Semester at Sea has changed my entire outlook on life, my future, the world. How could it not? And being home is very bittersweet. But what I have learned will always stay with me. It has been a fantastic start to the summer, and I know much of that is due to the absolute exuberance I have for life thanks to SAS.
I thought I would share with you some of my post-SAS reflections, written in my handwritten journal. They really express what the journey has done for me, and these are just the things that I recognize now. Imagine how I will discover how I have been changed later on down the line.
“108 days of suns rising and falling and hearts rising and falling. What have I learned? What will I take with me always?
-Things work out the way they are supposed to. They always do.
-If someone or something makes you sad, get rid of it. No one, no thing, is worth it.
-There is something better out there. Don’t settle until you find it.
-You can do anything. Anything. And all on your own too.
-You really can get through anything. You already knew this, but now it will be engrained in your mind forever.
-Be proud of yourself, but never too proud. You too have many flaws and should constantly strive to be better. Isn’t that what you expect from everyone else?
-Love is out there. Real love. Keep giving it, and it will continue to find you and wrap you up.
-Don’t discount anyone. You have a tendency to close yourself off from some people for really no reason at all. Instead, open yourself up for no reason at all.”
I have always been a self-confident person. But the amount of confidence I have now is positively overflowing. I can do anything I want to, and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. And I can be exactly who I want, and I will not settle in any area of my life, and I will choose my own happiness.
And I will never, ever stop traveling.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Hawaii and Guatemala
Hawaii and Guatemala were pretty much considered afterthoughts for most everybody aboard the ship, as if they were not real ports. And yet, both are right up there with some of my favorite experiences on the entire voyage. And now I can officially say that I have boarded the ship for last time… watched land fade away for the last time… stepped into an unknown country on this voyage for the very last time. I have been to twelve ports. I have five days left on this ship that has become my home. It is done. Now all I can do is look back and be thankful for the amazing journey I have almost completed. Hey, remember that time I circumnavigated the globe?
So, as I listen to the reggaeton CD I bought for two dollars in Guatemala, I will try and finally finish sharing my experiences in Hawaii, Guatemala, and FINALLY India.
I woke up before dawn to watch the island grow larger and larger as we inched towards it. The weather was perfect and the sky changed from black to purple to pink to a riveting blue as the sun rose. I’ve been to Hawaii many times with my family, but never Honolulu. The view of the city was gorgeous. I watched them raise the American flag as the sun came up and got just a little bit emotional.
We were all ecstatic to have phone service that didn’t cost an arm and a leg per minute. I called my parents and talked to them for an hour and a half while the ship was being cleared. It was so nice to be able to have an actual conversation with them and tell them how much fun I was having and how thankful I was that they let me do this program, and how much I already know it has changed me. I made a bunch of other calls to friend over the couple of days and sent out a few mass texts, just to holla. I’m not going to lie, I am very much looking forward to being able to use my phone and go on the internet again.
We finally got off the boat and set out for our day on foot. We decided to walk the couple of miles over to Waikiki Beach. Our group today consisted of Hannah, Caroline, Alicia, Greg, Alex, Disha, Doug and I. It was perfect. I love them all. The weather was sweltering and we were drenched in sweat, so we finally caught a bus the last stretch of the way. My feet were rubbed raw from walking in flip flops so much over these two days.
We finally got to the beach and it was absolutely gorgeous. I have seen so much beauty all over the world. Crowded too. We all laid out our towels and ran into the perfectly refreshing water then laid out for awhile. By this time we were getting pretty hungry and couldn’t WAIT to have a huge heap of American food. Being in the U.S. again was completely surreal. Being able to speak the language, feeling at home, knowing your taxi driver understands you and is actually going to take you where you ask, being able to read street signs, asking for directions and understanding where the hell the person is telling you to go, all of it felt GREAT!
We decided on a 50’s diner for lunch. We all had varying types of good ol’ American cuisine. I had a delicious meatball sandwich, some fries, and finished it up with the most satisfying banana split ever, which I split with Hannah. I want one right now. And I had sips of everyone else’s desserts/milkshakes/smoothies and bites of burgers/chips/sandwiches. Sooooooo good. Being familiar with the songs playing in the restaurant or the shows playing on TV was all so great, and these are things you completely take for granted at home. But one thing we didn’t like… American prices.
After eating our fill and rejoicing in America, we headed back to the beach. Greg, Doug and I took off to head back to the boat because we had signed up to do a Q&A and tour guide for people from the Hawaii area. We were running really late because the bus took a lot longer than we thought it would, but we made it. There were about fifteen people there, some prospective students and parents, mostly from U of Hawaii, and a couple of representatives from the HI area. We watched a twenty minute long video, and it was so strange to see these other kids on MY ship, living MY life, talking about things I had done, sitting places I sit every day, then watching them talk about the end of the trip, and realizing we were almost there. It was strange for all six of us students representing the current voyage. The question and answer session was great and we all tried to give as honest answers as possible. It seemed as though we all have had the same genuine experience of being altered forever by what we have seen and experienced, and we all felt especially attached to the shipboard community that has formed. After we collected our free T-shirt and chocolate macadamia nuts, Greg, Doug, and I opted out of the tour part because we had to meet back up with our friends for a BOOZE CRUISE!
Earlier we had noticed a sign for a catamaran sunset cruise, a.k.a. booze cruise. SDRN. So down right now. We all paid thirty bucks and hopped on. Now our group consisted of Greg, Caroline, Hannah, Doug, Nancy, Skyler, Brendan, creepy Mike, and me.
This booze cruise was an absolute blast. I alternated between mai tais and rum and cokes and we all laughed for an hour and a half straight as the sun set over a few clouds and a crisp blue ocean. It couldn’t have been more perfect. I was surrounded by people I love, people I have grown so close to, people I am so blessed to have in my life. This one Australian guy started talking to all of us, and he was a really fun guy so he ended up hanging out with us for the night. I told him I was going to live in Sydney and we talked all about traveling and Australia and all of the cool things I am going to do when I go there. He was super cute, but also super short, and he may have been gay, we’re not sure. He was traveling around all by himself at the moment, and I can’t wait to do that same thing, just bum around the world, meet people, learn lessons, have adventures, love life.
After the booze cruise, we went over to Duke’s where we had a dinner reservation. We had more delicious American food. I split ribs with Doug, and they were riblicious. I also bought… my first legal Americam drink! WOOHOO!!!! TWENTY ONE!!! Pretty much the entirety of SAS was at this restaurant and bar, including our sexy dean Les McCabe, and it was a great time. Braxton and Riley both bought me birthday drinks, and we all just hung out drinking and dancing the night away. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, so not too much was open, so Doug and I left around midnight.
The next morning we slept in a little bit then caught a bus into town. We stopped by a place to rent bikes for the day. I love bike riding. I can’t wait to do a lot of it when I get home. We wanted to try to ride all the way to Hanuama Bay, about fourteen miles, but we didn’t quite reach that mark. Actually, we only got about two miles. Lexi, Caroline, Hannah, Doug and I rode along the beautiful coast in perfect weather, gazing at the ocean to our right. When we were hot, we stopped at a little beach that was sparsely populated and took a dip and tanned for awhile. Then we were getting really hungry and we didn’t see any food around, and we REALLY wanted Mexican food. So we rode back towards Waikiki and kind of haphazardly looked for a place to eat. We finally decided to stop and park our bikes, and lo and behold, exactly to our left is a Mexican place! Called La Cucaracha. This hit the spot like nothing else on earth could have at that moment in time. Nobody does Mexican food quite like the United States, haha. We all shared a huge plate of nachos and I shared a quesadilla with Lexi. Mmmmmmm. And we got to take pictures of all of us in sombreros! So touristy right now.
After we ate we hit up the beach for a couple more hours. When we saw the catamaran from the night before, we seriously pondered doing another booze cruise to finish out the two days, but we unfortunately wouldn’t have made it back to the ship in time if we had done it. Darn. So we just enjoyed the water, sand and air before hopping in a taxi to head back towards the boat. What a perfect couple of days with so many people I love.
Back on the boat, I enjoyed one last sunset while making many phone calls, mostly to Jessica, Becca and Melissa. It felt great to hear everyone’s voices, but in a way it’s not as big a deal now for either side because we will be seeing each other SO SOON!!! I called Jon and talked with him about SAS memories for a good half hour. I can’t wait to see everybody…
The next eight days on the ship went by in a flash, just like I knew they would. We had so much fun, staying up late playing games, talking, and very seldomly studying. I had my last four days of class, then global studies exam, then my Islam final. Global kicked my butt and I got a C+ in the class, but I’m taking it pass/fail so no biggie. Islam was fine and I’m sure I did well. I don’t think I went to bed before three a single time on this stretch. This ship has really become home and the people here have really become family. We have been ticking down the days, and as every single day slips through our fingers, we are in more and more disbelief.
The morning we got into Guatemala I made sure to get up in time to see the sunrise. I did at 5:15 a.m., and Doug came with me, and the sunrise was perfectly shrouded in clouds, which was still pretty but less than fantastic. So I went back to bed for a few hours. I had no concrete plans in Guatemala, and I was happy about that. All I planned on doing was spending as much time with Hannah as humanly possible.
A lot of people were really freaked out to go to Guatemala, including Caroline, because of the high crime rate, and the addition of the swine flu epidemic was no help either. I could care less. I love Central and Latin America and I couldn’t wait to be in the heat speaking the language. SAS has taught me that I can do anything, as long as I’m smart about it.
We met up around ten and got off the boat to head to Iztapa, a beach area with a sandbar that supposedly had restaurants. A lot of people went to Monterrico, a black sand beach, and Antigua. Our group included Alicia, Caroline, Hannah, Greg, Lia, Brendan and creepy Mike. Most of my favorite people all with me for an entire day. Perfect.
We catch the free shuttle over to the port entrance where there are a ton of taxis waiting around for us. However, they are ridiculously overcharging for their services. They are trying to get somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 for a ride to Antigua, which is about an hour away. And they want us to pay $25 each to get to Iztapan, which is no more than twenty minutes away. Hell to the no. So Greg and I, the only ones that speak any of the language, begin searching out people to negotiate with. One guy offers me $5 per person and I quickly agree. We hop in the van and drive away. Our driver’s name is Jorge, though he told us he prefers to be called George. He is a really nice guy and ends up hanging out with us for most of the day and part of the night.
He drops us off in Iztapan, which it turns out is the middle of nowhere. We walk to the “dock,” which is basically just a few tug boats hanging out. The boys wanted to try and go ocean fishing, so they looked around for a boat to hire, but no such luck. Us girls in the meantime hung out with a couple of locals and their puppy and chickens. Next we all decided to head over to the sandbar. We hire a “water taxi,” just a rickety old boat driven by an old man, and putt-putt over to the other side. We get off and look around. The place is deserted. There is one guy hanging out there, a surfer from Israel. We talk to him for awhile and he tells us the places to eat and everything else are only open on weekends. We’re on our own. There are literally three locals on the whole beach, and they are fishing. It was the most unique beach experience I have had on the voyage so far, that’s for sure. Lining the beach are several large huts covered in thatched roofs. There are many stray dogs, all looking very sickly and disease infested, except for one dog who had a beautiful golden coat and liked to show off by jumping around and running around the other dogs who could barely walk. We played with a little puppy for a really long time, though we were careful not to touch him as his ears were basically falling off and we didn’t want to end up itching ourselves the way this dog was constantly itching.
We decided to make the best of it, and it was kind of fun to have our very own beach, so we laid out our towels on the blazing hot black sand, stripped down and plunged into the ocean. Bathwater. The waves were fun and the beach was semi-clean. Except for that syringe I saw nestled in the sand. There was a pretty quality rip tide going so we stayed pretty close to shore. Alicia got bit by something and ran out of the water. She also wiped away a squid that had made its way onto her head. Alicia can’t help it, the wildlife is just drawn to her. We laid out for awhile and I took a little nap I desperately needed. The san was so hot it was literally burning our feet. We had asked our water taxi to pick us up again at three, but we were ready to go by 1:30, so the boys tried to whistle and wave across the riverbank to attract his attention, but no luck. We finally got ahold of him on the phone and he came over and got us.
Once back on the other side we looked around for somewhere to eat. We sat down at a little place that looked like it had some quality options, like Guatemalan food for me and hamburguesas for the less adventurous. The meal was actually really, really good, and the people were nice. We enjoyed a soccer game while we ate our meal, with Jorge by our side the whole time.
We headed back to the ship and rested for a couple of hours before meeting up at 7 to go into the nearest town, San Jose. Greg and Brendan decided to stay in, so it was just Caroline, Alicia, Hannah, Lia, Doug and I. Thank goodness Doug tagged along because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have gone out just the gals. This night was random but ended up being a lot of fun. We got a taxi for $5 each, each way, with our boy Jorge and his friend. His friend spoke pretty good English, so I spent most of the night talking to Jorge and reminding my tongue how to speak Spanish.
