Semester at Sea Spring 2009

Post-ship Reflections

2009-05-23T10:57:00.001-07:00

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.

Hawaii and Guatemala

2009-05-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

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.

bittersweet...

2009-05-12T11:49:00.001-07:00

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?

2009-05-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

NO MORE SCHOOOOOOOL! I AM A SENIOR!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Four days...

2009-05-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

Is this real?

ship of wonders

2009-04-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-04-23T23:12:00.000-07:00

I have one more day of classes, na na na na na na.

Second Half of Japan

2009-04-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-04-22T00:11:00.000-07:00

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.

last sentence got left out haha...

2009-04-19T02:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-19T01:56:00.000-07:00

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.......

And the ship goes on...

2009-04-14T22:25:00.000-07:00

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…

nine days at sea

2009-04-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

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.

Goodbye, Japan

2009-04-10T16:35:00.000-07:00

Domo arigoto, Mr. Roboto.

China 1

2009-04-05T07:58:00.001-07:00

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.

China 2

2009-04-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

Next we stopped at the Temple of Heaven. This was my favorite place of the day. It was like a big park with a ton of people of all ages hanging out and having a great time. The first thing we see as soon as we walk in is a random dance party going on. Chinese music played as dozens of people danced in pairs or all by themselves, everybody just out there shaking it in their own style. It was GREAT! Win and I got out there immediately and danced with everybody for a good ten minutes. It seriously made me so happy, I just loved watching these people all congregating like this. That is something you just don’t see in the States. Apparently spontaneous dance parties like these are very common in China, especially in the mornings and evenings. People gather in groups to do tai chi or other exercises. We saw a lot of people participating in this same ritual all over China, some with swords, fans, umbrellas, or with no props at all, just out there grooving.

Next we got to this long outdoor corridor where hundreds of people were hanging out, mostly elderly or parents with children. There was a different card or board game going on everywhere you looked. I watched as person after person slapped down a card on the table. There were also many musical groups. People set up music stands, turned on a tape player, and dozen people would stand and sing along. Musicians were also present. Groups of adults could be seen playing the Chinese version of hackey sack, which replaces the sack with a group of feathers weighted at the bottom. It’s a pretty fun toy and I bought one to send to my Vicarious Voyagers. And of course we saw more people dancing, freely and to routines. I love them.

The Temple of Heaven was beautiful as well, and after having a very satisfying day, we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Xi’an. I slept the whole way, and when I woke up, we were there and they were reminding us to get out our passports. Lexi and I looked at each other in a panic… we had both left our passports locked up in our hotel safe, and neither one of us had remembered until that very moment. We were of course very disappointed in ourselves. I was embarrassed and upset that I had done something so irresponsible, especially after making it this far into the voyage without having done so. We informed Jonathan and our trip leaders, the Schoenners. Ooooh the Schoenners. Male Schoenner is our official global studies teacher, meaning pretty much the entire student body hates him and his terribly disorganized class. Female Schoenner is his wife and his the most grating and irritating voice on the planet, just like the scratching of a chalk board, and she always seems to be the one in charge of doing things like passing out passports and yelling directions. Ugh I am cringing thinking about it. Anyways Lexi went up to Mrs. Schoenner and told her we had forgotten them. Her reaction was, “Oh no, I should have reminded you guys this morning I completely forgot!” But Lexi said, no, it was our responsibility, we will deal with it. Fortunately for us, the hotel was able to get our passports out of the safe and someone was immediately on their way to the airport to bring them to us. Before we knew this, however, Lexi and I were sitting quietly while everyone else was checking in. Mrs. Schoenner walked over to us, bent down, and said, “You know we are going to have to report this as an incident to the ship. I don’t know what they are going to do with it, but we are going to report it.” EXCUSE ME? I immediately answered her with respect but in anger that this had nothing to do with anyone else, we weren’t affecting the group at all, it was our own responsibility, but Lexi tapped my leg as if to tell my to calm down, so I shut my mouth. Mrs. Schoenner goes on to say, “I reminded everyone on the bus today that they should have it and everyone heard me.” WHAT? You just told Lexi you forgot to do that! She flat out lied to our faces, and we have no idea why. Lexi’s big blue eyes started pooling with tears as Mrs. Schoenner walked away. I hugged her and said don’t worry about it, but she is just one of those people that reacts badly to people yelling at her, she wasn’t actually upset. But thanks so much for making us feel worse when we are already obviously stressed and upset. They treated everyone like kids the entire damn trip, taking names if you were more than five minutes late and threatening dock time. I hate them both. Mrs. Schoenner apologized to us the next day, which I appreciated, but doesn’t change what she did.

They all take off for the flight and Lexi, Jonathan and I stay behind. The man arrives with our passport and we pay him, $25 each, and run to catch our flight. We make it just as they are doing last call. ONE more minute and we would have missed that flight. We were so lucky and so grateful to Jonathan and everyone that helped us out that day, and so pissed at the Schoenners. She practically glared at us when she saw us on the plane, didn’t say one word to let us know she was glad to see us there. Guess she wishes we had missed it.

We arrive in Xi’an to our hotel, the Tianyu Gloria. Another beautiful hotel in another beautiful city. Xi’an was my favorite city we visited. It was just so clean. I think a huge reason I liked China so much was because it just felt so good to be in civilization again! I mean, I have been in pretty big cities, even huge cities, this entire time, but I guess China felt the most like California crowds to me, the most like a big city, the most like development. It felt nice.

We went to dinner at a dumpling buffet place and it was DELICIOUS. I hope I can find a dumpling buffet near me at home because I can’t get enough of dumplings.

Next morning, off at 8 to begin our day and see the Terra Cotta Warriors! We stopped first at the Lesser Wild Goose Pagoda and the Museum of ancient artifacts and enjoyed some tai chi with swords and fans. I walked around exploring by myself for awhile and enjoyed the beautiful scenery covered in the morning fog.

Another bus ride, and finally we were going to see the Terra Cotta warriors. Yet another wonder of the world I can check off my list. It was a pretty awesome sight. There are four separate pits, one with all fully excavated warriors, and the rest with some partial so we could see what it is actually like to excavate them. Pretty cool. Each one is unique and we got to see four of them very close up.

We went to the inner museum which housed the largest, and most frightening, marionettes in the world. One is a gigantic Terra Cotta soldier holding the hand of a young Chinese girl. His eyes stare menacingly into your soul. We marveled at how creepy they were for quite some time and took pictures of them and with them, then the frenzy of people asking us to take pictures with them happened all over again. Win and I even strategically placed ourselves in front of a group of them once hoping to get asked haha. One guy that went by said, “You are handsome, you are beautiful.” Aw thanks.

We ended our time there at the tea house where we got a free demonstration of how traditional tea is made.

When we got back to the hotel we crossed the street to the mall to go to Dairy Queen, something different, and then to Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart is the devil, I know, but it was crazy to see what a Chinese Wal-Mart looks like. All of the people on all of the products are Asian, which is to be expected but still really strange to see. And the products themselves are totally crazy. All we wanted were some good snacks, but everything is fish and meat flavored. Do they believe in cheese in Asia??? But I did grab some koala snacks, remember those from our youth?

That night we went to a nice dinner at a local theater. After a quality but Americanized Chinese dinner, they put on a great show for us, with many different types of music and traditional dances. Again, pictures and video would serve the purpose of a thousand words here. But the scenery and costumes were immaculate and grand.

