Road Rules: Semester at Sea

Road Rules: Semester at Sea
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	19 (including two specials)
Release
Original network	MTV
Original release	June 8 (1999-06-08) – October 11, 1999 (1999-10-11)
Season chronology

Road Rules: Semester at Sea was the eighth season of the MTV reality television series Road Rules. This season featured six cast members in the shipboard Semester at Sea study program, and followed the cast as they travelled aboard a cruise ship, both while taking school classes and embarking on the various adventures and scavenger hunts typical of Road Rules. This is considered to be the final season of the 'classic era' of Road Rules, as the format of the show would change significantly beginning with Road Rules: Maximum Velocity Tour. This season was filmed in: Nassau (Bahamas), Havana (Cuba), Salvador (Brazil), Cape Town (South Africa), Mombasa and Chyulu Hills (Kenya), Madras (India), Penang (Malaysia), Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), Hong Kong and Shanghai (China), Osaka and Tokyo (Japan) and Seattle, WA.

A pair of specials — a casting special and a "Passport to Road Rules 8: Semester at Sea" special, aired on June 8 and June 14, 1999, respectively, and the season premiered on June 21, 1999.

Cast

• ^Note 1 : Age at time of filming.

Missions

Episodes

Memorable Moments

• The infamous tension between Veronica and Ayanna began when landing in Cuba, Ayanna had told Veronica that she too knew some Spanish. Ayanna claims that Veronica responded with such a disbelief and negative attitude, that it caused them to start off on the wrong foot.
• In one mission, the cast had to compete against a team of Japanese people in a skiing competition. Pua expressed her hesitance to do the mission because she had never been skiing before. However, the Road Rules team beat the Japanese team.
• In one mission, the cast was told to spend 12 million Vietnamese đồng, and if they did, 12 million dong would be donated to an orphan center. The cast came into conflict when Ayanna didn't want to spend money on an expensive Armani salon, but instead wanted to spend money at a family-owned Vietnamese business. She later gave in and got a massage. Pawel was so touched by the orphans at the center that he sold his prints and raised over $2000 for the orphan center.
• Containers of alcohol were found in Yes' quarters, in violation of the Semester at Sea rule against it, for which he was disciplined.
• Pawel, an aspiring photographer, was crestfallen when he did not win a mission involving photography.
• Pua, after a garment of hers turned up missing, found the garment among Veronica's belongings, apparently having been stolen by the latter. Pua decided to wear the garment to a public gathering on the ship, where she hoped that Veronica, seeing her wearing it, would be shamed by her act. Veronica was later forced to admit stealing the garment after she pulled Pua into the bathroom late at night and had confessed that she had stolen it. Veronica had asked Pua to cover it up for the cameras to avoid embarrassment, but Pua confessed the next day.
• Pua became upset on a mission in which the cast had to entice elephants to paint on canvases using paintbrushes held by their tusks, when one of the elephant handlers used violent discipline on her elephant to motivate it to paint. Pua rebuked the handlers for doing this, and later insisted that the abuse she herself had suffered in her past was not a motivating factor in her taking offense at the act.
• Ayanna came into conflict at times with other cast members, for example, during an argument in which Pua accused Ayanna of placing talcum powder and matchsticks on her bed in a voodoo ritual intended to inflict bad fortune on Pua and Veronica after the two became close friends. In another incident, she accused Veronica of plagiarizing her paper. In comparing the two papers, Ayanna read off each and the two ended up so similarly that Veronica looked as if she did indeed plagiarize. While Veronica asked to read both papers, Ayanna refused and took off running to slide the papers under the dean's door. Veronica ran after her, but couldn't catch up. Although Veronica was never formally accused or admitted to stealing the paper, they both had to re-write them.
• Ayanna was forced to deal with the separation from her mother, who was suffering from breast cancer. Ayanna was reunited with her mother during the show, though her mother later died from the disease, as Ayanna mentioned on the Extreme Challenge reunion.

After filming

External links