They took us first to this really fun bar all lit up with flashing neon lights, really loud music, and a guy on a loudspeaker randomly enticing people to come into the club, which really reminded me of Cabo. We sat down at a table and were the only ones in there. We ordered some rum and chasers, as all Guatemalans claim that Guatemalan rum is the best in the world. They brought out some meat that was basically all fat, but it tasted pretty good, until I spit it out that is. The music videos playing on the televisions were pretty hilarious. They were all old 80’s songs, and we were loving it. I went up to the DJ and requested “Dimelo” by my boy Enrique, but he didn’t have it, so I requested a great reggaeton song I know from Guadalajara called “Perdoname.” He put it on and kept the reggaeton bumping, and we all got up and danced for awhile. And by all of us I mean us five girls, while Doug watched, because we were the only ones in the whole place. After we were all a little buzzed we headed off to explore the town.
All of the shops were shutting down around this time, but we walked around checking out the street food and the little shops. I bought a reggaeton hits CD for two dollars. I bought one similar to it in El Salvador and ended up loving it, and this one is pretty good. I gave the kid my money and he put the case in my bag, then I asked him, is there a CD in there? I opened it up and there wasn’t, and he just laughed innocently. Haha little jerk. So I had him play the CD for me to make sure it worked, then he put it in the case and we went on our way. Lia and I split some delicious street tacos topped with cebollas and salsa. We all went and sat in the plaza and watched all of the skateboarding teenagers. There were of course the couples making out all over the place, but I noticed more than anything all of the kids running around. I went over to a group of kids and started talking to them about their lives, where they lived, if their older siblings were there in the park. We took a bunch of pictures with them and then showed them. Then we headed back to the ship as there was not too much else to do.
Little did we know, there was a great bar with live music right at our free shuttle pick up! We stopped in there and partied with maybe twenty other SASers and some people from the other cruise ship docked at the port called “The World.” A few girls from the ship were behind the bar handing out drinks, I’m not sure how they swung that gig. The music was great and we danced for an hour or so. Doug actually knows how to dance, so he tried to teach me a couple, but I’m no good at following haha. Riley was crazy drunk and so was Alicia. We got a few free shots and drinks from the girls working the bar, then we headed home after the music was done. We put on our bathing suits and went swimming for awhile, as it was still, as Grandma would say, hotter than blue blazes out. Then we sat around talking for a long time. Apparently Alicia ended up getting really sick and Hannah and Caroline took care of her till late at night, but I was hanging out with Doug so I didn’t know. The funniest thing that happened that Hannah told me about was when Alicia said, “Canalay… I mean… Hannah.” Hahahahaha.
The next morning Hannah and I were up bright and early to get down to the gangway at 7 a.m. to leave for our volcano hike! Pacaya Volcano. We were both pretty excited for this trip, and I was especially excited to be with Hannah. Our bus was about 45 minutes late, but that gave me time to run upstairs and grab some pastries, so it was cool. We tried to sleep for the hour or so ride there, but it was kind of difficult with how windy the trail was. I would wake up on every curve in a slight panic that our bus was tumbling down the hillside. When we got there I maybe had four or so hours of sleep under my belt, so I was ready to go!
We all bought water and marshmallows to roast over lava and then started heading up the trail. Some people bought walking sticks for five quetzales from the little boys selling them. 8 quetzales = 1 dollar. They were charred on the bottom from being stuck into the lava.
The hike was moderate, not too bad, especially when I got into a nice rhythm. It took us maybe an hour and a half to get to the top. The weather was amazing as always, slightly overcast and a little breezy so we felt refreshed whenever we stopped to take a break. There were about 20 of us, and Hannah and I were definitely the loudest. We joked and talked the whole way up and we saw a dead snake and some vibrant red and yellow pacaya fruit.
Soon we were out of the foresty area and standing before a giant mountain of ash and hardened lava… or pahoehoe. You could see the top of the volcano above us, and quite often it would start spewing smoke. The area around it was constantly steaming. Across the way, on the other side of the town below, you could see Fuego Volcano. The view was astounding.
Our guide’s name was Chicki, and he was a pretty entertaining guy, as well as cute. But, as most Latin men go, he was short too.
To get to the area where all the hot lava action was occurring, we had to trek down a steep hill of crumbly ash/pahoehoe. This was the most fun part of the day, and maybe one of the most exhilarating activities of the entire voyage. It was like skiing downhill in tennishoes. We were flying down this lava hill! Hannah and I had huge smiles on our faces the entire way down. And it just kept going! We really wanted to do it again but the climb back up would have taken hundreds of years, as every step we would take, we would fall back three.
Once at the bottom, we looked across a field of jagged pahoehoe, dried lava as far as the eye can see, in all sorts of beautiful shapes and formations and even colors. Sometimes it had almost an opal coloring effect, and most of it glimmered like sparkling obsidian. And then, across the way several hundred yards, was hellfire red magma spewing out of the earth.
We hiked over to the magma area, very cautiously. There were quite a few spills, and trust me, pahoehoe is a funny word but it can really cut you up. Hannah took a mini spill and bled quite a bit from just a little scratch. Something about dried lava that makes you bleed profusely. The ground was constantly shifting or falling apart underneath our feet.
Finally we ascended the hill where magma was flowing in a solid, molasses-like stream. It was HOT. The closer you got the scarier it was. Magma was flowing to our right and left and below us. We were literally standing five feet from it. We busted out marshmallows and popped them on sticks and went to roast them. When I went to roast mine it felt like the skin in my face was going to melt off and I just couldn’t hack it.
Down below there was a very fast flowing tunnel of magma flowing. A magma river. We could really close to it too because the ridges on the side acted somewhat like heat buffers. The river went all the way down to the bottom of the hill. Someone stuck a walking stick into the magma and we all oohed and ahhed when the stick emerged on fire, which quickly died down as the magma cooled.
After our heated experience, we trekked back across the perilous pahoehoe field then sat down to have a quality lunch of sandwiches, cookies and chips and enjoy the gorgeous view of Mount Fuego in front of us. There were these stray dogs that followed us all the way up and down the mountain and we fed them food. They are pretty experienced hikers and they weren’t afraid to cut us off at any time, often almost tripping us. We hiked back down the mountain, another pleasant experience. We passed by some cows chilling and lots of little boys riding horses up the trail. Much of our hike was spent avoiding road apples actually. (That’s horse poop, guys.)
Once we were back at base, Hannah and I tried to figure out how to get a ride to Antigua, since we were only an hour away. Chicki tried to set us up to no avail. We finally gave up and just got back on the bus, hoping to find something once we got back to the ship. Hannah and I listened to music together the whole ride back and anything we do together makes me pretty happy.
When we got back to the ship we again asked Chicki if he could possibly help us find a ride. First, he invited us back to his beach house in Puerto Quetzal instead. And we definitely actually considered it. But no, we need to get to Antigua. He helps us talk to a van driver who is driving other cab drivers back to Antigua. He tells us to meet back in about 30 minutes. We rush onto the ship and change and gather some stuff, then awkwardly wait outside for the guy. Everyone thought we were really confused and finally one of the Guatemalan guides who was on another trip came up to us and said, with a very quizzical look, “Excuse me, but, can I help you with something?” We explained what we were waiting for then he took us on the bus to talk to the van driver. We agreed we would pay fifteen dollars each, I believe. Except now we would be leaving more around seven. So we go back on the ship, grab food, relax a little.
We finally hop in the van along with two other tour guides that both speak great English. The weather starts kicking up and all of the sudden dust clouds are flying everywhere and then the sky blackened and we were in the midst of a huge thunderstorm. I love storms, and it was definitely amazing to see, but it was frightening at the same time. Here Hannah and I are in a car headed to Antigua, which is an hour and a half ride or so, just hoping they are legit, all the while lightning is practically striking our car. The rain was beautiful though and the car ride was great expect for those couple of times when Hannah and I wondered whether or not we were on a ride to our deaths.
Finally we did get to Antigua and they dropped us off at El Gato Negro hostel. They were such nice people and really did us a favor by giving us a ride and dropping us off wherever we wanted. Now onto our next goal: finding a place to sleep. Hannah and I stopped by several hostels, all of which were full, then gave up and went to meet our friends Riley and Braxton at a restaurant.
The restaurant was delicious, we had chile con rellenos and chips and guac. There was also an amazing guitarist playing Spanish guitar and singing while we were there. I requested “Besame Mucho,” my parents’ love song. I got a little teary-eyed listening to it. He was amazing.
After dinner Hannah and I continued the quest to find a place to sleep, along with Riley. We finally found a great place for $35 a night for two. It was perfect. Very safe, a nice and clean room, and breakfast included in the morning, though we didn’t know that until the morning. We each paid about seven dollars more than our friends did at their hostels and I feel like we got a lot more.
After we situated all our stuff we changed into going out clothes and went to meet our friends. First stop was this hookah bar where there were about ten SASers, a really fun group. Everyone was dancing. Our friend Diana was carrying over a dessert tray of ice cream while dancing and it dropped first on her head and then on her floor. It was HILARIOUS. What was even funnier was when a guy walked by and stepped in the ice cream, immediately after looking back very surprised and perplexed. You just don’t expect to step in a scoop of ice cream.
After this we headed to a bar down the street. Many many SASers were in Antigua and as always we all gravitated to the same place. The bar was called Frida and featured much of her art and pictures of her. As soon as I walked in I saw a teacher on board, Dr. John Serio, and his wife Faye. Dr. Serio and I have been on several trips together and he rather enjoys my company, and I his, and he greeted me with a huge and happy drunken hello. Then we took a shot together. Only on SAS.
I headed upstairs and there was salsa dancing going on. Then all of a sudden I am pulled onto the floor by this gorgeous Guatemalan who is basically a professional dancer. I dance with him off and on for the next two hours. This experience was amazing for me. I love to dance, and though I stumbled and it took me awhile to get the hang of it, I picked it up and it was so exhilarating to be dancing like that. He flipped me and dipped me and twirled me all over, and he was patient as I learned the steps. I can’t really explain how great it made me feel and I think taking some dance classes would be really fun.
We all had a great night of dancing and talking and drinking with teachers and Hannah and I headed home and PTFO’d. (Passed the eff out.)
The next morning we slept in till about ten, which really is sleeping in for us, and when I woke up I jumped in bed with Hannah and we cuddled and listened to music on my iphone for a good half hour. What a beautiful morning. When we looked outside the weather was cool and, surprise! Breakfast is included! Hannah ate pancakes and I had a delicious egg sandwich of sorts. DELICIOUS. We ate in the sunny little courtyard of our hotel with a fountain in the middle. We let the morning linger because it was just so pleasant. By the way, our hotel was called Posada Asjemenou, and I recommend it.
Next we set out to explore Antigua. It is a beautiful town, colonial style. The buildings are very beautiful and many of the people are indigenously dressed. We didn’t really know where to go but we had the names of a couple of places. We wandered around, looking at the historical sites. We stumbled upon this gorgeous yellow church and hauntingly beautiful and muffled music seeped out of it and reached our ears. We walked inside and slowly wandered towards the front. We sat down and listened to a couple of songs. There were three singers and their voices were immaculate. I had tears in my eyes. My chest felt heavy. I have been to so many places of worship all over the world, and there is always something beautiful and calming and haunting and humbling about sitting in a place of worship, hearing the music, seeing the people praying. We left the church and immediately told each other how spiritual of an experience that had been for both of us.
Next we went to the market. Every market seems to have the same general items, and yet they are all unique. I bought a mango with chile powder and lime and it was delicious. There were electronics, tons of clothing, household items, lots of toys. We walked through the art area as well. We wanted to try to get to a lookout over the city, “something da la cruz,” but we didn’t have time to get there and find a ride back to the ship.
We got a little worried once we got separated from our friends to get a ride back, but once again life is on our side and everything works out. We got offered about three rides and we took the cheapest one, a van back with about 12 SASers. We each paid about six bucks. The ride was a little squeezed, but not bad. It was sad to leave Antigua, I wish we had more time there. It was also sad to be on our way back to the ship for the last time… leaving our last port.
We had a little time before on ship time so we went to the port shopping area and I bought a couple of sweet shirts, a hat repping Gallo cerveza, my favorite beer from around the world, with a bottle opener on the brim, and a SWEET rainbow headband. We rode on the roof of the shuttle on the way back, along with the luggage.
And finally, we got in line for the last time ever to board the MV Explorer… at least for now.
Guatemala completely surprised me with how much I enjoyed the experiences I had there. I always love being in Spanish speaking countries and I especially love the flavor and feel of Latin American countries. Guatemala, the port no one really counted as a port, ended up being one of my favorite experiences.
