The next four years...

Hello everyone.

 

Thank you all for your wonderful comments. Semester at Sea has definitely given me the opportunities that I’ve needed to become a more informed and better educated citizen of this world. Not only have I been able to experience many different cultures of our globe, I’ve also been able to experience different facets of American culture through my peers. Some of these facets are much different from the culture that I know to be American and others seem to mimic my own. 

 

Over the past few weeks, students and faculty members formed an election committee in order to keep us well informed of everything going on back home in the political realm. Today will be a day that every single American will remember, much like September 11^th. I have mixed emotions about the outcome of the election, but I think many people feel the same way I do. Unfortunately, over the past few years, confidence in our President faltered and I feel that Obama will have his hands full when trying to make up lost ground. Party politics aside, the next four years will be an interesting turning point in American history. It is up to Barack Obama to put his right foot forward and not to let all those who believe in him down. Four years from now, I want to be able to say that America chose the correct candidate, not that they wish they chose a different name on the ’ 

As a college student growing up in a time of war and visiting both Viet Nam and Cambodia, I want our troops to come home as safely as possible. The men and women that serve in our military deserve the utmost respect from their fellow Americans when they arrive home. Obama says that he wants to withdraw troops as quickly as possible, but he really needs to make sure he understands the complications and potential dangers of doing so. I am all for every single soldier coming home to their families but I am also for them believing in the work that they are doing in the Middle East. Unless you’ve been there, you really haven’t the slightest idea what it’s really like.  Americans need to stop relying on biased news channels for their information. If you want to know what is going on, turn off your TV, turn off your party politics, and turn on your hearts and minds and listen to what our men and women who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq have to say.

 

As Obama said tonight, “Our stories are singular but our destinies are shared.” Whether you are a democrat or a republican, male or female, black or white, we are all American and we all suffer together and we all celebrate together. We may be individuals in person but we are a community in spirit. Although we should look forward to the potential of the future, let us not forget the progress we have made in the past. I am where I am today because both parties believed in evolution and change. 

 

I have six weeks left on Semester at Sea and then I come home to the life I’ve loved for twenty years. I will come home to my biggest support- my family, I will come home to friends that I will have for the rest of my life, and I will come home to an America that will appear the same from the outside but will be completely different from how I knew it before I left in August. It will be bittersweet.

 

Tomorrow we reach China…I’m off to Beijing and Xi’an province and I’ll be seeing history on a physical scale that I’ve never experienced before. I can’t wait! When I get home in December, I’ll load my pictures onto a picture-sharing website and then post all the links onto my blog for you all to look at.

 

I hope all is well back home and I wish I could be experiencing history while on American soil, but I suppose a ship will have to do J 

 

-Amanda