testing out new waters.

Well...I have succumbed. I am starting my own blog in order to stay in touch. I want people to experience what I see as it happens. I hope that everyone will comment/post/view to their leisure instead of me sending out mass e-mails to people who all have so many diverse interests.

This will be my way of connecting to everyone while being time zones ahead and on the other side of the globe. I encourage everyone who is interested to post on my entries and send me emails if they are interested in anything they see (or to just say hello!).

For everyone who does not know: I will be going abroad next semester. The program I am participating in is called Semester at Sea. I will be taking classes aboard a ship and travelling around the world stopping in select ports along the way and taking in the local fare. The decision to participate in this program came to me after I learned that I did not receive the Department of State internships I had applied for in Geneva and Marseille. I had planned on the internship counting as my stand-in study abroad experience. Then I found out about this program and I will be departing from the western coast of Mexico on August 27th.

I hope you will follow along with me in my journey around the world. The destinations I will be visiting (depending upon world conditions, as they say) are:

Honolulu, HI
Kobe, Japan
Qingdao, People's Republic of China
Hong Kong, People's Republic of China
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Yangon, Myanmar
Chennai (Madras), India
Port Suez (Adabiya), Egypt
Alexandria, Egypt
Istanbul, Turkey
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Cadiz, Spain

If any of you are interested here is my itinerary plotted out in Google maps (here) I will be posting as regularly as I can throughout the summer and during my Fall semester. Let me know if there is anything you believe I should (must!) include in my posts. I'm already dreaming up ways to fit in everything I want to share with everyone.

Have a lovely weekend all. I'll leave you with a few pictures of the places i'm currently dreaming about.