Day 114

Today was a day filled with emotion. 

People were writing on each others maps or in notebooks. Saying goodbye, reminiscing about the past four months. 

I thought it was funny, during convocation there was a section called 'voyage reflections' by Dean Nick. But everything felt like a reflection of the voyage. That is what we were doing at all times. 

At 11 we gathered in the piano lounge to have a day full of trading photos. We set up a nest in the corner and only left it for meals and to go to the various events in the unions.

I embraced the unidentifiable meat sandwiches that we were for lunch. It was the last time that I was going to be eating bright pink meat. Yum. 

The first event in the union was Re-entry where people talked about what we can expect as we re-join the real world. 

One of the voyagers, Asher, read a speech given by a professor from the Fall 05 voyage. He adapted it from a speech given to the Spring 2005 voyage by Robert Fessler. It was really powerful and really spoke about what we have experienced and how we should process it. It is really long so I will post it at the end of this. 

We also had convocation where we honored those who are graduating this semester. The graduates had chosen Dr. Dave to speak and, as always, it was perfection. 

Here are some of the highlights from his speech: 

"I know things that your mother and father don't know. It is a good thing your mother and father don't know." 

"I have systematically insulted you many times." 

"And yet you can't remember if the camel that tried to bite you resides in South Africa or Portugal…its neither."

"Does it have rabies? Can we pet it?" 

"Can you tell me what day of the week it is?" 

"Put on your sunscreen, and go commence. Go get out there, do that thing that will put a smile on your face." 

Then Dean Eddie gave some advice, which I thought was pretty good

Society will continue to break you down. But now you are wiser and have made it this far. 

1. A desire to move on 
2. Live life – be sure to keep breathing, eating and loving. Struggle if you have to, it will make you stronger. 
3. Money is not everything – it is the spiritual, physical, and emotional well-being that matter
4. Get a mentor – a wise and trusted guide. They get behind you and your dreams and goals. But they are also there to challenge you. 

To conclude they had two of the graduates say a few words. It was Raj and Sammy and it was absolutely hilarious. Here are the things that they said that they learned: 

Even thought there is a 4-1 girl/guy ratio it does not mean there are 4 girls waiting for you.

I'll be five minutes does not actually mean five minutes  

Boyfriend/girlfriend  is a ambiguous term 

Even if you get kicked off you can still follow the ship…too soon? 

Just because you can grow a beard  for no shave november does not mean you are 21 and can drink in the states

Don’t mess with the portugese bouncers although I'd be more scared of demitru

My new goal is to out produce the Schuchardts 

They ended with some real lessons learned which included this gem: 

"Follow your dreams, and make your own path. Unless you're in the woods, and you're lost, and you see a path, then you should follow it." 

Right after convocation they had logistical pre-port for the U.S. It was done by the international students who gave some of their opinions on the U.S. It was not all that funny and was actually kind of lame. I feel like it could have been better. But it was still good to be all sitting in the Union together one last time. 

And they did tell us a little about what to expect the next morning. Breakfast would be served between 6 and 7 am. We would be getting into Ft. Lauderdale between 7 and 8. After that the entire ship would have to clear before we would be allowed to get off the ship. The we would be called group by group. 

After all of the events were over we just settled into the piano lounge as a group. I was surrounded by all of my friends, Molly, Marie, Jessi, Lillian, and Amanda. We had been sharing photos and media all day and it was still going. My computer was completely full. It was sad and struggling. I had to be nice to it or it would rainbow wheel for way too long. 

People were having people sign their maps and notebooks all day long. I was having people sign the back of my third notebook. Catching people as they walked by was a challenge. It felt like yearbook signing at the end of high school. It was all very hard. The whole day was very hard and emotional. But for some reason it didn’t feel like it was ending. I had had that moment during the crossing to Cuba. It was then that I struggled because it felt like the voyage was ending and I wasn’t ready to leave. But on this day, sitting in the piano lounge with all of my friends and most of the other people that I had become close to over the past 4 months. In the moment it felt like it wasn’t the last day, that we had another port, another crappy meal, and another gathering in the union. It felt like there was so much more ahead of us. I wasn’t sad. 

Eventually people started peeling off to go to bed. Marie went first. She left around 7 to take a nap and then never emerged. 

The rest went around midnight. Just Molly and I were left. We originally had the plan to stay up all night but it seemed like that wasn’t going to happen. My computer was the main attraction of the whole day, when I finally got it back I just spent my time blogging and organizing my media and putting more of my video together. 

Around 1am I made and ate my last cup of noodles that I had bought a few days before. I didn’t have a fork and was going to eat them with a pen cap but then Byron came by and told me that the silverware is always there. He was right they were just covered by a table cloth. So I stole one and took it to the piano lounge. So illegal. But they were delicious and gave me a second wind. I also had a issue where I was really thirsty but didn’t have anything to put water in. Byron told me to eat my noodles and then use my noodles cup to drink water. Genius.

