The Beginning

I'm about to embark on a journey of a lifetime.  Yeah, yeah, that sounds so banal, but I'm not sure how else to describe it.  As many of you may know, in just a week, I will be heading to Nassau, Bahamas to board the MV Explorer on the Semester at Sea program.  In the next 105 days, I will be circumnavigating the globe, visiting a total of 15 ports in a dozen countries across 4 continents (if we count the United States as one of those countries and our final destination of San Diego as a port).

For those of you reading this who I don't know yet, my name is Paul.  I'm a 20 year old from the Bronx, New York.  I'm a junior attending the University of Rochester where I designed my own major called the Globalization of Music & Dance Culture which integrates my love for singing, booty-shaking, and figuring out why people around the world choose to do those things in the first place.  In short, I want to use cultural arts as a tool for improving refugee health.  But that story shall be saved for another day.  In other words, I want to travel the world and change it as much as it changes me.

Right now, I am preparing for a three-and-a-half month journey around the world, and as you can imagine, it's quite stressful.  I, for one, am not the best when it comes down to dealing with stress, so instead, I am writing this first entry of my blog where I will track my progress around the globe and share my insights of the entire experience.

Now you may be thinking, "Paul... why the hell is your travel blog called 'Shoe-mester at Sea?'"  You may not be thinking that.  Either way, you're getting an explanation.

I love shoes.  Memories of that horrible YouTube video sensation from a few years back may come to mind.  However, that's not exactly what I mean.  I've been thinking of doing some kind of art project dealing with shoes for a while now, and I'm taking this semester as an opportunity to do so.

I'm sure each of you have owned a pair of Converse shoes or some variation thereof.  Y'know what, any sneaker will do.  Or even boots.  Really, this idea can be applied to lots of shoes, but trusty old Chuck Taylors come to mind first.  When you first take them out of the box, they are in such pristine condition.  And you're slightly irked by it.  Chucks only look good when they're worn out and dirty.  Once they're grimy and disgusting, they seem to have their own personality, of sorts.  I've caught myself taking a fresh pair of Converses and beating them in the dirt, purposefully stepping in mud, and scuffing them all over.  However, these deliberate actions never truly deliver the results I want.  Eventually, after multiple wearings, these shoes take on the identity that you give them.  As you simply just walk around, they naturally retain the stains, dirt, and slime of the world.  They finally become presentable, and you can wear them with pride.  They will continue to wear down until the canvas rips at the most inconvenient time and the soles wear down in the middle of a thunderstorm, and you have to walk home with sadness on your face and what seems like the world's entire water supply in your socks.

So putting this in mind, we want our shoes to get dirty, and the only way to do that is to just let them get dirty on their own.  By simply living, we see our shoes transform into a weathered version of their former selves which reflect where we have been and what we did in them.  In a way, our shoes are a living canvas where the world leaves its own masterpiece.  They are a blank slate which tells our story.  We often think that we are leaving our own footprint on the world, but we fail to recognize that the world is leaving something with us, too.  It is through our feet that we are truly connected to the world.  It is how we know that we are planted on this earth, and it is through our feet that we create our paths, go on our journeys, and make a difference.

So this is my project.  I bought a brand-spankin'-new pair of natural canvas Toms.  I chose Toms for the simplicity of the design, their current fad-status in our society, the philanthropic idea that this one pair of shoes provided a pair of shoes for child in need who I could technically encounter on this trip, and the fact that the shoes are made of canvas make them the perfect, well... canvas.  They are a very versatile and deceptively comfortable shoe as well, so that is definitely a plus as I trek around the globe.  I will wear these every day (or as close to every day as possible) and chronicle my trip through my shoes.

I plan on taking numerous photos in each destination which depict the state of the shoes on my feet as well as the location where those feet standing.  Eventually, I hope that these pictures can be compiled in some kind of montage that will provide me some fond memories of this trip for years and years to come and to give you all a look at what it's like to walk in my shoes.

So here begins my project.  This is the first photo.  It was taken in my living room with a poster that I made a few months ago that I'll be taking with me to track my trip.  On a map of the world, I superimposed letters that I cut out of some more maps forming one of my favorite quotes which seems to be very suitable for my current situation.  I couldn't think of a better place to start what I hope will be a life-changing experience.