After we got back from the show we got ready to go out to Club Salsa, a club which has nothing to do with anything we traditionally think of when the word salsa is said. This night was so quality. We had a group of about ten, but practically everyone else was Chinese. It was a crazy crazy night. Everyone wanted to be our friends, and I didn’t pay for a single drink all night. I also got introduced to a new delicious drink, whiskey and iced tea. Sounds gross, but it is delicious. Even at 11 p.m. we would look around us and see Chinese people passed out all over the place. Guess they go hard there. The music was great and the dance floor was bumping. In between dancing we would go hang out with new groups of friends. Win met our favorite group of the whole night and he dragged us over there to go meet them, about eight guys and one girl. They loved us and we all danced together all night. One of them bought me a rose. Near the end of the night I met these two guys that told me they were soldiers and showed me their IDs haha. The hours flew by and Lexi and PJ and I were the last ones left. I was willing to make it an allnighter that night but when Lexi told me she was ready to go I reluctantly left. What a great night!

The next morning we got to sleep in a little, then visited another temple and headed to a school to take a calligraphy lesson from a teacher. The Chinese language is so complex and puzzling. I just can’t grasp the concepts. At our pre-port for China one of the speakers tried to explain to us about how one word in Chinese can have six different meanings. She said a sentence that sounded like, “She she she she she she she she she she she she she she,” in a bunch of different inflections, then did the English translation which went something like, “Shi-shi fed her rhinoceros on the beach.” Seriously. The calligraphy lesson went kind of like that. The characters originally represented objects, not sounds, and they technically still do today, but I don’t understand how that works. Like my name, Jillian. What images can possibly represent that, and how do they know? All I know is I watched Jonathan texting in Chinese on his phone a couple of times and I am so very glad I don’t have to do that. But I have a cool calligraphy souvenir to bring home.

We went out to lunch at the Xi’an revolving restaurant. We sat down to eat and kept waiting for it to revolve. It never did… because it only revolves at night. Oh.

Finally we went to the Bell Tower and shopped around a little bit. Win and I found this really sweet arcade and watched people play DDR for awhile.

Our final stop was at the Mausoleum for Emperor Jingdi, which was actually really cool. It was like the Terra Cotta warriors on a smaller scale, thousands of small stone people and animals and artifacts buried in there with him. And the way they were exhibited was much cooler than the Terra Cotta exhibit. The floors were glass so you could stand over them and see down into the excavation sites.

Two more great signs here: “Watch out for head,” and “Drunk and improper clothes are not permitted to visit.” I hate drunk clothes.

The toilets in China were my least favorite part. They are squat holes, and without getting into too much detail, they are very very unhygienic and I just kind of stopped going to the bathroom after awhile.

Flight from Xi’an to Shanghai, remembered my passport this time.

I am so exhausted, but looking at that fantastic Shanghai skyline I know I have to go out. Hannah calls me and we get a group together to hit up a karaoke place. Our taxi starts out following their taxi, but then suddenly we are following a taxi with three black people in it. Not them. So we get out and start walking. But we can’t find it, it is getting so late and I am so tired, so we hitch a ride back to the ship. Epic fail. But at least I got to walk around the city at night, it is fantastic, especially right along the water. The next night before we took off I sat and watched the neon lights of the boats pass by as the buildings flashed millions of different colors at me from hundreds of feet in the air.

The next morning I woke up early for a 7 a.m. departure for an FDP to Suzhou with my art teacher Fred Levine. This was the PERFECT FDP for me on this day. It was an hour and a half busride there, and I needed every second of that ride to catch up on sleep. We went to several different gardens which allowed me a lot of time for personal reflection. I also didn’t know too many people on the FDP which was also perfect because the only person I wanted to hang out with was me. We went to the University of Suzhou which was very pretty and took a boat ride down the river that some famous guy once referred to as “the Venice of the East.”

Good sign from one of the gardens: “Civilized behavior of tourists is another bright scenery.” And, “Give the grass a little love, the grass will reward you with an extension of green.”

I slept the whole way home and got back on the boat after spending six amazing days in colorful China.

Tomorrow, Japan. This is basically our last port. After this it is a month of school and basically a countdown till home. I expect to love Japan, and I am especially excited to be traveling with Hannah as it is rare that it happens and I am madly in love with her. We bought our bullet train passes and have a tentative schedule set up. Hiroshima, Kyoto, Tokyo for two days, Yokohama. But we currently have no reservations at any hostels. So we will see how that goes.

I’m not worried about it, honestly. I’ve realized that things just have a way of working themselves out.

2009-04-02T03:36:00.001-07:00

Another thing I've learned on my travels around the world... everybody picks their nose, no matter what country they are from. Some just do it more publicly than others.

2009-03-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

Oh my god… I have never seen anything like the Hong Kong skyline. New York City has nothing on this.

Vietnam 1

2009-03-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

Vietnam can be summed up by two things: dong jokes and, “Hoooooooly buckets!”

I wasn’t sure what I expected to see in Vietnam, similar to some other countries. You have a picture of these countries in your head, but you never know how accurate (or inaccurate) they really are until you get there. I have learned first hand just how uneducated I am when it comes to the world and different cultures. I don’t know what language is spoken where, what religion is followed where, what country is located where, and I’m not ashamed to say that because I know you as my fellow American citizen probably don’t know either.

I awoke at 5:45 AM to witness the sunrise along the Saigon River. We traveled along the river for several hours to get to Ho Chi Minh Port. It was pretty cool, we are used to the wide open ocean, and the river was definitely different. There were boats collecting clay from the river bottom all around us and all sorts of other construction areas, as well as some homes and random river villages. The sunrise was amazing. It peeked out over the jungle as the morning fog still crouched low among the foliage. It was the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that. I have had so many first times on this voyage. My camera fogged up instantly from the intense humidity, even at dawn. Vietnam would be the country I sweat in the most, hands down.

We were greeted in the port by Vietnamese women dressed in traditional “ao dai” clothing and rice hats with a sign that said “Welcome Semester at Sea.” We were also greeted by the many parents waving frantically to their kids on the ship, as Vietnam was the port where the planned parent trip took place. I hoped loosely for an hour or so that my mom would surprise me and I would look off the ship and there she would be in a bright pink shirt, white shorts, sandals, red lipstick and blonde hair blazing. But she wasn’t, which was okay, but I miss my family. ☹

I explored Ho Chi Minh city with Kendra, Win and a couple of other people this day. The big thing to do in Vietnam is to get clothes custom made for you for really cheap, and almost all of us partook. I decided to get professional clothes made, as they are one thing my wardrobe really needs more of. I chose a simple black pants suit and two high-waisted skirts in gray and black, all work appropriate. I picked out the fabrics myself and then they took my measurements. To get all these clothes custom made for me in two days… $120. Pretty sweet huh? In the end, the skirts came out really nice, but the pants suit… not so much. Maybe I can get it tailored at home?

After that we went to the main market. We stopped at Pho 24 to get some food. Pho
(pronounced fuh) is a traditional Vietnamese dish… kind of look soup with meat and noodles. I liked Vietnamese food alright, but it had a lot of sea food in it, and I got sick of eating it three times a day by the end. I did really like the fried rice and spring rolls, though. They had a lot of fried food, which is always delicious.

After the pho, we headed into the depths of the market. It really really reminded me of the market I went to in Guanajuato, MX. It was inside, huge, tons of different items. I bought a lot of stuff. I buy a shirt and a hat and a magnet in every country, but I bought three shirts in this country because they were just so good. I bought one shirt that says “Same same, but different,” a common phrase around these parts. A ton of people have that shirt. I also bought a bro tank that is red with a yellow star on it; the Vietnamese flag. And when I went to Nha Trang I bought my signature cheesy tourist shirt that says Nha Trang in bright colors with a beach setting. I can’t wait to show you guys all of my amazing shirts. I never buy them for more than five bucks, they are way too cheaply made for that, but they have made up a huge part of my wardrobe now.

