A Life Marked by Travel & SAS Voyages

When she steps off the MV Explorer, in Norfolk, Virginia, in less than a week, Kara Gregory will end her third Semester at Sea voyage and added three new countries to her current total of 36 countries and 35 states.

It’s a lot of traveling for someone so young (she’s 23), and not quite expected from a girl who grew up in Anadarko, Oklahoma, a town of 6,000 people, and attends college in another small town, in Emporia, Kansas.

But Kara belies her small town image. She is a self-described risk taker, adventurer, and experienced traveler. She started at age16 as a foreign exchange student in Australia for the summer. And, she has no intention of stopping anytime soon. (Aside from her SAS voyages, she’s has been on six cruises and plans to go on another, short one in January to the Cayman Islands and Mexico.)

Kara first sailed with Semester at Sea on the Fall 2007 voyage. “I knew the moment I got off that voyage that I was coming back,” she recalls. She returned in May 2008 for an Enrichment Voyage to Central America and then again for this summer’s voyage.

Kara’s wanderlust didn’t start with Semester at Sea. She credits her father with the initial spark in traveling. He traveled around the world in the Army and now works in China setting up an Asian division for his job. He has used Kara's voyages on SAS as an excuse to travel to Vietnam and, most recently, Greece to visit her.

Kara does cite her experience with Semester at Sea as having stoked her interest in international travel.

“I just absolutely loved getting to see the world, especially experiencing the different cultures,” she says. “It just made me want to continually come back and see different parts of the world. And I think this is the best opportunity because you not only get to take classes, you get to learn about [the countries] in depth.”

The experience on Semester at Sea also prompted Kara to travel to South Korea last summer to teach English to college students through a program at her home university.

Kara could have studied abroad elsewhere, but returned to Semester at Sea because of its unique opportunities for global learning and exploration.

“I did have the opportunity to study abroad at Oxford, but I chose Semester at Sea again because you get to go to a lot of countries and see so much more. You get to experience a lot more versus just being in England for a whole summer. I think it’s a better learning experience to go to several instead of just staying in one,” she says.

Kara doesn’t have an unlimited bank account to pay for the voyages. A combination of financial aid, grants from her home school, and long-term saving helped her afford the Fall ’07 and Summer ’09 voyages.

Kara returns to her college ready to complete her final year and graduate with a double major in business marketing and psychology. Her post-college plan for now is to move to China to join her father and brother to either teach English, work for a business, learn Mandarin, or all of the above.

She is certain, however, that her life will mirror her passport: filled with as many adventures and experiences abroad as there are stamps from those countries.