So, as I listen to the reggaeton CD I bought for two dollars in Guatemala, I will try and finally finish sharing my experiences in Hawaii, Guatemala, and FINALLY India.
I woke up before dawn to watch the island grow larger and larger as we inched towards it. The weather was perfect and the sky changed from black to purple to pink to a riveting blue as the sun rose. I’ve been to Hawaii many times with my family, but never Honolulu. The view of the city was gorgeous. I watched them raise the American flag as the sun came up and got just a little bit emotional.
We were all ecstatic to have phone service that didn’t cost an arm and a leg per minute. I called my parents and talked to them for an hour and a half while the ship was being cleared. It was so nice to be able to have an actual conversation with them and tell them how much fun I was having and how thankful I was that they let me do this program, and how much I already know it has changed me. I made a bunch of other calls to friend over the couple of days and sent out a few mass texts, just to holla. I’m not going to lie, I am very much looking forward to being able to use my phone and go on the internet again.
We finally got off the boat and set out for our day on foot. We decided to walk the couple of miles over to Waikiki Beach. Our group today consisted of Hannah, Caroline, Alicia, Greg, Alex, Disha, Doug and I. It was perfect. I love them all. The weather was sweltering and we were drenched in sweat, so we finally caught a bus the last stretch of the way. My feet were rubbed raw from walking in flip flops so much over these two days.
We finally got to the beach and it was absolutely gorgeous. I have seen so much beauty all over the world. Crowded too. We all laid out our towels and ran into the perfectly refreshing water then laid out for awhile. By this time we were getting pretty hungry and couldn’t WAIT to have a huge heap of American food. Being in the U.S. again was completely surreal. Being able to speak the language, feeling at home, knowing your taxi driver understands you and is actually going to take you where you ask, being able to read street signs, asking for directions and understanding where the hell the person is telling you to go, all of it felt GREAT!
We decided on a 50’s diner for lunch. We all had varying types of good ol’ American cuisine. I had a delicious meatball sandwich, some fries, and finished it up with the most satisfying banana split ever, which I split with Hannah. I want one right now. And I had sips of everyone else’s desserts/milkshakes/smoothies and bites of burgers/chips/sandwiches. Sooooooo good. Being familiar with the songs playing in the restaurant or the shows playing on TV was all so great, and these are things you completely take for granted at home. But one thing we didn’t like… American prices.
After eating our fill and rejoicing in America, we headed back to the beach. Greg, Doug and I took off to head back to the boat because we had signed up to do a Q&A and tour guide for people from the Hawaii area. We were running really late because the bus took a lot longer than we thought it would, but we made it. There were about fifteen people there, some prospective students and parents, mostly from U of Hawaii, and a couple of representatives from the HI area. We watched a twenty minute long video, and it was so strange to see these other kids on MY ship, living MY life, talking about things I had done, sitting places I sit every day, then watching them talk about the end of the trip, and realizing we were almost there. It was strange for all six of us students representing the current voyage. The question and answer session was great and we all tried to give as honest answers as possible. It seemed as though we all have had the same genuine experience of being altered forever by what we have seen and experienced, and we all felt especially attached to the shipboard community that has formed. After we collected our free T-shirt and chocolate macadamia nuts, Greg, Doug, and I opted out of the tour part because we had to meet back up with our friends for a BOOZE CRUISE!
Earlier we had noticed a sign for a catamaran sunset cruise, a.k.a. booze cruise. SDRN. So down right now. We all paid thirty bucks and hopped on. Now our group consisted of Greg, Caroline, Hannah, Doug, Nancy, Skyler, Brendan, creepy Mike, and me.
This booze cruise was an absolute blast. I alternated between mai tais and rum and cokes and we all laughed for an hour and a half straight as the sun set over a few clouds and a crisp blue ocean. It couldn’t have been more perfect. I was surrounded by people I love, people I have grown so close to, people I am so blessed to have in my life. This one Australian guy started talking to all of us, and he was a really fun guy so he ended up hanging out with us for the night. I told him I was going to live in Sydney and we talked all about traveling and Australia and all of the cool things I am going to do when I go there. He was super cute, but also super short, and he may have been gay, we’re not sure. He was traveling around all by himself at the moment, and I can’t wait to do that same thing, just bum around the world, meet people, learn lessons, have adventures, love life.
After the booze cruise, we went over to Duke’s where we had a dinner reservation. We had more delicious American food. I split ribs with Doug, and they were riblicious. I also bought… my first legal Americam drink! WOOHOO!!!! TWENTY ONE!!! Pretty much the entirety of SAS was at this restaurant and bar, including our sexy dean Les McCabe, and it was a great time. Braxton and Riley both bought me birthday drinks, and we all just hung out drinking and dancing the night away. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, so not too much was open, so Doug and I left around midnight.
The next morning we slept in a little bit then caught a bus into town. We stopped by a place to rent bikes for the day. I love bike riding. I can’t wait to do a lot of it when I get home. We wanted to try to ride all the way to Hanuama Bay, about fourteen miles, but we didn’t quite reach that mark. Actually, we only got about two miles. Lexi, Caroline, Hannah, Doug and I rode along the beautiful coast in perfect weather, gazing at the ocean to our right. When we were hot, we stopped at a little beach that was sparsely populated and took a dip and tanned for awhile. Then we were getting really hungry and we didn’t see any food around, and we REALLY wanted Mexican food. So we rode back towards Waikiki and kind of haphazardly looked for a place to eat. We finally decided to stop and park our bikes, and lo and behold, exactly to our left is a Mexican place! Called La Cucaracha. This hit the spot like nothing else on earth could have at that moment in time. Nobody does Mexican food quite like the United States, haha. We all shared a huge plate of nachos and I shared a quesadilla with Lexi. Mmmmmmm. And we got to take pictures of all of us in sombreros! So touristy right now.
After we ate we hit up the beach for a couple more hours. When we saw the catamaran from the night before, we seriously pondered doing another booze cruise to finish out the two days, but we unfortunately wouldn’t have made it back to the ship in time if we had done it. Darn. So we just enjoyed the water, sand and air before hopping in a taxi to head back towards the boat. What a perfect couple of days with so many people I love.
Back on the boat, I enjoyed one last sunset while making many phone calls, mostly to Jessica, Becca and Melissa. It felt great to hear everyone’s voices, but in a way it’s not as big a deal now for either side because we will be seeing each other SO SOON!!! I called Jon and talked with him about SAS memories for a good half hour. I can’t wait to see everybody…
The next eight days on the ship went by in a flash, just like I knew they would. We had so much fun, staying up late playing games, talking, and very seldomly studying. I had my last four days of class, then global studies exam, then my Islam final. Global kicked my butt and I got a C+ in the class, but I’m taking it pass/fail so no biggie. Islam was fine and I’m sure I did well. I don’t think I went to bed before three a single time on this stretch. This ship has really become home and the people here have really become family. We have been ticking down the days, and as every single day slips through our fingers, we are in more and more disbelief.
The morning we got into Guatemala I made sure to get up in time to see the sunrise. I did at 5:15 a.m., and Doug came with me, and the sunrise was perfectly shrouded in clouds, which was still pretty but less than fantastic. So I went back to bed for a few hours. I had no concrete plans in Guatemala, and I was happy about that. All I planned on doing was spending as much time with Hannah as humanly possible.
A lot of people were really freaked out to go to Guatemala, including Caroline, because of the high crime rate, and the addition of the swine flu epidemic was no help either. I could care less. I love Central and Latin America and I couldn’t wait to be in the heat speaking the language. SAS has taught me that I can do anything, as long as I’m smart about it.
We met up around ten and got off the boat to head to Iztapa, a beach area with a sandbar that supposedly had restaurants. A lot of people went to Monterrico, a black sand beach, and Antigua. Our group included Alicia, Caroline, Hannah, Greg, Lia, Brendan and creepy Mike. Most of my favorite people all with me for an entire day. Perfect.
We catch the free shuttle over to the port entrance where there are a ton of taxis waiting around for us. However, they are ridiculously overcharging for their services. They are trying to get somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 for a ride to Antigua, which is about an hour away. And they want us to pay $25 each to get to Iztapan, which is no more than twenty minutes away. Hell to the no. So Greg and I, the only ones that speak any of the language, begin searching out people to negotiate with. One guy offers me $5 per person and I quickly agree. We hop in the van and drive away. Our driver’s name is Jorge, though he told us he prefers to be called George. He is a really nice guy and ends up hanging out with us for most of the day and part of the night.
He drops us off in Iztapan, which it turns out is the middle of nowhere. We walk to the “dock,” which is basically just a few tug boats hanging out. The boys wanted to try and go ocean fishing, so they looked around for a boat to hire, but no such luck. Us girls in the meantime hung out with a couple of locals and their puppy and chickens. Next we all decided to head over to the sandbar. We hire a “water taxi,” just a rickety old boat driven by an old man, and putt-putt over to the other side. We get off and look around. The place is deserted. There is one guy hanging out there, a surfer from Israel. We talk to him for awhile and he tells us the places to eat and everything else are only open on weekends. We’re on our own. There are literally three locals on the whole beach, and they are fishing. It was the most unique beach experience I have had on the voyage so far, that’s for sure. Lining the beach are several large huts covered in thatched roofs. There are many stray dogs, all looking very sickly and disease infested, except for one dog who had a beautiful golden coat and liked to show off by jumping around and running around the other dogs who could barely walk. We played with a little puppy for a really long time, though we were careful not to touch him as his ears were basically falling off and we didn’t want to end up itching ourselves the way this dog was constantly itching.
We decided to make the best of it, and it was kind of fun to have our very own beach, so we laid out our towels on the blazing hot black sand, stripped down and plunged into the ocean. Bathwater. The waves were fun and the beach was semi-clean. Except for that syringe I saw nestled in the sand. There was a pretty quality rip tide going so we stayed pretty close to shore. Alicia got bit by something and ran out of the water. She also wiped away a squid that had made its way onto her head. Alicia can’t help it, the wildlife is just drawn to her. We laid out for awhile and I took a little nap I desperately needed. The san was so hot it was literally burning our feet. We had asked our water taxi to pick us up again at three, but we were ready to go by 1:30, so the boys tried to whistle and wave across the riverbank to attract his attention, but no luck. We finally got ahold of him on the phone and he came over and got us.
Once back on the other side we looked around for somewhere to eat. We sat down at a little place that looked like it had some quality options, like Guatemalan food for me and hamburguesas for the less adventurous. The meal was actually really, really good, and the people were nice. We enjoyed a soccer game while we ate our meal, with Jorge by our side the whole time.
We headed back to the ship and rested for a couple of hours before meeting up at 7 to go into the nearest town, San Jose. Greg and Brendan decided to stay in, so it was just Caroline, Alicia, Hannah, Lia, Doug and I. Thank goodness Doug tagged along because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have gone out just the gals. This night was random but ended up being a lot of fun. We got a taxi for $5 each, each way, with our boy Jorge and his friend. His friend spoke pretty good English, so I spent most of the night talking to Jorge and reminding my tongue how to speak Spanish.
They took us first to this really fun bar all lit up with flashing neon lights, really loud music, and a guy on a loudspeaker randomly enticing people to come into the club, which really reminded me of Cabo. We sat down at a table and were the only ones in there. We ordered some rum and chasers, as all Guatemalans claim that Guatemalan rum is the best in the world. They brought out some meat that was basically all fat, but it tasted pretty good, until I spit it out that is. The music videos playing on the televisions were pretty hilarious. They were all old 80’s songs, and we were loving it. I went up to the DJ and requested “Dimelo” by my boy Enrique, but he didn’t have it, so I requested a great reggaeton song I know from Guadalajara called “Perdoname.” He put it on and kept the reggaeton bumping, and we all got up and danced for awhile. And by all of us I mean us five girls, while Doug watched, because we were the only ones in the whole place. After we were all a little buzzed we headed off to explore the town.
All of the shops were shutting down around this time, but we walked around checking out the street food and the little shops. I bought a reggaeton hits CD for two dollars. I bought one similar to it in El Salvador and ended up loving it, and this one is pretty good. I gave the kid my money and he put the case in my bag, then I asked him, is there a CD in there? I opened it up and there wasn’t, and he just laughed innocently. Haha little jerk. So I had him play the CD for me to make sure it worked, then he put it in the case and we went on our way. Lia and I split some delicious street tacos topped with cebollas and salsa. We all went and sat in the plaza and watched all of the skateboarding teenagers. There were of course the couples making out all over the place, but I noticed more than anything all of the kids running around. I went over to a group of kids and started talking to them about their lives, where they lived, if their older siblings were there in the park. We took a bunch of pictures with them and then showed them. Then we headed back to the ship as there was not too much else to do.
