Ariel@SAS

Japan

2006-04-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

K guys here it is. I know it’s another short one, but I will be home soon and promise to fill in any blanks. I just felt I had to write for our last country. I didn’t edit this one, but I am sure you can figure out the gist of it. I can’t wait to be home, we are all feeling both sad and excited right now.

Day 1
So I woke up for the welcome reception the first day. There was a diplomatic briefing before but I missed that. The reception was really interesting just because it was something we have not done in any other country. The academic dean spoke and one of our Japanese quests spoke in very broken English. Our dean, captain, and two of the other officers, and two students representing everyone else were all given gifts and then we gave all of our guests’ gifts. It was just really interesting because it was all so formal and everyone bowed every time they gave and accepted a gift, plus the captain and dean both got samurai swords (w/the disclaimer they are for show only). After that some women in kimonos played music on the koto which is a Japanese harp. They even played some American songs for us.
After that we went to get our Japan Rail Passes. The tourist information desk at the port \told us there were two places we could get our passes so decided to try and miss the SAS line at the first place and go to the second; we took the port liner to Sanomiya and then the subway to Shin-Kobe station, for a total cost of $4 then found out that Shin-Kobe does not issue JR passes, so we took the subway back to Sanomiya for another $2, stood in the line that was now out the door for about 2 hours, and took the subway again for another $2 back to Shin-Kobe to get to Tokyo. The public transportation system in Japan really was amazing and it was definitely convenient, unfortunately it was quite expensive and in addition to spending quite a bit on a rail pass in 5 days I ended up spending over $80 just on transportation, which just plain sucks. At the end of our trip we really did see a lot of places but we all felt like we spent the majority of our time on bullet trains, subways, busses and street cars. But anyways, it was Gretchen, Nicole, Dustin and I on our way to Tokyo.
The bullet train was really fun. It took about 3 hours to get to Tokyo. We played games to occupy our time. So once we got into Tokyo it was already getting late and we had no idea where to go to eat or sleep and it was raining and cold. We ended up wearing winter coats almost every day because it was so cold and rainy. We had heard that all the hotels were booked, I think this was because the cherry blossoms were blooming, and that we wouldn’t be able to find anywhere to stay for less than $70 a person. We wandered around looking for food and possibly somewhere to stay. Nicole and Dustin found a sushi restaurant. They barely spoke English and really did not seem happy to have us there. There were a few businessmen drinking and eating who spoke a little English and tried to help Dustin and Nicole pick what they wanted. There were pictures up but we found out that wasn’t actually the menu. When we asked for menus they just pointed at the wall and it was just Japanese writing with about 5 different prices. They just ordered whatever was on the top and ate that. It was definitely real sushi, there were all different kinds of fish and even the eggs wrapped in seaweed and some kind of orange chunky goop wrapped in seaweed. I don’t eat sushi so I don’t know what it was. After that we went back to the train station to try and find a tourist agency to help us find a hotel. The agency was closed, but luckily I had a lonely planet book so we looked up a capsule hotel and decided to go there. The hotel was in Akusaka, so we had to take another subway train. The hotel was supposed to be within stumbling distance from the subway station but it still took us a while to find it. We finally found it and went in. The first thing that happened was the guy ran out from behind the desk and told us to take our shoes off. There were little lockers and we put our shoes in and then put on little house slippers. We actually paid for our rooms through a vending machine, it was right by the desk and the guy working helped us and then it printed a ticket and he gave us our keys. This was one of the few capsule hotels that took women so all of us girls were on a separate floor from Dustin. We went up to drop off our stuff. There was a room with lockers and sinks and a bathroom and then a door that separated the room with capsules. The capsules were stacked in twos and there were about ten in a line. I thought they would actually have doors but there were just little fabric things that pulled down like a window shade. The capsules were about as wide as a single bed and tall enough to sit up in. There was a mat with a blanket and pillow and a TV and radio inside. There were already people sleeping so we had to be quiet and we went back out to find somewhere for Gretchen and I to eat. We wandered in the rain for a little bit and found a place called Yoshinda. It was kind of like fast food, more like an old small diner in the US where you walk in and there is just enough room to sit at the bar and order your food. We got lucky because the guy working spoke English so we got to talk to him which was fun and the food ended up being really good. We wandered in the rain again after that looking for something to do. It was already after 10 and everything seemed to be closed. We went back to our hotel to get out of the rain and decide what we wanted to do. Dustin decided to go out and us girls all went up to bed because we wanted to get an early start the next day. Sleeping in the capsule definitely sounds more fun than it was. It was pretty much a plastic box and the walls were definitely thin, but it was still a fun experience.

Day 2
All of us girls got up and were ready to go at 8 the next morning, Dustin had wanted to leave at 8 but still wasn’t out in the lobby. He rolled out of bed long enough to tell us he needed more sleep and asked us to come back in an hour. We didn’t really have anything to do so we just went out and wandered in the rain again. We found a cute street but everything was closed. I liked it because it was a bunch of shops and they all had metal grates down but they were all painted with different pictures but it was actually pretty and made everything look really clean. As we wandered more and more shops started to open but we had to get back to get Dustin. Once we got back to the hotel Dustin still wasn’t up. Since the floors are women or men only and we can’t exactly call his room, we just had to sit there and wait. He ended up coming out about 45min late right before we were going to leave.
The first place we went was to the Museum of Natural History. We had to take a subway to Ueno but to get to the Museum we had to walk through a park and it was really pretty and the cherry blossoms only added to that. The museum was cool because we got to see samurai swords, paintings, statues, and samurai armor. After that we took the subway to try and go to a famous garden, we had a hard time figuring out the subway connections so we ended up taking the subway somewhere else. We were trying to find the Oriental Bazaar but we ended up finding this really cool street called Takashita. It was almost all young people and trendy stores. The best part was just walking down because the street was filled with the Tokyo fashion that is famous around the world. We saw some pretty outrageous clothes and some pretty outrageous outfits in general. We ate lunch and Dustin decided to leave and meet up with us later at the Sony Building because Nicole wanted to shop and we figured we would spend a while there. We wandered in to most of the shops and didn’t really buy anything but we were still entertained by all the people. We finally decided to go to the Sony building. When we got there we didn’t find Dustin but we figured he was probably gone by then anyways. The Sony building was pretty cool; they had all the new products and some that were not available yet. The game room was under construction though and that was the main reason we went so that was disappointing but not a huge deal. We wandered around for a little bit after that looking for somewhere to eat dinner. It was interesting to see the difference in clothing in central Tokyo versus the street we had been at earlier. We hadn’t really walked around the city much so that was nice too; it was mostly buildings and little convenience stores, like ampm and 711. We were definitely happy to see some places that reminded us of home, we even saw a Wendy’s. We didn’t eat there but at that point seeing anything American was exciting for us. We ended up eating back at the train station before taking the bullet train back to Kobe for the night.

Day 3
Today we went to Hiroshima. The weather was the best this day because it didn’t rain at all. Generally as a city Hiroshima or at least the part we were in was really pretty. We took a street car once we got there to the Peace Memorial Park. We saw the A-Bomb Dome which is the only building that was left like it was after the bombing. The park was really big and we walked around to different parts. There was the children’s memorial which is for all the children who died or were affected. There is also a hill that contains the ashes of tens of thousands of victims, and there was a peace flame that is burning and will burn until there are no atomic weapons in the world. The Peace Memorial Museum was in the park so we went there too. There were lots of videos and displays on the bombing. There were models of Hiroshima before and after. There were videos and pictures of people who had been injured. There were some really gross pictures and even some pieces of skin and fingernails which was really gross. The whole point of the museum is obviously about remembering what happened but also Japan has a strong belief that there should be no atomic weapons in the world so there was a lot of information aimed at that. From there we wandered around trying to find somewhere to eat lunch. It seemed like everything was closed. We finally found a place that was open. It was really interesting because it was another vending machine type place. Everything else was like a normal restaurant but we put our money in the vending machine, picked our food, it printed a ticket and we gave it to the guy working, who just yelled it back to the kitchen. It was really fun and the food was pretty good. The only bad thing is they eat a lot of raw egg there and so all of our food came out with raw egg on top, which was not in the picture. The heat from the food cooks it partially but it was still a goopy mess. I just pushed it to the side as much as possible and ate the rest. From there we went to try and find an internet café. We knew there was one by the train station so we headed that direction on the street car. On the way we saw a covered shopping area, so we got off the train and wandered through there. There were still some pretty outrageous clothes but not as much as what we had seen in Tokyo. Some people were really nice and some would ignore us completely which was strange. From there we finally made our way to the internet café. It wasn’t really what I expected. It was pretty much a gamer place. We had to get membership cards to even use it and then it was a bookstore type place and most people were just playing online games. The keyboard was really hard to use and the spacebar was about the size of the enter key and it kept going from English to Japanese so that got annoying fast. After that we took the bullet train back to Kobe. There were private rooms on this train with tables, so we sat there and played cards the whole time.

Day 4
So this day we went to Kyoto. Kyoto is a very beautiful city with lots of gardens and temples. The weather was pretty cold all day but it was ok. We ate lunch at the train station when we got there and it ended up being the best meal we had in Japan. It was just some random place, it was pretty packed and the waitresses were all running around. I think it took most people about 10min to sit down, order, get their food, eat, and get out. We were difficult because the menu wasn’t in English so we had to take the waitress outside the front of the restaurant and point at the displays. Once we were done we took a bus to the Golden Pavilion, we weren’t actually going there but we walked from there to Ryoan-Ji which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful gardens in the entire world. Even the walk there was really nice because both sides of the roads were lined with cherry blossoms. The garden really was beautiful; it is the most beautiful garden I have ever been to. There was a lake with purple lily pads and cherry blossoms and beautiful trees and flowers, it was just really pretty. There was also a temple which we went into. It has a famous Zen rock garden. The meaning is supposed to be up to you and the longer you sit and meditate there the more your imagination is supposed to grow. It was pretty boring to me; really it was just some rocks. Gretchen and Nicole sat there for a while and I understand the importance and significance to some people, it just wasn’t me.

From there we took a bus to Gion. Somehow we ended up on the bus for about an hour and a half when it was supposed to be a half hour drive. We finally figured out where we were and where we needed to get off. Gion is supposed to be the more traditional part of Kyoto. There were a few Geishas walking around which was really cool to see, but most people were literally following them down the street trying to get a picture. The streets were pretty crowded with tourists. We went to Gion Corner because we had heard about a traditional show there. We found out when we could buy our tickets and wandered around the area until then. We were trying to find a market but the only one we found was really expensive. We tried to find food after that. The only place we ended up finding was some kind of Japanese pizza place but they really shouldn’t have called it that because it was nothing like pizza. The setting was really funny though, we had special guests at our table with us, they were two Japanese mannequins. The walls were covered with little wood tablets with very funny but raunchy cartoons. The food wasn’t very good at all, it had raw egg again, tons of onions, some beef and I couldn’t tell what anything else was, it was folded in half like an omelet. It was an interesting experience though. After that it was time to go to the show. We were pretty excited because the show had been recommended to us by the tourist information as a really good show. It ended up not being so great but I’m still happy we went. The first part was a tea ceremony, the problem with the ceremony was that it was off the stage on the side and no one could really see it except for the people that were sitting on that side of the room. Next was koto playing and flower arrangement which is a big deal in Japan. It really wasn’t flowers though it was actually some leaves and sticks and one thing of flowers. After that was court music. This was a few guys sitting on the side of the stage playing instruments and a man in a costume with a mask walking around the stage. I am sure there was more significance to it than that but I didn’t really understand it. Next was traditional dancing. This was my favorite part of the show. The dancer was a geisha so that was cool to see. After that was a puppet show. It is supposed to be traditional and a major cultural thing but we thought it was the worst part of the show. It was three men in black hooded outfits with a large puppet. They would stomp across the stage to pretend she was walking and then they would take their hands out to do different stuff and it was just really terrible. I would equate it to an elementary school play. After that we found our way back to the train station and went back to Kobe.

Day 5
We stayed in Kobe for the last day. We had planned on going to a baseball game but once we made the trip there we found out it was rained out. That was a big disappointment because we really didn’t have any other plans for the day. We went back to the main station to try and find the shopping area around the station. When we got there we saw a bunch of kids in costumes and so we decided to follow them. It turned out it was some sort of parade. It ended up being really cool and it was actually the coolest thing I saw the entire time. There was a little shrine set up and as each group would go by they would stop and do different stuff at the shrine. There were guys dressed as samurai warriors and did some kind of bow and arrow display. There were also little kids who sang, they were really cute in their little outfits with their faces painted. After that we pretty much just walked around, shopped and ate lunch. There really was not a lot to do in Kobe so we went back to the ship early and then hung out in the terminal building and just made it back in time for dinner.

We had a really bad storm the night we left Kobe. It was the worst we have been through yet. Morning classes were actually cancelled because of it.

So now we have already had four time changes. We will be crossing the International Date Line tonight so we are having 2 April 20ths. I can’t believe we only have 9 days left. Things have been pretty busy, we are all getting ready for finals there has been lots of stuff every night since we left. The theatre department had there last play two nights ago and last night was the Mr.SAS competition, which was hilarious and now tonight is the Ambassadors Ball. I will try and post about that if I get a chance.

Hong Kong and China

2006-04-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I know this is the worst blog I have written and I’m sorry, but I am so tired. China was a lot of traveling and just a lot in general.

Either way this is what I learned in China:
The pollution was absolutely disgusting, the dust was terrible; just walking around it hurt to breathe.
Hard to believe but I thought it smelled worse than India.
The fashion is totally different than at home and anywhere else we have been, I can’t wait to see what it is like in Japan.
People seem to have no idea what it means to stand in a line and simply just push past you whenever they want.
Habits usually reserved for when you are five, like picking your nose, are done on every street corner and shop and almost anywhere else you happen to be, it was really gross.

Hong Kong
So there was no diplomatic briefing for Hong Kong, it was cancelled for whatever reason. The place we ported was kind of interesting because there was a covered tunnel walkway thing instead of the normal gangway and it literally dropped us off in the middle of a mall. Hong Kong was pretty much skyscrapers everywhere we went. These were definitely the biggest skyscrapers I have ever seen; some were literally 50-100 stories tall. Where we docked we had to take the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island. It was Nicole, Gretchen and me. The city was a little overwhelming because the buildings were all so big it was hard to orient yourself. Most of the buildings were companies we all know like Panasonic, LG, Epsom, Bank of America and tons of others. There were so many people on the streets it was hard to walk around. The crosswalks were across the whole intersection and they would make these ticking sounds, slow for don’t walk and fast for walk. It’s for the blind but it was pretty useful for us too because it was so crowded you didn’t even have to look around you just knew when to go. The “sidewalks” were actually above the ground in most places. We would walk up cross the street and go down or just continue along the side of the street one story up until we needed to go back down. We were trying to find an internet café and there were supposed to be tons. The language barrier was difficult and no one seemed to know what internet was even when they spoke English. We ended up getting sent four or five different places all of which we never found. We ended up spending quite a few hours just wandering trying to find an internet café. Finally we found out we could use the internet in the library at City Hall. We knew where that was because we had seen it by the shore when we came across the bay. Once we finally got there another problem was that there was only one English computer. The buttons were all in the same place so we managed okay. After that we went to a place called Ocean Park. We ran into a guy from the ship named Bob at the bus station and he came with us. We couldn’t figure out the buses so we ended up just taking a taxi. Ocean Park was pretty cool. It was a theme park but it was also aimed at environmental education. The first place we went was to see the pandas. They were so cute and fluffy. I hung back for a while after they were all done looking just because I thought it was so cool. After that we went to the aquarium. This was definitely the best aquarium I have ever been to. The first part we went to was to the shark tunnel. It was a moving walkway with a glass tunnel where you could see the sharks swimming all around you. We kept going back and forth until more people came and we couldn’t do it anymore. The coolest shark I saw was one that’s nose looked like a chainsaw, I don’t know the name. The aquarium was really cool too because it was a huge tank but as you walked around you walked lower and lower so you could see the different levels in the tank and then along the sides there were little tanks too. The coolest fish I saw was called a weedy sea dragon. It literally looked like a piece of seaweed floating in the tank. The main tank had rays, grouper, turtles, hammer head sharks, and tons of other fish that were big and small. After that we took the cable car across to the other side of the park, which was built on the side of a mountain. We rode some rides there. Gretchen rode a roller coaster for the first time ever so that was fun. After that it was time to go. When we went outside there was a bus to Admiralty which was the one we had been looking for earlier so we jumped on. It was a double decker bus which was cool because we could see a lot more of the city that way, even if it was still all skyscrapers. Where the bus dropped us off it was about a 20min walk back to the ferry area. We went looking for a flag and for dinner. After that we went back to the ship and tried to go out but that didn’t really work so we kind of just hung out outside the ship.

China

Day 1
So only one day in Hong Kong. All the Great Wall trips left the second day in Hong Kong. They all went to Beijing. Gretchen and I were on the same trip and we were roommates. The first thing I noticed was the fog/pollution that was so thick we could barely see the sun, it was pretty gross but it was hard to tell if it was fog or pollution because it was cold out. When we got into Beijing we went straight to the University. We were staying at a hotel at Peking University. The university is one of biggest in China, it has over 46,000 students. The hotel was not very nice. I would equate it to a dirty Super 8. The lobby we went into was nice but then when we walked around and out to our building it was not quite as nice. There was a little raid container next to the bed and there was so much dirt and grime on the floors it was pretty nasty honestly. We wandered out to the minimart/school store/grocery store/whatever you need store. No one spoke English so that was difficult. China ended up being the country with the largest language barrier I have encountered so far. Many SASers had a hard time with this and thought if they kept repeating themselves the Chinese people would suddenly understand English, too bad that doesn’t work. Dinner was interesting; it was real Chinese food which I soon learned was nothing like Chinese food at home. It was okay but it was definitely not what I am used to. Everything was on a lazy Susan which seemed fun at first but the novelty soon wore off especially when I would not describe most of the people on our trip as patient. After that we went to meet our PKU students. They just took us to a room and then told us the students would take us on campus tours, to the store or out wherever. Our student took us on a campus tour. She was really nice. I feel really bad because I am still not sure what her name is, every time she would say it it sounded different. I thought it was Charlie at first and then I thought it was Cookie and then I just gave up. Most of the students have American names but even when she wrote down her name it was something totally different. After the campus tour she took us to the store and helped us pick out some traditional candies and snacks, I feel bad for you all at home because you will be my guinea pigs when I come home. It’s definitely different that anything we have at home. After that we just went back to the hotel.

