New Website!

I decided to use a new blogger forum. Find me here:

http://pirateblogging.tumblr.com/

Go Head, Turn It Up

                       
               (Mood: Scary/Excited, as in, it's scary how excited I am)

Here are some highlights from the past two months. Hopefully you think they're highlights, too. 

The John Lennon Wall

Cassis, France

Český Krumlov

The Bone Church

Less than fifty days till my ship embarks on its voyage around the world. 

(Whoop Whoop)

I guess I never fully explained the purpose of this blog, nor have I gone into great detail about my impending journey. August 26 (which if you check your calenders is fast approaching!), marks the day the M.V Explorer will set sail from Montreal, Quebec.  The ship will be carrying me along with 700 other classmates, crew members and Life-Long-Learners. The M.V Explorer, over the course of approximately four months, will circumnavigate the globe, making stops in Morocco, Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Malaysia, Viet Nam, (Cambodia), China, Japan, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Cuba along the way. 

(Visuals are always nice)

I discovered Semester at Sea two years ago during a spell of nocturnal googling. I knew immediately (or at least shortly after) that it was something I wanted to do. When my sister Jori entered college, she began exploring every inlet and landmass available for travel. Hearing her gallimaufry of adventures and stories, one can only generate through travel, inspired my own thirst for exploration. I knew when I set foot in college that I wanted to get out there, create my own stew of memories. I just didn't know where or when. As I sat wrapped in a blanket on the floor of my Chicago apartment at an ungodly hour, watching a promotional video for Semester at Sea, I got chills (and not because it was December and my apartment building had the heat turned off). Everything communicated on the video excited me. I identified, or wanted to identify with these people; professors and students alike. As a student on the ship I could collaborate on philanthropic efforts worldwide by building a house in Ghana or volunteering at an orphanage in India. I could turn my history lessons into reality by climbing through the dark and narrow Chu Chi tunnels, see firsthand what war is capable of producing at Hiroshima, and watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat, an exciting alternative to glancing at pictures of it in my Art History textbook. I had to be apart of it and as of August 26, I finally will be.  

Now to get to the purpose of this blog--I have never had a blog and I'm not really the "blogger" type (but who is?). However, it was through reading other students' blogs that I confirmed my aforementioned intuition regarding the greatness of this program. Also, I heard the internet on the ship is slow and expensive, making blogging an easier substitute to recount my adventures to friends and family (mom). 

                            

                      
                          (Video from the Spring 11' trip)

Above is sample from the massive amounts of SAS videos I've consumed over the past twelve months (it really was a disgusting amount). Good thing this is happening.
                          
                            Until next time peeps.
                                   Love,
                                    Meg

Counting Down the Months...

(To set the mood)

"Our first experiences with travel are likely an attempt to lose our innocence, and then later, perhaps, to regain it. Our earliest journeys may be to fill a blank page and our later ones to erase some of the marks we have made in the world and the world has made on us. One way or the other, travel is about innocence lost or recaptured, about changing the way we see ourselves and how we live our lives. If even true travel doesn't transform us permanently, it usually allows us to leave personal history behind. When we travel, there is only History and the characters we make of ourselves. Our lives become a new page--a blank one--for experience to write upon. As travelers, we are in the world now, in the immediate and present sensation, not drifting in the past or yearning for (or fearing) the future."           


--Michael Pearson
  Innocents Abroad Too: Journeys Around the World on Semester at Sea


Five weeks from now I will board a plane to Prague. I am studying abroad in Prague for six weeks, working on a marketing project with DRAFTFCB Prague and their client, Kraft. I am extremely excited, but even so, I feel like most of my thoughts these days are occupied by images of the MV Explorer. I feel like I am stuck somewhere in time, waiting for school to end, waiting for Prague, and waiting for my ultimate destination: Semester at Sea. Focusing on these last few weeks of school is nearly impossible. I put off writing papers by searching YouTube in hopes to find another SAS video I still haven't seen (it's getting more and more difficult). I procrastinate, refusing to study, instead I read new blog entries posted by students on the ship. Saying I am excited is an understatement. I just need to make it through finals. May 11, hurry up already!