Little did we know, there was a great bar with live music right at our free shuttle pick up! We stopped in there and partied with maybe twenty other SASers and some people from the other cruise ship docked at the port called “The World.” A few girls from the ship were behind the bar handing out drinks, I’m not sure how they swung that gig. The music was great and we danced for an hour or so. Doug actually knows how to dance, so he tried to teach me a couple, but I’m no good at following haha. Riley was crazy drunk and so was Alicia. We got a few free shots and drinks from the girls working the bar, then we headed home after the music was done. We put on our bathing suits and went swimming for awhile, as it was still, as Grandma would say, hotter than blue blazes out. Then we sat around talking for a long time. Apparently Alicia ended up getting really sick and Hannah and Caroline took care of her till late at night, but I was hanging out with Doug so I didn’t know. The funniest thing that happened that Hannah told me about was when Alicia said, “Canalay… I mean… Hannah.” Hahahahaha.
The next morning Hannah and I were up bright and early to get down to the gangway at 7 a.m. to leave for our volcano hike! Pacaya Volcano. We were both pretty excited for this trip, and I was especially excited to be with Hannah. Our bus was about 45 minutes late, but that gave me time to run upstairs and grab some pastries, so it was cool. We tried to sleep for the hour or so ride there, but it was kind of difficult with how windy the trail was. I would wake up on every curve in a slight panic that our bus was tumbling down the hillside. When we got there I maybe had four or so hours of sleep under my belt, so I was ready to go!
We all bought water and marshmallows to roast over lava and then started heading up the trail. Some people bought walking sticks for five quetzales from the little boys selling them. 8 quetzales = 1 dollar. They were charred on the bottom from being stuck into the lava.
The hike was moderate, not too bad, especially when I got into a nice rhythm. It took us maybe an hour and a half to get to the top. The weather was amazing as always, slightly overcast and a little breezy so we felt refreshed whenever we stopped to take a break. There were about 20 of us, and Hannah and I were definitely the loudest. We joked and talked the whole way up and we saw a dead snake and some vibrant red and yellow pacaya fruit.
Soon we were out of the foresty area and standing before a giant mountain of ash and hardened lava… or pahoehoe. You could see the top of the volcano above us, and quite often it would start spewing smoke. The area around it was constantly steaming. Across the way, on the other side of the town below, you could see Fuego Volcano. The view was astounding.
Our guide’s name was Chicki, and he was a pretty entertaining guy, as well as cute. But, as most Latin men go, he was short too.
To get to the area where all the hot lava action was occurring, we had to trek down a steep hill of crumbly ash/pahoehoe. This was the most fun part of the day, and maybe one of the most exhilarating activities of the entire voyage. It was like skiing downhill in tennishoes. We were flying down this lava hill! Hannah and I had huge smiles on our faces the entire way down. And it just kept going! We really wanted to do it again but the climb back up would have taken hundreds of years, as every step we would take, we would fall back three.
Once at the bottom, we looked across a field of jagged pahoehoe, dried lava as far as the eye can see, in all sorts of beautiful shapes and formations and even colors. Sometimes it had almost an opal coloring effect, and most of it glimmered like sparkling obsidian. And then, across the way several hundred yards, was hellfire red magma spewing out of the earth.
We hiked over to the magma area, very cautiously. There were quite a few spills, and trust me, pahoehoe is a funny word but it can really cut you up. Hannah took a mini spill and bled quite a bit from just a little scratch. Something about dried lava that makes you bleed profusely. The ground was constantly shifting or falling apart underneath our feet.
Finally we ascended the hill where magma was flowing in a solid, molasses-like stream. It was HOT. The closer you got the scarier it was. Magma was flowing to our right and left and below us. We were literally standing five feet from it. We busted out marshmallows and popped them on sticks and went to roast them. When I went to roast mine it felt like the skin in my face was going to melt off and I just couldn’t hack it.
Down below there was a very fast flowing tunnel of magma flowing. A magma river. We could really close to it too because the ridges on the side acted somewhat like heat buffers. The river went all the way down to the bottom of the hill. Someone stuck a walking stick into the magma and we all oohed and ahhed when the stick emerged on fire, which quickly died down as the magma cooled.
After our heated experience, we trekked back across the perilous pahoehoe field then sat down to have a quality lunch of sandwiches, cookies and chips and enjoy the gorgeous view of Mount Fuego in front of us. There were these stray dogs that followed us all the way up and down the mountain and we fed them food. They are pretty experienced hikers and they weren’t afraid to cut us off at any time, often almost tripping us. We hiked back down the mountain, another pleasant experience. We passed by some cows chilling and lots of little boys riding horses up the trail. Much of our hike was spent avoiding road apples actually. (That’s horse poop, guys.)
Once we were back at base, Hannah and I tried to figure out how to get a ride to Antigua, since we were only an hour away. Chicki tried to set us up to no avail. We finally gave up and just got back on the bus, hoping to find something once we got back to the ship. Hannah and I listened to music together the whole ride back and anything we do together makes me pretty happy.
When we got back to the ship we again asked Chicki if he could possibly help us find a ride. First, he invited us back to his beach house in Puerto Quetzal instead. And we definitely actually considered it. But no, we need to get to Antigua. He helps us talk to a van driver who is driving other cab drivers back to Antigua. He tells us to meet back in about 30 minutes. We rush onto the ship and change and gather some stuff, then awkwardly wait outside for the guy. Everyone thought we were really confused and finally one of the Guatemalan guides who was on another trip came up to us and said, with a very quizzical look, “Excuse me, but, can I help you with something?” We explained what we were waiting for then he took us on the bus to talk to the van driver. We agreed we would pay fifteen dollars each, I believe. Except now we would be leaving more around seven. So we go back on the ship, grab food, relax a little.
We finally hop in the van along with two other tour guides that both speak great English. The weather starts kicking up and all of the sudden dust clouds are flying everywhere and then the sky blackened and we were in the midst of a huge thunderstorm. I love storms, and it was definitely amazing to see, but it was frightening at the same time. Here Hannah and I are in a car headed to Antigua, which is an hour and a half ride or so, just hoping they are legit, all the while lightning is practically striking our car. The rain was beautiful though and the car ride was great expect for those couple of times when Hannah and I wondered whether or not we were on a ride to our deaths.
Finally we did get to Antigua and they dropped us off at El Gato Negro hostel. They were such nice people and really did us a favor by giving us a ride and dropping us off wherever we wanted. Now onto our next goal: finding a place to sleep. Hannah and I stopped by several hostels, all of which were full, then gave up and went to meet our friends Riley and Braxton at a restaurant.
The restaurant was delicious, we had chile con rellenos and chips and guac. There was also an amazing guitarist playing Spanish guitar and singing while we were there. I requested “Besame Mucho,” my parents’ love song. I got a little teary-eyed listening to it. He was amazing.
After dinner Hannah and I continued the quest to find a place to sleep, along with Riley. We finally found a great place for $35 a night for two. It was perfect. Very safe, a nice and clean room, and breakfast included in the morning, though we didn’t know that until the morning. We each paid about seven dollars more than our friends did at their hostels and I feel like we got a lot more.
After we situated all our stuff we changed into going out clothes and went to meet our friends. First stop was this hookah bar where there were about ten SASers, a really fun group. Everyone was dancing. Our friend Diana was carrying over a dessert tray of ice cream while dancing and it dropped first on her head and then on her floor. It was HILARIOUS. What was even funnier was when a guy walked by and stepped in the ice cream, immediately after looking back very surprised and perplexed. You just don’t expect to step in a scoop of ice cream.
After this we headed to a bar down the street. Many many SASers were in Antigua and as always we all gravitated to the same place. The bar was called Frida and featured much of her art and pictures of her. As soon as I walked in I saw a teacher on board, Dr. John Serio, and his wife Faye. Dr. Serio and I have been on several trips together and he rather enjoys my company, and I his, and he greeted me with a huge and happy drunken hello. Then we took a shot together. Only on SAS.
I headed upstairs and there was salsa dancing going on. Then all of a sudden I am pulled onto the floor by this gorgeous Guatemalan who is basically a professional dancer. I dance with him off and on for the next two hours. This experience was amazing for me. I love to dance, and though I stumbled and it took me awhile to get the hang of it, I picked it up and it was so exhilarating to be dancing like that. He flipped me and dipped me and twirled me all over, and he was patient as I learned the steps. I can’t really explain how great it made me feel and I think taking some dance classes would be really fun.
We all had a great night of dancing and talking and drinking with teachers and Hannah and I headed home and PTFO’d. (Passed the eff out.)
The next morning we slept in till about ten, which really is sleeping in for us, and when I woke up I jumped in bed with Hannah and we cuddled and listened to music on my iphone for a good half hour. What a beautiful morning. When we looked outside the weather was cool and, surprise! Breakfast is included! Hannah ate pancakes and I had a delicious egg sandwich of sorts. DELICIOUS. We ate in the sunny little courtyard of our hotel with a fountain in the middle. We let the morning linger because it was just so pleasant. By the way, our hotel was called Posada Asjemenou, and I recommend it.
Next we set out to explore Antigua. It is a beautiful town, colonial style. The buildings are very beautiful and many of the people are indigenously dressed. We didn’t really know where to go but we had the names of a couple of places. We wandered around, looking at the historical sites. We stumbled upon this gorgeous yellow church and hauntingly beautiful and muffled music seeped out of it and reached our ears. We walked inside and slowly wandered towards the front. We sat down and listened to a couple of songs. There were three singers and their voices were immaculate. I had tears in my eyes. My chest felt heavy. I have been to so many places of worship all over the world, and there is always something beautiful and calming and haunting and humbling about sitting in a place of worship, hearing the music, seeing the people praying. We left the church and immediately told each other how spiritual of an experience that had been for both of us.
Next we went to the market. Every market seems to have the same general items, and yet they are all unique. I bought a mango with chile powder and lime and it was delicious. There were electronics, tons of clothing, household items, lots of toys. We walked through the art area as well. We wanted to try to get to a lookout over the city, “something da la cruz,” but we didn’t have time to get there and find a ride back to the ship.
We got a little worried once we got separated from our friends to get a ride back, but once again life is on our side and everything works out. We got offered about three rides and we took the cheapest one, a van back with about 12 SASers. We each paid about six bucks. The ride was a little squeezed, but not bad. It was sad to leave Antigua, I wish we had more time there. It was also sad to be on our way back to the ship for the last time… leaving our last port.
We had a little time before on ship time so we went to the port shopping area and I bought a couple of sweet shirts, a hat repping Gallo cerveza, my favorite beer from around the world, with a bottle opener on the brim, and a SWEET rainbow headband. We rode on the roof of the shuttle on the way back, along with the luggage.
And finally, we got in line for the last time ever to board the MV Explorer… at least for now.
Guatemala completely surprised me with how much I enjoyed the experiences I had there. I always love being in Spanish speaking countries and I especially love the flavor and feel of Latin American countries. Guatemala, the port no one really counted as a port, ended up being one of my favorite experiences.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
bittersweet...
I've been back in the US a week now already. I've spent the last several days in San Diego, very pleasant and the reunions were wonderful. And it is amazing to hug my family.
....but I am missing the ship, the community, the friends I made, the connections I felt. The adventures I took. The travels I embarked upon. Will I ever be that supremely happy again?
....but I am missing the ship, the community, the friends I made, the connections I felt. The adventures I took. The travels I embarked upon. Will I ever be that supremely happy again?
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
ship of wonders
God, life is so so good.
Day seven on this eight day stretch. WHAT??? I just freaked out as I typed that. How is that possible?
It’s 9:15 a.m. I woke up for breakfast. But I stayed up until 4:30 a.m. talking about life with Doug, so I am about to go back to bed. Which is fine, because today is a study day, and let’s face it, I won’t start studying until at least 3.
We had our final global studies test yesterday, THANK GOD. It was hard and made me angry but all I need is a B so I’m hoping to get that.
This last week has been absolutely fantastic. My heart is aching with the fact that this coming to an end so absurdly fast.
I’ll write about Hawaii soon, and then FINALLY finish up with India, perhaps after my final tomorrow, but for now I want to write about the talent show Greg and I performed in, like, a week and a half ago.
So we did a rendition of “No Land” and called it “On Land.” It was a compilation of three songs, “Somewhere Out There” from Fieffel Goes West, “Disturbia” by Rihanna, and of course, “No Air” by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown. Here it is!
(Somewhere Out There)
Somewhere out here, in Pacific moonlight
We’re all reminiscing, from Cadiz to pub night
Somewhere out here, we’re all saying a prayer
The ship will do a 180, some more preports we’ll all share
But even though the end is near, the voyage is almost done
from ping pong shows to communism its been a lot of fun
And when we’ve had four drinks at night, and our inhibitions low
It’s insane to think how far that we have come since Moroccoooooo
(Disturbia)
Off the ship in Morocco, things were getting started
The port was dirty as hell, it smelled like someone farted
Bought my mint tea for a buck, that’s how I do my barter
But don’t look him in the eye.. yea….
