I am 4 days away from beginning my Semester at Sea and couldn't be any more anxious! I left Texas yesterday with my bags packed and headed to Florida to stay with my Aunt for the weekend before my Dad and I headed down to Nassau, Bahamas where the ship leaves from on Wednesday. I am very relieved to have everything packed and so far it doesn't seem like I forgot anything. Now I just have to pray the next 4 days go by quickly and I will be on my way around the world!
I will post text, pictures, and videos along the way so people at home can keep up with my travels since my communication will be limited. I am shutting my cell phone service off for the next 3 and a half months to avoid roaming charges. I will be able to communicate through email, facebook, and skype. We have a limited amount of internet each day but when we get to the ports we can skype and it sounds like we aren't AS limited.
If anyone is interested my skype name is ericamadden18 and the email I will be using is erica.madden@tcu.edu.
For those of you interested in why I am doing this and how I heard about it I will give you a brief story of how it all fell into place. I went to school at the University of Hawaii at Manoa my freshman year before I transferred to TCU and my friend Hanna and I heard that the Semester at Sea ship was in the Honolulu port and was giving tours to people who were interested. We had both heard of Semester at Sea but didn't know how hard we were going to fall in love with the concept until after our tour. Basically what we got out of our tour was: one semester, 10 countries, 4 continents, 15 credit hours, and an experience of a lifetime. I'm pretty sure we both had one of those moments where you are overflowing with motivation, you feel like you can do ANYTHING in the world, and you are willing to do anything to make what you want to do possible. Luckily our inspiration never faded away and two years later we are both on our way to get on the ship to go on the same voyage. I actually met Hanna in 3rd grade and she has been one of my best friends ever since so going through this with her is just going to add to many memories we already have together.
I am extremely excited and can't believe the time has finally come. I have been researching this trip and trying to make it work for 3 years and feel so lucky and blessed that it has finally worked out. There were a lot of make or break moments in the last 6 months but I worked really hard to make it all work. I had to petition through TCUs study abroad office for them to allow me to do this and accept my credits, had to get course approval through the marketing department, I applied for 7 visas for different countries the ship is going to, and of course figuring out how to pay for it has been a challenge. I was lucky enough to get TCU to accept the credits, I got a grant from the International Studies program throught Semester at Sea and am using some of my TCU financial aid, and got all my visas just in time. Although the preparation was stressful this is a once in a lifetime experience that was going to take A LOT for me to not make it happen. Plus if you think about it it's a great deal... This is the ultimate bundle package. Buy one, cross a couple dozen bucket list items off for free!
I plan to make several posts a week on this blog so feel free to follow if you are interested and you can leave comments on anything that fascinates you and I can tell you more or answer questions you may have :)
