When the meeting in Japan did finally happen, only three could make it. The day that Kieran and Sam were waiting to buy train tickets in Moscow, Sam learned that a close friend’s father had died. He returned home for the funeral, leaving Kieran to travel through Siberia alone to meet their roommates.

In the four-day trip through Siberia, Kieran befriended a German backpacker going to work with children in Mongolia and managed to escape from a man he believed to be a member of the Russian mob. He then boarded a train to Mongolia, followed by a 35-hour bus ride through the Gobi desert to Beijing. In this bus, which Kieran describes as the “modern equivalent of a slave galley,” the passengers lay in four-level bunks. They slept with their hands shielding their faces to keep their noses from slamming against the higher bunk when the bus hit a bump. From Beijing, Kieran had hoped to take a boat to Japan, but a monsoon foiled that plan. He flew in by plane instead, and landed in the midst of violent wind.

Throughout Kieran’s ordeal, Nick remembers that he and Aaron kept phoning their friend but could only get through for brief exchanges.

“We’d just hear, ‘I’m coming by plane, or boat,’ then static and a click,” Nick says.

When the roommates finally met in Japan, they traveled together to an island called Shikoku, where they spent six days living in a 300-year-old peasant hut and working the land.

As Nick describes the trip, he decides that he wants to show the pictures in his album.

Before Nick can enter his room, however, he slips off his sneakers. His single is designed to resemble a traditional Japanese room—tatami mats carpet the floor, a bamboo roll-up shade covers his bookshelf, a tea set sits in the corner. He has no bed and no standard-issue desk, chair or bureau. Instead, his laptop rests on a small wooden table low to the ground, and he takes a futon mattress out of his closet each night.

Back in high school, Nick’s interest in linguistics led him to Japan in eleventh grade for a six-week homestay. There, he grew fascinated with the culture as well. Since, he has studied with a sushi chef in New York—a skill that he brought to the Quincy Grille last year in his role as “Chef Niku,” rolling eel and California rolls at the weekly sushi nights.

“When I get into things, I just get into them really passionately,” Nick says.

Evidence of passions is on the walls of each of the eight roommates’ singles. For Justin, it’s colorful paintings he bought during a summer in Haiti. For Chris, it’s posters from Valencia, Spain, where his family is from.

While Chris spent countless childhood summers in Spain, he got to know the country more intimately during his year off in Spain and the Dominican Republic. That year, he also made a brief stop in Morocco, driving one day to the edge of the desert and vowing to return—which he did this past summer, this time with Sam. They drove to the spot where the road ended and rode on camels through the desert.

The roommates say that their travels—which include a road trip to Anthony’s family home in Ohio, regular weekends at Kieran’s house in New Hampshire and Bastille Day in Paris—have deepened their friendships and broadened their views of each other.

“You just find that you’re a different person when you’re not here,” Kieran says, gesturing from his seat on the Quincy balcony to the surrounding campus. “Certain parts of you are just more accessible, more alive.”

Challenging Values

As they’ve journeyed the world together, the roommates have found a shared sense of social justice. But each of the eight envisions different means to righting the injustices they’ve perceived in their travels.