Headed south down the coast to Namibski
SAS Swakopmund party police get angry
Wild Dog-er’s trapped in bus, man that was crazy
Rented 4x4’s… just kidding!
Partied in Cape Town
Met our very own Mavis
ate some kudu
kept our eyes open for rapists
Table Mountain
No one said it was this hard
That’s what she said
Cuz in South Africa
You can drink the water
unlike in India
Where you could end up with some
Cholera
But washing in the Ganges equals
Diarrhea… diarrhea…
Made a turn toward the east, headed towards Asia
Ladyboys in tuk-tuks creep in Pattaya
Got a six dollar massage with happy ending
Was Mauritius even a port?
Floated to Vietnam
Got a suit made in some tunnels
And rode a cyclo
to Apocalypse Now
Then to Hong Kong
Took the tram to the peak
Gotta get rid of this dong… what she said!
And then in China
saw a really big wall
But couldn’t talk about it
Or you might get arrested
But not in Japan
Where free speech is accepted
Domo arigoto
Mr. Roboto…
(No Air)
Laaaaaand!
Tell me how I’m sposed to live on land… whoooaaaa
Luke Jones don’t you understand
No laaaaand
Got us out here heading towards the US
Reacclimating’s gonna be a test
Coming towards the end of SAS
I’ll miss Les, miss Les
Explorer, spring 09!
Went around the world 108 days man it blows my mind
Tell me how I’m sposed to breathe on land
Where there’s not more women than I can stand
How will I function with more men at hand
on land on land
Got us out here in the waters so deep
without waves rockin me I won’t sleep
Saying goodbyes will make me weep
On land on land
I’ll miss you…
Les McCabe….
HAHAHHAHHAHAH. We got another standing ovation. We had TWO costume changes. First we were in sweats, then we stripped, and underneath that I was wearing the full body panda suit I bought in Japan, and he was wearing traditional Muslim garb, just picture old men in Aladdin. The next change, we stripped out of that stuff into evening wear. It was great. I love Greg, he is really one of my favorite people on this ship, and we make a really good team.
Alright that has been enough energy expended for this morning. Goodnight.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Second Half of Japan
Second half of Japan…
We took the bullet train over to Tokyo, and the ride took about two hours and 45 minutes. And these trains go 230 miles an hour, so we went quite a ways. I was exhausted and tried desperately to sleep, even wrapped my scarf around my head to make it dark, but no sleep would be had. We arrived and stepped into a grand city of lights, traffic, people everywhere, so many signs pointing us in so many different directions.
We had a place booked at the Tokyo International Hostel, but due to really bad planning on Kendra’s part, we didn’t have the address or even the phone number of the place because she didn’t look it up in her email before we left the ship. Great. And the place had a curfew at 11, and it was around 10. We were quickly running out of time and would soon be bedless in Tokyo.
We asked a few taxi drivers to take us there and none of them seemed to know where it was. We wrote it down in English as most Japanese people can read English very well, but when that didn’t work we decided to ask someone to write it down in Japanese for us. We asked three teen-looking kids, two girls and a guy. They turned out to be a blessing of the Tokyo gods. They looked up our hostel on their phone, told us the train would be quicker, looked up our train route for us, helped us buy our tickets, and sent us on our way, telling us to hurry up. Lifesavers. City of miracles.
We got off at our stop at 10:45. Tick tock tick tock. We spotted a policeman and frantically asked him where it was, and he pointed to a large highrise very near us. We quickly made our way over, got to the 18th floor, and rejoiced when we stepped through the doors of our hostel just in time. We cancelled the other two nights we had booked there, because we had thought previously there was no curfew. City of lies. Our guidebook was a liar. The internet was a liar too. So all in all I think we each paid around $45 which is not bad for a night in Tokyo at all.
We got our room keys and listened to the rules. Shower time was over and would begin again from 6:30-8:30 a.m. You had to rent towels. Lights out at 11:30. We had a room just the four of us. Hannah and I sat on the windowsill for awhile and looked out at the city lights. Then we all went upstairs to try and get something to eat. Well, the city of future has vending machines EVERYWHERE. This particular vending machine, you could order any sort of hot food, like hot dogs, fried rice, noodles, French fries. All you had to do was put in your money, wait 60 seconds, and it would pop out piping hot. And… it was yummy.
There were only foreigners staying here, many British people but people from all over the place as well. I used the internet for 15 minutes for a dollar and sat next to some particularly smelly Argentines.
I got on facebook to put my birthday spot on my status so that all of my friends could meet me at the same place. We had decided to go to the Absolut Ice Bar, a bar made completely of ice. I had been planning this for maybe three months, and everyone knew to meet there at 11. So I googled the place to find the address… and it is closed because they are moving locations and won’t open back up again till late April. Awesome. So I write in my status, don’t meet at the ice bar, it is closed, I’ll see you all in Ropungi! No one had any phone service because Japan has all of their own phone and internet services, so I hoped I would at least run into my friends out and about that night.
By midnight I was ready to pass out, so I climbed into bed and pulled my curtains closed and lay my head down on my rice pillow and tried to get comfortable on my inch-thick mattress. I didn’t sleep well again… I lay there for hours and couldn’t have gotten more than two hours of sleep. The light was coming in when I shut my eyes.
Woke up at 8 the next morning, and it was my birthday! HOORAY! I took a shower with a rented towel, and got ready for our day in Tokyo. We stopped to eat at Denny’s because that was an exciting name to see, and we all had great and relatively cheap meals. The sausage was delicious.
All that Kendra cared about on this day was meeting up with her high school friend, who lives in Tokyo, and that basically set the tone for the day. We again didn’t plan very well and didn’t know exactly what we wanted to see or how to get there. If I could do Tokyo over again…
We picked out a couple of places in the map book that looked cool and tried to make our way to them. That was a lot harder than it sounds because we’d have to go to the JR line, have someone tell us what line to get on to get to the area, and once we were in the area, we had to try to find someone that could tell us how to actually walk there, because taxis were far too expensive.
Before we even went somewhere, however, we walked around trying to find a place Kendra could use internet, because she AGAIN didn’t use the internet that was available to us in the hostel to get to her email to write her friend about a meeting time, Very frustrating and a huge time waster. So we walked around, I kept trying to get it on my phone, legitimately a million times, until I finally got it. I stopped dead in my tracks and let her write her friend an email. When that was finally done, we got on with our day.
We decided to go to Tokyo Tower first, which is a replica of the Eiffel Tower, but taller… and in Tokyo. We could see it in the distance, so we just headed in that direction. On our way there we happened onto a beautiful Buddhist temple. I stood in the courtyard and let the cherry blossoms falling off the trees blow by me. It was a beautiful sight. We washed our hands off with freezing cold water to cleanse before entering the hallowed space. The temple was mostly wooden and one of the largest I had seen so far in Japan. Outside were many Buddhist statues and other artifacts. There was one representation of Buddha that I saw most often, with him pointing with one finger on his right hand to the sky. Many flowers adorned this statue. Outside of the temple was almost like a little fair; you could buy several different types of food and souvenirs.
Inside the temple was decorated with brilliant gold, everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling, on the walls, even Buddha himself was rockin’ the gold. And, of course, the incense burned and smelled ever so sweet.
We continued onward and explored a shrine to the right of the temple, as well as a small courtyard area with hundreds of small statues of children, each one decorated with a red bonnet and necktie, and holding a pinwheel. There was something calming and even a little sad looking at them and watching the breeze flow through and each pinwheel in turn spin madly with the gust. I didn’t know what they represented, but Hannah’s blog informed me that they represent the spirit of dead or aborted children. Each statue is identical, with their hands folded as if praying and eyes closed.
I continued to wander around and stumbled on a sort of graveyard area. There was one courtyard surrounded by cherry blossoms with maybe a dozen rather large stone monuments, and I don’t necessarily know what they were for. Each one had a wooden sign near it, and many had flowers on them.
The next area I wandered into I almost certain was a graveyard, but really there is no way of knowing. There were hundreds of stone monuments, maybe four of five feet tall, with Japanese writing. They were usually smooth and glazy, and I suppose they hold urns. Many were decorated with flowers. Most had several wooden pegs propped up behind them, all with Japanese writing on them. I wish I had someone there who could tell me what I was looking at. I got one great picture of the cherry blossoms flurrying in the wind, falling all over the stones.
We walked out of that area and came along a little stream surrounded by foliage and went climbing around a little. There were so many little random beautiful spots like that in Japan.
Finally we were at the tower, which was pretty cool, just picture the Eiffel Tower painted orange and white. Outside there was this crepe shop. You could fill the crepes with ice cream, sauce, fruit, deliciousness, and I couldn’t wait to get one as soon as I was out of the tower. Also, I was on a mission to get boba tea.
We bought a ticket for about eight dollars to go up. The view was pretty awesome, but I know it would have been even better at night. I walked all the way around a couple times, checked out all the sights, and looked down at the area where the floor was clear. They had these cool video screens where you could see the view progress for 24 hours in high speed. What a beautiful city, the night view is spectacular.
After exploring, we went downstairs where they had a bunch of shops and food. I didn’t buy anything because the prices were outrageous, but I was definitely tempted. The smallest, teeniest, cheapest P.O.S. Hello Kitty keychain was eight dollars. How does anyone afford to live in Tokyo??
When we got back to the bottom, I got my very own delicious crepe filled with strawberry ice cream, strawberry sauce, and delicious banana. Yum.
I really wanted to go see the Shinto Shrine after this, but Kendra’s personal itinerary called again, and we headed to the train station to go meet her friend Mary. We caught a train to an area, met up with Mary, Mary and Kendra had their sweet reunion, then we caught a train right back to where we just came from. Annoying. Sorry for the enormous amount of bitterness in this blog, but you know what, I am bitter. Mary wasn’t that friendly, was pretty boring, wouldn’t let me use her call phone when I needed to call my friend, and she just wasn’t a good host in general. Thanks for nothing.
So we headed to the Harajuku district to see all of the Harajuku girls and their wicked style. Everything Gwen Stefani ever sang about was absolutely true. The clothes were insane. And insanely expensive. It’s basically a huge shopping district, and I had a lot of fun looking around, but I can buy expensive clothes back in the US. It was fun to explore, though. I took lots of pictures of the girls all dressed up; wigs of ever color and style, bright leggings, crazy heels, posh jackets, fake eyelashes, the works. Apparently every Sunday the “fashion gangs” come out and hang out on street corners so people can take pictures of them. I want to start a fashion gang. We would wear pajamas.
I got especially excited when I saw a girl with bubble tea! She pointed me in the direction she got it, and Hannah and Adrienne and I all got delicious boba. Birthday wish granted.
I got internet on my phone again and was so excited to see that I had a message from Chris Cooke. He went to Damien for high school and was in a band called Winds of Plague. I knew of him, he was friends with a few of my friends. He went to UCSD and became really good friends with Fran, which is where I met him and hung out with him several times. He said that we should definitely hang out and he gave me a meeting place and time to meet him. Finally, we might be able to meet up with someone fun! So Hannah, Adrienne and I left Kendra and Mary behind and headed to Shibuya to meet Chris.
We arrived a little before our meeting time and waited for a little while, until there he was with his bike! I ran up to him and hugged him, it was so cool to be hanging out with someone from home. He is studying in Tokyo for a year. He’s been there for about nine months. Next year he’s finishing up his senior year at UCSD, so I can hang out with him at home too! I thought it was so nice of him to message me, even though we have only hung out a few times. Adrienne, Hannah, Chris, and I all go to school in San Diego, so we talked about San Diego a LOT which was really nice, and I talked about Fran for about three hours straight.
He was a great host. We told him we wanted some good, cheap sushi and he immediately took us over to a place. Mary, on the other hand, had told us, when we told her we wanted sushi, that “she never at sushi in the city.” Oh.
The sushi place was pretty cool. All of the sushi was on a conveyer belt and you just picked what you wanted. You could tell the price of the dish by the plate design. Chris grabbed glasses and started filling them with tea like he owned the place, then he told us what each sushi was as it conveyed by. It was really cool listening to him speak Japanese. He had to pause sometimes when talking to us because it had been so long since he spoke English, which pretty much blew my mind. The sushi was delicious, and I tried everything, even eel. Oh and I eat jellyfish in China, I keep forgetting to write about that haha. Adrienne ate twenty dollars worth all by herself, while Hannah and I each paid about six. That’s my girl, Adrienne.
Chris took us around the area a little and showed us this one shop that was insane. The minute I walked in I saw it… a full body panda suit. I had to have it. Life just wouldn’t be the same knowing there was a panda suit somewhere in the world that wasn’t mine. So I did buy it, and it is the best purchase I have made on SAS. Second best purchase… my panda hat from China. The rest of the shop was nuts, all sorts of crazy clothes, fake nails, electronics, stuffed animals, anything you could want really.