We did a little more shopping in the pirated video district. This was the best place ever. I bought Pokemon Pinball for my gameboy advanced for three dollars! I’m so excited to play it when I get home haha. My favorite purchase of all, however, were the FULL SERIES of television shows I bought. I bought House, Seinfeld, Arrested Development, and Sex and the City… for THIRTY TWO DOLLARS!!! SCOOOOORE! And they all work! I’m really disappointed now I didn’t buy Family Guy. Why, Jillian, why?? But basically I’m all set for the month of April when I am on the ship endlessly and bored out of my mind.

Next we headed to the War Remnants Museum. This was a very sombering museum and I learned many things I never knew before. I have heard so much about the Vietnam War in my life, and I know so many people that lived during it and even fought in it, and I still know almost nothing about it. Before coming to Vietnam, I watched a documentary all about McNamara’s life and basically his regrets and renunciations of the Vietnam War, and it completely intrigued me, especially a story he told about him sitting down at a table with a former Vietnamese war official years after the war. The two practically came to a fistfight at this huge gala. McNamara held his position that the US was trying to stop the spread of communism, but the Vietnamese official kept saying, “Don’t you understand, Vietnam has been fighting invaders for centuries. We were fighting for our independence, and we weren’t going to let you or anybody else take it from us!” The museum definitely spoke to that tone. There were horrific pictures and horrific stories and horrific quotes of mostly Vietnamese people but many Americans as well. I knew nothing about Agent Orange before stepping foot in Vietnam. It takes one teaspoon of Agent Orange to destroy a city of 8 million, but we used it as an environmental war strategy, in the process completely mutilating a society. Many people’s faces were burned off. I actually saw several survivors of Agent Orange with my own eyes. The chemical also caused severe mutations to thousands and thousands of children born to parents in the affected areas, many of which are cared for in orphanages all over Vietnam even today.

The museum really made me think about war, about our country, and mainly about the fact that I have lived through the Iraq War and 9/11, but never have I REALLY known what it is like to live in war time. And how blessed I am to be able to say that. That, in turn, made me think of the wars I may see in my lifetime, and of the certain wars my children will see in their lifetimes. Over three million Vietnamese people died in what they call the American War, while 59,000 of our own men died. How tragic… and for seemingly nothing.

We headed back to the boat to put our stuff down and get ready to go out to dinner and a night on the town. A really cool service SAS provided in Vietnam was a free shuttle going to and from the main part of town every half hour, every single day we were in port. I wish they had that everywhere! They probably just wanted to look good for the parents…

That night I went out to dinner with Kendra, Taylor, Lia, Rosalee, Chazz, Nate and Bradee. Dinner was good but again on the expensive side. Next we headed to a jazz club, Jazz N Art, where the main AV guy Bob, who is an AMAZING musician, was playing for the night. We all got some drinks and chilled out and watched them play smooooooth jazz. Next we headed to a bar called Apocalypse Now, which had some very inappropriate names for drinks like “Agent Orange” and “B-52.” Offensive? But we had a total blast here. There were a lot of SAS kids as well as locals and we danced for hours, great music, great people. Got home and in bed by 1 in preparation for my 3:45 AM wakeup call.

Woke up on time for once, hopped on the bus to the airport. Flight to Nha Trang, about 50 minutes. Bus ride from airport to hotel, about an hour, I slept this entire ride however and don’t remember a single part of it, which was really weird on the bus ride back to the airport and it was as if I had missed out on a whole hour of my life. Arrived in Nha Trang… and it is beautiful. Another gorgeous beach paradise. Basically everywhere I go it’s another day, another one of the best days of my life. Our hotel was nice, called Qua Haung, which is not even pronounced the way it sounds, which my roommate and I found out when we tried to get a taxi home and they had no idea what we were saying, and only found the hotel when we showed the hotel card. My roommate’s name was Kit, very cute brunette girl, and we got along famously.

This SAS trip was one of my favorites yet because of the huge amount of flexibility they gave us, and because there were only about 20 of us on the trip. Our tour guide gave us two hours to sleep in the hotel before we met up at 10 AM to begin sightseeing, which was very generous of him indeed. Once we were all a little better rested, we got back on the bus to explore this beautiful beach town. The first thing you notice when looking out at the ocean, other than the intense humidity, is the island across the way with a gondola ride leading to it. The island is very large and has the word “VINPEARL,” or the Pearl of Vietnam, on it in Hollywood-esque letters.

First we stopped by a Buddhist temple. A pristinely white 30-foot-tall Buddha can be seen towering above the pagoda. We went inside the temple where several different representations were on display, and saw a couple of people lighting incense and worshipping. The architecture was amazing, dragons everywhere, bright colors, lotus flowers. We climbed the stairs and stopped by a large stone reclining Buddha, not quite as grand as the one in Bangkok, but still very beautiful.

The children in Vietnam were my favorite. They were so playful and fun and cute all the time. They always seemed to be playing games and frolicking, and I just wanted to join them, and sometimes I did. I watched these little boys fighting in a fountain and another boy carefully taking on and off his shoes and a little girl using a large stick to tell the children what to do. There was also a very special little baby on our trip, Ellie, whose dad is the Vicarious Voyage coordinator and whose mommy is his wife. She is such a sweet little baby, with curly dirty blond hair, and the BIGGEST smile with four cute little front teeth. This baby was unbelievably good, she is only one and a half and I only heard her cry twice the entire time we were in Nha Trang.

We made it to the white Buddha and entered the room at its base, which had bronze moldings sticking out from the walls in 3D telling the stories of Buddha’s life. I forgot to take my shoes off and a little boy quickly reminded me.

Next we went to lunch at a restaurant atop a hill, giving us an amazing view of the bay. All of the restaurants SAS hooks it up with are spectacular, great food and great views and great atmospheres. And on this trip we were often the only ones in the whole place. We were the only ones here and we were served plate after plate of magnificent food. Whole crabs, huge prawns, real calamari, traditionally cooked fish in a clay pot that was DELICIOUS, rice, beef, and pineapple for dessert. Most meals served food quite similar to this, and rather in the same fashion too.

After we had eaten our fill, we stopped at one of the oldest buildings in Nha Trang that has some significance that I cannot recall at this time, but we were able to look around at the old photographs and artistic paintings and drawings of Nha Trang, as well as signed pictures of famous people who had been there, then we made our way down to a gorgeous little rocky beach area. A few young men were fishing while some other women had set up little souvenir shops under tarps tied to the few trees. The boys went right for rock climbing and I joined them a little bit, then just sat and enjoyed the view of the crystal teal water.

Next stop, a Hindu temple that looked like something straight out of Costa Rica or Guatemala, or at least how I would imagine an antique building looking there. I just wish I could post pictures so much. Think something you might have seen in Indiana Jones movies when they are exploring buildings in the jungle. There were about five separate buildings, each with a different god, and each with a representation of the lingam and yoni, images of male and female fertility, respectively. The insides of the rooms were small and stained black from incense smoke. The smell was pungent but nice, and the smoke made the room hazy.

Final stop, the local marketplace. They sold some fun stuff, but nothing much different from anything we have already seen. The fruit here was crazy and exotic and I took a lot of pictures of it, particularly dragonfruit which tastes kind of bleh, but the outside reminds me of a flamenco dancer and on the inside the fruit is white with a ton of little black seeds. Very pretty.

Vietnam 2

2009-03-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

Back at the hotel, all the girls popped on their swimsuits and went to grab some food and a 6 dollar massage. The food was delicious, the massage, not so much. Too much pounding, not enough relaxing. Oh well, that’s what I get for 6 dollars.

After that Kit and I were tired and went back to the hotel and used the internet and slept before getting ready for dinner and going out that night.

Dinner that night was at another hotel, where we were again the only ones dining, and a traditional Vietnamese musical show was put on for us. The instruments were crazy and I had never seen them before, on one of them the woman basically plucked strings vertical to the actual instrument itself. Dinner was delicious again, especially the soup which we all loved.