Day 2
One of the girls on our trip was sick this morning so we had to drop her off at the university hospital before leaving for the day. The first place we went was to a Jade Factory. It was not that fun. It was all really expensive and we had an hour and a half there. After the tour most people ended up just sitting on the bus waiting for other people to finish shopping. Even the PKU student that had taken us out the night before said she didn’t know why they take us there and that it was pointless to go. After that we went to the Ming Tombs. We actually didn’t get to go to the tombs because other groups didn’t like them so we just walked through this long corridor, I think a lot of people were disappointed because we did want to go to the actual tombs. The corridor was still cool though there were 24 giant stone animals along the corridor. There were mythical beasts, elephants, camels, horses and other ones. There were also giant stone guards at the end. After that we went to have lunch. Another traditional Chinese meal; with more impatient Americans trying to share a lazy susan. The restaurant was of course attached to a mall so we could shop after lunch. We all planned on leaving early so we could have more time at the wall, but one person was still shopping so we ended up not being able to leave early. The part of the Great Wall we went to was called Juyongguan Pass. It was really cold out and it was such a long hike up to the top. It was all stairs and they were really big and the handrails were really small. We were all so out of breath but Gretchen and I made it to the top and it was really beautiful. I still can’t believe I climbed the Great Wall of China, I keep saying it over and over in my head and I still can’t believe how amazing that is. My legs believe it though; our knees were shaking the entire way down. I didn’t really get sore but I was definitely pretty stiff that night. The Great Wall was definitely great though, it was of course the highlight of that trip. After the Great Wall we went back to the university for dinner. We had dinner with the PKU students, and then we had a “party” with them. Quite honestly our party sucked. They just put us in a conference room with some chairs. It was not planned at all and we ended up playing games like the hokey pokey and the limbo. A lot of people didn’t really involve the students and it was hard for them because we played all American games and no one explained them very well. Not much else that day.

Day 3
So today the first place we went was Tiananmen Square. This was the coldest day we had. Most people immediately took the subway or a taxi to the Silk Market to shop. Gretchen and I hung around the square. The first place we went was to the Peoples Hall. This is the final resting place of Chairman Mao. It was really strange to see his body. I have never seen that before. He didn’t even look real, it was just strange. After that we went to the National Museum. Most of it was just relics that had been recovered, and most everything was in Chinese. After that we found the wax museum. That was really cool because I had never been to a wax museum before. We of course didn’t know who most of the people were and everything was in Chinese but it was still fun. They did have some people we knew though like Yao Ming (a Chinese basketball player), Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Marylyn Monroe. All the people that weren’t Chinese were definitely not as well constructed though, they didn’t look nearly as good as the Chinese people but it was still fun. After that we met back up with the group to go to the Forbidden City. It was so big. We had these auto translator things that gave us a tour but they were too slow and it was so cold out so we walked through kind of fast. We got done pretty early so we took a cab with 2 SAS kids to the Silk Market. We only had about 30 min there and we didn’t even buy anything before we had to go back to meet up with our group. We were late but our group leader didn’t really care about anything so it was no big deal. After that we went to a park. It was cold and we all just walked through and then left. We had dinner after that, it was Peking Duck so that was a big deal. They use the whole duck and it was pretty good, but they served it on a plate with the head and then they brought us out all these bones with seasoning on them. Next was the acrobat show. This was the other highlight of the trip. It was really cool. They did stuff like jump through hoops that were about 10ft high and put 12 people on one bicycle and make a tower of people balancing on a board on a stand. It was pretty amazing. I really liked it. There were other SAS groups there too so we saw a few of our friends there which was really nice because Gretchen and I didn’t really know anyone on our trip. Our guides told us after that the average age was about 15 for all the performers which I thought was pretty crazy, she also told us that they start training at about age 5. Once we got back to the University Gretchen and I went to try to use the internet. The library was closed but we found a student who spoke English and she took us around to try and find somewhere but everywhere was closed or too busy. It was still really nice of her though she was one of the nicest people I met during the trip.

Day 4
Once we had all checked out of the hotel we went to the Summer Palace. It was on the lake and it was really pretty. This was the first warm day we had in Beijing so that was nice, the sky was even blue when you looked straight up, just as long as you didn’t look around at all the pollution ringing the city. It was really windy and there was a lot of dust blowing all around. We couldn’t even walk without having to squint because we kept getting dirt in our eyes. Gretchen and I left the Palace early and took a taxi back to the Silk Market. We shopped for a little bit and then grabbed lunch before meeting up with our group at the Temple of Heaven. We were on time but our group was not there. We waited for a while and then we had to ask someone for a cell phone to call our guide. They had gotten there early and went in without us so our guide had to come back out and get us. The coolest place was the echo wall. Supposedly the way it was built would magnify your voice and if you stood along the wall and someone stood at another place you could talk and they could hear you. It didn’t really work but it was still cool. After that we were off to the airport. It took forever to get us all checked in, the flight was really full too and we all had tons of stuff. Once we got into Quingdao we went straight to the ship. On the way there we got into a little car accident. We were in the huge tour bus so we didn’t even know but a car hit us somehow and it put a scratch down the side of the bus and the car’s mirror was broken off. It was crazy because our driver got out yelled at the people, jumped in a taxi and drove off, the other people drove away, and then about 5 minutes later the driver was back and we were on our way again. I have no idea what happened but it was just really strange.

Day 5
So the big part of this day was spent getting rail passes. On the taxi ride into town I realized that I had forgotten my credit card on the ship so I had to take a taxi back to the ship and then back to the hotel. It was annoying because it ended up taking me about 2 hours to get it all done and everyone had to wait for me, but I got my rail pass for Japan and that’s all that matters. So after that we kind of wandered and then had lunch. Gretchen Nicole and Ryan went to use the internet and I used the phone at the hotel. I tried to find them once I was done but couldn’t and so I just waited at the hotel for them. Once they got back we tried to take a taxi to a market and ended up at some scenic spot and couldn’t explain to the taxi driver who spoke no English that this was not where we had wanted to go. He finally dropped us off in the right general area. We never ended up finding the market but we wandered around for a while in the dusty cold wind. We had to be back at the ship by 1800 to turn in our passports so that was pretty much all we did that day. We came back and hung out and watched a movie and that was about it.
Ok, so I know this is probably the worst blog I have written and I’m sorry, but I am so tired. China was a lot of traveling and just a lot in general.

Either way this is what I learned in China:
The pollution was absolutely disgusting, the dust was terrible; just walking around it hurt to breathe.
Hard to believe but I thought it smelled worse than India.
The fashion is totally different than at home and anywhere else we have been, I can’t wait to see what it is like in Japan.
People seem to have no idea what it means to stand in a line and simply just push past you whenever they want.
Habits usually reserved for when you are five, like picking your nose, are done on every street corner and shop and almost anywhere else you happen to be, it was really gross.

So Japan is only a day away! The last port, it is so hard to believe. Most people got rail passes for the bullet train. We will probably be in a different city every day and plan on staying in hostels wherever possible. I am not doing any SAS trips. I don’t know how much we will actually get to do but we plan on going to Hiroshima, Tokyo, and Kyoto; hiking Mount Fuji and seeing Sumo wrestling if at all possible. So it should be a busy 5 days and we will probably need the next few days on the ship just to get ourselves back together. I can’t believe I will be home in less than 3 weeks; this trip has been so long and so short at the same time. As always I am doing well and hope everyone is too.

Vietnam

2006-04-02T22:46:00.000-07:00

These pics are from the Reunification hall and Cu Chi tunnels. I just thought the bench was cool because it was in Vietnamese. I don't even know what it says. We spent about an hour last night trying to find a group picture we liked and we couldn't find one but hopefully I will get one up so you guys can see who I am always talking about. I didnt have time to proofread this so sorry if there are messed up parts.

So first of all we sent all our laundry out before we got to Vietnam. We had not had laundry since before India so we all had a lot of clothes to be washed, including our fabric before having clothes made. We ended up not getting our laundry back and pretty much had to wear the same clothes every day, it was pretty stinky. Some of the random things I though were cool in Vietnam were that the women wore surgical masks and long gloves, the masks are partly for pollution but it is mostly because it is seen as attractive to have white skin. The traffic was pretty crazy; it was definitely the worst of any country so far. The main form of transportation is scooters and motorcycles and we were told to cross the street that if we just look straight forward and walk we would be okay. This sounded good in theory but it is a lot scarier in reality when you just step off the curb in front of all these vehicles coming at you and just expect them all to go around you. We did good though; every time we would cross the street successfully I would breathe a sigh of relief. One of the crew did get hit but he was okay and so was the driver of the motorcycle. One of the SAS buses saw someone get hit on a motorcycle, from what I hear the guy was not okay. The power lines were absolutely crazy. There had to be at least 100 lines connecting at each pole. I don’t know how it is not a fire hazard and how people have power because it didn’t look it was anything more than a jumbled mess of wires.

Day 1
I woke up this morning with Nicole and Morgan for the sunrise. It honestly wasn’t that spectacular but we were already going up the river so that was cool to see. After that I went back to bed until breakfast. I went to the diplomatic briefing which was possibly the most boring one I have been to. It of course took a few hours for the ship to clear. When the ship cleared all the parents got to come on board. I was anxiously awaiting Nick Nett’s (just a random guy on the ship) mom coming on board to get a package from home. He called me pretty soon after she got on the ship. I was really excited and pretty much ran to his room. MMMM BEEF JERKEY. I knew my loverly mother would not forget my favorite Easter treat. After that we went to Morgan’s room to meet her parents. Her parents weren’t there because her dad had gotten sick and needed an IV. I got to meet her brother though, his name is Alex, he is 32 and in the Marines. Morgan’s dad was in the army and was in Vietnam during the war. This was his first time coming back so it was a pretty big deal for the whole family. We hung out for a few minutes, made plans to meet up later and took the shuttle into town. When we first got into town we went to the post office. Gretchen, Nicole and I all had postcards we needed to send that day. After that we went to a travel agency, since we were mostly independent the entire time in Vietnam we wanted to try to plan a few different day trips. The one we picked was to the Mekong Delta the next day. We wanted to plan an overnight trip but since we hadn’t gotten our fabric back yet we needed to wait to get that done. We went to the Rex Hotel after that to book massages, they were about $6.50 for an hour which was awesome. After that we decided to try and find the North Face factory that was supposedly in the city. We literally wandered around for a few hours looking for the ever illusive North Face factory. It didn’t take long to realize that since the location of the factory was supposed to be right around the market and all the other street shops which had tons of north face, bags, polos and every other name brand for about $5 that there was no factory just a bunch of things that were the “Same Same but Different.” It took almost the whole trip to figure out what this meant, but we finally figured out that it was because it was the same as the real stuff, but different, and this is what the shop keepers would say whenever we bought knockoffs. We did a lot of shopping and went to our massages before meeting up with Morgan’s parents for dinner. The massage was really good, they gave us little outfits to wear and then we all went to separate rooms. I wanted the girl to walk on my back and there was a bar for it on the ceiling but she didn’t. The mood music was great; I never knew that old Shania Twain could be so relaxing. It was fun though and it was a good way to spend the first day. After that we took a taxi to meet Morgan and her parents at their hotel. We hung out in the lobby for a little bit waiting for Morgan’s parents because her dad still wasn’t feeling great. Her and Alex sat with us and talked while we waited. When her Mom came down Morgan did all the introductions but didn’t introduce her mom to us. I of course asked her name and was met with the staunch reply of, “Mrs. Wright,” yeah, it was pretty uncomfortable. Needless to say I didn’t ask her dad’s name when he came down. We went to eat at a place called Hio An. It was really nice. Morgan’s dad still wasn’t feeling well so he ended up leaving with Alex. It was just us girls after that and we ended up having a pretty fun time. Our waiter was really cool and we goofed around with him the rest of the night. After dinner we went back to the hotel and met up with some more people to go out. The first place we went was a casino that was attached to the hotel but right around the corner. It had the biggest elevator I have ever been in. The door was a huge elevator door and when we went in I thought it was a room but the doors closed behind us and the girl pushed the buttons to the next floor and the doors opened on the other side to the casino. The casino was small and only one room. It was mostly video games with one blackjack table. We all played just long enough to get a couple of free drinks and went to the bar next to the casino. The weirdest thing about the bar was that about every 5 minutes a long troop of about 15 girls scantily dressed would walk in the front door, through the bar, and out the other door. It was really strange because they didn’t stop, they just walked straight through. We wanted to know where they were going so Gretchen, Steve, and I walked to see where they went. There was a room downstairs with karaoke and they were all just standing in a line there. It was really strange. It was not hard to figure out what their profession was we just didn’t really understand what they were doing. After that Gretchen, Annie and I went back to the ship. Some of the other SAS kids went out drinking but I didn’t really want to spend a lot of money drinking.

Day 2
We had to leave at 0800 for our Mekong Delta trip. We had a few more people jump onto our trip so there were 8 of us that was good because that meant less money for us. We had to go back to the tour agency to get our refunds but it only took a few minutes. Our guide was named Dung, and he made sure we knew how to pronounce it, like Dyoong, and politely asked us not to call him dung. The drive to the Delta took about an hour and a half. The Mekong Delta was one of the 4 strategic locations in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. When we arrived we had a sing a song (bathroom) break before getting on the boats to go down the delta. Outside the shop we bought some of the bamboo hats (the triangle ones). They had stitching with pictures and words on it and we were so happy to be wearing them. At the end of the day I asked Dung what it said, and he told us that it said Saigon Tourist, so we did a great job blending in. The first place we went was to Unicorn Island. A bunch of the islands have different animal names and they all symbolized different things. We went to taste tropical fruits first. We got off the boats and walked down a narrow path and sat at tables at a picnic like area. There was dragon fruit, papaya, short bananas, pineapple with Chile and salt, and sarsaparilla. My favorite was the dragon fruit and pineapple. The dragon fruit is green and pink on the outside and was about the size of a grapefruit with leaves that looked like buds coming off of it. The inside was all white with lots of tiny seeds. The only think I can relate the taste to is a sweet kiwi. The pineapple was just in chunks and we dipped it in the salt and chili mix. I thought it would be gross but it was pretty good. The whole time we were eating we had people playing us music and singing. That was cool too. After that we walked to another picnic type place and tried banana whiskey and honey tea. We got to hold a python too, which was kind of random but fun. It was about 6ft long, most of the girls were freaking out, everyone but one girl held it. The banana whiskey was pretty gross and they poured it out of an old plastic water bottle. The honey tea was really good. It was made from tea, honey, pollen and lime. After that we went to a smaller delta and got into two large canoes. There was an old woman on the front paddling and one on the back. The delta was really small and narrow where we were and there was lots of overhanging palm trees. From there we went out to the main delta area and got on our motor boat to go see how coconut candy was made. The candy was at a similar open area type place, I’m sorry I don’t really know how to describe it. It was in the middle of the trees/forest and it was open and there were little canopy type things made out of bamboo and palms. So we got to see the whole candy making process and taste some fresh candy which was so so good. I bought three different kinds to bring home. After that we took went back out to the main delta area again to go eat lunch. The place we went was the same type of set up with individual tables set up under each canopy. The first thing they brought out to eat was an entire fish. It still had the head and it was propped upright and the scales were sort of fanned out, I didn’t eat any of it. I had told the guide no seafood for me. He kept telling me that because prawns were fresh water not from the sea I could eat them so he clearly didn’t understand. I managed to eat a few of the dishes they brought out but it was mostly fried vegetables and steamed rice. After lunch we went back to Ho Chi Minh. The van had a flip down DVD player so we got to watch some Vietnamese music videos and part of a comedy show. Dung ended up putting on Top Gun because he said we couldn’t understand. We tried to tell him that we liked watching the Vietnamese stuff but he didn’t listen. Once we got back into the city we went to a liqueur factory where all the employees are disabled. Lacquer ware is a big export in Vietnam. The stuff was really cool but it was super expensive. It was fun to see the process though. There are about 10-20 different steps depending on what you are making. It is wood that is covered with lacquer and then they make pictures and designs with different stuff. Most of the stuff was eggshell designs, but there were also some made with mother of pearl and some just painted. After that we all went back to the ship. We still didn’t have our laundry which was disappointing. We took the shuttle into town and did some more shopping. Gretchen had found a place to fix her camera so she went and dropped that off and we did some more shopping. I bought an art set, it is lacquered with eggshells. We went to a little café to eat. The girls all ordered cheeseburgers which I though was funny. I ordered food that I though was safe, but it of course wasn’t, it wasn’t a big problem, mostly just annoying. We went back to the ship after that.

Day 3
So we still didn’t have our fabric this morning and pretty much everything we were planning depended on getting our fabric. We decided to ask our cabin steward, Joseph, if we could get our fabric even if it wasn’t done yet. He told us that we wouldn’t be getting our laundry back until after Vietnam. We begged and begged and eventually he found our fabric. We were so happy to have it back but we were kind of mad too because it was all washed and there were other clothes mixed in so we knew that the laundry was done and that they just weren’t distributing it. When we got off the ship we went to use the phones and internet. We had found out there was a place right next to the ship where we could use the internet and phone for super cheap so we were all excited to be able to call people without spending a ton of money. After that we went to the tailor to get our clothes figured out. Nicole had found a shop that looked nice and was decently priced. We didn’t just want to go to a random shop on the street because we all wanted our clothes to come out good. Nicole and I needed a few more things for our clothes that they didn’t have at the tailor shop so we had to go back out to the market to find them. That of course involved even more shopping. After that we went back to the tailor shop to drop off our stuff and went to lunch. Most of the restaurants we went to were pretty nice inside and they were still really inexpensive so that was good. After lunch we went to the Reunification Hall. This building used to be the palace of the president of South Vietnam. It was bombed by the north and then Ho Chi Minh renamed it the Reunification Hall. The tour took about 2 hours and then there was a video at the end. I learned a lot about the war mostly random stuff that I never thought of like that the war is called the American War in Vietnam. We got to see the underground communication rooms and bomb shelter. I thought that was kind of weird because there was no way out it was just a room with a dead end. There was some British guy who was our age and was on the tour with us, at the end he kind of just followed us out and around the grounds and then to our taxi, where he left. He was nice it was just kind of strange. After that we went back to the ship to have dinner. I had been having allergy problems at almost every meal in port and I wanted to eat on the ship as much as possible for the rest of the trip. After dinner we went back into town to try and go to a youth festival. We had seen it getting set up in the street from the Reunification Hall and our tour guide told us that it was once every five years and that it was a special because it was 30 years. She also told us that it was free, for the public and encouraged us all to go. The streets were blocked off and we could hear music so we figured it was a big street festival and would be a big party type thing. Yeah, we were totally wrong. There was no music and there was definitely no youth there. When we got there we couldn’t even get into the park because we were stopped by police who didn’t speak English and the only thing they could communicate was that we were not allowed. There were banners up in Vietnamese; the only thing I could figure out was 30 years and the dates. When I realized the date was 3/28/76, I finally figured out that it was actually 30 years of independence. We tried to ask lots of people what exactly was going on and no one around seemed to speak English. We finally found a woman on the street who spoke a little English and she told us that they didn’t want people there who didn’t understand and that was us so we gave up trying. There was a mall right next to the park with a bowling alley so we decided to try to go bowling but there was an hour wait. Apparently bowling is really popular in Vietnam. After that we went to have some desert before going back to the ship. We just went to a little coffee shop called Java. I had an avocado shake. I wanted to try something different and it was really really good. It was avocado, cocoa, and ice cream, it was the best thing I ate in Vietnam and it didn’t give me an allergic reaction so I was happy.