We headed back towards the train station to meet up with Kendra and Mary, since Adrienne and Kendra had split a locker and we all needed to change clothes for the evening’s festivities. We got our stuff and got dolled up. I wore a black dress, black tights, gold heels, and little tiger ears I had purchased for a dollar to signify that I was the birthday girl.
Chris took all of us to a bar he hangs out with to chill for awhile. He doesn’t drink, but this bar is a pretty cool place and he got a couple of jobs out of the people he met there. It has a half pipe in it and is also sort of an art exhibit for tattoo artists. The current exhibit was of pictures of the kappa, a Japanese mythological monster. The kappa is kind of frog like. It has a pool on the top of its head filled with water, and if these pool is empty, it loses all of its power. When you encounter a kappa, you are supposed to bend down very low, so that the monster bows to you as well, and the water falls out of the pool. Kappas are not supposed to be violent creatures. They eat cattle mostly, though they will pick off small kids once in awhile. The drawings definitely stated otherwise, however. All of the kappa were either in a very violent or sexual setting. Interesting, though, to think about different culture’s myths and monsters.
We sat and had a couple of drinks, we were basically the only ones in there. We played Uno Stack Em, which is basically Jenga. Then the lights went dim and Happy Birthday came on, and they brought me a bowl of popcorn with candles in it and some chocolates. It was so sweet of them. I made a wish and blew them out, then we all scarfed. Next a guy did a magic trick for us, levitating a pen out of his palm. WOAH! City of magic. Everyone was really nice and we had a good time there. Adrienne told Chris about the tattoo she wanted to get, and he hooked it up with a local tattoo artist so she could get it done. They set up a time to meet the next morning. Chris was great and really helped us out.
We took off from the bar and headed out to explore the rest of Shibuya district, hoping to run into friends. We stopped into one more bar and had another drink. Every time we saw SAS kids we would latch onto them for a little, until we finally found a big group and ended up going into Club Vuenos with them, $10 including two drinks. Sweet. The place was empty pretty much except for us. In fact, the whole district seemed empty. The trains stop running at midnight, so everybody either goes home or passes out at local food places till they start running again. We are just not used to that.
There was another birthday boy in the group and him and I celebrated our coming of age. Hannah and I kept going up to the bartenders and saying “TANJOBI!” or something like that, which means Happy Birthday. I kept forgetting how to say it, though, so I kept asking people, and they would all lie to me. It was pretty funny, I’m not sure why they lied. City of lies. Anyways, the bartenders were pretty awesome and kept lining up little shots for Hannah, me, and themselves. They finally got sick of us asking though and turned us away. The club apparently got really packed with locals around 2 a.m. The night after about 1 is a little fuzzy for me, but I know I had a blast.
I woke up the next morning. Where am I? All four of us girls are in the same bed, Hannah Kendra and I lying next to each other, and Adrienne at our feet. We ended up staying the night in a love hotel, which you can rent by the hour, if you know what I mean. I had lost one of my tiger ears in the night’s festivities and was pretty sad. That was nothing, though, compared to what Hannah had lost… her entire purse. It had her passport, her camera, our locker key, and both of our train passes in it. S***.
We went back to the club and knocked, but no one was there. I was supposed to meet Win that morning to go with him to the Pokemon Store, but now we had more pressing things to deal with, so I met him and let him know I wasn’t going, then Kendra took off to go meet Mary, leaving us with Mary’s phone number. Hannah was mortified and visibly very upset, who wouldn’t be? I tried to let her know that this could happen to anyone, none of us were upset with her, and we were here to help her in any way we could. She just felt so bad.
We met up with Chris and he immediately took us to a police box. They filed a police report and everybody kept assuring us that it would probably show up, things don’t get stolen in Tokyo. They were wrong.
We were hungry so we stopped at a place to eat. Chris stopped at a pretty traditional place, which I wasn’t too happy about, but it turned out to be delicious. First, you put your money in a machine and press a button for which item you want. City of future. Then you sit down and they bring it to you. My meal was like a big noodle soup, but so much more than that. The broth is like the most delectable, amazing, brothy broth you’ve ever tasted, and the noodles are amazing, and there are two slices of yummy pork, a hard boiled egg, and spices to die for. It was so. So. Good. I knew something was really wrong with Hannah because she didn’t eat, and that never happens.
Chris called the club for us. They informed him no one would be there till 3 p.m. and to check on the bag then. Unfortunately, I had a baseball game in Yokohama to get to, and I needed to leave by 2:30. We weren’t sure what to do, so we just headed with Adrienne and Chris over to the tattoo shop to get Adrienne’s tat done. The tattoo artist turned on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for her and got to work. We watched for a few minutes, then we left Adrienne to be stabbed and Chris and Hannah and I headed out as we all had places we needed to be. Chris was meeting a friend, I needed to get to Yokohama, and we had decided that Hannah would meet up with Kendra and Mary so Mary could help her contact the embassy/find her purse. We got to the train station and had a worker there break into our locker for us, as we no longer had the key. That cost us $17. After we had our things again, I didn’t want to leave Hannah and I was scared Kendra wouldn’t be a huge help. I gave Hannah 400 yen and a big hug and said, “Kendra better stand up for you, Hannah.” Too bad I would find out later that she didn’t, and I never should have left Hannah alone.
I gave Chris a big hug goodbye at the train station and thanked him for being a lifesaver, then hopped on my train to Yokohama. It was about a 35 minute ride. I watched everyone sleeping around me, and couldn’t help but notice the girl sleeping on top of me. Seriously. It was hilarious, she was actually on me. The Japanese people can sleep standing up, sitting up, any way at all really.
I got to Yokohama and set about walking to the ship. I was still in my dress and tights from last night. I finally had normal shoes now that I had cracked open our locker, but I had gum on the bottom of my tights from walking all over Tokyo barefoot while carrying my heels in my hand. Like the walk of shame times ten. The five minute walk was more like fifteen, but Semester at Sea always miscalculates time to get in and out of ports. City of lies. It was also really hot out, I was tired, and it had been a long day. The port was really weird and long, but also cool, but it took me awhile to find my way in.
When I was finally ship sweet ship, I had to immediately change to leave for the baseball game, which they told us to be there for at four even though the game started at 6:30. I figured they gave us extra time to get on buses and ride over there, but no. We walked twenty minutes to the park. ALL the field office did was get us the $22.00 tickets, and they charged us $53.00. That makes me so angry that they rip us off like that.
Braxton and I decided to spend the evening together and he coerced me into stopping int the nearest 7-11, our heaven, and buy cheap food. The food in these places is so good, and so cheap. We got our stuff and went out to the street, sat on a corner, and ate. It was great. Then he coerced me into buying these lemonade alcoholic drinks called “STRONG” that are 8% and pretty tall. He then promised me that we would go out tonight and buy me a birthday drink. Braxton is pretty much my favorite person. Hannah’s too.
After sitting out for a long time and eating and drinking and talking we finally headed into the game around 6. The ballpark was really cool and the crowd was crazy. One side was all home and one was away. All of the cheers are orchestrated by a little band with a drummer, trumpet, some other instruments, and a huuuuuge flag. Braxton and I really wanted to wave that flag. We went up and asked if we could, and they tapped their two pointer fingers to tell us no. That means no in Japanese, or if they REALLY mean no, they cross their arms in an aggressive fashion. So we asked if we could play the trumpet. No again. Braxton and I had a blast, cheering along in Japanese, even though we had no idea what we were saying, and we sat right in the Japanese group the whole time, far away from SASers.
I met so many people at this game. There were a bunch of 30-something military guys behind me and I talked with them for a long time. Then I went over to sit with Doug and some other people and this guy called out, “Hey, are you from Semester at Sea?” And I was like, “Yeah!” Then I went over and spent an hour with them. They were all twenty-four year old Navy guys. They had just gotten back from observing the North Korean satellite launch. NBD. They were really nice guys and I enjoyed asking them a bunch of questions about life in the Navy. They asked me just as many questions about SAS. I asked them if they knew any good places to go out around here, and they told me to gather my friends after the game and follow them to a bar. Perfect.
I gathered up Alicia and Nate and Doug, and tried to find Braxton but he was gone. Sad face, but pretty much I had been sitting with these guys for an hour and he thought I had left. Sorry B!
So the Yokohama BayStars were a pretty terrible team and they lost by at least 9-1. Bad. But it was still a great experience. I haven’t seen nearly enough sporting events in the countries I have been to and I regret it.
We took off with the guys to a bar. On the way there we passed by a Japanese guy in a suit, passed out on the street, vomit caked on his cheek. Disgusting. I’m telling you, they party hard in Japan. Hannah and I also saw these guy vomiting his lungs out at a subway station once. Oh and when I asked our interport lecturer if there was an open container law in Japan, he said, “Are you kidding? These people’s idea of a good time is sitting under a tree and getting drunk.” Haha.
Anyways, the bar was a chill place, the Navy guys bought all of our drinks. I spent the entire time talking to Doug, who I had the most interesting bar conversation with of my entire life. Doug asks questions like, what did you like to do as a kid, what are your grandparents like, what is your idea of heaven? He is an extremely intriguing guy and he is basically a human mindreader. We played darts and then we took off a little before midnight to catch the last train.
Ship sweet ship. I was lying in bed sleeping when Caroline stumbled in, drunk as a skunk, and that was pretty funny.
The next morning I woke up around nine and went to breakfast. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back into Tokyo and try to meet up with Chris again. I gave him a call but he didn’t answer, so I just decided to wander around Yokohama with Greg and Caroline. We had a nice, stress-free few hours together. We went over to the amusement park and rode the gigantic ferris wheel, talked and looked out over the beautiful coastal city. I took pictures with a giant Pikachu. We wet over to the big mall and ate food. I sat down for another traditional meal and had basically the same noodle dish from before. Just as delicious.
Next we took a little boat ride for four dollars around the bay. There were such sweet little babies on the ride and we made faces at them the whole time. We passed by our boat and took a bunch of pictures. After the ride Caroline and Greg headed to the ship and I went on a HUNT for a solid hour for postcards and stamps. I wandered through Chinatown, which wasn’t that cool because I have actually been to China. Japan does not cater to tourists. No post cards. No stamps. No nothing. I asked about a dozen people to help guide me to a place to buy post cards. I finally found one, like a mile and a half later, and once I had them it was time to head back to the ship.
We all carded onto the ship, THEN had to disembark for ANOTHER face to face inspection. City of crazy. It felt so good to be on the ship after that, sit for hours on end, sleep for hours on end, be clean, not be stressed.
Traveling shows you people’s true colors, and Hannah certainly saw some people’s true colors. When she met up with Mary and Kendra, she told them her predicament, then, being the overly nice person she is, said, “I know you guys are sightseeing and I don’t want to get in your way or anything…” Instead of saying, no of course not, you have NOTHING, we will help you in any way we can, they nodded, and left her. I am still angry about this, a week and a half later. Kendra didn’t even give Hannah her green sheet with all of the important phone numbers and port info on it. So Hannah embarked on an epic journey, all alone, and everything eventually was okay in the end. She got lucky, met a guy who actually worked at the embassy, he set her up, and she got an emergency passport the next morning. With no help from Kendra or her friend WHO LIVES IN JAPAN AND SPEAKS THE LANGUAGE. ARRRRGGHHHHH. So mad.
Anyways… the last nine day stretch on the ship was a blast, I’ll write a little more about it later. Right now I’m gonna play card games and just relax for awhile. Hawaii was amazing, so so good… and I have fifteen days left before I am home. Unbelievable.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
last sentence got left out haha...
I like skinnydipping just as much as the next person, but this was different. The whole time I was thinking of my mom and how if she were here she would be the queen of the naked bathhouse and have no shame whatsoever and that is why I love her.
Japan Part 1
Tokyo… city of lies, future, magic, transportation, and a series of unfortunate events.
Going into Japan I had many high expectations. Unfortunately, most of these would not be met.
First of all, Japan is the most ridiculously expensive place I have ever been, other than the US. Hannah, her roommate Kendra, Adrienne, and I had all decided to travel together, so we bought our bullet train passes at $300 a pop. And that was very worth the deal, as just to Hiroshima and back is $200, and though the regular trains are a lot cheaper, they take a lot longer, and so limit our already limited time. Also, they allowed us to use all Japan Rail trains in the cities, which saved us at least another 50 bucks. You are only allowed to buy the JR passes outside of the country, as they are solely for tourists, which I thought sucks a lot for the Japanese citizens.
It took us a long time to get off the ship that morning, as we all had to do face to face inspections, have our temperatures taken, be fingerprinted and photographed. Japan is not messing around.
Also, I am just going to say right away that Japan is at least twenty years ahead of us in every possible way. We are so far behind we may never catch up.