The thing I like about these random trips I’ve signed up for is that I usually don’t know too many people, and I end up meeting new friends. It turned out like that once again, and I ended up hanging out with Kit, Carl, Barney and Kyle the whole time, with a few other people thrown in there too. Funny kids, let me tell you. After dinner we all went out on the town, stopping first at a bar on the beach. The guys were already pretty tipsy from dinner, and we ordered buckets, of course, and they decided to speak in Australian accents for a good twenty minutes. I don’t remember who said it, but someone called out in an Australian accent, “Hooooooly buckets!” And that was it. That phrase would not leave our mouths for the next three days. It cracked me up every single time. I’m still cracking up right now, actually. Barney, our resident narcoleptic, has a problem with falling asleep when he’s drunk, so he would be basically sleeping, we would wake him up, and he would yell, “Hooooooly BUCKETS!” Hilarious. We went to a few other bars, one called Red Apples or Candy Apples that we really liked, lots of foreigners. This was a pretty late night, but it was okay because I was able to sleep in until 8. HA.

The next morning we got up to go on a full day boating excursion. We had a private ferry-ish type boat to our group. We motored around for awhile then stopped at an aquarium built inside of a fake ship. It was super ghetto but also kind of sad, because it is the shabbiest aquarium I have ever seen. There were about five sea turtles and a ton of eels in a tank I personally think is way too small for them. They were in fish tanks that you might see at a fish store or Asian restaurant in the states, except somewhat bigger.

Next we stopped in this little cove to get out and take a dip. I was slow getting in, however, because I was just waking up from a nap. This turned out to be really good because almost everyone that got in was stung by jellyfish. So I stayed put right where I was while everyone got out and started rubbing lime and ice all over their bodies.

Oh by the way, I am going to take this opportunity to talk about dong jokes. The Vietnamese currency is Dong, 17,000 Dong to 1 USD. Well, you can imagine what kind of things our immature college minds came up with me. We made a lot of jokes like, “Man, everybody wants my dong in this country.” But we also slipped dong into many popular songs, like The Dong Song, instead of the Thong Song, and my personal favorite, “Killing Me Softly with his Dong.” Really funny. Admit it, yeah, even you chuckled a little.

So they took us over to another beach area that was more guest-oriented, with chairs, a bathroom, and an ice cream stand, and let us roam free for two hours. There was a really cool little raft thingy with a slide on it about thirty feet out, so we all swam out there and did slide stunts and then laid out on the raft and talked and joked. It was a relaxing couple of hours. I tanned to my content then read The Kite Runner, which I am just a little bit into. Oh and a sidenote, old men in speedos are the best.

We were all starving so they took us to lunch at a place where you couldn’t dock up directly to the restaurant, but had to be taken there by a raft being slowly moved back and forth by two guys on the raft tugging a rope. There were also these crazy basket boats that look exactly like huge baskets. We wanted to go in one really bad, but our guide said no, the rafts were already paid for. Damn. Another delicious meal with a great view and great company. And lots of dong jokes.

The day came to an end, and Kit and I again relaxed for awhile, showering, napping, internetting. Dinner was at a Japanese restaurant this time and was the best one we had. I’m not a huge seafood person and I definitely don’t like shrimp, but I ate everything offered to me like a good traveler should, just to try it at least once, and the clams I had were the best buttery garlicy clams I have ever had, and the shrimp was… tolerable.

After dinner we went back to the hotel to relax for a little by the pool before going out again. We drank our bottles of four dollar vodka then went for another night of barhopping. Kit and I caught a motorbike with a one-eyed guy named Huang who offered us all types of drugs. Pretty common occurrence everywhere we go. No thanks, though. We got back to the hotel and hopped right in the pool, where we stayed till late at night, till finally I crawled into bed.

I slept in until 8:30, then got up to spend a little more time roaming the city and swimming in the ocean until we had to leave at 11. I got a delicious mango smoothie. We all met up and took the bus back to the airport. Our flight was scheduled for 1:15. Unfortunately for us, our flight wouldn’t leave until 6:45 due to “technical difficulties.” So it was a very long day at the airport and it meant an afternoon lost in Ho Chi Minh City, but this stuff happens, and it’s actually the first major delay I have had so far. We made the most of it, or tried to. Lots of card games. We climbed up on top of a huge billboard. We tried to walk through a field to get to the ocean, but security guards came whistling up to us on a motorbike to tell us we couldn’t go over there. Apparently it is a military owned area. Communists. We even went to eat at the airport restaurant, where I had the best Cantonese Fried Rice ever after having a full out fight with the horrendously rude waitresses that paid no attention to us, didn’t care that we didn’t get we ordered, and were basically just big b****es.

We finally board the plane and get back to ship sweet ship. I put all my stuff down, shower, and get ready for yet another night out. Go hard or go home. I met up with Kit, Carl, Natalie, Doug, and Philip and we stopped by the night markets where I bought some really cute earrings. We wanted to go to Buddha Bar, a new bar where we had heard everyone was going. One guy said he knew the way, but I knew by the way he was talking that he didn’t. I warned everyone else about this getting in, but no, no one listens to me. We end up driving around for a half hour before finally telling him to just go back to Apocalypse Now. When we get there, we give him three dollars, angry that he wasted our time like that. He started yelling at us, mainly the boys. We all tried to walk away but he grabbed Philip’s arm demanding more money. Philip finally gave it to him. Taxis can be a tricky business, and they are ALL out to get you.

Back in Apocalypse, another great night, we closed the place down this time, about 2:30. I reunited with my lover Hannah, who I miss everytime I am in a country, and we danced it up. This night was even more crowded than the first night and my toenails were literally bleeding at the end of the night. But it had great music and great dancing. I danced with this Spanish guy named Jose for awhile and we started talking. He didn’t know much English, so we went to the bar and spoke Spanish for about an hour. It was great! Most Spanish people I meet know more English than I know Spanish, but it was the other way around this time and I got a good amount of practice in. Then we said encantado and mucho gusto and I caught a cab home with Kit again. Hit the bed hard to get ready for my 7:45 AM wakeup.

Wake up, stumble to the bus to get ready for my full day excursion to the Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi tunnels. Win and Lexi were on this trip, and I love them, so I was happy.

We drove about two hours and stopped to eat, another delicious meal, the breaded shrimp was the best shrimp yet. There was a little Vietnamese baby rocking in a hammock that I really loved.

The Cao Dai temple was the Disneyland of temples. It is a religion that combines aspects of Catholicism, Buddhism and Hinduism. The colors are something out of Pokemon or Alice in Wonderland. The ceilings were bright blue with silver stars all over them. The columns had brightly decorated dragons. Pictures of Jesus, Buddha, and Hindu gods hanging out were all over the place. We were there for a full service. There were about two hundred people worshipping, all sitting in organized rows. Up top there were musicians and singers playing the music that led the service. All followers were dressed in white. Followers of specific religions were dressed in red, blue, or yellow, one for each religion, I don’t know for sure which off the top of my head. The hundreds of people below bowed at times when dongs were sounded. Again, pictures would really help here.

Next, another hour bus ride to the Cu Chi tunnels. These were the tunnels used by the Vietcong in the Vietnam War to ambush us from all over the place and effectively use guerrilla war tactics. We started our visit by watching a Vietcong propaganda video. It was very interesting to watch, knowing that our country would do the exact same thing in times of war. They called the Americans monsters and spoke many times of the many heroes who were rewarded for killing many Americans. Cu Chi was revered as a peaceful, beautiful treasure of Vietnam that the Americans sought to destroy. We got to explore the area, saw a lot of bomb craters, original tunnel entrances you could never see with the naked eye until our guide pointed them out, air vents dug into termite hills, bunkers that still remain after all these years. One display showed all of the booby traps the Vietcong set up for Americans, pretty barbaric stuff, lots of things where the body would be impaled. One was basically a revolving door, where you would step on it and instantly fall below where sharpened sticks of bamboo waited for you. Nothing I would want to fall into in the forest. I never really knew before that those types of tactics were used and it made me queasy to think about the young men that died in this way.

