Semester at Sea Fall 2006 Voyage

• Home Page
• My bio
• A Comparison of Transnational & Vernacular in Turkey & Vietnam
  

• Vietnam: God & Cash in Saigon
  
• Diary of a Haughty Tourist in Croatia
  
• Turkey: Istanbul: Open for Business
  
• Burma: Yangon? Rangoon? Who Cares? The General Sure Does
  
• Spain: Barcelona: Flamencomania!
  
• Traditional & Vernacular in Japan
  
• Open Letter

Open Letter to Citizens of the World

Hello, hola, kanichiwa...whatever...citizens of the world!

I have been truly blessed during the last hundred days during my travels on Semester at Sea. The world is a beautiful and strange place. I urge anyone who has not left his or her country to take a chance and go travel. Pick a country, maybe one you know little about, do some research and go there. Take a risk! There is just so much to learn and so much to experience!

Whether we are willing to admit it to ourselves or not, our minds are filled with prejudices and stereotypes about "the ways of the world" and the peoples who inhabit it. The fact of the matter is, we are not all exactly the same. We all come from different historically and cultural and religious backgrounds, and these factors, in many ways, mold the people we are and the ways we interact with one another. However, there is somthing primitive, somthing pure deep down inside us that we can only refer to human nature that unites us all, and makes us realize that we are all part of the human family, first and foremost. All over the world people are people, and its about time we all got off the couch and start meeting our brothers and sisters!

Much Love: Jason