Once we had our group together we headed over to the bullet train to book a ticket to Hiroshima. This was easy enough, and we explored the train station for awhile, marveling at the beautiful sweets and many meaty, bready goodies. I was hungry and finally decided on a sort of bread dumpling, meat surrounded by sweet bread, about as big as a large muffin, along with a couple of other fried yummies. JAPANESE FOOD WAS AMAZING. Everything!!! Everywhere you looked, another cake shop, another pastry shop with breads of wonder encasing delicious meats. And it all cost so much, but it was so damn good!
We got on the bullet train and took our very comfortable seats. These trains go 230 miles an hour. NBD. Everything whizzed by outside.
We got to Hiroshima and headed to the Pace Park and museum by bus. As we walked towards the Peace Park, our eyes were immediately drawn to a three story high skeleton of a domed building that used to be. This is the one building that has been preserved and left just as it was after the dropping of the atom bomb on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 AM. It is eerie in its permanence. A moment frozen in time. Twisted steel, stairs leading up to a now nonexistent floor, bricks crumbling away, and finally your eye settles on the exoskeleton of the dome. The building used to be an important government building in Hiroshima, and now will stand forever as a reminder of the terrors of nuclear war.
We made our way through the beautiful peace park, people riding bikes, resting under cherry blossoms, sitting on benches. We entered into the museum, which was extremely well done as well as impartial. The first part detailed the history of Hiroshima, which I read through rather quickly as I knew the museum would be closing in a couple of hours and I wanted to be sure to get through everything. I read over why Hiroshima was ultimately chosen as the bombing site; because it was an important military center, though occupied mostly by citizens, and ultimately because the weather was perfect for bombing in Hiroshima on that day. A video detailed every minute of the bombing from the perspective of the actual American plane that dropped it, including the pilot’s words as he flew away from the mushroom cloud exploding behind him. Something along the lines of, “Target dropped, no enemy fire intercepted, plane returning to carrier.” Something about the straightforwardness of those words, the lack of emotion, the fact that at the instant he spoke those words, thousands of people had just been obliterated, stayed with me.
There were many models throughout the museum. Two of the most intense were the before and after models of Hiroshima in 1945, and then another model of Hiroshima today. Before, it was a beautiful city. One second after that bomb dropped, there was nothing. Nothing. I cannot grasp that something has the power to do that on this earth, and that we would actually use it as a weapon against other human beings. It was interesting as well to see the bits and pieces of architecture that remained standing, like the bridge over a body of water that was meant to be the epicenter of the bombing. And there stood the dome, looking exactly as it still does today, standing in solitude.
The last part of this room of the museum was dedicated to sharing Hiroshima’s mission to stop all nuclear weapon production, promote immediate disarmament, and never allow something like this to occur again. Every time a nuclear test is conducted by any country, the mayor of Hiroshima sends a letter of protest. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of these letters of protest were displayed on a wall. It amazed me that this was the attitude that Hiroshima chose to take. Of course I compared it to my own country, which I assume would take the path of revenge over repair any day. There was also a list of all of the countries with nuclear capabilities and who has the most. We are second only to Russia.
We always think of communist countries as dangerous, Middle Eastern countries. We don’t want them to have weapons, we put sanctions on them. But WE are the most dangerous country in the world. We are the most reckless, we are the only ones that have used the weapons, and we are the ones most likely to use them again. The United States is a frightening world power.
I finally entered the main building, which I hadn’t even known was there. This was dedicated to those that died in the bombing. I only had thirty minutes in this area, but those thirty minutes were beyond influential for me.
The first image that confronted my eyes was a wall that contained a lifesize model of three people, fires blazing behind them, skin literally melting off of their bones. What could that possibly feel like? To have your skin suddenly dripping away? The room was filled with items of the dead that their families found later on; the only remnants of their bodies. There were watches set to 8:15 AM for eternity… the exact time the bomb dropped. There were sandals, children’s charred clothing, school lunchboxes, school books. Many remnants were from the many innocent schoolchildren that died. The hardest things to see were the stories that accompanied the items… some of the items were found near the schoolyard by parents who knew their children were dead but were perhaps holding onto hope that they would find them alive, or at least be able to take their bodies home. Instead, they found these small items that hinted at the fate their children had succumb to.
Then I came across a class case containing human nails and skin. The caption read that it was donated by a young boy’s mother. He had somehow made it home after the blast, his skin hanging off of his body. He had tried to suck the puss out of his raw fingers because of his ravenous thirst. He died a few hours later, and his mother saved the skin and nails to show his father, who was at war.
There were also pictures of burn victims, their bodies looking like the outside of a marshmallow when it catches on fire. Everything was so gruesome and hard to take, but it was important to see it, important to know that this is real, this happened, almost all of the people that were injured or died were civilians, and my country is responsible. The country I take pride in did this. My country dropped the world’s first nuclear weapon… and we did it twice. What a frightening nation we are.
After we left the museum, I needed a good thirty minutes to decompress. It was very disturbing, to say the least.
We explored the rest of the Peace Park, including the Children’s Memorial. People leave hundreds and thousands of colorful origami paper cranes at this sight, in memory of Sadako, a Japanese girl who got leukemia at age 12 from exposure to radiation from the atom bomb, though she lived outside of the area of the blasts. She spent her time in the hospital making paper cranes, as there is a Japanese myth that if you make 1000 paper cranes, you can make one wish and it will come true. Her wish was to live. She only managed to make 644 before she died.
There was a Japanese old man there who introduced himself to me as Sunflower. He had a magnificent camera and was taking pictures that looked like professional portraits. He took a couple of us.
The sun set over the cherry blossoms and paper cranes, and I looked around me at all of the people lounging around in the park, riding bicycles, drinking wine, eating food, laughing. This was once a place of devastation. People died on this very spot. Whatever buildings used to stand here were blown away in an instant. And yet… the people prevailed.
Japan really presented me with the idea of solidarity, and pride in your country.
Before catching the bullet train back to Kobe, we stopped in a mall to explore and eat some food. The fashions are crazy, just like every picture you’ve ever seen. And with an expensive price tag to match. Hey, I can buy clothes for that much in the US, I’m not gonna buy them here. There was this one necklace with lensless purple Ray-bans hanging off it like bling that I really really wanted though.
We went downstairs and explored the supermarket, which was crazy, trying to find some normal snacks. I ended up buying jelly balls, delicious, and lots of pocky and koala bears. Yum.
Then we sat down at a place to eat and had okinamiyaki, or a Japanese pancake for slang. But it’s not a pancake. It’s a plate full of DELICIOUS, including egg, chicken, calamari, sauce, onion, cheese, just everything delicious. Like a big fat Japanese omelet. So so good. Okinamiyaki is my favorite word to say now.
That night Hannah and Adrienne and I got dolled up and headed to a bar everyone was going to because, like many smart bars do, they set up a deal for SAS kids. It was $15 to get in with an open bar. The place was small, and there were two locals in it and about 75 SASers. GOOD night, let me tell you. Open bar + SAS kids = Belligerence.
The next morning was one of the funniest mornings I have had the entire voyage. We were all still drunk, except for Kendra. Needless to say, it was hilarious. Kendra was our mom. We called her mommy. We would have been lost without her. It took until noon for the booze to seep out of our systems. We were late for our train to Kyoto, so we booked another one and got some more food. Always food.
The train ride was rather quick and I watched everything fly by outside.
We got there and hit our first obstacle… we had no idea where to go. Our trusty guidebook was pretty damn useless when it came down to it, and it really hampered our time in Japan. We finally picked that we would head to the botanical gardens. We took a bus there, and then wasted a lot of time finding a suitable place to grab food for a good half hour.
Finally we went into the gardens, and they were really beautiful. All of the Japanese people are out and about to celebrate cherry blossom season. They all come, sit underneath the trees, and eat and get drunk. What a grand festival. There were so many beautiful babies… I took lots of creeper pics of them. Many people were sleeping under the shade. The weather was downright HOT on this day and I sweat a good amount. Winter?
After the gardens we headed over to the Golden Temple by bus. This was beautiful as well, a temple of pure gold sitting on a lake. We tossed our spare yen into this bucket to try to gain luck. Kendra almost made it.
After we explored the area we headed to a public bath house for a very… unique Japanese experience. I am very proud of all of us for going through with it, because it took a lot of guts and overcoming awkwardness to strip down to our skivvies and enter a bath house with a bunch of naked Japanese women. And the towels they gave us, which we had to rent, were slightly bigger than face washcloths. Awesome.
We got into the locker room and Hannah was FREAKING out. So was I really, but slowly we all took off our clothes, laughing and giggling the whole way. The Japanese women either thought we were amusing or obnoxious. They handed us these buckets, motioning something and speaking in Japanese. We took them, but who knows what they said.
We at least knew some etiquette for bath time. You are supposed to wash your entire body before. We sat down on these stools in front of individual shower and awkwardly figured out how to work the showerheads, then rinsed off. Just picture it… the four of us, naked, crouched on stools, washing off, laughing our heads off, while Japanese women look on.
Finally we were ready to go in the actual bath. We stepped into one area and a woman immediately began to try and tell us something. Unfortunately, once again, we don’t speak Japanese. She keeps motioning towards the wall, so Adrienne puts her hand up to it, then tells me to. I do, and get a nice little electric shock. Ouch! So I still have no idea why there were electric bubbles coming out of the wall, but I think perhaps the woman was telling us, watch out for this, this area is for your feet only. But who knows really. She could have been trying to make us touch it just for kicks. Who knows.
So we chilled in the scalding hot spa for awhile, then when we couldn’t take it anymore, we got out and sat in the outside area. The water here was warm but not hot, and the ceiling was open to the outside air. It felt great. We all sat on ledges with our feet in the water… talking… naked. For like thirty minutes.
It was crazy and not something I would do every weekend or something, but it was a cultural and freeing experience. We all got dressed and headed back to catch our evening train to Tokyo.
TO BE CONTINUED.......
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
And the ship goes on...
April 14, 2009
Okay, before I write my Japan blog I wanted to write about a couple of things that I forgot to write about that keep nagging at me.
First, that first night in Thailand when we all went out, I left out a really really cool part of that night. We saw some SASers at this sweet African-themed restaurant so we went in and sat down with them and got some delicious Thai food. God I can’t wait to have Thai food again. Anyways, there was this great band playing American rock favorites. As soon as I had a couple of drinks in me I went right up there and sang with them, a bunch of Eagles and CCR songs. It was great, they were really nice and great musicians, and I have forgotten how much I really love to sing.
Another really hilarious and embarrassing event for me occurred in Vietnam. We were walking down the streets in Ho Chi Minh City looking for a fun place to go at night. We had asked several people, but nobody really spoke great English, and we were tipsy and impatient. So I walked up to an Asian girl and said, “Excuse me, do you speak English?” Which I NEVER do, I always just start talking as to avoid the very situation I was about to get into. She looks at me and says, “Um… I’m on SAS.” Oh god. My heart dropped and I instantly started apologizing, saying, “Oh my god, I am so sorry, that is the most racist thing I have ever done in my life.”
HAHHAHHAHAH. It was so bad but so so so funny to look back on. That girl probably hates me.
Anyways, this is my fifth day on the ship on our nine day stretch and I’ve actually been having a lot of fun. I am finally starting to love life on this ship just as it is coming to an end. Funny how that always happens.
Last night was the charity auction that I was asked to MC. There were two other MCs as well, Steven Trombetta, who was in charge of the shipwide Assassins game and is a pretty nice guy, and Johnathan Katz, our resident Jewish stand up comedian who I have a legitimate silly crush on and get nervous around. We had a lot of fun doing it and it went really well. There were some great items, as well as funny items. I won having our shipboard disciplinarian Joe read all of my friends and I a bedtime story. Pretty sweet, huh? I also auctioned off a day at Raging Waters with me, which my friend Adrienne bid on and won haha. I tried to bid on a weeklong condo in Waikiki for my parents, but it got a little out of the price range I was shooting for. By a little, I mean it went for $1200. We raised about $8000 for the shipboard drive, which goes towards the fairy godmother fund as well as getting more stuff on the ship for the voyage, like new exercise equipment, AV equipment, all the stuff that makes living here fun.
The talent show is on the 16th and Greg and I worked furiously last night and today to finish up our act. We did another song parody summing up the voyage so far and saying goodbye to our many fans. Haha. Everyone is pretty excited for it. We spliced together three songs, and there is a costume change… let’s just say the full body panda suit I bought in Japan will be making an appearance…
Also, we didn’t have class today, so I slept till one and I am still in my pajamas. And tonight is fancy dinner for my birthday! We are getting all dressed up and taking prom pics beforehand haha.
Three weeks…
Saturday, April 11, 2009
nine days at sea
Japan and long lost India blog coming soon.