We had the opportunity to enter a tunnel ourselves, which we all did. The funny thing was, these tunnels had been enlarged 40% from their original size. Unbelievable. These people were so small. Even the larger tunnels were ridiculously small, you were hunched over almost on your knees the entire time. And these people lived there for years! Thousands of them! I cannot even imagine that type of existence.

On the bus ride home our guide told us about his life. He was a really funny and friendly guy and spoke great English. When he was 12 he was forced to quit school along with his sister and was sent to a refugee camp in China by his parents during the war. The camp had terrible conditions and no education. He finally returned to Vietnam where he stayed with his family for two weeks before immediately enrolling back into school, ad he has never satisfied his hunger for education since. He is 33. He says that his greatest wish would be to study in the U.S., but the kind of money we take for granted, even at the cheapest university, he said is like a dream to a Vietnamese person. He also voiced his opinion that the US invaded Vietnam, rather than Russia or China, because Vietnam had so many lucrative exports, namely oil. Interesting. I bet a lot of people think that.

Vietnam has suffered as a country so much, but today the country is growing rapidly. In fact, it is estimated to be one of the only countries that will continue to grow this year, even with the severe economic slump. In 30 years their country’s literacy rate as well as poverty rate has dramatically dropped. It is a beautiful country with very friendly people, and I really enjoyed being there. And, having now just written all this, I really learned a lot.

I’ve been on the ship two days now, getting a lot of rest and sleeping as much as possible. I’m a little sick, sore throat, very sore lymph nodes, kind of achy, but I figure mind over matter, this is NO time to be sick… because I get to China tomorrow! We dock in Hong Kong, but unfortunately my trip leaves immediately for Beijing. I’ll just have to come back to Hong Kong. I CAN’T BELIEVE I WILL BE IN CHINA TOMORROW!!! MY NINTH COUNTRY!!! WHAT IS GOING ON!!! I know China will be an intense learning experience. Also, it is going to SNOW in Beijing! Isn’t that exciting? I hope I will be on the Great Wall while it’s snowing. I definitely didn’t bring any snow clothes, but oh well, I’ll deal with that later.

I am already so looking forward to Japan where I will celebrate my birthday and travel independently all over the place with Han Han Han, Kendra, Adrienne, and hopefully Caroline, Alicia, and Lexi.

See you in six days!

2009-03-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNINNNNNNNNNNNNNG VIETNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First half of Thailand

2009-03-20T04:51:00.000-07:00

“Mai pen rai” – “It doesn’t matter.”
My new motto in life.

Thailand was the best port experience I have had so far. Nothing can quite measure up to the level of craziness, absurdity, wonder, joy, fun and pure goodness I experienced in this country. I had one of the best adventures of my life because I was willing to take a leap and make a crazy decision, but in the end it was the best decision I have made on Semester at Sea so far.

The first day I hop right on a bus to head to the Bangkok airport. Our port, Laem Chabang, is an hour and a half outside of Bangkok. Large ships have to dock there because the inner port is too shallow for them. We stopped halfway at a rest stop with all sorts of crazy food, orange eggs, dried out whole squid, just crazy looking stuff. We’re in Asia now!

Bangkok airport is a spaceship. It is huge and so futuristic. It reminded me of Epcot/Spacecamp, which I remembered my Dad and I went to when I was younger haha. We were in this airport for like four hours before our flight, sucks but we really had no choice, so I bought a couple of books, one on the huge sex industry in Thailand and Asia in general and another about a guy who was put into a Bangkok prison for twelve years for smuggling drugs. I’m a few chapters through the sex slaves book and it is very interesting and informative indeed. It also gave me a good background for what I was to see and experience on the streets of Thailand.

The flight was fine, I took my first double decker plane ever.

We arrive in Phuket (pronounced Poo-ket) a little over an hour later. We checked into our hotel, the Duangjitt, which was gorgeous as always, SAS always hooks it up. I was rooming with Marlee again, we often do as they usually set us up alphabetically. And Lexi was on this trip which was awesome because I haven’t been able to hang out much with her in port yet.

Smith, Lexi, Lynsey, Claudia and I all met up to go eat. We had our first taste of real Thai food at this sketchy restaurant, but the meal was cheap and delicious. I am in LOVE with Thai food, I am going to eat it all the time when I get home, “pad thai” is a little piece of heaven and everyone should experience it at least once. After eating we stopped back to the hotel for a little while to get ready to go out. I got cute and we hopped on a tuk-tuk (three wheeled car, tricked out with speakers lights and videos playing if you are lucky), which will apparently be everywhere we go from now on, and are my new favorite form of transportation, over to the main bar area.

This night, this city, this bar district, the Thai people in this area were surreal.

The sex industry in Thailand is prolific. It is everywhere and completely unavoidable. You will see it on any street. Phuket is a huge tourist destination and is naturally a huge area for the sale of sex. Prostitutes line the street everywhere you look. There are massage parlors that are not really massage parlors. I learned a new word, “ladyboy.” There are men dressed as women everywhere, very openly, and we were never sure who was pre-op or post-op. Every five feet someone else is beckoning you to come to a ping-pong show. You honestly don’t even want to know what that is.

All of this was hard for me to see, especially as a young woman, especially knowing that the large majority of these women are forced into the profession by many different things. Some out of desperate poverty, just to feed their families, some are raped then seen as worthless by their families and society, some are offered jobs in the city then are unknowingly sold into a brothel by friends and family members. And these women are not Thai women. 95% of them are shipped in from other, poorer countries. Mainly Burma. And this goes on all over the world, but it is an epidemic across Asia, including India. Mom, thanks for not selling me into prostitution, because a lot of parents do.

What was even more heartbreaking was watching many of my fellow classmates walk into these shows and pay money in these establishments, and even hearing of one or two partaking in more than just a show. Disgusting, disturbing, heartbreaking. I would never step foot in one of those places to see women be completely exploited in this way, even by other women.

I would see the sale of sex all over Thailand, but it was the worst in Phuket.

Anyways… onto the rest of the night. Other than that Phuket was a great place, filled with tourists from all over the world. The bar district is HUGE and a total blast, kind of what I might expect a New Orleans bar street to look like. The shopping is phenomenal as well. We started out the night at a hookah bar, as Smith and I love to do, then headed from there down the main bar walkway. We stopped all over the place at a bunch of different bars, trying to find the best deals. Thailand was more expensive than I expected, the most expensive place I have visited since Spain probably. But that is because I have been turned into a chintzy Scrooge on this voyage and have gotten used to my dollar stretching a long long way in most places. 35 Thai baht = 1 US dollar, but most things, including drinks and food, were only a little cheaper than they would be in the US. Partly because of all of the going out and traveling I did, I spent more in Thailand than I have in any other port.

All of the bars had very pretty women working in them, most of which I expect work on the side as prostitutes as well, but they were all very nice. Every bar had these little games to play, like brain teasers, connect four, separate this metal piece from that one. Weird. I got invited to go pole dancing at one bar so I brought Smith up with me and he climbed up the pole and wrote our names on the ceiling to be immortalized forever, “Pookie and Pookie-bunz.” Hahahahahah.

After our bar stint we all went skinnydipping in the ocean. I skinnydipped three night in a row in Thailand. I am skinnydipping around the world hahaha.

After that, who knows what time it was, definitely late, and we all went to bed to prepare ourselves for our 6:30 wake up time and next day of adventure.