Day 4
So the first thing we did this morning was go to the War Remnants Museum. Some of us took motorcycles there which were really fun and with all the traffic we got there much faster than the people who were in the taxi. The museum was very graphic, very focused on certain issues and VERY anti-American. The war is told by the winners and I understand that. I also understand that lots of terrible things happened during the Vietnam/American war but I was really surprised by the pictures and captions I saw at the museum. Some of the main things were pictures of American soldiers happily holding up mutilated bodies, American soldiers doing terrible things to Vietnamese people, Agent Orange victims, and preserved fetuses of Agent Orange victims, prison cells, and torture descriptions. It was very emotional and something I never could have learned about at home. I will say though that I really didn’t agree with a lot of what I saw; I am in no way denying many of the things that happened I just think some things may have been exaggerated and was really focused on the certain parts of the war. I don’t really know how to explain it and I could be totally wrong because I honestly don’t know a lot about the Vietnam War. So after the museum we went to the Norte Dame Cathedral of Saigon. It wasn’t that old and all the stained glass was in French since the French used to control Vietnam. After that we went to find the Saigon Market. We wandered around for a while trying to find it and no one around seemed to speak any English. We actually asked two guys who spoke English and they said they had no idea what we were talking about, it turned out we were standing right in front of it. I don’t know if it was really stupid on their part or ours, but at least we found it. We shopped there for a while and then went to eat lunch. We went to a little café around the corner and the food ended up being really good. One of the guys, Brett, in our group went to pick up his suits from the tailors and planned to meet up with us later. We went to the post office after that. It sounds strange but it was a really cool post office. It was huge and really fancy. We used the phones there and tried to make plans for a cooking class but we couldn’t do it. After that we kind of wandered for a little bit we tried to go into the US Consulate but we weren’t allowed. We stopped at a little street side coffee shop. It looked like a garage with plastic folding lawn chairs inside. We sat on the street in the little tiny chairs that kids use. It was really funny because when Ryan got up to get something the chair was stuck to him and all the people in the shop were laughing (I made sure that when I got up the chair wasn’t stuck). I had some really good Vietnamese coffee and we met a Vietnamese guy whose son had married an American and was trying to get all the papers done at the Consulate, he thought it was stupid we couldn’t go into our own Consulate and we thought it was stupid too. After that we went to the opera house. We were going to try and go to the opera. I went to meet Brett at the shuttle bus stop which was right behind the opera house. Unfortunately there was no show that night so we decided to go to the ship and drop off our stuff and go bowling. We seemed to be the main attraction; there were lots of people watching us. Now I know how the monks felt when we were all watching them eat. We met some people who were bowling next to us, they were our age and they were really nice. One of the guys named Jackie offered to take us out later and he went home to change while we finished bowling. It just so happened that the people who took their lane was a guy from Alabama, his translator, and his new Vietnamese wife. It was really strange. Her uncle lived in the states and he had set everything up. She spoke no English but had somehow sent him a few letters and he had come to Vietnam they had gotten married and he had been there for a few weeks with her. Her translator godfather and he was really nice. He asked me how old I was and when I told him I was 21 his response was, “Oh my god you are so big!” It was really embarrassing but it was funny I was about a head taller than him so I understood it was a cultural thing, but it still didn’t make me great, especially when he kept shouting it over and over. We asked the girl a few questions through her translator but I think we were all a little overwhelming for her. Jackie came back and we finished bowling and he took us to eat. We ate at a little food stand on the side of the street. It was good but even though I had managed to tell him I could not have any seafood and he ordered me pork everyone else at the table had shrimp and after taking the first bite of food I knew I couldn’t eat anymore. I don’t really know what I expected I honestly should have known better. Needless to say that ended up being an early night. The girls came back to the ship with me and the boys stayed out with Jackie.

Day 5
So all of us girls had a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels this day. We thought the trip left at 0800 but when Gretchen got up at 0645 to go use the phone she checked the sheet and we realized that the trip actually left at 0700, so we had about 10 minutes to get up and run out to the bus to make sure we didn’t miss our bus. The traffic to the tunnels was definitely the worst I had seen. It was rush hour and it was crazy. It had nothing to do with cars because there was probably only about 1 car for every 100 motorcycles. Being in a huge tour bus it ended up taking us about 2 hours to get to the tunnels. The first place they took us was to see a model of the tunnels. The tunnels are about 150 miles total and for anyone who doesn’t know they were used by the Viet Cong to fight the Americans. The tunnels even had meeting rooms, kitchens, and shelters. The first tunnel entrance they showed us was so small I couldn’t believe anyone could fit in it. The “park ranger” who was showing us around lowered himself in first and then we were allowed to try. Some people tried and I really wanted to try but I thought it would be really embarrassing when I got stuck and I was pretty sure I would get stuck. The next place they took us was to see a trap. It was a bamboo sheet that when stepped on would swing down and the soldiers would fall onto bamboo spears. The point was to wound the soldiers not kill them because a wounded soldier would take more resources off the battle field. Our trip leader was actually a Vet and he told us that they would put feces to put it nicely on the ends of the spears so that if you did survive the fall the infection would be terrible. After that they showed us more “traps” they were pretty sick. Most were metal spears that were in the ground and would spear the soldiers in different gross ways. One was two sheets of wood with long spikes on them and when the soldiers would open the doors to a house it would swing down and hit them in the torso. They seemed to be proud of their ingenuity. After that we went to the shooting range. Gretchen, Nicole and I all shot an AK-47. It was really fun. I only hit the target once and it was at the very top but I still hit it. After that we saw how rice paper was made which I though was kind of random but it was still cool to see. From there we went into the tunnels. I thought I would be able to handle it but I really didn’t like it, it was small, hot, dark, and hard to breathe. I was happy when Nicole wanted out too and we climbed up and out of the first exit we saw. We also saw different rooms that would have been underground. We went to a memorial site after that and then back to Ho Chi Minh. We ate lunch on the ship and went to the tailor as soon as we were done. We took motorcycles again this time and we rode two to bike, which really meant three with the driver but it was still fun. When we got to the tailor shop almost all of our stuff still needed to be altered, which I expected. Gretchen and I wanted to go get another massage and the other girls went to do more shopping. When we were trying to remember where the massage place was a man on the street asked us if we needed directions. He was French but he spoke English and Vietnamese. He told us about a traditional Vietnamese school where we could go and offered to take us there. It ended up being really weird and nothing bad happened but I was really happy when Gretchen knocked on the door and said we were late and needed to go. I don’t know if I was being culturally insensitive or if it was just a happy ending type of place but it was not comfortable. After that we went back to the tailor and met up with the other girls. Our clothes still needed more alterations so we went to eat. I wanted to eat somewhere that didn’t even have seafood on the menu so we went to a fast food restaurant called Lotteria. It was actually not too bad and I didn’t get sick so that was a big plus. After that we did a little more shopping because it wasn’t time to go to the tailor’s yet. I was really happy when our clothes were finally done and they had all came out good. We went and had coffee after that because Gretchen still hadn’t tried the Vietnamese coffee. We watched MTV and listened to Shania Twain yet again. After that we took the shuttle back to the ship and Gretchen went to use the phone. Nicole and I wandered around trying to spend our last Dong, and yes it was fun to say Dong all the time. We got on the ship by 2100 because there was going to be a cultural dance. It was really good and one of the coolest things I saw in Vietnam. The dances were really fancy and the costumes were elaborate. The dances were choreographed by a famous Vietnamese couple. We were really tired and went to bed after that. Apparently things got really crazy with all the drunk people at the gangway. They had to make quite a few announcements and it was really annoying because we were trying to sleep. A bunch of people ended up getting dock time for it and we all got a letter from the dean talking about how embarrassing it was and it was the worst behavior the dean had ever seen. Some people who weren’t even drinking but were just caught up in the crowd ended up getting in trouble too so I am sure they are not to happy.

Now we will be in Hong Kong tomorrow. The satellite is supposed to be down so I am not even going to try to send this until I get to an internet café. The trip I am doing in China is Beijing: Peking University. I as well as 600 other students will not be on the ship in between Hong Kong and Qingdao. Most people are doing Great Wall trips with SAS or independently. I should have a lot to write about when I get back, I am hoping food isn’t so much of a problem this time but I guess I’m going to find out. I hope everyone is good and can’t believe that I am going to be home in a month.

Myanmar

2006-03-22T23:40:00.000-08:00

So Myanmar was probably my favorite country so far. I was quite worried about it but I am so happy that we went now. It was definitely the most thought provoking country I have been to so far. I will just give you a brief description of some of the things we learned before going there.

Myanmar is controlled by a military government. It is a bad place to live. There are pretty much no human rights and no personal freedoms of any kind. Certain websites are blocked. Many things are tapped the government pretty much controls the entire country with fear. There were political billboards up to deter the people from any kind of uprising. It is illegal to talk about politics for them and for us and if someone does not report hearing about someone talking about politics that is even illegal. Things like using an unauthorized fax line are punishable by up to 15 years in jail. Rape and torture are considered reasonable means of controlling the population. The entire country pretty much just lives under constant fear of the government. “The lady”, Aung San Suu Kyi, is the democratically elected leader but has not been allowed to take office for many years and has been jailed and is currently under house arrest. The list of places, people and things we were not allowed to take pictures of was too long to recount. The capital city which was in Yangon has been recently moved for fear of a US invasion at any time. There is a civil war going on in the country right now, and the government did mandate where we could and could not travel. Not to feed the rumor mill but there were several reports of incidents with students/SAS groups being followed or hassled by the police. There are rumors that the government went through the city and “relocated” many of the bums and beggars before we came to make the city look better. Many people also feel that a lot of what they saw was “staged” and not the real Myanmar. I had a wonderful time and I am really happy that we went. I am only happy though because we knew about the political situation in the country and because it allowed me to think a little more critically about what I was seeing and what I was not seeing. 5 days is a very short time to spend in a country and I think it is just too hard to form concrete opinions because we saw such a small part. I did talk to some local people and I can tell you all about that when I get home.

Day 1
So we actually arrived in Myanmar at about 1545 on the 16th we were not allowed off the ship until 0600 the next morning. We had to come up a river to the port though so that was cool because this was the first country where it has been light when we came in. The next morning I stayed on the ship instead of leaving in the morning. Yangon was actually about a 45min shuttle bus ride away and the shuttles only come every other hour. My trip was leaving at 1330 so I didn’t mess with leaving in the morning and trying to get back on time. Annie, who lives across the hall from me, was on this trip too and we were roommates. Our group was 90 people total but we were split up into three groups. So when we left the ship, our guide was waiting for us at the bus with flowers which was really nice. His name was Winston, but we all called him Uncle Winston. He was really funny and ended up being the best guide ever. He was always goofing around with us and trying to learn slang. It was really fun to hear a little Burmese man trying to rap on the microphone and asking “what up homies.” The plane ride to Inle Lake took less than an hour so that was nice. When we got off the plane we were in Heho and it was another hour bus ride to Nyuang Shwe from there we went to the jetty to get onto our boats. The boats were long motored banana type boats and we sat 5 to a boat. The boats were our only source of transportation the entire trip, if we went anywhere on land we would just walk. The lake is surrounded by the Hazy Blue Mountains and they literally are hazy blue all the time. It was absolutely gorgeous. The boat ride to our hotel took about another hour. We got to stop along the way to see some local fisherman. The way they fish is really cool. It is hard to explain but they stand on the edge of their canoes and they have these big bell shaped bamboo shells with a fishing net inside. They put the fishing net down and they put a pole in the water to scare the fish out of the weeds and then they pull up the nets and catch the fish. We saw lots of local people out on the lake too, they were so cute, and it didn’t seem real. They were all in their little canoes and they would sit on the end and the back would be up in the air or they would stand on the back and wrap their leg around the oar and row, their balance was amazing. All the houses were bamboo and on stilts. It seriously looked just like something you would see on TV, it did not seem real at all. The hotel we stayed at was called Paramount Inle Resort and it was literally on the lake. It was on bamboo stilts as well and there were little bungalows and rows of rooms on stilts. Our boats literally pulled right up the dock. It was so cool. The hotel was not that big. It was only one floor and had about 50 rooms total. The inside was really nice and all the employees were really nice. It was pretty fancy, they gave us hot towels when we got out of the boats and then had our room keys on a tray all ready for us, the hotel was beautiful inside with intricate wood carving everywhere and on everything. Our rooms all had balconies that looked out onto the lake. They made sure to put us all in one hall, so we would not disturb the other guests, although there were only 3 people other than us there the whole time. We had a fabulous dinner there. I ate vegetarian for this whole trip because of allergy stuff, but I still ate really good food there was another girl who was vegetarian so we had to sit together at all the meals, but she was really nice and Annie and I ended up hanging out with her most of the trip. After dinner we tried to go to bed. Unfortunately the walls were super thin and people drank at the bar before bed and were really loud and most of the hall didn’t get any sleep.

Day 2
So we got up at 0600 this day so that we could go to a market. The market was only once every 5 days and our guide thought it would be a good experience for us. The market was definitely busy. When we were trying to come up to the shore all these boats came out at us with people trying to sell us stuff before we even got out of the boat. We couldn’t even get to the shore because there were so many boats everywhere. Our drivers had to get out and go walk across the other boats and push them around so that we could get close enough to get off. The market was really cool, everything was “antique” I didn’t want to buy a lot because we still had to fly back to Yangon. The phrase from everyone we walked by was “just looking, just looking.” It was really funny because they clearly didn’t understand what they were saying. When we left the market people followed us in their boats again trying to sell us some last minute souvenirs. The next place we went was to the Mine Thauk Village to go to an orphanage. We had to walk from where the boats dropped us off to get to the orphanage. It was really hot but the village we walked through was really cute and lots of kids came out to see us and wave as we went by. When we got to the orphanage all the boys were lined up playing drums for us. They gave us some snacks and tea then we went upstairs for the boys to sing for us. The director spoke about the orphanage. The orphanage is a monastery as well and that is why there are all boys. They are not all orphans some of the families are just to poor to take care of them so the monastery takes them in. The boys sang us a song in Burmese; after that we sang Row, Row, Row Your Boat and they sang Jingle Bells which was really cute. We had to leave after that which was disappointing because we didn’t really get to spend any time with the kids. I had stuff for the kids so I just gave it to the director to give out. From there we walked to the Mine Thauk Monastery. It was all uphill and it was really hot. When we got to the Monastery we got ready for the food donation for the monks. The food was all set up on the tables and the monks came in and sat on the floor, then we kneeled and picked up the tables and then sat them down and then the monks could eat. This is done to gain merit for your next life. This is done at every meal before the monks can eat. After that we were allowed to take pictures of the monks eating, and it was just as weird as it sounds so I didn’t want to take pictures because I thought it was rude. After that we went to have our lunch in another building. After we ate lots of people were really lazy and fell asleep on the floor. I wandered around a little taking pictures and trying to talk to a few of the younger monks. One of the boys actually had a toy gun. It was just two sticks tied together, but I just thought it was funny to see a monk with a “gun” I guess kids are kids no matter where you go in the world.

Once we left the monastery we went on our “light trek,” it was not too bad and we got to walk through two Shan villages so that was nice. I tried some Khun at a little street vendor. Our guide bought some and a girl I was walking with, Ning, tried it she tried to ask them if she was supposed to swallow it and just told her to put it in her mouth, she said it wasn’t bad and that I should try it. When I was buying it Uncle Winston came up and told me what it was. It was a beetle leaf, lime, beach nut and some spices. He explained to me that most Burmese girls will not touch it. It is pretty much the equivalent of chew. We were not supposed to swallow it but spit the juice out. Ning wasn’t very happy when she heard that because she had been swallowing it. I still tried it and it wasn’t too bad. It turns your whole mouth red and it makes you spit a lot. I made sure to rinse my mouth out with lots of water. The women at the stand could not stopping laughing at me. After that I went and sat down with some kids who were sitting in front of their families street side “shop” they thought it was fun to get their pictures taken. A woman who I think was their mom was sitting nearby shelling some sort of bean thing. I tried to ask her what it was and she just gave me the outside and told me to eat it. I found our from my guide that the food was called tamarin. You don’t eat the seeds just the outside, which confused me at first. It was so sour, I could barely eat it and I only took a little piece. All the locals started laughing so hard. It was really funny.

After that it was time to go to the Jumping Cat Monastery. This is a monastery where the monks have taught the cats to jump through little hoops. It was a beautiful monastery as well and there was of course shopping out back. The show only took a few minutes and it was pretty cute. I have no idea why the monks have trained the cats to jump through the hoops but it was cool. After that we went back to our hotel and had some time to get cleaned up before dinner.

Day 3
The first place we went to this day was the Tuang 5 Day Market. This one was a lot like the last one but I think it was even bigger. They were all selling the same stuff pretty much and I didn’t really have a desire to buy anything. We just wandered around instead. The market was just bellow a pagoda and was just as crowded with boats as the day before. The coolest thing I saw there was gambling. They had a tent set up and there were tons of men inside. We watched from the outside but I guess it would be the equivalent of playing dice. There were these 3 huge die that had different animals on them. There were two tables set up with the different animals and people would throw their money down on the different animals and then when the die would drop whoever’s animal was showing would win. I actually got in trouble for taking a picture, but I’m still happy I took it, because it was really cool. There was also a little bar next to it and that was all men too. After that we went and sat with our guide and drivers and more or less just watched what was going on around us. That was fun because we could just ask our guide about different stuff and I definitely think sitting around and watching people is more fun that shopping.

