A Journey Across Time and Space

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. My journey abroad is officially underway, and so far, it’s been nothing short of incredible. Even now, as I write, I am sitting on the back of a perfect little cruise ship called the World Odyssey – my home for the next four months. Every day, I wake up to marvelous white and navy ocean waves, and the sun rising over the horizon in a pink, hazy glow. First we traversed through the Arabian Sea, and now the Indian Ocean as we make our way to our first port of call, Mumbai. Admittedly, sometimes it feels more like a dream or a vacation than my life now. But my piles of textbooks in my backpack and long hours spent reading assignments remind me that I am, in fact, going to school.

So, what is going on with my post schedule?

I haven’t quite established a post schedule yet. I am still adjusting to my new class schedule, and the altering weeks of being at sea and then at port. I am also keeping up with schoolwork, meeting lots of new people, and hurriedly making plans for India and Kenya. My internet is also very limited, and incredibly slow, so I must take that into account as well.

My goal is to post at least once a week, however that could vary based on my days I spend in port, where I probably won’t be able to post. Over the next days, I will post to “catch you all up” as the last week has been extremely hectic. As I continue to fall into routine, I am confident that I will establish a schedule soon. For now, just keep an eye on your inbox (as I surely hope you all are subscribed).

The Journey Begins

On January 2nd, after heartfelt goodbyes to friends and family (I tried my very hardest not to cry, but it was difficult) I left my dad in the car and my mom and brother at airport security. From that point on, I was alone (in a sense). While I didn’t travel with anyone I knew beforehand, I did meet Taylor, a wonderful girl who attends Texas A&M University and her equally amazing mother, Dedra, who graciously adopted me for our duration of travel and days in Dubai. After nervously making my way through security with a floral duffle bag filled with clothes (a gift from Aunt Kris, which proved to my saving grace when packing), and my extremely heavy camera bag, containing my camera, laptop, I-pad, chargers, toiletries, and other necessities, I met Taylor and Dedra at the gate. We also met a couple other “SASers” (Semester at Sea students) as we call ourselves, including Caty, who boarded in the same group as me. It’s so exciting running into other students!

Once there, I filled my water bottle and sketched a vision board in my journal for 2023, which will undoubtedly be an unforgettable year. At this point, it still felt unreal that I was flying to Dubai. Although the international terminals look different than the national ones, a part of me still felt as though I were flying back to Fort Collins for another ordinary semester at Colorado State.

Before I knew it, we began boarding our flight, a double-decker Emirates plane. I hadn’t been on a plane this large since I was a young girl, flying to and from London to the United States. On that flight, I was lucky to experience the luxury of first class, but for this one, I was just happy to get an entire row of seats to myself. Additionally, I was one row away from business class, and therefore close to the front of the plane, which would make for a quick exit in Dubai.

A selfie of Caty and I waiting to board the plane, which was delayed by 20 minutes. While waiting in line, we met the sweetest lady who told us stories about her life in India!

Let the 14 hour flight begin

At around 5:30 p.m., the plane took off, and the 14-hour journey began. For the first couple hours, I put in my Airpods and tried my best to sleep. But I was restless because I was anxiously awaiting dinner. For dinner, they served a variety of food, including chicken and rice, a dinner roll, a small piece of chocolate, some pretzels, and so on. Maybe it was because I was starving, but I enjoyed dinner. After that, I immediately tried to sleep again was much more successful with a full stomach.

The next hours were filled with light sleeping, thanks to the baby in front of me that would not stop crying. I was forced to plug my Airpods in as tightly as possible and blast music to drown out the fitful cries. It made me wonder – why on Earth were you bringing a baby on a 14-hour flight? What could possibly be so important that you would want to put yourself, the baby, and everyone around you through the torture of 14 hours of crying in a confined space? At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel pity for the tired mother. Whatever reason they were flying to Dubai must have been important.

Some hours later, I awoke once the flight attendants came around offering more food. I was given a personal pizza, which was also decently good for airport food. My phone said it was about 2:00 a.m., but it was bright as day outside my window, which was incredibly disorienting. I had really no way of knowing how far we’d flown or how close we were to Dubai. I ate my pizza and then started my latest book, People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. After drinking tea provided by the flight attendants and reading a chapter or two, which helped me feel some normalcy, I felt drowsy enough to sleep more.

Stretching out across the three seats in my row and taking advantage of the three provided travel pillows and blanket, I managed to fall into a deeper sleep until around 8:30 a.m. (or at least that’s what my phone said). Despite that fact that it was morning, it was completely dark outside my window. I still had no idea where we were or how far we were from Dubai. A little while later, breakfast was served, consisting of an omelet, some yogurt, sausage, another role, fruit, and coffee. The breakfast wasn’t great, and the omelet made me a little queasy. After breakfast, I once again went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and get dressed for the day to the best of my ability.

Afterwards, I grew bored enough to purchase an internet plan to stream Netflix for $20. This ended up being a total waste of money because Netflix wouldn’t stream, despite the plan claiming it would (sorry Dad!). I was, however, able to access YouTube so I watched videos for a while and messaged a few people via WhatsApp. Then, I felt drowsy enough to try and sleep again.

I must have slept longer than I realized, because before I knew it the captain was announcing we were within the hour of landing in Dubai. From that point on, I opened my window cover and watched the night sky fly by in eager anticipation while listening to Evergreen by Ritchy Mitch and the Coal Miners until we landed.

Overall, the flight was not nearly as bad as I expected and I was incredibly excited to be in Dubai, even though I had no idea what to expect! I’ve come to learn that coming in with no expectations isn’t a bad thing - it just makes the adventure all the more exciting.