Woke up in a stupor and threw my stuff together for a day of boating adventure. This day was basically a day of houseboating, and everyone knows how much I like that, so it was pretty much the best day ever. We drove an hour, hopped on the houseboat, about thirty of us to a boat. We putted through this amazing Thai bay, miles wide, gorgeous random tropical hills jutting out of the water here and there. We paired up on inflatable canoes and a trained canoe paddler paddled us around. Me and Dan’s guy was named Mik. He was a pretty quiet guy, but the rest of the crew was crazy fun. They were pushing us and each other in the water all the time, running around and joking with us, they made all of us these really cool roses out of straws and reeds.

So went exploring caves on canoes. The first cave was called Bat Cave. It had a lot of bats in it. And Batman was there. The caves got extremely low, so low that Dan and I had to lay down completely flat while Mik deflated our canoe a little to be able to fit us through a very small opening. My nose scraped the rock above, until suddenly we were outside again in a jungle lagoon. Monkeys were perched on the trees, they didn’t mind us at all. We were only able to stay in there for literally two minutes because Mik said if we didn’t leave now we wouldn’t leave because the tide was coming up. So we laid down again and repeated the process, this time with the water an inch or two even higher. I can’t wait to show you video of this so you can see for yourself how really crazy this was.

Next we went to Oyster Cave. There were a lot of oysters there. We repeated the scary laying down process again and were in another breathtakingly gorgeous Jurassic Park-esque lagoon.

We explored this lagoon and another area for awhile then hopped back on the ship for lunch, which was AMAZING. Have you ever had fried pineapple? I have, and it is delicious. After lunch we all jumped off the top of the houseboat a few hundred times, swam around, then the boat took us over to a little beach area, where we lounged and watched the crew play a sort of hackey sack game except with this hollow wicker ball.

Bus ride back, showered and slept for a little waiting for Lexi to get back. Little did I know this would be the night that would alter the rest of my Thailand experience. In a good way. In a GREAT way.

Lexi and I got ready and set out for our next night of debauchery. I love Lexi. I have so so much fun with her and it is crazy how chance brought us together again. In case my readers forgot, Lexi went to USD, rushed sorority with me, was my BFF in AXO, then transferred to U of Oregon halfway through sophomore year. And now we are on SAS together and loving it!

So her and I basically tore up the bar district together. We went all over the place, talking, eating, drinking, discussing. I think we hit up eight separate bars, at least. We danced like crazy in all of them and had a blast. Finally we ended up at this bar called Seduction.

The minute I walked in I spotted this amazingly cute guy. We locked eyes and I saw him make some sort of motion toward me. So I smiled at him, walked back, and asked him to dance. He said yes. And the rest of history. We decided to elope.

KIDDING MOM CALM DOWN.

But yeah I spent the rest of the night dancing with him and hanging out with him and his AMAZING friends. His name is Stas, he was born in Serbia or Slovakia or Slovania or something like that, and he lived in San Francisco for ten years or so. He is twenty-four, finished a two-year stint in the army, went to school for two years, has a semester off and is applying to schools, and is now in Thailand training to be a Muay Thai fighter. And so are the rest of his friends, who are also from all over the world. The one from Bulgaria and the one from Romania, who we called Bulgaria and Romania, were straight up models. But my favorite person was Andrew from Laguna Beach. This guy was fantastic, charismatic, hilarious, friendly, just a great guy in general, and we are best friends and plan on hanging out when we are both back in America. But yeah, muay thai is traditional Thai fighting, and all of these guys from all over the world are at this camp for at least a few months, and a few girls too. And I happened to stumble into their midst.

I spent hours with them, laughing dancing and talking. I asked Stas what that motion towards me had been when he first saw me in the club. He said he and his friends play “point and shoot,” which is basically point out the gorgeous girls you see, and he shot at me. The feelings was mutual.

Finally it was getting to be light out and they had to get home because they had an early ferry to catch over to Phi Phi Island (pronounced Pee-pee). Google it. One of the most beautiful places in the world. Stas invited me to meet them there in the morning and spend the day with them. At first I was like, no way can I do that, I’m supposed to do stuff with the SAS group tomorrow, I know no one will go with me because no one else knows them, I can’t do all of that traveling by myself, blab la bla. And then I was like… YES. YES I will go. This is my chance to have one of those crazy experiences that everyone always talks about. HERE IT IS! I’M GOING FOR IT!!!

The main thing that pushed me into this decision was the fact that if I stayed in Phuket with my SAS trip, I would be taking a three hour bus ride there and back, and only doing activities for two hours. The activities would be fun, elephant riding and jungle trekking, but the six hour bus ride was like another entire day being stripped away form me. Also, I knew I would have a blast hanging out with these guys.

I slept for about forty five minutes then woke up to get a taxi to the ferry. I was nervous about my decision, going back and forth about it. But what if they aren’t there when I get there? Well then I’ll just meet other people and hang out with them. Okay, stop thinking about it, just do it!

I hopped on a motorbike taxi and basically slept on his back for the forty minute ride. He woke me up when we stopped at the ATM, then he helped me buy my ferry ticket. The ferry didn’t take off at 7:30 am, it took off at 8:30 am. First roadblock. I was supposed to meet the guys at Reggae Bar at 9 am. Okay, oh well, I’m taking this ferry. I slept the entire hour and a half ride as I am surrounded by Chinese and Japanese tourists.

Oh another phenomenon of Thailand! Couples match. Everywhere. Matching tee-shirts, shoelaces, shoes, jackets, shirts with cute cartoons on them. It was insane. I was like, yeah maybe I would do that as a joke, but these people are more than serious.

Anyways, I wanted to make note of the Swedish woman I met sitting next to me who had the most gorgeous green eyes I have ever seen. Almost forest green, almost solid. Beautiful.

2nd half of Thailand

2009-03-20T04:50:00.000-07:00

We arrive at the island and I am sort of refreshed, now running on maybe two and a half hours of sleep. I am awakened, however, by the beauty of this place. I am way late on meeting the guys, but I make my way over to the bar anyways. It is, of course, empty, and they are, of course, not there. Okay. Well I knew this might happen, time to make a day of it all on my own.

I walk around for about an hour, get a smoothie, explore the island which takes like ten minutes to walk all the way around. I’m getting bored being alone already. All of a sudden I see three SAS kids. I walk up to them, tell them I’m alone, and ask if I can hang out with them. They were really nice and said of course, and I ended up spending the rest of the day with them. Penn, Jake and Adrian. We all actually really clicked and ended up having a great day. By the end of the night we were drunkenly telling each other how happy we were that we found each other.

First we went and got Thai massages on the beach for an hour. Amazing. Six bucks. Then we hang out and lounge in the ocean for awhile, which is perfect and like stepping into the most comfortable bath ever. Next we eat delicious pad thai and fried rice. I always got pad thai and fried rice, and it was always too much food, but I always kept getting because I always wanted both.

Next we got a four hour private tour of the island by boat for 1500 baht, or about 45 dollars. We went all over the place to a bunch of different islands. We went snorkeling and saw the most amazing tropical fish. Tons of parrotfish. Love them, my favorite fish. We climbed into caves and explored oases in the center of islands. We climbed up a very precarious ladder and jumped off a 60 foot cliff. It was really fun, but I landed a little funny and my knee has been hurting ever since. Hope it feels better soon… anyways we had a great day, we all bonded, they are great people. Ate some spring rolls and had some drinks before headed back to main Phi Phi.

We were walking around when we turned the corner and… THERE WAS STAS!!! And his friends! Stas ran up to be and gave me a big cheek on the kiss and told me he was hoping he would see me. We made plans for all of us to meet up later that night and g out for a raving St. Patty’s Day. All of the bars were prepping for the big night and had all sorts of free drink deals set up, which we did indeed indulge in.