From there we went to a silk weaving factory. Now I know why the one in India was considered modern. There were about 5 2-story buildings. They didn’t have any windows or doors but the people were just sitting inside working on the looms. One of the buildings we went in the workers invited us to sit on the floor and have tea with them, that was fun but communication was difficult. We were allowed to wander into any of the buildings we wanted to and I met the cutest chubbiest little boy and he loved my camera, literally, he was holding it and didn’t want to give it back. From there we went to a metal working shop. They had a store and in the center the men were making swords. They would put the metal in the coals until it was red hot and then they would take it out and the men would hit the piece of metal. There would be anywhere from 2 to 5 men at once and they would almost go to a beat, each taking his turn with the big sledgehammers. Next we went to a cigar making store. We went in and sat in little chairs around the women on the floor who were making cigars. They all gave us one and lots of people smoked them, but I thought they smelled nasty. They don’t use tobacco but different local spices. The women make from $1-$5 per day, depending on how many cigars they can roll. From there we went behind the cigar shop to a canoe making place. That was cool too because the men were right there carving the planks of wood. After that was lunch time and we ate at a great restaurant in the middle of the lake. From there we went to the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda. It was pretty big and was all painted gold and then inlaid with mirrors everywhere so everything was really shiny and bright gold. Inside there were five Buddha’s in the center on a pedestal type thing. Women were not allowed to go up but the men were allowed to buy gold flakes and apply them to the Buddhas, this is done to gain merit. The Buddhas actually really just looked like gold globs because so many flakes had been applied. Women could buy the flakes but they would have to find a man to apply the flakes for them. It was interesting to say the least. From there we went to another market and I didn’t really shop again. The next place we went was to the Pao Village and Imdein Unique Temple Pagoda. We had to walk a little to get there but it was through a beautiful bamboo forest so that was okay with me. The pagoda was really cool because there were 403 pillars leading up to the top and we had to walk the whole way, which was also lined with vendors. Some of the pagodas were over 1000 years old and there were just tons of them. Many were crumbling and many were new. The pagodas had little bells on the tops and wend the wind would blow they would all chime. The pagoda was at a higher elevation than the village below so we could sort of look down through the pagodas so that was cool. So then it was time for our traditional canoe rides back at the hotel. We sat two people in each canoe and the men stood on the back and paddled with their leg. It was really fun and it was around dusk so that was nice but there were lots of bugs on the lake. After that we had dinner and traditional Shan dancing performance. They did 12 different things. It was mostly dancing but there were also martial arts, dancing with fire batons, and a big animal costume with two people in it like a Chinese dragon, but it was not a dragon. I tried to ask what the animal was but I think it was just a made up animal. At the end we were all invited up to dance and that was a blast. Some of the SAS guys scared the girls trying to dance with them but I don’t think they offended anyone, just scared them a little. After the dance and dinner we went to our room to pack.

Day 4
So we flew back to Yangon in the early afternoon. The first place we went in Yangon was to the Reclining Buddha. I had no idea this thing was so huge. It is over 7 stories tall and the eyes are 15ft wide each. I didn’t really even know what a reclining Buddha was but it is in a lying down position on its side. It was pretty sweet but it was just really big and almost overwhelming, I don’t want to say it was tacky exactly but some people definitely thought that it was. After that we went to Traders Hotel for lunch. It was a big SAS lunch because all the trips were getting back that day and there were SAS groups staying at the hotel. We ended up seeing lots of our friends there which was good because all our trips were ending at different times than we thought and we needed to make plans for later. After lunch we went to Scott’s Market. We had an hour there to shop. I had planned on buying stuff there because we didn’t have to fly anywhere else. I didn’t really end up buying much but it was still fun. The best thing was trying to buy sodas. I wanted a bottle with the cap still on so that I could take it on the ship and they just didn’t understand. They ended up opening two bottles before I just grabbed a soda and put it in my purse and handed them money. They finally understood but it was just funny to me that that was the most fun I had in the market. After the market we went to Shwedagon Pagoda. This is the most revered site in all of Myanmar so it was good we got to go there. There are tons of pagodas all over and one main one that is over 200ft high. There are all kinds of gems all over the top and the spire is topped with a 76 karat diamond. We tried to look through the telescope to see the jewels but we still couldn’t see it. After that it was time to go back to the ship. We were all sad to say goodbye to Uncle Winston. He really was amazing. It was such a fun trip.

So once we got back to the ship Annie and I got ready to go meet the other girls in town. There was a shuttle from the ship to the Traders Hotel and we planned on meeting Gretchen and Nicole there and going out to dinner. We had not ridden the shuttle before and so we did not know exactly how it worked. When we got outside a bus pulled up and we got on. As soon as we stopped at the gate we figured out that this bus was the one that only took you to the gate for taxis. We tried to ask the guards at the gate and we were not sure if they understood us but they just said to sit and wait. I was a little worried at first because we had heard so many terrible things about all forms of the government, the guys were really nice though and I talked to them, or at least tried to until the shuttle bus came. They spoke pretty broken English but my Burmese is not exactly spectacular; none the less we managed to figure out a few things like names, family stuff, occupation, and age. It was fun just trying. They would laugh at my attempts at Burmese most of the time but it was still fun. Once the shuttle came it was pretty full and I ended up having to sit in one of the chairs in the isle. All the SAS kids on the bus looked at us pretty strange when we hopped on from the guard station. Once we got to the hotel Gretchen and Nicole were already waiting for us. We didn’t want to take a taxi to eat so we walked to a place the girls had seen earlier that day. Unfortunately the place had just closed, but the employees were walking out and offered to show us somewhere to eat. Many places were closed for dinner by now because it was after 9pm. They figured out a place we could go and 3 of the guys walked us there. Once we got there they came in with us which was nice because they spoke fairly good English and no one else at the restaurant did. They also helped me find “safe” food to eat since there would have been no way for me to figure it out on my own. The strangest thing about this restaurant is that they were having a model show. There were absolutely no women in the restaurant except for us. I was not too surprised by this though because we had been told that Burmese women do not drink, at least not in public, and they do not really go out at night just because it is not part of their culture. So anyways there was a model show, the girls would walk around the stage and then just walk off, some would sing and there were all these flowers by the stage. One of the guys told us that men would buy the girls flowers if they liked them. Then he told us that it was very common knowledge that the men would come a few times and do this and then could take the girl to a hotel. I was pretty much amazed by this just because I had never actually seen anything like this before. We sat around and talked for a while and then Gretchen and I wanted to go to a dance club. The other girls wanted to go back to the ship so we stayed and they left. We asked them what the club was like and they told us that it was a “normal” dance club with a disco ball, dance floor, and music. We thought it sounded cool and decided that we would not really have another chance to go to a Burmese dance club anytime soon. We walked there and when we got there we had to walk down into a parking garage to get to the club, I was a little worried but I saw other people walking down to so I figured it was ok. We paid to get into the club and right away when we went in I was excited because there were girls there, and I thought, cool we are not the only girls here. It only took me a minute to figure out that we were definitely not in a dance club. This place was a lot like the restaurants model show but a lot more obvious about it. It was pretty much a brothel. I was completely floored. Let me make the point that at no point was I scared or worried for my safety. It was just so strange to see this totally different side of Burmese culture that I had never expected to see. We hung out for a little while but left soon after we actually got propositioned by a man at the club. It was definitely a strange and eye opening experience. I was totally taken aback by it. The guys we came with were super nice and got us a cab before leaving.

So too bad the story doesn’t end there.

On the way back to the ship we had to cross this super long bridge. Well our taxi broke down on the middle of it. They had to push the taxi the rest of the way across the bridge and while this was happening another taxi pulled up behind us that just happened to be SAS kids who seemed to have no concern for our well being but thought it was funny to laugh and take pictures. When we got to the end of the bridge they pulled the taxi to the side and all the cars passed us. Our drivers did not speak English but we soon figured out that the car had overheated when they got out water to pour in the engine. Shortly after stopping we had police officers walk up to us. They translated to another guy who was trying to help us and they were upset because they thought we had been taking pictures and they wanted to see our cameras. As I said before we are not allowed to take pictures of many many things and a bridge being a strategic location that was a big no no, especially one with a police checkpoint at the end because that is also a big picture no no as well. Luckily we did not have our cameras on us and we explained that it was the car behind us taking pictures not us. The officers seemed a little agitated but relaxed after a little bit. I don’t know where the driver got all the water from but he kept running back and forth across the road refilling the water bottles. We ended up getting the car to start again and got safely back to the ship. The students that had passed us were at the gate and they told us how they wanted to stop and help, even though they didn’t at all. One of the guards was still at the gate from earlier and I talked to him for a second and we walked back to the ship without anymore incidents.

Day 5
Today we slept in and did not even get off the ship. Onship time was 1130 and we would have only had about an hour in town from the time the first shuttle left till we would have to catch the last shuttle back.

So things have been good on the ship. We are about to stop in Singapore right now. We are not getting off the ship we are just refueling. We have no class today because we are refueling and it is crew appreciation day. Last night was the crew talent show. It was undoubtedly the most fun I have had on the ship. Our cabin steward, Joseph, danced to the song, “In the Navy.” It was really cute because he is a really shy man. There were other dances, singing, and even stand up comedy. It was great. I never realized how young a lot of the crew is. I have never even seen some of them before because of the different departments they work in. It was really great though and we made our steward cards last night and put them up for him today. Now I have tons of work to do before Vietnam. I probably won’t post anything else till after that. The only trip I have planned right now is the Cu Chi Tunnels the last day. Other than that we are just planning on doing whatever. Most of us bought fabric in India and are planning on having clothes made in Vietnam so we will see how that turns out. As always I am doing great and I hope everyone at home is doing well.

Oh my god a picture worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-03-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

AMAZING INDIA

2006-03-16T07:43:00.000-08:00

Sorry if this is not too detailed, but I have had no time. I am sure there are lots of grammatical and spelling errors and I am sorry but I am just going to post it. I know it is long but I promise you this is not detailed. And FYI if it makes you feel any better this is 8 pages on word but it took me 21 in my journal.

Day 1
So the first day in India we had a diplomatic briefing with two members from the US Embassy. Everyone had to go through face to face immigration so the ship didn’t get cleared until after lunch. We had to go get our immigration and custom forms to get off the ship We all had to carry these forms on us at all times and show them at different times at different checkpoints. Once we all got off the ship we went to get a rickshaw. There were seven of us so we had to take different ones. We just planned on meeting at a certain place. We all took rickshaws to Penegal Park to go to a fabric store called Nalli. Gretchen, Nicole and I jumped into one rickshaw. He took us to an auto-rickshaw which is this little yellow three wheeled vehicle that resembles a clown car. From there we went to Nalli's.

We pretty much had our cameras out the whole time. As we were driving along we went across this bridge, I don’t know the name of it, but I called it the smelly bridge from that day on. It was so terrible. It is where the sewage enters the ocean and it was terrible. I tried not to be rude but I was literally gagging, it was so sick. There were so many cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, scooters, buses, subways, trains, people, and cows everywhere. It was almost like sensory overload just looking around, there was so much to see and take in all at once. There were mostly men everywhere, over the course of the trip I saw very few women out and about in relation to the number of men. On the way to Penegal Park our driver did take us to one shop. They get commission for taking you these places, you don’t have to buy anything but you just have to go look. We had already been warned the drivers would do this so we got out and looked around and then were on our way. The people in the shop and pretty much everywhere pretty much followed us around trying to get us to buy a million different things.

After that we had to stop at an ATM because I only had $300 rupees which is about $7US. From there we finally headed to Nalli’s. The other group was already there waiting for us. We had to cross the street to get to the store which was pretty crazy; luckily our driver was with us so he helped us. Crossing the street in India is pretty much like the game frogger, you take a few steps forward and a few back and hope that you don’t get smashed. Funny as it sounds cows have the right of way in India, people do not. So Nalli’s is a fabric store. We wanted to buy fabric because we are planning on having clothes made in Vietnam. The rest of the group separated from Gretchen, Nicole and I because they decided they wanted to go to other shops. I bought fabric for a few different things. Most girls are having fancy dresses made but I didn’t want to do that so I bought a few pieces for a few different things. I found what I needed pretty fast but the other girls took quite a while figuring out exactly what they wanted. Our rickshaw driver was staying with us for the day and he actually came in looking for us at one point, I think he thought we had snuck out.

After that our driver took us to buy hookahs, he was more than happy to recommend a shop. The shop had tons of different stuff I actually got to put together all the pieces I wanted to make my hookah which was fun. Other than a hookah I bought a few other things. There were of course plenty of people there to follow us around and help us find stuff we really didn’t need or want. They were really nice though. After that we had to go to the post office, we are not allowed to take hookahs on the ship even if they are completely clean. The post office was really cool but I got pretty upset there too. The post office actually packages all your stuff for you. It was sweet. They took our hookahs which were wrapped in boxes and tore them open and wrapped it all up and then put this cloth over it and sewed it around the package. Then they took this red pen/marker and filled it with ink and wrote the address and everything on it for us. It was so cool. The part that made me mad though was that while we were in line all these men just kept walking right in front of us and they all got to go before us. There was even another SAS person there and because he was a guy he got to go in front of us to. We just kept having to stand there and every time we would get close more guys would come and walk right in front of us. We ended up spending almost an hour in line because so many guys got to cut us. This was the first experience I had with women being second class in India, and it was really annoying. It was so hard because I did not want to be disrespectful to their culture but at the same time I didn’t want to just stand there and let all these men just keep doing it.

So after that we all needed to get back to the ship for the welcome reception. Nicole didn’t have a ticket but she wanted to try to get on the waiting list. When we got back to the ship the buses were already there so we had to hurry up and get on the ship, drop our stuff and get back off. The buses we took to the reception were not air conditioned and it was SO hot. We had to go across the smelly bridge again too. We got stopped on the way too by a security checkpoint. It was pretty weird to have to go through these all the time. IT took about 30min to get to the welcome reception and it was really hard not to fall asleep in the hot bus. Once we got to the reception there was a little band playing and as we got off the bus there were women giving us jasmine lei’s and the dots on everyone’s heads. It was all outdoors and there was a picture on the ground made from rice powder and there were different colors of powder for us to fill it in. It was cool. There was also henna for your hands and a few stands to buy stuff. The first thing that I did was the saree tying demonstration. We went up onto the stage and the women showed us how to put on a saree. That was fun. Nicole showed up too so that was good. After that we went to get the henna done. There was a traditional Indian dancer as well. There was Indian food too. It was all so good. We were in the south of India and rice is the major crop there so I was happy that I could eat everything. I didn’t really get much chance to talk to many students but I did get to talk to a few so that was good. The dancer, danced for a really long time. The entire time we were waiting for henna, while we got our food and ate, and even after that. She must have been so hot and tired. We got some pictures with her once she was done and then it was time to go. We had to cross the smelly bridge again, but this time we had pretty flowers to hold up to our noses when we went across. Once we got back to the ship Gretchen and I went with Dustin to use the phones, I didn’t get a hold of anyone so I just waited for Gretchen to finish and then we walked back to the ship and went to bed.

Day 2
Gretchen left for her Taj Mahal trip this morning and I had to get up to for my Kancheepuran/Mamallapuram trip. I went up to eat with Gretchen before we had to leave. While we were eating a girl named Tammy from my Environmental Politics class came up to me and said she wanted to go to Auroville too. She was on my trip that day so we got to plan it out a little bit together. I was happy to have another person to go with because as of that time it was just me and another guy from Environmental Politics. The bus ride to Kancheepuram was about two hours, I tried not to sleep but it was too hard. Kancheepuram is not nearly as populated as Chennai so we saw a lot more cows everywhere. They pretty much just wander around everywhere in the fields and on the streets, or they are pulling carts, or being given their baths in the ponds. It was definitely different. The first place they took us was to a hotel to use the bathrooms because there would be nowhere for us during the day. They had to open up rooms for us to use. The Indian way is just to walk a few feet away from where ever you are standing and do what needs to be done. And I saw people doing this every day, everywhere we went. And just so you know, because I know you all want to know, this applies to no.2 as well as no.1. So I pretty much watched where ever I walked and had to avoid the cow dung as much as the other kind. Once again, something totally different, these were the little things that made India as amazing as crazy as it sounds. By the way you also eat with your hands, but only the right, the left is unclean and I am sure you can all figure out why, and even though there were actual toilets for us in the hotel there was still no toilet paper.

Anyways enough of that, after leaving the hotel we went to a temple called the Sriekambaranthar Temple. This temple is for Siva. There are over 30,000 Hindu gods and they all have different forms. This temple and the others that we saw date back to the 7th and 8th century. I could explain the temples to you but honestly it would be pretty hard, they were beautiful and had tons of carvings and our guided told us the stories that went along with the pictures. There were lots of beggars at all the temples we went to. It was really sad and really hard to say no. We are not supposed to give to the beggars on SAS trips, but pretty much everywhere I went I gave money. We went to two other temples in Kancheepuram and then we went to have lunch at the hotel we used the bathrooms at. Lunch was really good and it was served with Palm Leaves. The food was really good. I just tried a little bit of everything. After lunch we went to a silk weaving shop. We got to see a man making a saree on the loom. They use “modern technology” but it didn’t really look modern to me at all. After that we went upstairs to the shop and had time to buy stuff.

From there we went to Mamallapuram. This was another 2hr drive. We went to a temple there called the shore temple. It is literally on the shore and it was never completed or consecrated so we were allowed to wear our shoes. They had to build an embankment around it because the salt water was wearing it away. Almost none of the carvings are discernable. After that we went to another temple that had big statues of a cow, lion and elephant. We were allowed to walk on this one with our shoes too. After that we went to see Butter Ball. It was literally this big ball that is on slope, it is like a balancing rock. There was also a big stone wall that was had tons of really well preserved carvings. There were lots more street vendors in Mamallapuram. They were really bad. They would line up outside the gates just waiting for us and then they would circle us trying to get us to buy stuff. If we told them we didn’t have money they would just come up with stuff for us to trade. Some people traded their watches, some tried to get me to trade my camera.

Once we got back to the ship Tammy and I decided to try and get everything figured out for Auroville the next day. We wanted to leave that night but we couldn’t find Carter, who was supposed to be coming too. We got a rickshaw to the Egmore Rail Station to try and figure out a train for the next day. We got sent about 7 different places before we finally figured everything out. When we got back to the ship I just left Carter a note with our plans for the next day.

Day 3
So Carter was still no where to be found the next morning at 0430 when Tammy and I met to leave. Our train didn’t leave until 0630 but we were told to be there early, and there was only one train that we knew about so we didn’t want to miss it. When we got to the train station we got our tickets to Pondicherry and then realized that they had no platform number on the tickets. We asked a few people and again got sent a few different places but we eventually found the right train. The people that helped us seemed quite amused by us and sat around talking and laughing at us. They gave us some pretty funny looks when we were putting on our sunscreen and spraying ourselves down with bug spray. The train ride was a little less than 200km so we figured it would take a few hours. We were so so wrong. Apparently there was another train. The train we were on was a passenger train and the other is the express. We ended up stopping in quite a few places and even sat at one train station in who knows where for over an hour. All in all the train ride ended up taking over 6 hours. It was ok though because I saw some beautiful parts of the countryside and we talked to some really nice people.

Once we got to Pondicherry we had to find a taxi to Auroville. When we went outside the station there was this tiny little old man with a bicycle rickshaw. He insisted he knew where to take us even though he spoke almost no English other than telling us to come and that is was only 10 rupess (less than 20 cents). We got in and he ended up taking us to a guest house where he thought we wanted to stay the night. Luckily the guy there spoke English and he explained to the rickshaw driver where we wanted to go and what we needed. Auroville was about 6km away and the old man insisted he could take us there in his rickshaw. We politely as possible told him no that we needed a taxi. It was nice of him but he was so small and frail we even felt bad having him take us a few blocks. He eventually found us a taxi driver that would take us to Auroville and then back to Chennai that night, because there were no more trains.

