When it was first settled that I would be participating in the Fall '11 Voyage of Semester at Sea I decided on a whim that I should read a novel for each country I will be visiting. It was a great decision.
I am not even half way through the list (~4.5 books down) yet all the bits and pieces of information I am picking up along the way are helping to make the prospect of this Journey a little less intimidating. I tried with each selection to pick a novel, not a history book, in an attempt to get a somewhat candid view of the cultures and customs of the countries I am visiting. So far I've learned a little about the importance of haggling, the purported exquisiteness of the durian fruit, and how to recognize a malarial attack, though I only hope to use two of those learnings this fall.
(My stack of summer reading)
So far I have finished my reading for Morocco, Ghana, Malaysia and Vietnam, with South Africa still in the works. I'm going to write a short little review of each for my own practice. The goal is that I write at at least the 6th grade level by the end of this voyage!