Around 3am they made us move into the 6th deck dining room because they needed to clean the piano lounge. 

I guess this means that it was now day 115. Because day 114 never really ended. The two days just blended together into one giant day that seemed to go on forever. 

It went on forever. 

The Last Lecture- Robert Fessler; Semester at Sea Spring 2005

Adapted by Asher Thompson; Semester at Sea Fall 2013

 

     Back at the beginning of the voyage some of us talked about the difference between individualism and collectivism. We had just come on the ship…700 of us…from different backgrounds, different schools, different religions, different countries…with different interests, different dreams, different hopes, different plans.  And in those first few days we were trying to get our sea legs…and just beginning to get to know each other.  There was a lot of excitement and enthusiasm…mixed with some apprehension about how the voyage would unfold…about what it would be like to travel around the world with all these strangers.

 

     Look at us now.  Shipmates.  Friends.  Many of us have found ourselves talking to people we never would have approached at home.  Many of us have made friends with people we didn’t know we could be friends with.  Slowly…so slowly that you can’t quite put your finger on when it began to happen…700 individuals became a community.  The diversity is still there… maybe even more so than it was at the start.  We are shaved and braided.  Beaded and saronged.  But we have learned tolive with that diversity.  And we have learned to be incredibly accepting and tolerant of each other.  Want to shave your head?  Okay.  Don’t want to shave your head?  That’s okay too.  Girl wants to shave her head?  Doesn’t bother anyone.  Dean Eddy wants to dress up like Queen Neptune.  Yeah…whatever.

 

     And it has been more than simply learning to accept the diversity.  Wehave learned to appreciate the differences…to appreciate what each individual brings to the whole.  It takes threads of different colors and textures to make a tapestry.  It takes tiles of different sizes and shapes to make a mosaic.  This is a collective society and each of us has our place in it.  Not one of us can be removed without all of us losing something.  Seniors and kids.  Staff and students.  Family members and crew members.  Happy people.  Cranky people.  Serious people.  Silly people.  New Yorkers.  Californians.  South Americans.  Canadians.  Sky divers and poets.  Medical students and mystics.  Scientists and surfers.  Philosophers and fools.  Poker players.  Preachers.  Atheists.  Smokers and weight lifters and drummers and sunbathers.  Each of us belongs here.  Not one of us can be removed without all of us losing something.

 

     And we have achieved that in a little over 100 days.  Learning to look out for each other.  Learning to take care of each other.  But most of all, learning to listen to each other.  Social scientists have shown that the only way to break down the walls between people…or between groups of people…is to put them together in a situation that allows them to get to know each other…to get to see what they have in common.  From the outside, it is too easy to make judgments about those who are different…to hold stereotypes.  Us and them.  But when we sit down together, the differences in our values…in our beliefs…in our assumptions…that looked so divisive from the outside, begin to be seen more as interesting variations…because we discover that there is so much more that we share.

 

     We have shared a lot on this voyage.  Some of it exhilarating.  Some of it frightening.  Some of it very funny.  Some of it tragic.  But all of it…enlightening.  And those shared experiences have brought us together.  At the beginning of the voyage we were told we would have many new experiences.  Not one…not ten…not a hundred…but wave after wave of amazing experiences.  Too much to process all at once.  Do you have any idea how much we have been through together?  How much we have seen and tasted and touched and smelled?

 

     Lunatic tro tro drivers playing bumper cars in the streets of Takoradi.  Children without homes.  Beggars without limbs.  Open sewers and open sores.  Neon nights in Paris.  Lion kills.  Shantytowns.  Dolphins and flying fish.  The smell of fresh baked cookies at the pool bar.  Mitchell’s.  A massage from a stranger in a hammam.  Candomble. Racing against draw bridges in St Petersburg.  Babies holding babies. Cruising through the Kiel Canal.  Table Mountain.  Rolex knockoffs. Shellbacks and Pollywogs. Dock time. Captain Jeremy.  Calm seas and cubed cheese.  Castle beer and Malbec wine.  Rita…Pinky…Perry.  Poverty and paper usage.  Samba…sunsets…street mimes and Spanish.  Life boat drills and laundry day. Doxycycline.  Pepto tabs.  Clogged toilets.  No toilets.  Head nods and thumbs up.  Rain forests and rhinos.  Philanthropy and polyrhythms and pasta who-knows-what?  A surrealistic Alice-in-Wonderland voyage where clocks are retarded and sweatsocks are bartered and doctors are stand up comedians.