We both didn’t really know what to expect with Auroville. Other than that the community is completely sustainable we didn’t know anything. The first thing that I noticed as we got closer to Auroville was that the landscape started to get cleaner. Everywhere we had been there was trash everywhere, slowly we saw less and less. The next thing I noticed was the smell, everything smelled literally like fresh flowers. There were trees everywhere, it was beautiful. Soon all the vehicles we saw were all bikes and motorcycles. We were one of only a few cars that we saw the entire time. The first place that we wanted to go was to eat. We had not planned on the train taking so long and now it was almost 1400 and we had not eaten all day. The driver took us to the cafeteria and we soon figured out that it was only for residents. We had the driver take us to the visitor’s center from there because there was a café. The food at the café was so so good. Everything was vegetarian and everything was organic. After eating we went up to watch a video about Auroville. Pretty much to sum up Auroville the idea is that it is a place for all people to come together and create a community based on unity. Everyone who lives there has to do some kind of work to benefit the community. Even visitors who come to stay must volunteer their time. Everything is powered using wind, solar, or other forms of renewable energy. The idea was pretty neat and from the outside it seemed to be working really well. The only thing that made too much for me was that they have this big sphere meditation chamber where you go to become enlightened and everyone kind of worships “the mother” who was the woman who started Auroville. It was kind of weird but at the same time it was definitely one of the coolest places I have ever seen. It didn’t even seem like India and the Aurovillians probably would not even consider it part of India, because it does not belong to any country it only belongs to humanity as a whole. Anyone who wants to check it our more can look on the web. They have their own website. So we pretty much wandered around the community as much as we could and then went back to where our driver was waiting to get back to Chennai.

Once we got back to Chennai Tammy and I went to an Indian Restaurant to eat. It was a place that was close to the ship, since we were really tired, and it was a place that SAS had recommended. It was really good but I found a hair in my food and I had a hard time eating anything else. We were pretty tired after that and went back to the ship to get ready for our trip the next day. Tammy was on the Dalit Overnight trip as well

Day 4
We left around 0800 for this trip. We had 21 people on this trip so it wasn’t too big. The first place we went was to the Delta School of Nursing. This was a place outside of Mamallapuram. Our vehicles seemed to barely fit down the dirt roads to the village. The School was started by a Dalit man and the goal was to provide education and women’s empowerment.
Before I get into all the here is just a little background info on the Dalits:
The Hindu religion is a four tiered caste system; there is also a class system, which is different. The highest caste is the Brahman’s they come from the head of gods, which is the most important part of the body to Hindu’s, they believe the head is the seat of the soul. The next three castes go down from the shoulder to the stomach and the feet. The Dalits are so low in this system they are not even considered in the four caste system. The word Dalit literally means the oppressed. This is a name that the Dalits have chosen for themselves and is the most respectful way to refer to this group of people. Dalits are also known as “the Untouchables” this stems from the fact that Dalits are untouchable to members of higher castes because they are considered unclean. If a higher caste member is touched by an untouchable certain cleansing rituals are needed to make the person clean again. These practices are not as wide spread presently but many people still practice this and the Dalits are still at a significant disadvantage in comparison to the general population. There are still religious as well as government regulations that keep the Dalits oppressed. Historically Dalits were kept out of areas with higher caste members and lived in settlements outside the general population. For this reason most still do live in Dalit Villages outside the nearby cities or towns. All of the families live in poverty, most people are farmers although the children do go to school, many work in the fields as well.

So the Delta School of Nursing helps to educate women and give them training so they are able to go out into the world and become able to support themselves. In a society where women are still considered second class citizens this is an important organization.

When we arrived at the school there was a welcome reception for us. We all went and put our things in a room and then there were drummers that led us in a procession to the center of the classrooms and the women were all lined up and they gave us the dots on our necks and gave us all jasmine leis. After that they led us to another classroom where we all sat and they performed various dances, songs, and skits for us. From there we went to have lunch. The food was truly amazing. It was the best food I had in India. After lunch they had more performances for us. After that we were given nap time which we thought was funny. They told us that past experiences were that it was going to be a tiring day and we should rest. I tried to go rest but on the way I got stopped by a group of girls who wanted to talk to me. I of course could not say no and had a lot of fun trying to talk to them with the very limited English they spoke. It was still really fun though. After that is was about time to go. The girls all seemed so sad to see us leave. They all helped us carry our stuff back to the cars, it was really sweet.

After that we had a little bit of time before we had to be at the village. Our guide took us to a couple more temples. I sat outside because as crazy as it sounds I had seen enough temples. I was actually really happy that I did because I ended up seeing some really cool stuff just sitting around and watching that I would not have seen otherwise. Some of the things I was a monkey chasing a woman and almost attacking her, she was screaming and the monkey was pulling on her skirt. Some local men ran up to help her and threw stuff at the monkeys to get them to go away. Then there were some kids who were running around the temple and went to the bathroom right in front of us. There was also a local man walking around with the traditional wrap on apparently unaware or uncaring that his entire butt was hanging out, just wandering around like it was no big deal. Then he proceeded to walk by stick his finger next to one nostril and blow the most snot out of his nose that I have ever seen. It was so disgusting, we tried to be respectful but we could not stop laughing. We also had many people come up and ask us to take their pictures, it was really cute, they loved to see it right away on the digital screen.

After we left the temple we were in a bit of a hurry because we were late to the village. When we got to the village all the people were lined up at the main street waiting for us. They gave us all the dot and gave us more jasmine leis. There were drummers playing. Then they poured some liquid on the ground and a man lit a coconut on fire and smashed it on the ground. All the women grabbed us by the arms and started pulling us down the dirt road. Every few feet we would stop and the men would dance in a circle and the women would yank on us and push us into the front of the crowd to make sure we could see. One of the times that we stopped to dance the men asked us to dance to and I went into the circle and danced all over. IT WAS SO FUN! I pretty much just copied the guy and jumped around randomly and threw my arms all over the place. It was amazing. After that it was getting dark so they took us to the only street light that they had so they could show us a stick dance. I do not know the significance of this particular dance but they told me it was very important. From there they led us to a intersection of two dirt roads. They had chairs set up and the people sat on the ground in the streets around us. The whole thing was so amazing I could not stop smiling. Then they talked to the people about who we were and why we were there, because this village had never had a group like us. We also went around and said who we were and then they translated for us. After that we went to their outdoor amphitheatre, which was actually quite impressive. They had tons of performances set up for us and they were really good and really extravagant. After the performances all the village people left. We put all of our chairs in a circle after that and they brought us a mediation lamp, and individual clay lamps. We were all told to look at the light in our hands and reflect on the day. After that we took all the lights and put them together in a circle around the larger lamp and looked at the collective light and how it was a different kind of beauty we all held hands and thought about our connectivity and how beautiful things can happen when we come together as a whole. I know reading this is sounds a little odd and reactions are probably, ok, go with the world peace and all but whatever. This was actually a really amazing and special experience for me and was one of the most memorable experiences I had in India.

So once we were done with the meditation we all went and sat on the stage and had our boxed dinners together. You wouldn’t believe it but sardines are not half bad. Everything in the box was nonperishable stuff and unfortunately mostly bread stuff, but I managed and of course had extra snacks of my own just in case. After that we all got ready for bed. We slept in one of the classrooms on the cement floor. In the morning we were literally woken up by a rooster which was more fun than I would have thought, it took me a minute to think about it and realize where I was. Once we got up we got freshened up and ate leftovers from our boxed dinners for breakfast. Some of the local men brought us tea, which was so nice of them and it was really good. After that we put all the things we had brought for them into bags and collected all the extra food we had to give to the villagers after we left. There were some men lingering around just watching us. Some children started to trickle in. Some boys came along and wanted us to see their village so they offered to take us out. The village was definitely different in the daylight. Almost all the housed were mud huts with palm roofs. The street was a dirt path. The “pond” in the middle of the town was more of a hole with some dirty water in the bottom. The boys took us to their houses and their families were very welcoming. They were so happy to show us their homes as simple as they were. The entryways were so little we had to crouch down and almost crawl in. The houses had dirt floors and were 2 rooms but only two because of a partial wall in between. Total the area was probably about 6ft by 15ft, and that was it. The people were very eager to have us take pictures of them and very entertained by seeing themselves. We went around to a few different houses but we did not have enough time to visit with everyone we wanted to. It was really sad because when we were leaving there were all these people waiting outside their houses, asking us to come see their homes and we had to try and explain to them that we had to leave already. Many of the townspeople followed us to the vans to say goodbye and ask for more pictures and shake our hands. They were so thankful that we were there I felt like it was strange because I was so thankful to be there too. It was really hard to leave the village, I can definitely say we all wanted to stay and spend more time there.

After we left the village we went to Mamallapuram for some free time (I really wish we could have spent this time in the village). We had about an hour and a half to walk around town. There were even more beggars this time. It was really hard because we could not even close the doors on the van because they were standing in our way. There were even people banging on the windows trying to get us to buy stuff and give them money. There is really no way I can explain the way I felt at that time. SAS has a policy that we are not supposed to give to the beggars, especially on SAS trips because as terrible as this sounds they will go and tell the others and then they will come and mob us. I did give money while we were in India but it was usually in isolated situations, I did give when I was on SAS trips as well. As non-emotional as SAS’s policy there is just no way I can just say no and get on our air-conditioned bus and going to our fancy ship and eating all I could and having everything I need and tons more and feel that it was okay to say no to these people that were barely surviving.

So back at the ship I waited for Nicole to get back from her trip. We were supposed to go out for our last day. Nicole’s trip ended up getting back late and so I went with some other friends around town. The guide pretty much took us everywhere we didn’t want to go, including the same hookah shop I had been to the first day. We mostly shopped and went to a grocery store. We went to the post office again and ended up running around with two different people trying to help us and going back and forth between the three buildings at least ten times. It was pretty entertaining though. After that we went back to the ship to meet everyone who was back from the Taj for dinner. Most of the girls ended up not wanting to go out because they had already turned in their customs and immigration forms. Nicole came and we went a few guys. We ended up going to the same restaurant that Tammy and I had eaten at. No hair this time so that was good.

All in all India was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now we are in Myanmar. Sorry it took me so long to finish this but I now realize that 3 days on ship is not enough to get anything done. I barely finished my homework and we are literally ported in Yangon right now while I am typing this. We will all be allowed off the ship tomorrow the trip I am doing here is Inle Lake w/Light Trekking. It is a 4 day trip and should be amazing. For anyone who does not know about Myanmar I STRONGLY encourage you to learn about this country. I had no idea about anything here and all I have to say is that it should be a very interesting port. I hope everyone is doing well.

Gettin Ready for India

2006-03-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

Getting Ready for Port #6

So we are all getting ready for and anxious for India.

First for a little info from the last few days:
Since the Sea Olympics things have been pretty calm. Last night we had our Sea Social. Every sea has one during the voyage. We all have to dress up and we go to the faculty/staff lounge and we get to socialize with people from our sea and our professors as well as the other senior passengers and adult passengers. It was fun but I only stayed for a little bit because last night was pretty busy. We had our cultural preport before the social. I left that early to get to the social. After the social I went to a Stretch and Strengthen class, from there I went to an Art show because it was for Nicole’s class and then I did Morgan’s hair. I am braiding 3 of the girls hair for India since it is going to be so hot, unfortunately none of them know how to do it so I have no one to do mine. So that was a long night. The last few days, I have mostly just been trying to make sure everything is done in advance for when we are back on the ship. There are only two days onship in between India and Myanmar and I have papers due both days so I am trying to get as much done as possible so I am not stressed out. We crossed the equator for our second time, two days ago. There were no special ceremonies this time, but the captian blew the horn.

Today we will have our logistical preport. This one should not be very much fun. We have tons of forms we have to have in order and it is supposed to take a long time for everyone to clear immigration. There are also a lot of health risks in this country so that will constitute a big part of the meeting. Another issue that came up were the bombs that went off in Varanasi. Most people are going to the Taj Mahal and some of the SAS trips go to Varanasi as well. Pittsburg/SAS has not yet decided how this will be handled. I am not going on a Taj Mahal trip or planning on visiting Varanasi so this should not interfere with my plans. I will post any new information if this does end up interfering with anything I am doing. As far as the trips I am doing in India, I am just going to give you the names and a little description. If you want anything more in depth you can look on the SAS website. So the first day I have the welcome reception. This is at night and it is a way for us to get to meet and mingle with Indian University students. There will be a cultural presentation and some Indian snacks. We also get the kum-kum, which is the red dot on our heads. The second day I have Kancheepuram/Mamallapuram. This is going to be visits to lots of temples and will take all day. I don’t have any SAS trips on the third day and I really don’t know what I’m going to do. Most of my friends are going on Taj Mahal trips so I don’t really have anyone to hang out with. I want to go to Auroville which is a sustainable development community. Some people will be going there but they are all staying a few days and I only have one open day. The last two days I will be doing a Dalit Village overnight trip. This is to an untouchable village and should be a pretty good trip. This is one that Leah did and she said it was one of her favorite trips. Just for general knowledge, the untouchables are the lowest group in the caste (class) system in India. They are literally untouchable by members from higher castes; if a person is touched by an untouchable cleansing rituals have to be performed to make them clean again. So that’s everything. As always I hope everything is going well at home

Sea Olympics

2006-03-05T00:07:00.000-08:00

Sea Olympics

Day 45!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So today started nice and early, we had another time change last night and we got up at 0745 to get ready for the spirit competition which was the first event of the day at 0900. We are the Vikings so a bunch of us had made horns for everyone and we had a big banner and weapons made from different stuff. Our color is blue so we all had to wear blue. We went down the halls banging on doors to get everyone up. We had a huge guy who was our mascot (Brianna and Ariana, you both remember Drew). We had drummers too. When everyone was in the hall we started chanting and drumming and went up the stairs and all the way to the union yelling our chant. When we got there everyone was pretty impressed with us and we definitely made a big entrance. After that we all sat down and they went in alphabetical order through the seas to come up and show their spirit. Some were ok, but we are pretty sure we won that round. We won’t know the final tally until the end of the day. After the spirit competition we went outside to the pool deck for synchronized swimming. Seas not only get points for winning but at each event we also get points for spirit. So we all were singing and chanting and cheering for our sea. I didn’t get to watch all of the synchronized swimming because I had to go to the 4th deck for the Orange Pass/Relay. The relay was first. Gretchen and Ryan participated for our team. The way the game works is that there is an orange inside of a pair of stockings and the stockings are tied around your waist so that the orange is hanging between your legs. There is another orange on the ground and you have to roll it across the deck (by hitting it with the orange in the stocking) to your partner who then has to go back the other way. I am proud to say that Gretchen and Ryan got first place for this part of the event by over 20 seconds, which was pretty cool. After that was the orange pass which I participated in, there were 8 people on each team. We had to put our hands behind our backs and pass the orange around in a circle 5 consecutive times and if we dropped it we had to start back at one. Unfortunately we lost this part of the event but I wasn’t one of the people who dropped the orange so that was good. It is a perfect day out today, the water is calmer than I have seen the entire time, and it is really really hot. We are on a lunch break right now, but we still have tons more. As of the noon announcements our sea is in second place right now.

So the rest of the afternoon went good and bad. After lunch we went to see flip cup. Flip cup is usually a drinking game but we adapted it and used lemonade. Each player has a cup in front of them and they have to chug their lemonade, put the cup on the edge of the table and flip the cup over. Once they are done their team goes down the line until all the players have finished. We lost this event in the first round. After flip cup we had a little break, then we went to tug of war and we lost that in the first round too. Then we went to the union to watch chubby bunny, we ended up not placing in this event but it was still really fun to watch and pretty gross too. After chubby bunny was the water drop. For this event there were two players for each sea. You had to drop water from one level to the lower into a cup of water on the other player’s head. The team who had the most water won, and that wasn’t us either. So after that we went to eat dinner. We had another barbeque which was really good because the food is the best at the barbeques. After that we came down to get ready for the big hair contest. I was on the 3 person team. I didn’t get my hair done I was an assistant. The girl who got her hair done was Nicole; her hair is pretty much like mine, long, curly and frizzy. We won that so that was good. After that we won the limbo contest too, so we were all pretty excited. So karaoke was the last event of the night, I was in that too. No, I didn’t sing although I can’t imagine it would have made it any worse than it was. We had planned something but everyone just did a lot more than us and so it made what we did look not so great, honestly it was terrible and I was only successful at embarrassing myself in front of the whole school. At least Gretchen and Ryan did it too so even though I made a total idiot out of myself I didn’t do it alone. Gretchen said she feels bad since this was the first time I have done something like this and it went really really wrong that I will probably never do it again……….... She is totally right.

All in all we ended up taking 3rd place in the Sea Olympics. It was close all day but overall we still did well since there were 8 seas total. Well that’s all for now. I hope everyone is doing well.

Mauritius

2006-03-03T09:21:00.000-08:00

Mauritius

Day 1
So we planned on waking up this morning to see the sunrise over the island on our way into port. We ended up sleeping in late and didn’t wake up until way to late. Luckily one of the girls, Nicole, has a bit of a picture taking problem and she got up and took 55 pictures, so I got a pretty good idea of what every second looked like. We ended up missing the diplomatic briefing too, but that was honestly just because we wanted to shower and get off. The ship actually did clear pretty fast this time we were able to get off around 0930. We had to take water taxis across the bay over to the waterfront. They were really cute little boats that looked like they could fit around 5 people safely but managed to fit at least 20 every time. It was good that the ride across was less than 5 min. It was cool because while we were eating breakfast waiting for the ship to get cleared all the taxis were just circling the bay all around the ship. It turns out our arrival had been discussed at the cabinet level in Mauritius, so it was a big deal to have us all come in, but it is a pretty small island. The city we ported in was called Port Louis; it is the largest city in Mauritius and has about 1.2 million people. Interestingly, the largest ethnicity in Mauritius in Indian.

So once we got over in the water taxi the first place everyone needed to go was to exchange money. The line was pretty long but it didn’t take too long for all of us to get through. We decided to just wander because we didn’t really have any plans. The city was pretty interesting. The waterfront area was clean and modern; there were nice hotels and a little mall. Everything was new and clean. Just on the other side of the waterfront, less than 2 blocks away it was completely different. The streets were crowded with cars, motorcycles, bikes and people. The sidewalks were narrow, the buildings were packed and older the streets were lined with vendors. The first place we found to go into was the market. The first thing we were confronted with was the smells. There were people selling some really different stuff. There was some type of dried fish that was cut in half and some octopus looking thing that was dried and cut in half as well. As if that didn’t smell bad enough, the guy tried to sell us some type of meat stick that smelled pretty interesting too. Needless to say we kept walking. There were also people selling lots and lots of spices. They were closed in packages so they didn’t smell as bad. The next part of the market we walked through was mostly Indian wares such as shirts and skirts and rugs, tons of silk tons of beadwork tons of smells. The people were definitely excited to see us and would jump up as soon as they saw us coming and would sometimes even follow us for a little bit if we showed the slightest interest in whatever they were selling. It was definitely interesting. The next place we went was to the fruit market that was right across from the craft market. It was really cool, there was definitely still a funk in the air but it was definitely better. The food was really cool. A lot of it was stuff that I recognized from Brazil and South Africa.