We went back to Penn and Jake and Adrian’s hostel, K House, which they had graciously allowed me to crash in, and put down our stuff before going on a hike to the top of the mountain’s island. The view was magnificent and there were about thirty other people up there. I sat in awe and listened to the fifteen different languages around me, all at once.

We headed back to shower and get ready before going out. I, however, had no clothing, and so set out to buy a dress. On my way, I got caught in a torrential downpour/flood/tsunami/hurricane/typhoon. It was nuts. The streets were a foot deep with water within five minutes. I was drenched to the bone, so I needed a dress more than ever, but unfortunately, now I was wet and no one would let me try anything on and looked at me anxiously when I walked in and started getting their floors wet. Eventually I got fed up and grabbed a simple black dress, bought it for 300 baht, and hoped it would look okay without a bra since I didn’t have one because I hadn’t known I would be spending the night until about two in the afternoon.

When I walked into the hostel room everyone cracked up. I had been walking in the rain and puddles for an hour now, and I was totally soaked, and I had gotten lost. I was a pretty funny sight. I showered and put on the dress, which magically fit me perfectly. Sometimes life just works out…

We headed out and met up with Stas and the guys, who were all dressed up for St. Patty’s day. They were crew Mother Russia, none of them had shirts on, they had green paint all over them and green string. Basically broin’ out big time. But I didn’t even care because these guys were so hilarious and awesome and entertaining I would hang out with them anytime. We ate another delicious meal then headed to our first bar, The Irish Pub.

The rest of this night was a blend of shots and buckets. Buckets are kind of what they sound like, drinks in a bucket. I was coerced into a couple of tequila shots, even though I hate the stuff. We hit up a few bars but the last one we were at was my favorite. I think it was called Tiger Bar, but I’m not sure. Anyways, the dance floor was great, the music was perfect, I distinctly remember all of us screaming YMCA and Penn and I pole dancing and Penn falling on his face hahaha. I danced with Stas and all of his friends and Penn and I was loving life. Andrew is pretty much the best dancer in the world, maybe the best person in the world, he took me out on the dance floor and was tossing and flipping me everywhere, it was fantastic. Jake had finally had a little too much, so Adrian took him home, and Penn and I stayed out for a couple more hours after I said my sweet goodbyes to Stas. I told him he will forever be a part of my Thailand memories, and he said we should definitely hang out when he gets back to the US in April. Awesome. Same with Andrew, I will DEFINITELY be calling him up when I get home, I mean he lives in Laguna, we have to hang out.

Back in the hostel, we crashed out hard before having to wake up at 8 to catch our ferry at nine. The three of them slept the entire ferry ride, but for some reason I wasn’t too tired and I sat with my feet dangling over the edge of the boat, watching the islands and water and boats go by. I couldn’t even believe it was already my fourth day in this island paradise or that my little adventure had turned out so amazingly perfect, better than I could have ever expected. I listened to good music and thought good thoughts and I was totally loving life.

Once back at the dock, they took off to catch a noon flight, and I hopped in a minibus to get back to the SAS buses that were leaving my hotel at 11:45 am. Thank God I have good friends… Lexi gathered all of my stuff from the room for me and took it to the bus. Minibus was a bad option for me for this trip… he stopped at two hotels before mine before I yelled at him that I was supposed to be at my bus in two minutes and would he please drop me off now. There was also a huge traffic jam. I almost got out and caught a motorcycle but I was patient. I got to the buses at 11:47 am… they left five minutes later. Wow.

Back to the airport, flight back to Bangkok. Transfer to the hotel, Hotel Tawana. Gorgeous, once again. Took a much needed shower, changed, went out to dinner at a Mexican place with Lexi, Taylor, Rosalee, Caitlin, and Lynsey. This dinner was my splurge dinner… it cost us over 20 dollars each. Kind of ridiculous, but we didn’t know they tacked on an extra 20% for tax and tip, but the food was amazing anyways.

Back to hotel, change into sexy dress and sexy heels, meet up with Lexi and we head out for another night in the big city. This night was pretty blah, especially compared to my last adventures. Everywhere we went ended up kind of being a dud, especially since we didn’t head out till 12. The whole city closed down around 1 or 1:30, which I guess isn’t too surprising for a Tuesday night but I thought because it was Bangkok it would be crazy all night. Oh well, I got a full five hours of sleep this night and that sure was a nice change. We went to a bar called Vertigo that was on the 59th floor of a swanky hotel. The charges were way too much to buy anything, but the view was definitely worth the dollar taxi ride over there. We went to one sketchy place our concierge had told us to go, but we were the only white people there listening to a terrible Thai band cover American songs, and we quickly left. Later our concierge told us our taxi driver had taken us to the wrong place, which I believe because taxi drivers have done that to us all over the world.

Oh and that night we saw two baby elephants walking on the streets, chained by ropes. You could buy food to feed them. It made me so sad.

The next morning, up at 7 am again to go do a little Bangkok sightseeing. We went to the Royal Palace, which was amazingly beautiful, then Lexi and I headed over to the Golden Reclining Buddha. Both places were gorgeous but I can’t really write about them, you’ll just have to wait for pictures. The reclining Buddha was HUGE though, 5 and a half tons of pure gold, with the soles of his feet pure mother of pearl.

We headed back to the hotel, checked out, plopped our stuff in the lobby, went and got a final Thai meal, then headed to a massage parlor for one last massage. They had us put on little clothes outfits and I got my first real Thai massage. They were stretching me and bending me all over the place, and I was SOOO sore from the day of physical activity I had had before and my hurt knee, so at times I was in severe pain, but I knew it would make me feel better the next day, which it did.

Hop on the buses at 2, hitch a two hour ride back to the ship… and my five days of bliss in Thailand came to an end all too soon. It is amazing how time flies.

In conclusion, I loved Thailand, what a beautiful place, I felt completely comfortable there, the people were amazing, some things were sad, some things were AMAZING, and it really taught me to trust in myself. I went for it on this trip, and you know what, I want to go for it in life, always. I want to say yes, I want to take that leap, I want to make the right decision that might be a scary decision, but will in the end be worth it. And I am blessed that my life has taken so many surprising turns and directions, but they always lead me to where I was meant to be all along. I am truly blessed. I had a love tryst in Thailand! What more could you want?

I apologize for not finishing my India blog, it might remain a little bit of a lost blog for now, I only have one more day on the ship before I get to Vietnam! CRAZY! Tonight is the crew talent show that we are expecting will be thoroughly hilarious. Tomorrow I really need to get some schoolwork in, I just haven’t really done enough of that in general.

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!! MAI PEN RAI!

2009-03-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

Thailand. One of the best experiences I have had in my entire life.

Hands down my favorite port. No question.

I had the adventure of a lifetime.

2009-03-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

I’m so behind on my blog. It is just taxing to write, it was a huge port and I want to do it justice but I have been really busy the last five days. I have really enjoyed myself on this stretch of the trip. It’s actually been really fun on the ship! Greg and I performed at karaoke night… we had practiced to do “I’m Real” by J Lo and Ja Rule, so we showed up in our ghetto duds, me with my LA earrings in of course, he with his SAS boxers hanging out and his Jewish star bling, and the song wasn’t a duet. So we improvised and did “I Will Survive” and it was a huge hit and we are on ship celebrities. Seriously. A girl came up to me the other day and asked me to MC the end of the semester auction because “you’re, like, really popular.” Awesome.

We played Egyptian ratscrew one night but we added a fun twist in… you have to slap your forehead before slapping the pile. Highly enjoyable. Noteworthy. Caroline had a bump on her head the next day.

Every night there is a jam session in the piano lounge and tonight I went up and sang with them because I have wanted to for the longest time, and now I think I will make that a regular habit.

