Semester at Sea!!

This past Friday, I was accepted by Semester at Sea. SAS is a study-abroad program put on my the University of Virginia. The way it works, it is like a university on a ship. We take this huge (cruise) ship, the MV Explorer, to our various destinations. While the ship is at sea, classes are in session. When we are in port, there will not be classes although there might be field practica (required for certain courses and optional) as well as opportunity for individual travel.

I plan to go abroad through Semester at Sea next summer (Mid-June to end of August). My voyage will tour the Mediterranean. We will start out in Nassau, Bahamas. From there, we will sail to

-Barcelona, Spain

-Naples, Italy

-Dubrovnik, Croatia

-Athens, Greece

-Istanbul, Turkey

-Alexandria, Egypt

-Casablanca, Morocco

-Boston, MA

I am very excited! I am most excited because I feel like this is God's will. Last year, I had attempted to make this trip happen for this past summer. However, things just never went smoothly in pulling all the parts together. For example, I never actually got around to the SAS application, despite considering it a priority for my Christmas break. This time around, I was able to complete the application in about an hour (during time that I was on-call to work but didn't get called in). The WSU portion of the application is also almost complete, whereas last year, it also did not happen. The ease with which things are happening, and the stress-free aspect, just makes it seem like things are going the way they are supposed to. Nonetheless, if this opportunity is not God's will for me, I would hope that He would stop my steps in that direction.

As you can expect, a trip like this will cost a pretty penny. So prayers for finances would be greatly appreciated. I plan to apply for scholarships, SAS offers many different ones, work studies, and loans. There is in particular one work-study that I would really like to get. It is for the position of the photographer's assistant. The job descriptions sounds absolutely heavenly to me!

I will try to keep everyone updated as I go through this process :) And thanks in advance for prayers!

OH and if anyone is interested, the website for SAS is semesteratsea.org