After that we decided to go to the Botanical Gardens in Pamplemousses. We decided to try and figure out the bus system. Once we found the central bus station we had someone help us find the right bus. The bus only cost 18 rupees which is only about 60 cents US, which was really good compared to taking a taxi for $20. We ended up taking the buses whenever they were running since they were so cheap. The bus was kind of scary but not too bad. The driver got cut off by another bus so the driver was honking and trying to pass the other bus on really narrow curvy streets, it was a little taste of what it will be like in the other countries, because the busses are supposed to be really good in Mauritius.

The gardens were really pretty, but it was really hot. I expected that it would be somewhat comparable to the size of the one in Denver, but it was actually really big. We were there for a few hours and we still didn’t see everything. Most of the plants there are exotic, so they are from other places. There were giant lily pads that were about 3ft across. They looked like you could sit on them. There were giant trees with vines hanging down and giant palm trees. It was pretty sweet. They had tortoises too and they were really big and they stunk just like cows. It was pretty funny. Some were pretty big. There were stags too. I don’t know what kind of deer they were, they just called them stags. Once we were done at the botanical gardens we hopped on a bus back to Port Louis to meet up with some friends who had been on SAS trips. We met up and ate at one of the restaurants on the waterfront. Once we were done there we went to a beach in a town called Flic en Flac. It was pretty nice but the entire island is surrounded by coral reefs so there was lots of coral in the water and my feet got a little scraped up. It rained for a few minutes but it was still really warm outside and there were two complete rainbows on top of each other, so it was really pretty. We stayed there until the sunset and it was really pretty too, we got some really gorgeous pictures.

After that we went to eat at a local pizza place with some locals we had met and then we went back to the ship before it was too late because we didn’t want to miss the last water taxi to the ship.

Just a little side note, we had thought about staying in a beach house at Flic en Flac because lots of people had rented houses for the whole time. We couldn’t because Gretchen and I had trips the next day. Although we were told that tourists were not typically targets of crime in Mauritius, many of the houses ended up getting robbed. One house was even robbed while the students were upstairs in the house. Laptops, ipods, money, and tons of other valuables were taken. It sucks but I am definitely glad we didn’t stay there.

Day 2
This day I had a field trip with my Natural Resource professor. This was just something she had organized when we got into Mauritius and she invited any students who wanted to come along. We left the ship a little before 0900 and had a van pick us up to take us to Blue Bay. The drive was about an hour but it was definitely worth it. This was definitely the most beautiful place I went to the entire time we were in Mauritius. The first thing we did was go snorkeling. We had a guide set up and he took us out in a glass bottom boat. I was really excited because this was the first glass bottom boat I had been in that you could actually see. While we were going around the bay our guide would stop and tell us about the different coral and fish we were seeing. We saw tons of different coral but the best one was a huge brain coral that looked like it was bigger than my bedroom. It was amazing. After that we stopped at a spot to snorkel. Blue Bay is supposed to be the best place to snorkel on the entire island. It was really cool, there was not a lot of bright colored coral but there were lots of different kinds of coral and fish. Our guide would throw bread into the water and literally hundred of fish would surround us. Some of the coral types we saw were the brain coral, table, chicken foot, cabbage coral and tons more. Some of the cooler fish that we saw was a trumpet fish and angel fish. We saw lots more that were really cool but I have no idea what the names are. We saw some sea cucumbers too and lots of sea urchins.

So after snorkeling we went back to the van and had a little time to get cleaned up and eat lunch before we went to the next place. We were supposed to pack sandwiches to eat and since I couldn’t I had brought various goodies from under my bed. Luckily there was a little food stand and I managed to get some rice for lunch so I was happy. After that we left to go meet our boat for Ile Aux Aigrettes. Once we got there we still had a little bit of time until our boat arrived so we walked around and took pictures and collected lots of cool shells.

Ile Aux Aigrettes is a nature preserve and it is really a tiny little island. We could see the whole thing from across the bay. The boat ride over felt really good because it was another really hot day. When we actually got on the island it literally took us 10 minutes to walk the first 10ft. It was really funny because we were all ooing and ahhing at all the cool stuff we were seeing as soon as we stepped off the boat. We saw needle fish, a bird, and a lizard. After that we started our tour. We all paid $30 for the tour and 100% of that money goes to conservation work on the island, so I definitely thought that was cool. The island used to be used for defenses when it was colonized and lots of exotic plants were brought in and many animal species were wiped out and many went extinct. The most famous animal that was lost to the entire island of Mauritius was the Dodo bird. They are trying to reintroduce all the indigenous plants and some animals that are comparable to some of the ones that were lost. The entire island is formed from coral so the ground was really uneven. The paths we walked on were super narrow. There were tons and tons of mosquitoes, we all put on bug spray and we all still got eaten up. Some of the animals we saw were skinks, which are a kind of lizard, geckos, birds, and tortoises. There are ten on the island and we saw 6 of them. When we were looking for the pink pigeons we saw one of the tortoises called big daddy. He is the oldest and biggest one on the island and he is 85. He was actually kind of scary and I know you are all going to think this is crazy, but we were chased by a tortoise. It was funny but at the same time it really was kind of freaky, we were all trying to take pictures of him but he kept pushing us backwards because he was trying to get at us, and he bites. We actually ended up having to take a different trail because he would not stop chasing us. We did see the pink pigeons but I was kind of disappointed because they really weren’t pink like in the pictures we saw, they were more white and brown. One of the guys on our trip, Ryan, found a baby tortoise and that was definitely the highlight of the day. It was so cute it was smaller than the palm of my hand. They actually take all the babies they find on the island and relocate them until they are big enough to be able to survive without getting crushed by the other bigger tortoises. So we all got to hold it and take it back to the house where they have scientists living on the island. It was so fun.

Once I got back to the ship I got all cleaned up and we took a taxi out to Grand Bay. We rented a hotel and went out with a bunch of SAS people. I found out later there were robberies at beach houses in Grand Bay too, so I was even happier we were in a hotel instead.

Day 3
So we woke up early at the hotel this morning since it was our last day. The other girls went snorkeling but I didn’t since I had been the day before. I got a few things done in town and then I met up with the girls on the beach. We laid around on the beach for a while, pretty much just happy to be lying on the beach and swimming in the Indian Ocean. After that we all went shopping for a little bit and then took the bus back to Port Louis to get some more shopping done. We have all learned to stop at grocery stores we find a buy a few things so that we don’t spend too much on the ship on snacks and sodas. We ate after that and headed back to the ship. Our room definitely had a funk goin on. Everything we bought and everything we were wearing definitely had a funk too. A little taste of what is to come in India. It as always took a little time to get everything cleaned up in our room as we usually just throw things down when we are in our room and leave again.

March 2, 2006
So today was honestly a really lazy day. I slept and did almost no homework. It was fun. I hope I don’t seem like I am complaining about my homework. I definitely have lots of busy work, but being able to lie on beautiful sandy beaches and snorkel in the Indian Ocean definitely more than makes it ok. I did do some Sea Olympics stuff. The Sea Olympics are in two days and I have been helping out with the preparations for our sea. We are in the Baltic Sea and our mascot is a Viking. We made lots of different stuff with stuff we had got at the grocery store in Mauritius. We made horns, a banner, and weapons. We have a meeting tomorrow to practice our cheer and get everyone pepped up. This is usually not my type of thing at all but it has been really fun and I have met more people in my hall. Some of the events are synchronized swimming, flip cup, tug of war, big hair, water drop, and lip sync. All the events are really just silly stuff but it should be really fun. I will tell you later about the events I end up doing. The most important part of the Sea Olympics is that the winning sea gets to be first off the ship in San Diego. Hopefully we will win, if not it goes in order.

Well there is not much else to report; I am sitting in the Union right now typing this during Karaoke Night. It’s pretty funny. I hope everyone is doing well I will let you know how the Sea Olympics go. One more thing, we will have water restrictions after India because we are not able to filter the water from there to Myanmar, so we have to conserve water now so that the restrictions aren’t as bad. Hopefully it will work, but I am doubtful.

more to come soon, i promise

2006-03-01T06:15:00.000-08:00

Port Number 4!!!!!!!February 26, 2006So we are all pretty pumped up for Mauritius. Exams went ok, I’m glad they are over. We had another 2 time changes on the way to Mauritius. I am now 11 hours away from home. We are supposed to be off the boat around 0800 but that is what they always say and I have pretty much given up on that ever happening. I will have a chance to try some of my French since Mauritius is a French speaking country. That should be interesting. I am trying to do one field trip with my Natural Resources teacher to an island to see a bunch of different little animals. There are supposed to be pink pigeons so that should be cool. We are planning on trying to snorkel too because the entire island is pretty much surrounded by coral reefs. I still do plan on spending some time on the beaches though, we all do. I am going to try and post some pictures with this at an internet café so hopefully those will work. Not much else to report, I will of course write more after Mauritius. And you can all be happy to know that since we are only there for 3 days you won’t have to wait as long to hear from me or have to reading a long post.
sorry the pics won't work =(

Back to Sea =(

2006-02-23T05:27:00.001-08:00

February 23, 2006
So hopefully you enjoyed my South Africa post. It is hard to believe we are on our way to our 4th port. Mauritius looks like a beautiful country, with lots to do. For anyone looking for it on a map it is a little island just east of Madagascar. I had no idea where it was before this trip. I don’t have any SAS trips planned for this port, mostly because the beaches look too good to pass up. The city we are porting in is called Port Louis and is the capital city. It doesn’t seem like it will be hard to get all over the island though.

We had another emergency drill yesterday. Everyone seems to just love those. We are not allowed to talk the entire time and a few people got in trouble for various things. The drills are of course taken pretty seriously. We had another time change last night too; I am 10 hours away now. I have already figured out exactly where I will be when I am officially half way around the world. I am secretly hoping the internet will crash that day so that I don’t have any contact with home.

Sadly, some people were sent home in South Africa. They tested positive for drug use in the time between Brazil and South Africa, they were allowed to stay on the ship until their plane left. Not much else to say about that, the rumor mill is the drugs were prescriptions for other people. I looked at their pictures in Purser’s Circle; I didn’t know who they were.

The next few days are going to be pretty busy. We only have a few more days until Mauritius and my professors are making sure to keep them packed. I have two exams in the next three days, as well as papers and readings to work on. Finding a balance between fun on the ship and school is hard because there is no way to get away. No matter where I am there are always people; in the lounges people are always hanging out and our room seems to have a never ending group of people filtering through.

On the road again

2006-02-23T05:27:00.000-08:00

South Africa

2006-02-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

South Africa

So Cape Town was another amazing city. I am so glad to have read some about this country before we arrived because I wouldn’t have realized some of the underlying issues in this country. For one I saw very few black people, something I did not expect in Africa. I knew there was a large white population, but they are in the minority. I know this was mostly in part to the area we were in with tourists everywhere, expensive hotels, malls, and every other amenity you would expect to see in any large city in the US. Some background for anyone who does not know, apartheid, which was a policy that separated the blacks, whites and coloreds ended a very short time ago, in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected president. He was the first black president in South Africa. There are still many problems the people of this country are trying to overcome. This port was extremely safe and I walked around alone during the day many times. Common sense was pretty much the rule. I wouldn’t walk around some places alone at night and I wouldn’t wave money around just like I wouldn’t do it at home. I know this post is going to end up being very long and understand it is hard to read and process everything at once, but I am still going to post all 7 days at once and you all can read it however you want.

Day 1
We arrived into the bay in the early morning. We were told to get up a little before 0600 to see the pilot come on board and the sun rising over the mountains as we came into the port. The night before we had all tried to sleep on the deck so we would already be out there in the morning. I soon quit along with others because it was just too cold and there were too many people to get any sleep. In the morning when we got up we rushed out to see the gorgeous bay, supposedly the most beautiful of all the countries we are going to, we were immediately disappointed to find the fog was so thick we couldn’t see ten feet of the sides of the ship and it was freezing and wet outside. We huddled together and tried to stick it out for the sunrise, hoping some of the fog would lift. It didn’t. The sunrise was beautiful though. We could see the light spreading out behind Table Mountain and were all cheering to see land. However as soon as the sun was up the fog was only a lighter shade of white for us to look out at. The port was closed because the fog was so thick so all we had to do was sit and wait.

I had a trip leaving for Robben Island at 1100 and ended up sitting in the union for over 2 hours before the ship was cleared and by then we had all missed the 1300 ferry and our trip was canceled. I was pretty upset because this trip was one I really wanted to do and all of my other days were packed. They ended up adding a 1500 trip for a smaller group of students and I jumped to get into that one with Annie. By the time we got of the ship we had about half an hour until we had to get back on for our trip. The ferry ride to Robben Island was about 15min from the bay. Dennis Brutis who was on of our interport lectures was also a political prisoner at Robben Island during the time Mandela was there, so we were really lucky to have him with us. When we arrived we all hopped in a bus and took a tour of the island. We saw most of the island including the leper cemetery and limestone quarry where the prisoners worked each day.

After the tour of the island we went to tour the prison. To tour the prison you have to have a political prisoner guide you, so we had two, our guide and Dennis. Another very lucky thing was that it just so happened that our guide had been imprisoned on that day (Feb 14) so it was a very important day for him and made it even more moving for me. We toured different sections of the prison. Political Prisoners were kept separate from the general population. We saw the courtyard where they used to sit and chip away at the limestone from the quarry every day. We saw Nelson Mandela’s cell where he was kept for 17 of the 26 years he was imprisoned. The entire time we were walking and our guide was telling us about the importance of this place to him I could really feel the importance for him and so many other people that were kept there. The last place that we went was the communal cell where he spent his time while imprisoned. His story was very moving and many people including myself were brought to tears. He was arrested at the age of 16, the last thing he remembers his mother saying was, “where are you taking my son?” the reply was that they would only be asking him questions and he would be back soon. He didn’t return for 5 years. The youngest person that was imprisoned while he was there was 13; the oldest was over 70. The stories of torture and random beatings he endured were intense and extremely moving. A profound thing that happened for me was that after he had recounted his experiences he walked up to a white South African man that was sitting and clasped his hand and told him that he harbors no ill will against him or anything else and that now is a time to move forward and not hold on to the past. This was the first time I saw true forgiveness, and I can honestly say I still don’t fully comprehend the magnitude of that kind of forgiveness.

Day 2
I had to get up really early to leave for my safari by 4:45. I was pretty tired but at least I got to sleep on the plane. This was an independent trip I had planned before leaving. There was a group of about 20 of us, we flew to Johannesburg and from there we had a 5 hour drive to Kruger National Park.

The safari company was called Siyabona and they met us at the gates with huge open Land Rovers, they were pretty sweet. They separated us into groups of 7-8 for each car. We all hopped in and took of to our camp, which was called Melalane. It was at the southernmost part of the park. The landscape was definitely not what I expected. There were tons of rolling hills, mountains, trees and bushes everywhere; we were literally in the bush.

When we were driving to the campground we saw a few warthogs and some impala’s. The camp was set up really nice when we got there. All our tents were up with sleeping bags, mats and pillows inside and there were tents set up for shade with tables. They brought us drinks with little umbrellas as we got out of the Land Rovers, it was so fancy. We threw our stuff into the tents and took off for our afternoon drive. We only had two hours because we had to be back in time for our night drive at 1800. We saw tons of impalas, an elephant, giraffes, some little monkeys and tons of birds. Once we got back to the camp we had to leave right away for our night drive.

The night drive had some slow spots where we only saw a few animals. Our guide was really good at spotting animals really far away or that we would have thought just looked like rocks until they moved. About the time it was getting dark our guide was looking out one side of the car and a rhino came out of the bush from the other side, I had to yell at him to watch out because we almost hit it. It was so cool! After that it started to rain and our guide asked us if we wanted to go back, it was only an hour and a half into the drive and we only got one night drive so we wanted to keep going. We had to put down the plastic sides on the car and couldn’t see anything so Nicole and I jumped in the very front of the car and we sat shotgun with a shotgun (we thought that was really cool). Soon after that we passed another safari jeep and they were going the way we had just came because they had seen lions there earlier that day. Our guide asked us if we wanted to go back, we had just been that way and had not seen anything. Nicole and I wanted to go back and about 50ft behind where we had just been there were 3 male lions lying in the middle of the road. They were huge, and less than 10ft from the front of the car. It was so amazing. Our guide told us that when it rains they come lie on the road because it is warmer. They were lazily lying around for a while, then they got up and walked right in between the two cars, they were literally within arms reach from the car. It was pretty scary. We turned the cars around and followed them for a while before they disappeared into the bush with the lightning flashing in the background. When we got back to camp we had an amazing dinner and went to bed because we had to be up at 0500 the next day for our morning drive.

Day 3
We got woken up by our guide bright and early for our morning drive and everyone was pretty tired. We were driving for about 30min and had not seen anything too exciting. Then we saw what we thought was a hyena in the road. We were all excited because we had not seen any hyenas yet. When we got closer we realized it was actually a leopard. We were so excited to see one because they are very rare. The leopard walked down the road and passed right by our car. We turned around and followed it. It went into the bushes and came out again; it was stretching and strutting just like a cat showing off. We followed it for a few more minutes until the tip of its tail had disappeared into the bush. Our guide told us how lucky we were to have seen a leopard. He had not even seen one since November and sometimes they would go 6 months without anyone seeing one, in addition to that people usually only get a fleeting glance before it’s gone, so we were super lucky. We had a reporter with us who was doing a story for the Kruger Times, which is a newspaper just about the park and she said that her kids were going to be so jealous. She was really nice and I got to talk to her most of the drive and ask her tons of questions about the park and the country in general so that was nice.

We also saw Water/African buffalo on the way back to camp so we were excited to have seen all of the big 5. The big 5 include the Elephant, Rhino, Buffalo, Lion, and Leopard. They are called that not because of size but because they were the ones that gave hunters the hardest time. We were the only car in our group to see all of the big 5 so we were pretty happy. After that we went back to the camp for breakfast and a break before our afternoon drive. We had about 6 hours of free time so the guides took us to the visitor center and gift shops to spend some of our time. Once we returned to the camp we left for our afternoon drive. We saw lots of animals again. We saw a group of rhinos in the road and lots more giraffes and zebras as well as tons of other animals. After that drive we returned to camp for dinner.

We had a chance to relax before dinner and had lots of time to ask our guides tons of questions. Lots of things were similar across cultures and many were very different. Most of our guides had never left South Africa or even been to the cities surrounding the park. Most of them spoke 5-11 different languages and lived in small villages neighboring the park. They were all really nice and we were happy they were so willing to answer all of our questions. For dinner that night we had traditional food. When I asked the guides how they eat the food, he told us with their hands, so we all ate with our hands, including the guides. We were supposed to leave our plates almost completely clean, so we even stuck the bones our mouths and had to try to suck all the meat off of them. It was really fun and we were pretty messy at the end. We hung out for a while after that talking until we got too tired.