It feels so good to be on this ship with my friends just vegging and sleeping for awhile. Nine days is a long time but honestly we all need them to recover. And study for many tests and finals coming up. FUN!!!! Bleh. Oh well this is really the first real schoolwork I’ve had to do, I can’t complain.
Happy Easter! Lucky for us, we get to have Easter TWICE. Right now I am almost an entire day ahead of you guys at home in Cali, 18 hours. Tonight at midnight, however, we are switching the clocks BACK a whole 24 hours, so we will be having April 12… again. Crazy huh?
I will be home in 25 days. It is absolutely unbelievable.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
China 1
April 5, 2009
First of all… three days till my 21st birthday!!! WOOOOOO!!! I can’t believe I am going to be 21… I keep thinking about my birthday last year… and my birthday before that, and how different each one has been and how far away 21 seemed, and now a year has flashed by before my eyes and I will celebrating in JAPAN! We are going to the Absolut Ice Bar in Tokyo, and everyone is meeting us there.
I wish North Korea would stop sending missiles and stuff, because it is really cramping our style.
Now for China. Communism is crazy and China was crazy but I loved it and had an amazing experience there. It was my second favorite country, behind Thailand of course. But… I do expect Japan to top that list. We will see.
Pulling into Hong Kong was astounding. The skyline is like nothing I have ever seen before. No city in America can even compare to this, and they call Hong Kong “Little Shanghai,” which means Shanghai is even BIGGER. It was just crazy because by now I have been to a lot of big cities all around the world and all over Europe and all over the US, and nothing I have ever seen comes remotely close. Everything was brilliantly lit up, even in the morning light. Business signs brightly glimmered from almost every building, Panasonic, AIG, etc, all blinking and changing colors. Every, single, building was a gigantic skyscraper, as far as the eye could see. And… it was chilly out! China was our first cold country since Morocco, and I wasn’t even that mad about it. Other than the fact I had no clothes to wear in winter weather, and it was gonna be pretty cold. Win let me borrow his big sweater with lining on the bodice and I took a sweater to wear under it, and I ended up being fine, even too warm sometimes.
Unfortunately for me, I wouldn’t even get to hang out in Hong Kong. My group immediately got on a bus and headed to the airport for out flight to Beijing. It was sad, made even sadder when later everyone talked about how Hong Kong was one of their favorite cities yet. Oh well, that just means I have somewhere to go back to in China!
The drive through Hong Kong was beautiful, and then I was in another spaceship airport. Seriously, US airports are nowhere near as cool or architecturally advanced as almost every other airport I have been to. I am no longer impressed. The Hong Kong and Beijing airports were like huge, futuristic malls. I didn’t bring along my Hong Kong money because I didn’t realize, hey, you might want to buy something in the airport, so Lexi bought me a muffin and frappuchino, and she got back the SWEETEST 10 note bill ever! I was obsessed with it, so much so that she eventually gave it to me. It is purple and has all these sweet colorful designs on it that remind me of rainbows and ribbondancing. What a great friend Lexi is.
There were about 50 people on this trip, a pretty solid number, and we had a good group of people. I spent most of time with Lexi and Win and we had so much fun together.
Arrived in Beijing in evening time. Again, I am amazed by the size of the city, the size and shapes and lights of the buildings. Every single building in Beijing is like a magnificent piece of art. Everything is lit up, all of the buildings are illuminated advertisements, everything is rainbow right, shimmering, glimmering, moving, changing, catching the eye, drawing you towards it.
Our guide’s name is Jonathan and he speaks English pretty fluently. His jokes are a little long and hard to follow, but he tried anyways. Lexi and I settle into our room and then head out to dinner at a restaurant.
Dinner was interesting to say the least. Everyone had warned us that Chinese food would be terrible but I wanted to give it a chance anyways. The first thing I tried was absolutely terrible, and the second thing on the table I just couldn’t bring myself to try. I’m glad I didn’t because later I found out it was chicken feet encased in jello. Delicious! This meal was horrendous, but most of the meals I had after this, especially at the dumpling buffet, were pretty darn good.
A bunch of us head to a street with a ton of karaoke bars, all lined up one after the other. We settle into one and order some drinks. Soon Win, Kelly, and I are up on stage singing “A Whole New World,” which now holds special significance for us now. We were terrible, but amazing at the same time. We headed to another little bar and ordered the DJ to play “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, the song I have now listened to on repeat nonstop since Thailand. It is pretty much the only song I listen to, actually. All of these bars were pretty dead since it was a weeknight, but we didn’t care, we got on that dancefloor and boogied.
Next morning, early wake up to travel to the Great Wall!!! The ride there was filled with sleeping, and I opened my eyes and all I could see were hills and mountains and a conspicuously long wall. A great wall even.
We began our trek up the wall. Lexi, Win and I were together pretty much the entire time. We took a lot of breaks to take pictures and laugh and breather, and we ended up making it to the very top in about an hour and twenty minutes, which meant we had forty minutes for our descent, which was honestly tougher than the climb up. We all had jelloid legs all the way down.
About halfway up the wall, an amazing thing happened. It started to snow! We all threw our hands up in the air and yelled with glee, “Snow, snow, snow!” All of the Chinese people laughed at us. We asked them how to say snow in Chinese and they answered something like, “Show-wah.” So we spent the rest of the time saying, “Showah showah showah.” It was great. It snowed again off and on for the rest of the time we were there.
When we got back down to the bottom Win and I saw a chain with hundreds of locks on it that we hadn’t seen before. Apparently all of the locks are put there by couples that have traveled to the Great Wall together, and when their love is locked on the wall forever, they throw away the key. Win and I purchased our own lock and had our names engraved on it, then we locked it on the wall and threw away the key! So our lock will remain on the Great Wall forever, a token of our Chinese love. We kept our love locked down, our love locked down, we got our love locked down, our love locked down.
After another nap, we continued our sightseeing at the Summer Palace. Google it. It was gorgeous and right on a huge lake. On our way out I made the best purchase I have made on the entire journey… a panda hat. It is amazing and I am going to wear it all over Japan and beyond.
Our last stop of the day was a distant stop to take pictures of the Bird’s Nest and the Watercube! It was so cool to see these buildings with my own eyes, after spending so many hours staring at the TV screen imagining what it would be like to be at the Olympics, to see these athletes compete, to stand where they stood. Win and Lexi and I decided we would head back to the area later to go up to the buildings and touch them and see them all lit up and have a moment of Olympic triumph.
Lexi and Win and I departed for a grand adventure on the Chinese subway system. It was only 2 yuan a ride, which is a fraction of a dollar. 7 yuan = 1 USD. The subway was so cool, there were so many fun things to take pictures of, including this huge image of the world all lit up. I found LA and threw up the sign for a picture. The subway was very easy to navigate and I always marvel at how universal English is and how hard most countries try to accommodate the language, while Americans don’t try at all to accommodate anyone at all.
If I had to describe Chinese people in one word, that word would be “aggressive.” And the women are worse. Nobody in China is scared to push you around a little if you are in their way, or in our case, if you are on the subway and they want to get in/out. The language is also very harsh and sounds like yelling 98% of the time. This one Chinese woman on the subway had a ton of stuff with her and got ready to exit the car, but the huge wave of people entering the car were not having it. The next thing we know, she is doubled over on the floor being pushed by everyone. We helped her up, but needless to say she did not get off on that stop. We geared ourselves up for the battle to get off at our right stop and pushed our way out with no problem, but that is probably because we are so tall compared to everyone else. In Tokyo they actually have hired personnel known as “pushers” to push you into the subway. Sweet.
We went to the Pearl Market first, and I spent a lot of money on very cool and very cheap gifts for all of my loved ones at home. I got my baby cousins some gifts I am very excited about, I can’t wait to show them! I probably bought the most souvenirs so far in China, and I expect to buy even more in Japan haha. Everything is just so colorful and cool… and cheap! Not that all of China was cheap… everything was very expensive and Japan is way worse.
Next we went to the Hard Rock Beijing to have some MUCH needed American food and meet up with some other SASers. The meal was 20 bucks, but it was worth every penny to bite into those nachos and that salad and that burger. Mmmm I miss American food so much sometimes. I texted Katie and let her know I was thinking of her. ☺
Finally we made our way to the Olympic sites. We got off one stop too far and so ended up walking about a mile back to the area, and when we finally got there… nothing was lit up. It was so sad, but even that disappointment couldn’t damper our spirits, as we were actually standing on hallowed Olympic ground. I tried to imagine the area filled with millions of people, athletes, fans, people from all over the world, Michael Phelps. The Bird’s Nest was huge and very impressive, but I wondered if people would think it was ugly in twenty years just like we think buildings from the 70’s are ugly. The Watercube was so cool, the outside just looks like a bunch of huge inflated bubbles. We took as many pictures as our hearts desired, and then it was already almost midnight, and we headed back to the hotel and into bed.
The next morning we were able to sleep in a little bit, then we headed to Tiananmen Square.
Some interesting facts about the level of censorship in China today… Greg wikipediaed Tiananmen Square while we were at sea, then again while we were in China, and the pages were completely and absolutely different. The Chinese page said no one had died, 700 people were injured, it was just a big accident. Obviously that is nowhere near the truth. Also on the day the incident occurred, the Red Cross issued a notice stating that thousands of people had died at the hands of the military. Within an hour this post was taken down and replaced with one where no one had died and people were only injured. As we approached the site, Jonathan our guide told us the subject was taboo and he couldn’t talk about it. My friend’s tour guide, however, told them that it had been an accident, no one had died, some people had been injured but it wasn’t a huge deal. The people in that bus were shocked that this Chinese person had no knowledge about what had actually occurred here at the hands of his own military. Brainwashed. The Communist element of the country was unavoidable, but I knew going in that was the way the country was, and so didn’t push taboo topics. Some of my friends did, however, and came out of the country with very interesting experiences and feelings of hopelessness and disbelief, as well as relief at their own freedom. But who knows how much our own government lies to us, really?
Anyways, the square is the biggest in the world, and it was huge indeed. The statues representing proud communists and symbols of their ideals were very interesting to me and I tried to capture some pictures without anybody arresting me.
We all got in line to go see the still-preserved body of Mao. This was definitely the creepiest part of the day. The line was huge and we all shuffled along. In front of the mausoleum lay hundreds of white flowers put there by people paying their respects to their dead leader. Inside, even more flowers, and finally… the perfectly preserved body of Mao Zedong. Laying there in a glass coffin. Bathed in yellow light. People bowing and paying respects. Creeeeeeepyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
We got out of there and explored the square. You would never think a gigantic massacre occurred there. That’s the thing about China… if you are a tourist, you will never know any downfalls of the country because everywhere you go is squeaky clean and catered directly to you, there are even “tourist orphanages” and “tourist retirement homes” that are strictly regulated, so that you see the good and great of China and communism alike, and never the dark side. And I did only see the good side. They do a great job.
I bought a Beijing 2008 Olympic hat for a dollar and popped that on my head as we entered the Forbidden City. Google it. On the entrance to the city hangs a huge picture of good ol’ Mao. I took a picture of a little Chinese boy waving the Chinese flag. I took a lot of pictures of Chinese children and adults alike, and I also took many pictures with them.
Never before have I been such a celebrity. The blondes got the worst of it, they were asked for pictures every two seconds, but Win and I were accosted as well because we are both so tall. We actually secretly loved it though, and I asked a lot of people to take pictures with me as well. My favorite people in the FC were the students in all matching track suits, a different color for each grade. Hilarious. I talked with them, or tried to anyways, and they loved us and took a bunch of pictures with us, always flashing the V for victory sign of course. The only ones we didn’t like were the ones that creepily took pictures of us right in front of our faces without asking us, and that happened a lot. I loved the children, though, they replaced Vietnamese kids as my favorite and I bet Japanese kids will in turn replace them haha. Chinese babies don’t wear diapers… they have holes in the bottoms of their clothes so their cute baby butts hang out in the cold winter air and they pop a squat wherever they would like. Charming. Wouldn’t that mean a lot more laundry/buying new clothes for the parents though? I didn’t quite understand it.
So we walked through plaza after plaza after building after building in the FC then head to another pretty yummy lunch. Oh this may be a good time to interject that the Lazy Susan is in full force in China and was utilized in every single restaurant I went to. Us individualistic Americans found it hard to cope with, however, as we all wanted our own food, our own portion, and we wanted it now.
Another interjection, the English translations on signs is HILARIOUS, one of my favorite things about China actually. My favorite one of all was posted above a hand drier in the bathroom that read, “This handryer has bad.” Has bad what? Does it also have good? If so, does it have more good than bad? Let’s hope so. My second favorite was one posted at the Great Wall that read, “Heart cerebral disease sufferer, ascend the Great Wall to please watch for.” HAHAHAHHAHAHHA.
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