Hello Goodbye

Hello to all of you, my faithful readers.

Goodbye to all of you, my faithful readers. I won't see you until I've been to all of these places:

• Nassau, Bahamas
• Cadiz, Spain
• Casablanca, Morocco
• Walvis Bay, Namibia
• Cape Town, South Africa
• Port Louis, Mauritius
• Chennai, India
• Laem Chabang (Bangkok), Thailand
• Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
• Hong Kong / Shanghai, China
• Kobe / Yokohama, Japan
• Honolulu, Hawaii
• Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala
  (Antigua, Guatemala City)
• Transiting of Panama Canal
• Fort Lauderdale, Florida

That's the plan. That's where I'll be. Some excursions I have planned include a safari, a seal and dolphin encounter, star gazing and camping in the desert, and various hikes and museums. And that's just scratching the surface.

My classes:

Intro to drawing
Marine Biology
Classical Islam
Global Studies-the required class everyone takes.

Some goals:

• Interact with, observe, and learn about other cultures.
  
• Increase my understanding of the human condition.
• Find commonalities between all peoples on Earth, besides shelter, food, clothing, sex, and smiling.
• See with my own two eyes some of the worlds greatest geological features, fauna, and flora.
  
• Develop my sense of global citizenship.
• Enrich the lives of others.
• Have others enrich my life.
  
• Make lifelong friends.

Some things I don't want to do (the "Grandma's Worries" List):

• Get seasick
• Get weird diseases
• Run out of money
• Be really homesick
• Have bad allergies
• Need to use my Epi-pen
• Vomit in front of an indigenous people if by accident their indigenous food disagrees with me.

The opportunities for personal growth and enrichment are endless. I intend on taking full advantage of every single one, as they say, an opportunity to travel around the world on a ship visiting 10 countries and interacting with different people around the world and visiting historical sites and eating new types of food and making lifelong friends and having a lot of fun is a terrible thing to waste.

Don't worry, Grandma(s) I'll be fine.