Day 4
Today was our last day on safari. We only had a morning drive and most of us were pretty tired from staying up the night before, some people didn’t even sleep. Our morning drive was pretty quiet. I took lots of pictures of the landscape and we got some amazing pictures of the sunrise. We were all sad to leave but excited to get back to Cape Town for the rest of our activities. We said our goodbyes around 1100 and headed off for another long car ride to Johannesburg and then back to Cape Town. We didn’t get into Cape Town until after midnight and I took a long shower, got all my stuff together for the next day and crashed.

Day 5
Today was Shark Diving! We had to meet outside the ship at 0445 to meet our driver to go to Kleinbaai, which was a two hour drive. Almost everyone slept on the way there. When we got to Kleinbaai we had breakfast at a little house and were briefed on the trip. We got going around 0900 and it was cold and foggy out. Our boat was called Predator II and it only took about 15 min to get to the spot. There were other boats there too which I thought was surprising. We put Gladys in the water (a fake seal), some fish on a buoy, and started to chum up the water.

We all knew it was low season and that the boat the day before had waited 6 hours to see their first shark, so we were all ready for some waiting. We saw our first shark within 5 min. It was so freaking scary. It was about 10ft long. We could not dive because we had to wait to get a working shark, which meant it had to be circling the boat. The water was only about 50F so it was pretty cold and they didn’t want us to be in the water too long. We ended up seeing about one shark an hour, we never got to dive. I am sure my Mom is cheering at that part. The coolest thing we saw was a huge shark. It was over 16ft long. It was longer than the whole cage that fits 5 people. We were all pretty amazed. The skipper told us that is was pretty rare to see a shark that large in the water. We were all disappointed not to get to dive but we were happy to have seen that huge shark. Once we got back to the ship I had about 20 min to get all cleaned up and ready to go out to dinner at Mama Africa. It was really good food and they had a lot of exotic stuff like crocodile, kudu, ostrich, and other stuff. We went back to the ship soon after that because we had another long day coming up.

Day 6
This day was definitely one of the most tiring of all. We left the ship around 0600 to go hike Table Mountain. We planned on stopping on the way at an ATM so we could all repel down after the hike. We soon figured out that wasn’t possible because there was a huge power outage over most of the Western Cape. We got dropped off at the base of the mountain and started to hike at around 0630. The first part of the hike was pretty hard. There had been fires in the days before we had arrived and most of the mountain side was burnt. I had a hard time breathing at first and so we took it slow. We tried not to hike on the burnt part but we quickly lost the trail. There was no one to help us find the path again because it was so early. We decided up was a good direction and hoped that by the time we made it to the cable car the power would be back on to get us down. We soon figured out that there was no trail anywhere near us and we weren’t sure once we got to the top we would be anywhere near the cable car. We ended up climbing boulders and were pretty much doing some pretty intense climbing. We kept trying to get up and towards the cable car but ended up never making it to the top. We made it to a cliff and could look of the back of Table Mountain and had an amazing view. It was definitely worth it just for that. The hike down ended up being quite challenging but we took it slow and steady and all made it down without any incidents.

It was about 1100 when we finally made it down and took off right away for the flea market. We all got some pretty funny looks because we looked pretty disheveled and dirty from hiking through burnt bushes. We only had about an hour there and we all bought tons of stuff. I bought some way to big stuff and some way too heavy stuff, but all in all it was good stuff.

We had to rush from there back to the ship to shower quickly before we got picked up at 1330 for our wine lands tour in Stellenbosch. The first place we went was called Anura. We had a tour and then a cheese and wine tasting. After that we went Speir for another wine tasting. We went to a cheetah reserve after that. We were supposed to be able to pet the cheetahs but the handlers were all gone. We still got to see them though, they were really cute. After that our guide left and we stayed in Speir to eat at a restaurant called Moyo. It was like a buffet but you chose the food and they grilled it in front of you. All the food was really exotic like at Mama Africa. We went back to Cape Town after that and crashed once again.

Day 7
This was our last day, we all felt like there was still so much to see and do. I had a SAS trip in the morning called the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust. We were lucky on this trip too because Amy’s sister Linda was in town and came on the trip with us. Amy Biehl was an American woman who had been killed while in South Africa in 1993 trying to stop apartheid. The foundation was set up by her family after her death and has various projects in 18 different schools. the goal of the foundation is to provide alternatives to kids to keep them off the streets.

The first place we went was a school in the townships called Langa. The school has a program where the older read to the young, this is to help increase literacy in the area. We observed a classroom and saw one of the older students reading to the younger class. After that was break (recess) for the kids, we got to walk around and it was mayhem. The teachers get breaks too when the kids do so there was no supervision and they were all really excited to have us there and were jumping all over each other to get pictures and see our cameras. Some people including myself had stuff to give away but we decided to give it to the foundation because there were too many kids and it was too difficult to even try to hand anything out.

After that we went to another school called Vukani. They had a project there called beautify the schools. First of all to understand, there is trash everywhere, there are stray dogs everywhere, and there is no grass or trees anywhere, just sandy areas with shacks. This school was one of the first places I had seen grass the entire time we were in the townships. They had an environmentalist club and the kids come and work during recess and after school. Last year they had over 11,000 plants. They donated them to other local schools and sell the rest to the local community to make just enough to buy supplies. The next place we went was called the peoples range and it is a driving range set up for the people who live in the neighboring townships. The idea is that they should have the same things available to them that the whites have.

We had lunch after that at a local Xhosa restaurant it was really good. After that we went to a squatter camp that was only a few minutes away. The difference between the townships is that the townships were set up by the government during apartheid; the squatter camps were places where people came in and simply squatted. We got to get out and walk around. There was tons and tons of trash. There was a really really sad looking dog lying in the middle of the road and it seriously looked like it was on the brink of death. It was really sad. There were lots of children following us around too. They followed us through most of the walk. Most of the houses were simple shacks nothing more. There are 4 million people in the Cape Town area; 2 million of them live in the townships.

After leaving the township we went back to Langa to see their after school programs. We saw the choir, drama, dance and art clubs. Then we left to go see a monument where 7 people had died. I honestly can’t remember the name of the place but they were 7 people that had been set up by the police and then killed. From there we walked to the Amy Biehl site. It was down the street in front of a gas station. Amy had been driving friends home to the township and came across a PAC (Pan-Africanist Congress) rally. The PAC was an armed ring of the resistance, the rally had just gotten out and the people had been ordered to go out and kill white people. Amy just happened to be in their path and a brick was thrown into her window and hit her in the head. She got out of the car and tried to run away. They caught up with her and killed her with a brick. I couldn’t believe the strength it took for Linda Biehl to be there. However that was not the whole story. The four men responsible for her death were brought to justice and sentenced. The Biehl family were the only Americans to ever come before the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission). The purpose of the TRC was to give amnesty to whites and blacks who had committed crimes during apartheid. They had to prove the crimes were politically motivated, full disclosure of their crimes along with other requirements. One of the tour guides named Tbeki was actually one of the four responsible for the death of Amy Biehl. The family had forgiven the men and two of the four actually worked with the foundation. I was amazed once again by this immense forgiveness. I cannot imagine having a member of my family taken away and then being able to not only forgive the people responsible but work alongside them. It is hard to understand the feelings and motives of people during that time and although Linda tried to explain it to us it was still hard to fully comprehend. This was the second time in South Africa I had been astounded by peoples ability to forgive and come together to work for something better. This was something that made me really believe that South Africa will have a brighter future and that other people should embrace, because it was truly inspiring.

So that was the Amy Biehl Foundation. Not much else for South Africa, we all went out for our last dinner and fell asleep before the ship even left the port. I hope you all managed to get through this. I am thinking of everyone at home and hoping everyone is doing well.

ALMOST THERE!!!!!

2006-02-13T05:58:00.000-08:00

February 13, 2006
So we are all prepping up for South Africa right now! We are so close! Last night we had a cultural preport. It was pretty interesting. We had a talk after about Corretta Scott King, it just so happens that one of the students on the ship is her “adopted” grandson. He goes to school in Boulder now but he has family ties and he used to live with her. He spoke a lot about her life and what it was like to be with her on a day to day basis. It was really sad. I have no idea what is going on in the news at home but he said there are some questions surrounding the actual cause of her death. We are supposed to be talking about her more after South Africa not only because of what a significant woman she was but also because this is black history month.

Tonight we will have our logistical preport and hopefully they will not completely scare us about South Africa like they did about Brasil. The water has been really choppy the last few days. The weather was not great yesterday. We are all planning on sleeping on the deck tonight so we can be up when we enter Table Bay in the morning, so hopefully the weather will stay nice today. The 15th is Gretchen’s birthday so we all got a cake and will be having a “surprise party” for her tonight too. Everyone is pretty pumped up and even the mention of the word Africa has everyone cheering in anticipation. I will post more when we get back from South Africa. I will do my best not to run on and on, but I am sure that inevitably I will. Take care everyone!!!!

Some catching up

2006-02-11T07:07:00.000-08:00

February 11, 2006

So I hope everyone is doing well, I wanted to give you all a little break after that long Brasil post.

Yesterday was an 80’s party. Most everyone dressed up and there were some pretty outrageous costumes. I dressed up with the help of various pieces of clothing from different people. Everyone kind of mismatched stuff together and as long as it was bright we were good. It was really fun, we were all pretty hot, sweaty, and smelly after it was over. There was no class today so everyone was definitely pumped up to have something to do after all this time we have been at sea. We crossed the Prime Meridian this morning. I actually slept through it. There were no special ceremonies or anything. Most people were just happy to have a day to sleep in because when we are in port we are all out of bed pretty early. We will be in South Africa on Tuesday. We are all getting so excited. It seems to be the only topic of discussion, as far as what people are doing, what we want to do and how we are going to fit it all into seven days. I am definitely happy we are there for seven days because there is so much to do. I will try and break up my post for that country just so that it’s not so overwhelming for everyone. We learned clicks in Global Studies yesterday. They are clicking noises that you make in place of consonants in words. We only learned three and they were pretty east to learn, its just actually putting the clicks into words that was hard. Everyone enjoyed that part of the lecture though. There are so many different languages it is going to be hard. Some people speak English but it is only the 4th most common language and when we go on our safari other than our guides there will probably be no one who speaks English. Ok, well that’s all for now, take care everyone.

Brasil

2006-02-07T03:23:00.000-08:00

Salvador, Brasil
First of all, what an amazing city! Salvador is beautiful. I am so excited to be here, and so thankful to have Leah to show me around. I have seen, smelled and tasted so much of this city and most of it would have been impossible without her. I apologize in advance for how long I know this post will become by the time I finish. I also am continuing to have problems posting pictures and it is driving me crazy. I am trying to figure it out though; we are even having trouble loading pics on hotmail, so it may be a lost cause.

February 1, 2006
When we first arrived in Salvador we had to sit on the ship until about 1200 when we were cleared through immigration. They came on the ship, just like in Puerto Rico, and we all had face to face contact with immigration. While that was going on we had our diplomatic briefing. I honestly don’t know who she was, but she is an American woman who has been living in Brasil for a while. She told us a lot about the political situation in Brasil. We found out that the current president never even completed his elementary education. When he was elected he gave the people great hope for a better future because he was a laborer and it showed all the poor in Brasil that anyone could become President. In Brasil the rich make up 1% of the population but control 50% of the wealth. Also the gap between rich and poor is very large. Another issue that ties into this is that the population of Salvador is 80% African. Brasil had the largest amount of slaves brought to it and was the last country to abolish slavery. The vast majority of the poor are African. Anyways, the President gave the people great hope, however soon after he was elected numerous problems came up with money going the wrong places, pretty much major corruption. In a country where the police, most governments, and the wealthy are corrupt this was very disturbing to the people because they had counted on this man to lead them out of poverty and unfortunately as soon as he was in power he became just as corrupt if not more corrupt than everyone before him.

So we got off the ship around 1200. I called Leah as soon as I found a phone. She decided to meet up with us as at 1400. We had a few hours to kill so she told us a local market where we could go and shop. Immediately things were difficult, it was definitely clear to us that this was not the US and this was not like Puerto Rico. NO ONE spoke English. We found the market but were only able to negotiate prices by calculators that all the vendors had. Everything was haggling, most of the girls had never had to do this, and other than Mexico I hadn’t either, and at least I knew a few words in Spanish and they knew a few words of English. Needless to say we found a few things and everyone was happy with what they got.

After that we went to meet Leah. This was interesting because I have not seen her for over 9 years. We hadn’t seen each other since I was in 7th grade and had no idea what each other even looked like. We met her at the elevator to the upper city (Salvador is separated into an upper and lower city by and elevator, it was super cool). Of course all the worrying about not finding each other vanished as soon as she got off the elevator and we both immediately recognized each other. She looked exactly the same, and I am sure that 5 Americans standing in entryway were not hard for her to spot (we stand out everywhere).

So Leah took all of us to Pelourinho, which is in the upper city. We walked around and she showed us different churches and foundations and we ate at a local restaurant, and of course did a little more shopping. After that we all went rode a VERY crowded bus to Uruguai which is a neighborhood her friend Everton lives in (I soon learned a bus with an open seat is pretty rare). On the way we stopped at the store and bought some food to make a huge pot of soup. Every Wednesday Leah and some other people make soup and buy bread and walk around the neighborhood and give it to anyone that needs it, and there are a lot of people that need it. The other days of the week there are different people who make soup and give it out. Just walking down the street to Everton’s house was amazing, I think that was the point it really sunk in that we were in Brasil. The neighborhood is considered lower-middle class. In the US it would not be somewhere I would go alone. At night in Salvador I would not go there at all. We couldn’t take any pictures because it wasn’t really safe (petty crimes like theft are the most common in Brasil). We went to Everton’s house and tried to start cooking. It was really hard because the kitchen consisted of a room with a tiny stove, small refrigerator, and a counter that was less than 3 feet long. There were 6 of us trying to cut and chop and peel in that small area. The coolest stuff that we put in the soup was abobora which is a type of squash that looks a lot like pumpkin. The other was chuchu, this was a green vegetable and when you cut it in halve you have to rub the two pieces together and this weird white stuff forms on the vegetable and you have to wash it off, it was really strange. So after the soup was put on to cook we all hung out and then went to eat a little before serving the soup I was not feeling well from being in the heat all day. After we ate I stayed at Everton’s house while everyone went to serve the soup. The girls came back and told me about how they walked around the neighborhood and gave out the soup to everyone, I was really sad that I missed it. We were all pretty wiped after that and crammed into a taxi to the ship to get some rest before having to wake up super early the next day.

February 2, 2006
This day I had to get up super early. All the trips to the Amazon and Iguassu Falls were leaving super early. I had to get up to meet Leah at 5am. We were going to the festival of Yemanja in Rio Vermelho, which is a neighborhood in Salvador. The festival is a Candomble festival which is a mixture of Catholicism and African religions. The festival was specifically for Yemanja who is an orixa (deity). There are many orixa but this one is a woman, and she strongly resembles Mary. Yemanja’s colors are blue and white. White is the most respectful color to wear, I of course didn’t know this and just happened to be wearing black. Yemanja is an orixa for the seas; she is also very vain. For the festival everyone brings her flowers and sends them out to the sea so that she will protect the fishermen. If the flowers come back it means she is mad at the person who sent them out. Everyone had different orixa’s; most people have two main ones but have others that are secondary. There were so many people; it was so packed. When we got there people were already setting up their food stands, selling souvenirs and there were flowers everywhere. There were people dancing and chanting, they can even go into trance and are supposed to become possessed by orixa’s and the orixa will speak through them. It was amazing to see how “tribal” this religion was, but at the same time the resemblance of Yemanja to Mary and people wearing rosaries. Leah said there are a lot of parallels between the two but also a lot of differences. There are supposed to be ties with voodoo as well. We also saw one of the upper level men dancing on leaves. They were spread on a platform and when he dances on them it releases a smell that has some spiritual significance (I can’t remember what). So, after the festival Leah went to class and I took a taxi to the ship to take a short nap. Leah met me after class and we went to Itapua, which was a long bus ride, but luckily we had seats. When we got there we walked along the beach. It was soooo beautiful. When we were walking we saw a group of guys in the water with a big fishing net. They were all pulling it in together, they didn’t really get a ton of fish but there were about 15-20 in there, some of them were pretty big too. After that we walked to get some bejou from a street vendor, it is this stuff made out of manioc flour which is the same thing tapioca is made out of. They take the flour and put it in a big circle cutout on a grill; somehow the manioc melts together and makes something like a pancake. You can put different stuff in it, mine had cheese and guava. It was SOOOO GOOD!!!!! It was my favorite thing that I ate the whole time. After that we walked to the Lake of Abaete. It was only a few minute walk from the beach we were already at. It had gorgeous white sand and was surrounded by beautiful trees. There were Candomble people there too. They have to go to the freshwater lakes too, because the Orixa for freshwater will get jealous if they only make offerings to Yemanja. They didn’t put flowers in the water, but they were all dancing and singing. After that Leah and I tried to take the bus back to the ship. I had a SAS trip that night. Because of the Yemanja festival traffic was terrible and we were on the hot bus for two hours. As soon as we got out of traffic, I jumped in a taxi to get back to the ship on time, and Leah went to her house. The SAS trip I was going on was called Bahia by Night. Bahia is the state that we were in in Brazil. First we went to the Museum of Natural Art too see Capoeira. Capoeira is a martial art that was developed by the slaves. They used it so they would be able to fight when they escaped. They used music to hide the fact that they were practicing a fighting style, so it actually looks like a dance mixed with a martial art. There were men and women doing it. They were so fast I couldn’t even take pictures. They did flips and all kinds of crazy stuff. It was really fun. After that we went eat at a Churrascaria; it is a place where they keep bringing you more and more meat until you can’t take anymore. The bus ride took forever again, because of the festival. Churrascaria’s are traditional in Brazil. There were three long tables full of SAS students there because there were over 150 students on this trip. The food was really good and we all ate a lot. After that I pretty much crashed as soon as we all got back to the ship

February 3, 2006
This morning I had a SAS trip to a favela, a favela is a slum. The one we went to is called Calabar Favela and it is a model in the community. Favelas are found all over the city, they are mostly built on hillsides, and the families have been living there for generations. When slavery was ended the people didn’t have anywhere to live so they went to the hills because it was the only place that others could not get to and that they could build homes. As the city grew urbanization spread around them. Most of the homes are dilapidated and very small. The favela we went to is a model because even with the pressures of urbanization around them they have managed to stay in their homes and start a school, clinic, and daycare. They receive little funding from the state and had to shut down a bakery and fire most of the teachers last year but are still struggling and fighting to survive in their homes. If the school was shut down the closest school is 1.5 miles away. The children would have to walk or ride the bus which is too expensive for the people that live there. The first place we went in the favela was the school. The children had arranged to show us Capoeira. It was really cute because the youngest ones were 4 and they were actually really fast, we were all very impressed. Once they were done we tried to teach them a song but it was really hard. They did manage to get the chicken dance down; although I think they thought we were crazy. After that we all had stuff to give to the children, if people didn’t bring anything there was stuff to give out, any school supplies were given to the teachers. I had a lot of stuff and was swarmed by kids; I gave some stuff to other people to help me because there were too many kids for me. They loved everything we gave them. Next we went to see the clinic. It was a small building with about 4 rooms. It was not very clean and other than water and electricity I didn’t see any other amenities that we would normally see at home. While we were touring the clinic some students were invited to play futbol with some of the kids from the neighborhood, they pretty much destroyed us. We went back to the school after that to see the library and some classrooms. It was pretty basic, one of the classrooms didn’t even have desks, and another didn’t even have a finished floor. The library had very few books and hardly any shelves to store them on; they were simply stacked on the floor, it was not something I am used to seeing and not what one would imagine when thinking of a school and how far ahead this favela is compared with others. Once we were done at the favela we all went back to the ship. Leah met me and we went to her friend Everton’s house to pick up some paper work and to get ice cream. On the way we stopped to visit some of the street children that Leah knows. She offered to let me meet them and see where they lived since I missed out on soup night. The children live in an abandoned warehouse. The “houses” are made from miscellaneous pieces of boards mismatched together to make a room. The houses are very small and simple, in most cases there are about 5 people living in each house. There was debris and trash lying around. It was very heartbreaking, it is one thing to know that there are children living in abandoned buildings and another to see their homes and meet them. I honestly had a hard time not getting upset, but they were all so welcoming and cheerful and really nice. I didn’t have anything for them so when Leah and I went back to the ship I gave her some stuff for them, and the other families living there. It was a very hard day, Leah and I talked a ton and she helped me understand as much as possible. I just can’t explain the difference between reading about these things and actually being there with these children giving me hugs and kisses and showing me their homes and trying to understand how it can be fair for me to be the same as them but have such a different life. After we left Leah and I did more touring of the city but mostly talking on the various bus rides we took. She was truly amazing and I am so grateful that she was so willing to show me so many things that I never would have had the chance to do without her. I will probably change my mind as the trip progresses but I can’t see how I will have a better time in any of the other countries, and I still had two more days.