 

     I was at club knox one night in the Reeperbahn of Hamburg. Many of you werethere with me. I had dislocated my shoulder a day or two before and my arm was in a sling. Everyone was dancing and the club was packed but I didn’t want to bump my shoulder and get hurt so gloomily I found a wall to lean on where Icould be alone. After a few minutes I caught eyes with another guy in the club. He was on crutches with his leg in a cast and was leaning against the same wall a little further down. I approached him and we both looked at each other’s injuries and just laughed. I said “What’s up man, I’m Asher.” He was German and spoke no English. I’m American and I speak no German. But it didn’t matter. At that moment our mutual recognition for each other’s situation completely transcended any difference in nationality or culture or language and we were both just people and understood each other. It was a human moment. And it was great.

 

     I hope you have had moments like that.  I think you probably have.  Maybe it was a moment when someone smiled at you.  Maybe it was a moment when language differences stopped being a barrier and you found yourself communicating.  Or when you quit worrying about being ripped off and just started talking to a street vendor.  Or when someone taught you to dance a new dance …or play a new instrument…or sing a new song.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t expect the world to change easily.  But I do know that the only way it can change is by finding the common ground.  The smiles…and those human moments.

 

     You now know, more than you have ever known, that you are privileged. Sure, some of you have more money than others.  But each of you has more money than most of the people in the world.  More money…more freedom…more education…more opportunity.  You are privileged.   And in addition to that, you now have a global awareness.  Don’t buy the myth that one person can’t change things.  Whether you become a CEO or a lawyer or a Peace Corps volunteer doesn’t matter.  You are in a position to do something…and a far better position than you were in four months ago. I don’t care if you spend the rest of your life in Oklahoma…you will always have a global awareness…an enriched understanding of your place in the larger whole.  Make good use of that…and the voyage will never end.

 

     Find a cause.  Something you believe in…and work for it.  It doesn’t have to be some big sweeping world movement.  In fact, one of the things we have learned on this voyage is that small local projects…like Global Mama’s and Pencils of Promise…are often far more effective and productive than large decisions made high above or far away by people who may have good intentions, but who don’t fully understand the local implications.  It may seem trite to say, “Think globally, act locally”…but small community-based and community-designed projects work.  And small changes are real changes.

 

     We are all in favor of the big things, like World Peace and the abolition of hunger.  Those are things that are easy to believe in, but very difficult to do anything about directly.  That’s the reason why people throw up their hands and say, “One person can’t do anything”.  Well, one person can.  You can.  You’re smart…you’re free…and you are a lot more independent and confident than you were four months ago.

You have communicated with people from different cultures, different backgrounds anddifferent languages.  You can figure out how to get from here to there in Rio de Janeiro, just because you want to.  You can bargain with the best of them in Marrakech.  You have skills.  If you can cross a street in Accra, you can do anything.

 

     This voyage has been an incredible gift.  It has changed you.  And now you’re going home.  No you’re not.  At least…not to the home that you left in August.  When you get off the ship in Ft. Lauderdale, you are going to know that.  You already know it in your head.  But when you get off the ship in Ft. Lauderdale you are going to know it in your bones.  You are going to feel it in your skin.  The world that you left behind isn’t there any more.

 

     There is a story that I like to tell about a fish in a fishbowl.  There is a way in which a fish swimming around in a fishbowl knows nothing at all about water.  Because water is so much a part of the fish’s life.  It is surrounded by water.  It is embedded in water.  In that sense, the fish does not really know water.  If you want the fish to really understand water, you have to take the fish out of the fishbowl and say, “Look, that’s water.”  Now…if you put the fish back in…the water never looks the same again.  Well, in a certain sense, we’ve all been taken out of our fishbowls.  We have been out of our fishbowl for 4 months.  Now we have to go back.

 

     It may not happen to you immediately.  Caught up in the excitement of seeing your friends and your relatives…it may take a day.  Maybe a week.  But sooner or later there is going to be a moment.  It might happen to you at the airport.  It might happen to you in your hotel room.  Maybe not until you get home.  But sooner or later there is going to be a moment when you realize that the world just doesn’t “fit” the way it fit before.

 

     Many of your friends…even your good friends…are going to seem suddenly, strangely… stupid.  You’ll want to talk about Morocco.  And they will say, “Yeah.  Right.  Sounds great.”  And somehow that is just not going to be enough.  And you’ll say, Yes, but I was in Marrakech…let me tell you about the colors and the smells and the people!”  And your friends will say, “Uh huh”.  And you will watch their eyes glaze over as they smile and nod and glance over your shoulder.  So you’ll try South Africa.  “You know, I was in South Africa.  Cape Town.  There’s a giant mountain that back drops the entire city and it’s called Table Mountain. And let me tell you about the townships! It’s where all the black and colored people were forced to move during Apartheid, oh but colored isn’t an offensive term there it just refers to the mixed race population. Oh and Desmond Tutu came on the ship at the end and gave this really moving speech!” And your friends will say, “Oh.”

