of which I have gotten to know beyond simple pleasantries.

This act of violence, when everyone finds out about it in the morning, will not only hit our 3 VT students, but it’ll hit all of us in the shipboard community. For some reason, probably due to the VT connection, this has hit me like a sack of bricks. I’m mortified, shocked, confused, and angry that yet another guy lost his marbles and had to pull this shit.

I’m too tired to write anything else at this point, not that anything else needs to be said. My thoughts go out to everyone affected by this tragedy.

Mauritius blows.

And I’m not saying that just because two of my trips were cancelled.

Or because the stuff here costs the same or more as it would in the United States*.

The food, however, is always excellent.

*Seriously, a $350 iPod Nano? And NO ONE sells Canon digital cameras, period - it’s all Pentax and Sony. You may be without candid pictures for a while.

But of course, when addressing him to his face we go with Father, Archibishop, or Arch. Whatever you want to call him though…I got Toots to wave at me. That was freakin killer. I can’t wait for his next photo op so I can get a picture of us O.G’s.

Also, know what’s fun? Having to download a 30 meg update for your camera software so it can download RAW images properly. On a satellite internet connection. At 4 kb/s. Ahh…the joys of being a early adopter.

So Ali will be buying a PS2 in Cape Town so we can get our DDR freak on, but the only problem is finding the dance mats. If any of you resourceful people could find a place in either Cape Town or Johannesburg where we can purchase DDR mats for the PS2, please give us a heads up.

Also, I just soul my soul to become this voyage’s web site guy. Yes sirs and ma’am’s, when the Spring 07 website goes live, some of that code will have been written by yours truly. Considering my last major web presence was back in 2001, it’ll be interesting to see if I can reignite that same spark I had back in the days when I painstakingly typed out every line of HTML by hand. In any case, our competition (previous voyages’ websites) is fairly weak and it shouldn’t tax me too much to create one of my web masterpieces.

Damn, I don’t think I want to wait around any longer for this update to finish. Shouldn’t be too hard finding a net cafe in Cape Town.

We’re over halfway there!

There’s a crewmember that walks by in the hall every once in a while, and he kinda reminds me of my father. It makes me wonder…does he have a family? If so, what compelled him to have a job that isolates him from them for months at a time? If not, why does he work on a ship? Why would anyone choose to work on a ship where they’re working all the time, not allowed to really chill out in the public areas, and have little time to spend in port? How do crew members deal? How do ship personnel in the Navy deal? These are all questions I’d like to ask but won’t be able to due to non-fraternization rules. Maybe somehow out there with experience can help shed some light.

To those into the car scene: Japanese cars simply do not exist in the country of Brazil. The most prevalent car models I saw were the Ford Fiesta, Volkswagen Gol, Ford Ka, and a Volkswagen pickup truck whose model name I can’t recall, and Fiats. The Brazilians seriously love their hatchbacks. I thought I may have seen a Toyota Corolla at the beginning of my journey, but lack of any other Japanese car leads me to believe I was mistaken. Also, sirens seem to be optional for Brazilian emergency vehicles (as they were in Puerto Rico), as do headlights for any vehicle. No riced out rides here (not counting the taxi van I saw with an illuminated exhaust), but everyone sure seems to drive like them.

I was woken this morning to loud noises in the hallway and someone furiously banging on my cabin door. You can imagine how pissed I was when I discovered that the ship wasn’t sinking, on fire, or being boarded by pirates. The alarms I thought I heard outside was actually a very rhythmatic drum beat, the shouts of fear was actually the crew singing, and the door banging…okay, that was actually them banging on our doors. Considering at that point I was only 3 hours into REM sleep, I staggered back to bed to rest for the 5 or so hours I desperately needed to keep awake. How dare they think we would’ve gone to bed on-time, the night before a no school day?

The BBQ for dinner, however, definitely made up for the inconvenience. Hey ISE, I’ll take daily wakeup calls if that means I can eat like King Neptune every night.

Also, hair orgy.

We’re about 1/3 of the way to Cape Town already. This voyage is going by real quick.

What’s with all the girls dressing up for dinner? It’s a freakin cafeteria, ladies. Seriously. And wearing your dress to a BBQ?

I had a guy remark last night that he thought the ship was getting cliquey. Human instinct, man.

There’s 4 people currently connected to my iTunes share and streaming music. While I am flattered that music is in demand by the shipboard community, it’s kinda hard to browse the web when all my bandwidth is being drained. Also, it would be nice if the owner of the “Owner’s Music” iTunes share would relabel their share with their name so I could identify him/her….I’d like to liberate around half of that library.