Emily here. I've heard through the grapevine named Audree that some WST 251ers are going to be reading this blog, so here's to you... enjoy.
So a little about my life? This semester I'm sailing around the world on a converted cruise ship. I have a really hard life. I only have class on A days... so every other day all I have to do is work for 2 hours. And usually my work consists of me playing on Microsoft Paint. I've gotten pretty good at it. Classes can be fairly intense, but that's mainly because there's so much to cram in in a short amount of time.
The shipboard community is great--imagine all of your life in one place. Okay maybe that's not so great. Rumors spread like crazy and there's always drama, but if you're not involved, you just sit back and watch it unfold. Dinner and a show. Speaking of dinner, it's pretty terrible, but I'm still sailing around the world, so whatever.
We circumnavigate the globe, stopping at different countries along the way. I chose Semester at Sea because I'm indecisive. I've always wanted to travel the world and I couldn't settle on one country, so I chose a bunch of countries. It's also a really cool way to compare how these different places have responded to similar events in their histories.
I can't believe we've reached midterms already. And yes, even though I'm on a ship, I have midterms. And a presentation. Better yet, we're rounding the Cape of Good Hope, which means rough seas. I'm talking 20 feet.
That brings me to my Western major. I like to call it "Development of Culture and Society Through Imperialism," and it combines history, anthropology, political science, international studies, etc. etc.
While we're onboard, we take classes. It was pretty easy to find courses that fit well with my major. I'm currently enrolled in four:
Global Studies
Everyone takes this class. It's just a comparative class, and it's very vague, but it hits a lot of the main points about each country we visit. I guess I can compare it to a history class, but there isn't anything too specific.
Human Rights and Ethics in World Politics
This class is a lot of fun. We talk about the issues in each of the countries before we arrive so we have an idea of the current political and social situations.
Anthropology of the Oceans
We talk about how different cultures view the ocean and how the idea of the seas has changed over time. It's probably my most interesting class because we float on the ocean each class and it's cool to look out the window and see the subject.
Language and Globalization
This is a linguistically based anthropology class. We've learned a little bit of linguistic theory, but focus on the languages in each country we visit. Sometimes we learn some phrases and words, but usually we read about how the languages of the countries relate to one another (in many of the places we visit, the colonial language is the official language).
While in port, we have FDPs. These are required field trips for our classes. It's mandatory that we sign up for two per class, but they're usually interesting so it's okay. If we aren't scheduled for anything, we're free to do independent travel, which is great because we can pretty much do what we want as long as we're responsible about it and it's no illegal. Speaking of illegal, someone got kicked off today. No idea why, but it was probably because she did something illegal. Why you would even risk that, I have no idea. People = dumb. Remember that.
You probably want pictures, so here.
That's my room before it was messy.
Mosquito nets in Ghana.
Marty and I playing rugby at the University of Cape Town.
I don't remember if I'm supposed to talk about anything else. Also sometimes email doesn't work, and that's how I've been blogging... so... maybe nobody will see this anyway.