 

     And then your friends will suddenly get enthusiastic again when they begin to tell you all the great things you missed while you were gone.  Like that big party…where everyone threw up on each other.  And that really great episode of “America’s Got Talent”.  And they will start telling you some of the things that happened…and getting excited as they are telling them to you.  And you will be crawling out of your skin.

 

     And you’ll say, “But I saw beggars.  I saw children begging.  Did you know that parents sometimes actually maim their kids to make them better beggars?”  And your friends will say, “Awesome”.  And you’ll know that they don’t get it.  In fact, you might even begin to wonder if some of your friends really know what it means for something to be…awesome.  Standing on the Cliffs of Moher and seeing the coast zig zag away into the mist, that’s awesome. Having dinner in the middle of the desert with a Berber family, that’s awesome.  Waking up in a hammock on a small boat chugging up the Amazon River, that’s awesome.   The big party you missed while you were gone, isn’t.

 

     And you are going to hear yourself sounding pretentious.  You won’t feel pretentious, but you are going to hear yourself sounding pretentious.  You know, here on the ship, if you are sitting around with one of your friends or your roommate and you start a sentence like, “One night in Ghana I was taking a tro tro back from the slave dungeons in Cape Coast…”  That doesn’t sound odd, here.  But can’t you just see your friends back home rolling their eyes?  You are going to have to choose between sounding pretentious…and being silent.  And you are going to long to be back here with us…where you can be normal.

 

     And maybe you have a relationship back home.  An important one.  One that seemed really comfortable and promising…last August.  Oh boy.  All those emails you wrote?  Or didn’t write?  Some of them maybe feeling a little forced as you wrote them?  That relationship might not feel right any more.  Like an old pair of jeans that’s comfortable…but no longer your style.  And you think, “I just can’t do this any more.”

 

     Many of us have become independent on this voyage.  Much more genuinely concerned about the world.  About other people.  Stronger.  Braver.  Better than we were last August.  And the life that we had planned for ourselves might not seem big enough any more.  You might be thinking about changing directions.  A new major.  A new career.  Maybe even a new country.  Who are you going to talk to?  How are they going to understand?

 

     There are a thousand little ways in which the world is just not going to fit any more.  And a thousand little reminders that it doesn’t fit.  Television commercials are going to look really stupid.  Houses and cars are going to be obscenely big.  Restrooms are going to be disgustinglysanitary.  Salespeople will look at you like you’re an idiot when you try to bargain.  And everybody is going to have so much…stuff.

 

     Even words aren’t going to seem the same.  You’ll hear the word, “Lisbon”.  Lisbon is a place…it’s not just a word.  Buenos Aires.  It all comes back.  It’s not just a word any more.  How could you possibly have imagined, back in August, that you would spend the rest of your life getting chills whenever you thought of the words, “The ship has been cleared” Who else will ever understand that?  The world is never going to be the same again.

 

     So what do you do?  Well, I think one of the things you have to do is to forgive your friends.  Looking at the pictures…listening to your stories…it’s not the same as having been there.  You know that.  You’ve looked at people’s vacation pictures before.  You know that pictures can’t capture the same experience.  They are going to be looking at it and listening to it…you’ve lived it.  It has changed you…it hasn’t changed them.  So you have to be a little patient with them… you have to be a little forgiving if they don’t quite get it.  But I think that you can only do that if they are willing to let you be the person you have become.  It is not the places you have been to …and it is not the things that you have done that have to be shared.  It is who you have become that has to be shared.  You don’t have to find people who have been around the world to understand you, but you have to find people to understand you.  And if your old friends won’t let you be the person you have become, make new friends.  There are a lot of people out there.  You know those foreign students on your home campus?  Those strange people with the accents?  You see them wandering around confused and not knowing what building to go into.  Been there.  Done that.  Go talk to them.

 

     There are a lot of people out there who can confirm who you are…and who you are becoming.  Even if that is not clear to you now.  In many ways, the person you will be six months from now is still developing right outside ofconsciousness.  You don’t know yet how much you have changed.  And you won’t know for another six months or a year.  It isn’t a good idea to make any major life decisions before then.  You might want to…but give yourself some time.

 

     Earlier I suggested that you might want to find a cause…something that you believe in…and work for it.  I think that’s a good idea.  But I’m not worried about you.  I don’t think that you have to be urged to do that…you don’t even need to be reminded to do that.  I think you are going to have to do that  in order to feel at home.  If the world doesn’t fit any more, then you have to create a world for yourself that does fit.  A place where you can feel at home.

 

     I have been on a previous voyage…and gone home.  So has Dean Eddie…Dean Nick… Marjorie…Bill…and some others.  We’ve all been taken out of our fishbowls and put back in again.  And I think I can speak for all of them when Isay, “Come on in.  The water’s fine.”

 

     Thank you.