February 4, 2006
This day was Praia Do Forte which is a Marine Turtle Project. We left around 0830; we actually went out of the city of Salvador for this trip. The bus ride was about an hour and a half. This was a FDP which means it is a Faculty Directed Practicum, or simply the professors come. We actually had two conservation biologists professors leading this trip in addition to our guide and a biology student from Salvador. We stopped on the way at a beautiful beach, it was super hot and the sand burned our feet if we walked without shoes. The water was super warm and pretty clean. It was a very nice beach and it was definitely a nicer area. After spending some time at the beach we went to eat lunch before Praia Do Forte and had more amazing Brazilian food. One of the things we ate that was delicious was bananas that were pan fried and covered in sugar. They were SOOO GOOD! We also had Brazilian coffee and fresh mangos and pineapple. The best part of the restaurant was that when we were leaving we saw marmosets. They are some of the smallest monkeys in the world and they were in a tree right outside the restaurant. One of the employees brought us pieces of mango and we actually got to feed them. It was so awesome. One of the monkeys even had a tiny baby clinging to its back, amazing doesn’t even begin to describe how cool it was. The tour guide kept trying to get us to leave, apparently unimpressed with the monkeys, but no one wanted to leave including the teachers. We ended up staying there until the monkeys had all gone away. Then we finally walked to the Marine Turtle Project. This place is an amazing model of what we can do to help endangered species. There are 7 species of turtles and we saw 5 of them at this place. There were ones that were over 5ft long and some babies that were smaller than my fist. We also got to see some sharks, pet manta rays, pet sea slugs, and saw a 7ft long fish. They even had protected nests of eggs on the beach that we got to see. After that we were supposed to go back to the town to shop or wander but no one wanted to leave. There were tidal pools along the shore and we wanted to go explore. Having two biology professors with us, it was not hard to convince them to let us stay. One of the professors was wonderful, his name is Sergei Polostov and he is Russian. He took us out and explained to us how the tidal pools are formed and different species of plants and animals we should be able to find. We wandered around looking at all sorts of corals, hermit crabs, birds, snails, and tons of different algae. His daughter was on the trip too and she found a starfish that was regenerating a leg, it was so cool. When it was time to leave I think it was harder to get the professor to leave than to get the students to go. That night Gretchen came back from her trip to Iguassu Falls around 2300 and we both crashed so we could get up early for our last day in Brasil.

February 5, 2006
Gretchen and I got up at 0800 so that we could go to the market and do a little more shopping before I met Leah and before Gretchen went to the futbol game (over 400 SAS students went to the game). We went to the market for a little bit and then Leah met us with her boyfriend Leo to tour the ship. It was the same ship Leah had been on for her voyage, and Leo wanted to see it. Leo has never been on a plane before so this was amazing for him. We wandered around the ship and then they had lunch with us. Leo tried peanut butter for the first time; he was a little reluctant but ended up liking it. He also had croutons for the first time which he ate with no salad but with mashed potatoes and spaghetti mixed together, it was interesting, he said it was good. After that Leah, Leo and I left to go to a Samba festival that was supposed to start that afternoon. We met up with a group of Leah and Leo’s friends and I was happy to find out some of the students were in the same program as Leah and so I had people to speak English with. We took a bunch of buses to get there but when we finally got there even though it was after three and the party was supposed to start at one it had not started yet. Everyone was just hanging out in the street and sitting in bars drinking so we all just hung out for a while and then Leah, Leo and I left so we could do a few things and get back to the ship before onship time. We only had to ride one bus back and then we got picked up by one of Leah’s friends which was really nice. When we were waiting to get picked up we had caramel popcorn with condensed milk and coconut on it, it was so good but so bad at the same time. Then we went to eat acai, which is a kind of fruit that is frozen and blended so that it is like ice cream but it is made from fruit. It is a dark dark purple and you can get it with different fruits mixed in and granola. I had one with cupacu which is another local fruit. It was really good and surprisingly filling. We went to the ship after that and I ran in with Leah’s camera to load some pictures before saying goodbye. Everyone had just gotten back from the futbol game so it was a little crazy but I managed to get on the ship, off to say goodbye, and on again without being late. I was sad to leave and I really didn’t want to say goodbye to Leah. I was worried at first when we planned to meet after all these years but she was truly amazing and we promised to stay in touch.

So now we have another 9 days on ship and another 4 time changes before we get to South Africa. I am so excited for everything else to come. I hope you all manage to sort through all this; I am thinking of everyone and hope everyone is doing well.

January 31

2006-02-01T14:37:00.000-08:00

January 31, 2006
Today was our first Global Studies exam. A lot of people were worried, but it wasn’t bad, and if I am wrong it will be curved. I have a psych quiz today, so I have been studying for that. Most people including myself are getting ready for Brazil. We will have a Mandatory Preport meeting tonight. We have them every night before we port. They will brief us on safety, getting around, language stuff (Portuguese), health issues and so on. People who are going to the Amazon have to take the Malaria meds. I am not doing any overnight trips in Brazil so I don’t have to worry yet. I will be meeting up with Leah (from Alaska) which I am very excited about. Most people I know will be gone to the Amazon or other overnight trips most of the days we will be in Brazil, so they all want to come with Leah and I on the first day.

I should have waited until tonight to write this but I didn’t and now I have more to write.

After dinner today I did yoga and it was amazing. It was so much harder than I thought it would be and the rocking of the boat did not help with balance but it was amazing. I felt so relaxed and rejuvenated after I didn’t want it to be over. Unfortunately we all had to go to our preport. They pretty much successfully scared us completely and totally. Salvador is the worst port we will be in the entire trip. They pretty much told us it is a guarantee that some students will be robbed and just what to do to avoid getting hurt. I don’t know if they are over exaggerating or not, but all the girls I am hanging out with have agreed to stay together and take taxi’s pretty much everywhere. It sucks because taxis were something most of us forgot to budget for, but it is safer so we all have agreed it is worth it.

Internet was down for most of they day so I couldn’t get things figured out with Leah until about an hour ago, and that was at 2330. We (Gretchen, Annie, Nicole, and I) were all planning on going to the welcome reception at the university since the last one was so great but then I found out from Leah that we can all go with her to make soup at a Brazilian home with other students and families and serve it to everyone. We all really want to do that instead but we are only going to do it if we can sell our tickets to the reception because they cost $50 each. Leah has a bunch of other stuff going on too that I want to do with her so I am excited about that, especially because I didn’t just want to do SAS trips and all my friends will be gone three days. Anyways that is all for now. Sorry this post is so long. I am sure I will have tons for you all from Brazil too.

P.S. Just to keep you all fully informed, the septic systems were and are shut down on the forward part of the boat. The only condolences we had were that we were warned.

P.S.S A little note for my mom: The SAS postcards do not count towards internet time and I do not have a class on Africa but my Abnormal Psychology professor is from S. Africa.

Neptune Day

2006-02-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

Neptune Day

So yesterday was Neptune Day. We officially crossed the equator at 0300 hours. In the morning I got up at 0730. We didn’t get woken up by the “band” but they did wake a lot of people up going down the hallways. They had outfits on with tin foil hats, their faces painted, spears and tritons.

We all went up to the 7th deck after breakfast for the ceremonies. King Neptune and Queen Minerva came to see if we were worthy to go from pollywogs to shellbacks. The tests were that we had to get fish guts dumped on us, say an oath, kiss a fish, kiss the kings ring and shave our heads. I didn’t shave my head of course, but Gretchen and I did the rest. I don’t know what was in the buckets of fish guts, but it was really disgusting. It was chunky and funny colored and smelled really bad. After it was dumped on us we had to jump in the pool. The water was clear when we started and by the time everyone was done it had turned a brownish yellow color.

There were a lot of people that shaved their heads, I don’t know the count for the boys, but there were 32 girls. Some teachers and even some of the kids on board did it too. Students of service collected the hair that was long enough to donate. The deck was covered with hair and fish gut water, so it was nasty out there. It took a long time for the crew to get it all cleaned up.

All in all it was really fun, I took lots of pictures and I apologize that I haven’t been able to put up any. I am having a hard time getting it to work and the internet is really slow. I will try to get it worked out in Brazil.

After Neptune Day everyone got cleaned up before lunch. We spent some time lying out on the deck and studying for our Global Studies exam, there were no classes today so it was pretty relaxing.

Equator

2006-01-29T10:07:00.000-08:00

January 29, 2006

As of right now we are getting pretty close to the equator. Satellite signal is supposed to go out the closer we get. That will mean no phone and no internet. It can last as little as a few hours and up to 2 days. I am trying to get this out before we are in the satellite shadow. Tomorrow is Neptune Day on board. We will have no classes and it is a ceremony for crossing the equator in a floating vessel for the first time. The people who have already crossed the equator are called scallywags and the people who are crossing for the first time are called pollywogs. The crew will be conducting the ceremonies since they have all crossed the equator before. This is supposed to be pretty secret but the rumors going around (including that there is a bear on the 5th floor) have been that we will be woken up around 7:30am, with pots and pans. King Neptune and Queen Minerva will be the masters of the ceremonies. There are supposed to be various activities such as kissing a fish, swimming in fish guts and shaving heads. Students of Service, which is a charity on board is having a raffle for 5 people to have the captain personally shave their heads. From the rumors on ship there will be lots of head shavings, everything is voluntary, of course. I will definitely tell you all more about that after the events and no I will not be shaving my head.

Another little tidbit that is probably gross to you all is that we are on the verge of a septic system disaster right now. Apparently there are things going in to the toilets other than No.1, No.2, and toilet paper. If you all don’t like hearing about it just think about the guy that has been on the speaker system telling the whole ship the last few days. However, after 3 days of warnings from our chief engineer we will possibly have to shut down the septic systems on the ship for at least 6 hours. Gross and just plain annoying.

2006-01-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

1-27-06

Today was pretty hum drum, nothing too exciting, class working out and homework. I have lots of reading to do. I had a bridge tour today. It was not very exciting. I was hoping for a big wheel in the middle of the room with the captain standing there, but it was all computers.

We had an activity fair tonight. It was VERY crowded. There were people sitting in chairs with signs and sign up sheets for pretty much whatever clubs they wanted to start. There was everything from Pilates to photography.

I went to community college tonight. Community college is every night in various rooms. There are different lectures every night on various topics. Yesterday was about gangs; tonight was change the world. The person who spoke is my political science professor; he told us a little about it in class today so I was interested to go and see what it was all about. His name is Scott Sherman and he is an amazing speaker. He is the most engaging person to listen to, that I have ever met. It was a really good seminar and he will be having them each time after we come back from ports.

That is all for today. I am thinking of you all and hope everyone is doing well.

January 28, 2006

Today we got back our field trip confirmations. I got bumped from a lot that I chose, but I got the big trips that I wanted so I was excited about those. I got all the trips I picked in Salvador, some in Africa, India, Burma, and Hong Kong. I didn’t get any of the ones I wanted in Mauritius or Vietnam. I am going to try and find people on the ship to plan a few independent trips with. The big one is the Taj Mahal. I definitely don’t want to go to India and miss that.

I already have two exams coming up in a few days and still have tons of reading to do. As soon as we finish one assignment and go to class, there is another 100 pages or so assigned for that class. I am skipping the community colleges tonight and am going to try and finish my readings so I can just study tomorrow.

catching up

2006-01-27T09:04:00.000-08:00

Puerto Rico

January 23, 2006

We came into San Juan around 7am. The pilot boat came up, once on board he put up the Puerto Rican flag. The Secretary of State came on board and gave a speech while we were going through immigration.

We got off the boat around 10am. I didn’t have any field programs until the evening so I wandered around Old San Juan with a group of girls shopping and sight seeing. When we went to eat lunch the Secretary of State just happened to be eating there too. I started talking to him and he was really nice. When he left he came up to us and told us the State Building was right around the corner and he would set up a tour for us. A group of 10 of us went there after lunch. The building used to be a penitentiary and then it was the treasury and now it is the State Building. There were pictures of it before the restoration and it is gorgeous now.

After that we went El Morro (which is a national park) it is a fort that dates back to when the Spanish occupied the island. Just the walk up to it was breathtaking. There was a huge area of grass that led up to the fort. Next to the fort was an old cemetery that is supposed to be the oldest in the Americas. It is right on the shore and the waves crash against the wall protecting it. One of the professors on board the ship is from Puerto Rico and her great grandmother is buried in the cemetery. All the headstones are statues and big slabs, they are beautiful.

Monday night I went to a welcome reception at Caribbean University. SAS had to go to four different Universities because there wasn’t one that could accommodate all of us. When we got to the university it was awesome, the students were all lined up clapping their hands and singing we had to walk through them and there was a salsa band and two men on stilts and we had to walk through their legs while they were dancing to get into the building. It was so welcoming we all could not stop smiling. When we went inside we watched a short video about their school and they had a few short speakers, then we went outside to the party. They had a band, dancers, and Puerto Rican food for us. They also had gifts for the 92 students that came. We all danced and ate and it was so great. I have never felt so welcomed before. They were all amazing to us.

January 24, 2006
Tuesday was a very long day. I got up early with a friend and we went into Old San Juan to see San Cristobal (another national park) and to do a few errands. San Cristobal is the largest fort in the Latin Americas. It is along the same side of the shore as El Morro there used to be a wall connecting them continuing down most of the shore but most of it is gone now.

At one I went on a hiking trip in El Yunque National Forest. It was about an hour and a half drive but it was definitely worth it. The ride to the forest the bus driver told us a lot about San Juan and the history of the city, while cussing and honking at most of the passing cars. His name was Rrrrricky Rrrricardo. The drive to El Yunque took so long mostly because the traffic is pretty bad, there is construction everywhere. By the way El Yunque is the only tropical rain forest in the US system. The rainforest was wonderful, everything everywhere was SO green. We did not see a lot of animals because it is mostly bats, lizards, frogs and birds. We did spend a lot of time not talking as we walked because the sounds of the forest were amazing. Halfway through the hike we stopped at a waterfall and got to swim in it. The water was freezing but it was worth it.

That evening we had a welcome reception for the students that had hosted us the evening before. They got to come on the ship, tour and have food (ours was definitely not as good as what they gave us). We had time to socialize with students and hang out. There were a lot of SAS alumni there and they spoke about their experiences with SAS, unfortunately it was all in Spanish. There was a teacher there who was on the ship in 1979. He is 92 years old now, he was a fragile little man. I have no idea what he said but he spoke with such passion everyone was clapping and standing up after he spoke.

After that we went out to a “disco” called the NuYoRican, some SAS alumni had recommended it. There were two live bands. One was African influenced the other was salsa. Everyone was dancing and it was SO fun. The place was so packed that the alley was overflowing with people because there wasn’t enough room inside for everyone.

January 25, 2006
Wednesday was another early morning because it was our last day in San Juan. I went into Old San Juan to use the phone and internet. Some girls met me after that and we of course, did more shopping. I went with Gretchen (my roommate) to the beach after that, which turned out to be less than a five minute walk from the ship. There was a little inlet where we swam, wandered around the rocks and jealously watched people surf. We met up with a group of girls for our last meal in Puerto Rico which turned into quite a time. We had a bit of a rude awakening as for the first time we had to try to work with someone who spoke no English. We had been spoiled most of the time there because everyone thus far had spoken English. We still made it back to the ship in time and hurried to clean up and crash into bed after a long and memorable three days.

Day to Day Stuff on Ship
January 26, 2006
Luckily Gretchen and I both have classes at the same time in the mornings so we usually drag ourselves out of bed at the same time, with just enough time to grab breakfast (0700-0800) before class. We have A days and B days on ship, which determine which classes we have. The only class we have every day is Global Studies and that is a class everyone must attend. It is held in the student union but it is not large enough to accommodate all of us, so the class is broadcast on the TV’s in other classrooms. The other classes I have are Abnormal Psychology on A days and Political Science and Biology on B days.
Lunch is from 1130-1330. Dinner is from 1700-1830. The meals are ok. Thankfully the salad bar is always there. Some days are more interesting than others but I usually can pick and choose enough to be happy. Today was one of the more questionable days (don’t worry mom I ate plenty from under my bed).
There are pub nights most nights on the ship and there will be activities and clubs starting soon now that we are into the routine of zigzagging down the rocking hallways. The professors are definitely keeping us busy. Classes are lots of reading and discussions. There will be even more to do once we get into the field stuff in other ports.
I am very happy with my roommate (Gretchen) she is from Homer, Alaska and she snowboards too. We have been pretty good about keeping our rooms clean so far and from the looks of a few I have seen we are actually doing awesome.
The crossing from Bahamas to Puerto Rico was pretty rocky a lot of people were sick but it is supposed to get better now. The ship was going slower then and we are going much faster now. We can actually go 29 knots; the Explorer is the fastest cruise ship in the world which I think is pretty cool. Right now we are averaging about 20 knots.