Around the world in 100 days
Two students spend semester on the high seas
By Kaleigh Maher, staff writer
Posted on January 22, 2007

This fall, seniors Tim Brown and Bret Van Roden took study abroad to the next level, sailing around the world in just over a hundred days while taking classes.

Van Roden heard about the Semester at Sea program, sponsored by the University of Virginia, from his twin brother who participated in fall 2004.

“I thought beforehand that the world couldn’t be that big, so I wanted to see how small it is for myself,” Van Roden said.

“I didn’t know exactly what to expect,” said Brown, an international business, Spanish and finance major. “But [the trip] was better than I expected. It was more work and more enlightening.”

The ship sailed from Enseñada, Mexico, on Aug. 27 with about 550 students from colleges and universities across the country, as well as some international students.

Students took a full course load aboard the ship, studying anything from philosophy to business.

“We had a global studies class which prepared us for the countries we were visiting and to discuss current global issues,” Van Roden said.

Brown said classes were challenging, but never so overwhelming that students couldn’t enjoy themselves.

From Mexico, the cruise circumnavigated the globe stopping in Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Egypt, Turkey, Croatia and Spain before returning to Ft. Lauderdale Dec. 7.

“We were able to do whatever we wanted while in port, which included anything from riding through jungles to lounging on the beaches in Vietnam,” Van Roden said.

Brown said he spent time researching the countries before the trip so he knew what he wanted to do in each country before he got there.

Some of his favorite experiences included visiting the Temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, seeing the ritual bathing in the sacred Ganges River and witnessing an initiation ceremony into a monastery in Myanmar.

“The American War Museum in Vietnam was intense,” Brown said. “It has pictures of horrible things we did to the Vietnamese, it counters everything we’ve seen and heard about the Vietnam War.”

Both Brown and Van Roden have traveled abroad before and agree that the Semester at Sea program was unlike other experiences because theyvisited so many countries in such a short period of time.

“We became experts at figuring out how to get to the cool places to see on a budget and getting back before our boat left,” Brown said.

Brown and Van Roden said that one of the greatest lessons they learned is that people are people, no matter how different their lives may seem.

“Despite cultural, political, economical and religious differences, people are just trying to make it in the world in their own way,” Van Roden said.

“It is amazing how many predetermined conceptions of other cultures we carry with ourselves.”

Brown said: “No matter where you are, people are people.”

JMU’s Director of Study Abroad, Felix Wang, hopes students will take advantage of these programs even though they are not offered through JMU.

“I think [Semester at Sea] is a wonderful experience, but the industry and our study-abroad field is not ready for that yet,” Wang said.

Wang said that a lot of JMU students study abroad through other schools.

The Office of International Programs acts as a resource center to help these students with their paper work and transfer credits.

“We’re here to support the students and we’re here to help them out,” Wang said.

For those interested in a Semester at Sea program, more information can be found at http://www.semesteratsea.com/.