South Africa was like sugar and salt. On one hand you have the cushiony waterfront with big malls, fancy restaurants and lots of comforts to spend money on. And then you go out to the townships and the squatter camps and it makes you feel guilty for the lovely breakfast you had just an hour prior.

There are miles of multicolored tin shacks with spray painted numbers. I enter shack number 293 and I meet a young woman, not much older than I with a baby on the way, she's cooking in the shiniest pot I've ever seen. What do I think of her living situation? It's relative. She has a cramped home about half the size of a standard sized garage. She has a modest but old couch, utensils, TV, radio, all the necessities and a few crowded beds on which her family sleeps. I guess if it was my first trip into a poor area I'd be devastated and frustrated like most of my friends on this ship are. But I'm not them and I've seen far worse. I'm not dismissing the poorness I saw in South Africa, nor denying the fact that they need more, that we as an international people need to do something about the current condition of many African countries. What I am saying is that judging solely on what I have seen with my own eyes, the squatters in South Africa are ten times better off than the shanty people in Sri Lanka. The children I was teaching in Sri Lanka had no beds, no couches, not even blankets and certainly no electronics besides the one light bulb that lights up there houses which are half the size of the shacks I saw in South Africa. The African swat camps were sad, yes- the people deserve more, yes- I'd help them more if I could, defiantly yes. But I wasn't thrown into a deep depression. Mostly I think I worked through a lot of the feelings of guilt and sadness and powerlessness that come from visiting places less fortunate during the few weeks I was in Sri Lanka. I just wasn't as disturbed as everyone else in South Africa. And I feel like a horrible person, but I hope we run into the poorest peoples in India while we are there, just to put everything more in perspective for everyone and for myself. I imagine Myanmar will be hard to swallow. I hope a lot of people on this voyage will be that much more educated and mature by the end.
 
I have to be a snot and complain about the level of immaturity I see on a regular bases. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to be associated with the rest of "the Americans" or "the gringos" or whatever we are called in port. When we dock, 700 or so students are unleashed onto the shores of any given country, we are like a 5 day infestation and unfortunately the portion that act like total idiots really discredit us as a nation. Maybe I'm just a prude, but I wish theSouth Africa was like sugar and salt. On one hand you have the cushiony waterfront with big malls, fancy restaurants and lots of comforts to spend money on. And then you go out to the townships and the squatter camps and it makes you feel guilty for the lovely breakfast you had just an hour prior. There are miles of multicolored tin shacks with spray painted numbers. I enter shack number 293 and I meet a young woman, not much older than I with a baby on the way, she's cooking in the shiniest pot I've ever seen. What do I think of her living situation? It's relative. She has a cramped home about half the size of a standard sized garage. She has a modest but old couch, utensils, TV, Radio, all the necessities and a few crowded beds on which her family sleeps. I guess if it was my first trip into a poor area I'd be devastated and frustrated like most of my friends on this ship are. But I'm not them and I've seen far worse. I'm not dismissing the poorness I saw in South Africa, nor denying the fact that they need more, that we as an international people need to do something about the current condition of many African countries. What I am saying is that judging solely on what I have seen with my own eyes, the squatters in South Africa are ten times better off than the shanty people in Sri Lanka. The children I was teaching in Sri Lanka had no beds, no couches, not even blankets and certainly no electronics besides the one light bulb that lights up there houses which are half the size of the shacks I saw in South Africa. The African swat camps were sad, yes- the people deserve more, yes- I'd help them more if I could, defiantly yes. But I wasn't thrown into a deep depression. Mostly I think I worked through a lot of the feelings of guilt and sadness and powerlessness that come from visiting places less fortunate during the few weeks I was in Sri Lanka. I just wasn't as disturbed as everyone else in South Africa. And I feel like a horrible person, but I hope we run into the poorest peoples in India while we are there, just to put everything more in perspective for everyone and for myself. I imagine Myanmar will be hard to swallow. I hope a lot of people on this voyage will be that much more educated and mature by the end.
 
I have to be a snot and complain about the level of immaturity I see on a regular bases. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to be associated with the rest of "the Americans" or "the gringos" or whatever we are called in port. When we dock, 700 or so students are unleashed onto the shores of any given country, we are like a 5 day infestation and unfortunately the portion that act like total idiots really discredit us as a nation. Maybe I'm just a prude, but I wish there was a maturity test you had to pass to go on a trip like this. The sad part is the kids who really need to visit townships and do the more educational eye-opening trips that SAS offers are too busy everyday finding beaches, going shark diving, paragliding and whatever and getting drunk daily by 4pm to really learn anything. Not to mention, they spend hours trying to think up ways to sneak in booze and drugs. They are going to step off this ship in San Diego at the same level of ignorance they were at when they boarded and that's a shame. This trip offers you the world, but you can only get what you are willing to take from it