around the world in 100 days!

I am returning to the world of blogging because I'm studying abroad this fall, I'll be taking 4 classes on a boat called the MV Explorer with Semester at Sea while sailing around the world and stopping in several ports. I'm really really excited and nervous because I signed up last minute (at the end of June!) and just heard (in July) that I'll be getting on Shuttle number 2 at 8am in San Diego California going to Ensenada Mexico on Monday August 27th to get on a boat for 100 days that sales around the world, stopping first in Hawaii for the day, then Japan, China, Hong Kong; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Bangkok, Thailand; India; Egypt; Istanbul, Turkey; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Spain and then finally, on December 7th, back in the good ol USA in Miami Florida, were I will go strait to the airport and come back to my home in Minnesota and I believe.... because my mother has already booked this flight... missing my dear friend Sarah Lawson's 21st birthday in my home in Chicago December 8th... though 21st birthdays don't come along every day so I guess I'll see if there's anything I can do to reach this location absent from my itinerary!

Anyway... I think I'm pretty much concentrating on talking about the US because I guess that's all I really know about!! I've been to Hawaii... I know what I like there, the beach, but all things considering I know about... nothing about all the countries I'll be going to! I didn't mention the ports in China, India and Egypt (Qingdao, Chennai, and Alexandria) because I have already had to preregister for class trips traveling around those countries but in the others it will be up to me (and... who ever my friends are!) to plan them ourselves. I've gotten travel books and am reading some fiction books taking place in the countries I'm going because I don't want to look like an American idiot, I'm also (trying to) read up on American history as I don't want to look like an American idiot... anyway really it's all very exciting and I can't wait for everything to start.

I like that it's so last minute because I definitely feel like a change of pace from ordinary crazy Chicago life and Minnesota this summer has been great but slow; it's been very exciting, though stressful, overnighting to get visas and calling all over the place to get stuff set up. I have to start packing, it's hilarious we just got a checklist in the mail today of what to do preparing for your departcher, it's like "one year before departcher" "six months before" "one to three months before" "the last month" haha, but like I said I'm also really nervous, not that I'll get sea sick or not have any fun or be homesick something ridiculous like that, but I've been reading a lot of people's semester at sea blogs and no one mentioned being scared, so I wanted to make it perfectly clear for anyone like me reading this sometime who's like -- what the f, why isn't anyone nervous at all about making friends?? Because I am.

I am really a people person, people make my days and I surround my self with good people, I wish I had an already acquired friend (haha) coming with me, but I don't, so I'm just going to be myself and make friends with every fun cool sensible interesting person I can, and hope for the best that I'll find a group of people who want to go to the beach with me in Hawaii, travel through japan by train with me... hit all the spots I've been recommend to in Croatia with me... plan fun and new things with me, do wild and crazy things with me, but not be careless... be interested in talking about and doing stuff I'm interested in... party all night with me... haha uhh kidding mom, but I hope that I can make friends on the ship like I have made friends all my life, I know that everyone who's going will be there to experience all the countries to their fullest and I'm being confident that I'll find the ones that want to do it in the same way that I do.

I'm also nervous because from what I've read the classes sound really pretty hard! I'm signed up for Global Studies, which everyone takes, so that will be cool; a macroeconomics class, which should be cool to learn while traveling around to different poorer countries and also business countries like Hong Kong; I'm taking a philosophy class, which will likely be confusing but... maybe help me to be more deep... or something; and then.... this is so scary... I got signed up for a class... because I registered so late....... about THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE! ahhhhhhhhhhh, oh my god it looks so hard, the syllabus is 22 pages! all my others are 3! the first line is about how architecture isn't about the aesthetic but about the affects of nature and... physics... and math.. and ahhhh! well. I guess we'll see if I make it. but this blog is now here so you can now read for yourself to see what I'm up to and if I'm alive or not!