I know I never wrote about Brazil. I don’t think I will, either. It’s May 3rd and at this point, I will be home so soon that I can tell all of you (whoever you all are) directly about my wonderful time in Salvador and Boipeba. For now, I think I’d rather try to describe the strange sensation I feel when I think about being back in the United States so soon.
It’s eerie walking around the ship now that exams are over, and all that is left to do is pack up our cabins and exchange contact information with friends. I’m scrambling to copy photos from friends I traveled with over these last four months, and I’m realizing I don't really need to add to my collection of thousands of pictures. Today is supposed to be “Reflection and Re-entry Day,” but really it’s just another unstructured aspect to this long, ten-day good-bye.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Semester at Sea compared to any other study abroad program is that we spend half of our time on land, experiencing local culture, and the rest of our time taking classes on a ship. And this ship is kind of like a frozen-in-time version of America. We all speak English to each other, eat American food, dress (usually) like we would back home, and are still listening to the top 40 hits from January. (Has Lady Gaga come out with anything since Bad Romance? And are you all still singing “Tonight’s gonna be a good, good night”? ‘Cause we are.) In between immersing ourselves in cultures around the world, we revert back to our normal tendencies. So I want to know, how different will it really be to be back in the States?
I know I will come back to tons of questions and requests to see pictures, but I wonder how many photos or stories it will take for my friends and family to get bored or start rolling their eyes. And I wonder how frustrated I will get, knowing that telling people about my experiences just isn’t nearly the same as living though them in the moment. And I wonder how incredibly pretentious I will sound starting my sentences with “Well when I was trying to cross the street in Vietnam…” or “In India they wear the brightest colors…,” when really I’m just trying to add to conversations like anyone else. I’m going to miss how normal it is, here in my shipboard community, to say “I like that dress! Where’d you get it?” and be told nonchalantly, “Oh, Ghana.”
But mostly, I’m scared of reverting back to my old ways. I scared of being so caught up with the social gossip right in front of me, that there isn’t room on my plate to care about the problems in the rest of the world. Everyone has been saying that it won’t happen, but how can I be absolutely positive? And how can I, after forming relationships with people all over the globe, make sure that I will make a difference in their world. I want so badly to help in any little way possible, but I’m finding myself in the same difficult place that I was in January: there are so many issues to be resolved that I just don’t know where to start. What I do know now, though, is that it is possible to help. Helping people on a local level really does make the hugest of differences, even if it might not look or sound so impressive. If I have learned anything on this voyage around the world, it’s that "it’s all about the people." We all live in this world together. We make it the place it is, and we need to make it into the place we want and need for it to be.
03 May 2010
Coming Home
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I know the feeling. I got back from the UK two days ago and it still hasn't quite hit me. I've been completely immersed in British culture for a solid ten months of my life, and all of a sudden I'm thrown back into America, expected to revert to the American way of life just like that. I've learned so much, not only about the rest of the world, but about myself during my time abroad. It's strange...I feel more grown up then ever. Maybe it's the fact that I'm almost 21 and officially a SENIOR in college, but I think it's more than that. By living outside the isolated cultural bubble that is the United States for such a long time, my mind, body, and soul have matured so much. I have a new perspective on just about everything.
ReplyDeleteI know you can sympathise (notice the spelling). The only difference between your experience and mine is the dynamic nature of Semester at Sea. One week you're in Hawaii, the next you're in Vietnam. You underwent a constant onslaught of new culture. Did you ever feel "settled in" at any point? On the ship maybe? Is there any country in particular you felt especially at home at?
I'm sure the little things - different foods, dispositions, languages, music - are what affected you most. That's certainly how it was for me. British culture is different from American culture, but in subtle ways. Different idioms were the most entertaining. Someone asked me if I had any cigarettes, except he worded the question like "can I bum a fag?" Ask that same question in central Pennsylvania and see what happens.
I can't wait to catch up with you and hear all about your time abroad. I'm super jealous that you got to travel and see so much of the world. I've always thought that it is every human's moral duty to experience as much of the world as possible. Culture is what defines a society, and the differences between cultures is what makes experiencing different societies so damn exciting. But I know you already knew that.