The Power of Place and Experience

I’m still feeling a bit disillusioned by the fact that on this first semester we are going to places that are so “easy” – the language is easy, it’s easy to find things you need, there are lots of familiar things, it’s comfortable to travel, tour and talk to people. I know those sound like good things but I believe that a trip around the world should be the opposite of comfortable, familiar and easy. The whole point is to be catapulted into the unfamiliar – your senses assaulted from the moment you touch ground, your cultural frameworks challenged with every interaction, your comfort zones pushed to levels you didn’t know possible and communication tactics forced to be creatively and delicately approached at every step.

I’ve been reflecting on this a lot recently because I’m just now realizing that one of my challenges this semester is that I don’t feel that I have been catapulted out of my comfort zone in many ways during our port visits. At first I was critical of myself asking, “Have I really become so jaded about traveling to new places that it doesn’t feel novel or exciting to me anymore?” That feels really icky and gross to think that might be the case. Where is the openness to learning and experiencing in those thoughts? Then I started thinking about my last trip around the world. What made that different? I think a big answer to that is the places we visited. They were all places that did assault your senses, places that were totally unfamiliar and challenging to our comfort zones. These places threw us off balance and challenged our thinking & our stereotypes, and opened us up to so much learning.

Is this happening for some students on this current voyage? Yes, I’m sure it is, but I’m sad because overall I’m not so sure how much it is really happening this semester for students, faculty and staff. We have gone to “easy” places that feel more familiar than foreign in many ways. In fact the Spanish speaking students aren’t getting to experience a country where they don’t speak the language until almost our last port!

I joined TSS because I was excited about their mission and goals around helping students develop into “global citizens”. Now that I am almost through the first semester I worry that we are creating “global tourists” rather than “global citizens”. Why is that happening? I think it’s happening for many reasons – there have been many missed opportunities on this voyage to prepare students, challenge students and frame things for students but I believe the ports we are visiting are a big contributor.

Unfortunately the geography of the world is not going to change and there are only so many places we can get to in a reasonable amount of time (don’t want to be at sea for three weeks!). That is part of the reason this semester’s itinerary was built the way it was. TSS has particular challenges in creating a dynamic itinerary because Royal Caribbean has very strict safety guidelines as to where we are allowed to go AND because we have so many different nationalities on board – some countries won’t allow certain nationalities in – so that restricts us as well.

The good news is that next semester has a very different itinerary. It will be interesting to be on this second voyage to see how it compares to the first – will going to less “easy” and “familiar” countries make a difference? I guess we shall see.

The other good news is that regardless of the countries we visit students are getting a multicultural experience and being challenged. That fact that we have faculty, staff, students and crew from so many different countries poses challenges and opportunities to learn on a daily basis. You can never say that TSS is not an interesting experiment!

As for me, I’m trying to be open to whatever learning I can in each port. Have the places we have visited thus far left my head spinning? No – but I also know that taking part in an adventure like this is not about any one experience in a particular port. It’s about the total experience – the cumulative experience that builds up from port to port. I guess I have to remember that there will be different lessons for me on these two voyages than there was on my last. What those lessons are – I’m not sure yet and I probably won’t know until much after this experience ends. I guess I just have to be open to whatever comes my way and soak it all in.