Last night was Halloween-themed pub night. It was probably the craziest and most enjoyable night I have had on the ship so far, definitely the most fun pub night. Smith and I dressed up as touristy newlyweds from Kansas, touring the world with our baby after a shotgun wedding. La familia Scarborough. He has this hilarious shirt with a baby in a carrier on it, so he wore that, sunscreen on his nose, high shorts, a fanny pack, and combed his hair down. I wore a button down shirt, a cardigan over my shoulders, very high shorts, high socks, keds, and a money purse. We looked hilarious, we were a huge hit. They actually had music set up for us last night at pub night for the first time, so we danced the night away and got pleasantly tipsy. My tolerance level sure has gone down. But that’s a good thing!
Tomorrow… THAILAND!!! I am on the best trip, exotic beaches, beautiful temples, canoeing, lounging, delicious food, and then partying in Bangkok. I fully expect this to be one of my favorite ports. We’ll see…

2009-03-11T05:11:00.000-07:00

So my India blog is taking a rather long time to write so I thought I would just write a little about ship life.

Last night I was up till about 5 am just kind of wired, doing homework, watching the Bollywood movie on TV. The whole time I could see lightning go on outside. So I finally went up to go check it out. It was raining lightly and the lightning was intense, lighting up the entire sky every few seconds. The storm stretched around me in a 360, but was so far away you couldn't hear any thunder. And I was the only one awake, the only one there to witness it. It was very beautiful, definitely a unique way to view a storm.

Three more days till Thailand now!!! I was most excited for South Africa as a country, but I am most excited for the actual trip I'm doing in Thailand to Bangkok and Phuket. Can't wait to tell you all about it.

Tomorrow night is karaoke night and Greg and I have another pretty exciting performance planned. We can't wait till the next open mic night to unveil our new song.

March is going to fly on by...

2009-03-03T20:01:00.000-08:00

March 4
       Fourth day of school in a row today. After today I have eight days of school left in March. We visit four countries this month and are never on the ship. March is going to fly on by. I am almost halfway done with SAS. Craziness.
       The night before last Hannah and I went out to the top deck to see the stars. It was so warm and pitch black out. It started to rain, so we sat down in it and let it pour on us for about five minutes. The rain was warm and felt so refreshing, but when it started whipping our faces we went inside. Then we had to walk back to our cabins soaking wet and everyone was wondering what had happened to us. I love rain. It has healing powers.
       The next night Hannah and Kendra and I were eating dinner, when all of a sudden a ton of dolphin started swimming by! They were jumping all over the place, waving to us. This was my first dolphin sighting, and it was a great one. They were everywhere. After that we sat and enjoyed the most beautiful sunset I have seen yet on this voyage. The ocean was like glass, kids were waterskiing behind the ship, and there was a haze on the ocean. The sunset stretched its rays all the way to the stern of our boat, and as it set burned a fiery red.
       A couple of peaceful, beautiful, warm days.

India tomorrow.

2009-03-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

Mauritius…island paradise, Christmas vacation spot choice of celebrities, home to exotic fishies. And SAS’s own personal island for a day.

We wake up at 6:50 AM trying to successfully see a sunrise come up over land for the first time. This time we are successful, and it is a beautiful sight to be held. The island of Mauritius stretched out before us, small enough to see both the beginning and end of it horizontally from our spot on the boat. The mountains are lushly covered in green, and the sun slowly creeped out from behind one of the peaks. The sky changed from purple to gold and then finally pink, and then it was time to eat.

After the eats I went downstairs and packed up my stuff for the day. Caroline, Hannah and I all had tickets for a trip exquisitely titled “Ile de Deux Cocos,”which we took the liberty to always pronounce in strong French accents whenever anyone asked us what we were going to be up to. I put on my most French bikini, zebra stripes haha, and a cute cover up. My mom called me that morning and my dad got on the phone and asked what I would be up to that day. “Booze cruise,”I told him. “Can’t you do something cultural?”he asked. And that’s when I had to tell him, no, Mauritius is an island paradise, vacation spot to many, and all of the culture I will be experiencing for the 11 hours I am here will be found in the ocean and tanning on the sand. Mauritius was added onto the schedule as a sort of break for us between South Africa and India, and we took full advantage of it.

The weather was amazingly hot and humid, just the way I like it. The ocean felt amazing, cool enough to be refreshing but easy to jump into.

After our diplomatic briefing we hopped into little buses to take us over to Ile de Deux Cocos. The island is only forty miles around so it baffled Hannah and I why it took an hour to reach our destination. The bus ride was pretty funny because pretty much everyone was sleeping on our bus, even though the tour guide was talking, including me for about half of it. Caroline’s shoulder is pretty comfy. The really hilarious part though was when the other bus pulled up next to us and seeing every single passenger inside completely passed out. Hahahahaha I am laughing thinking about it.

So we finally get there, and the minute we step out of those buses, we are in paradise. The water is my favorite color, light blue and sparkling turquoise and crystal clear. The water was shallow for about a half mile out to see due to the coral reefs surrounding the island that still flourish in the area despite huge sugar cane production and consequently pollution. We all hop into water taxis that are already waiting for us. They are glass bottom boats so we get to check out the sweet coral and fishies below us on our slow trip over to the island that is like 250 feet away.

And then we were there…Ile de Deux Cocos. Basically SAS rented this island for us for the day. Insane. There were a bunch of chairs set up along the beach, some in the shade, shaded areas with huge white couches to lounge on, a covered lunch area and a bunch of tables, a couple of bars, really nice bathrooms, a bunch of birdbaths with exotic birds drinking out of them, a little store selling homemade rum and magnets and other souvenirs, and a table full of snorkeling gear. Wow. We didn’t even know what to do first. I don’t think anyone expected a private island for the day.

We decided to go snorkeling first. We hopped in the water taxis that were also at our disposal all day along with about six other people and went snorkeling for a half hour. This was pretty funny as well because it was Caroline’s first time snorkeling and Hannah’s second time, and her first time she was terrified of fish touching her so she wasn’t sure how she would react this time. Hahaha. But when Hannah was finally able to figure out how to put on her goggles and Caroline had stopped complaining about hers fogging up, we really enjoyed ourselves. The ocean felt amazing, the coral was really cool, the fish were radiantly colored and visibility was perfect. I saw a bunch of parrotfish, which are my favorite fish. Google them. They are sweet.

Snorkeling ended all too soon and we headed back to the island, which by the way we could have swam to from where we were, I’m not sure why we had to take a boat. Probably because the coral was everywhere and the water was really shallow. A lot of people got scraped up or even actually cut pretty bad, especially when drinking started.

So back on the island we suntanned and went swimming until it was time for lunch, which was delicious as pretty much all meals have been on every SAS trip I have been on. There were huge prawns, scrumptious pink tuna, lamb, chicken, shrimp kabobs, marlin, and a bunch of appetizers. The tuna was the best tuna I have ever had. Hannah could not stop talking about it. She still talks about it. It was pretty fabulous. This is also when the alcohol started being served. Our server, Ravi, hooked it up. We loved him and Hannah tipped him 20 American dollars, which that reminds me I need to pay her back. We had lots of vodka and rum mixed with pineapple juice and orange juice and mango juice and wine and then a round of shots. I gave my shot away because I had had quite enough in the extreme heat. We made some new girlfriends and gossiped about everyone on the ship. It was a really really great lunch. There is a lot of gossip going on about a certain 16 year old that may or may not be the daughter of someone important on our ship…so we all talked boys and nightlife and shared our experiences on the ship and our many nicknames that Hannah and I have for the people we often chat about. Our favorite is this guy we call the ghost. He goes to USD but he told everyone that he wasn’t going on SAS even though he was, and he is here, so every time he passes we make a ghost howling sound. It is pretty hilarious and really never gets old.

Anyways, I digress.

So after lunch Hannah was on a secret mission and I was her wing woman and it went pretty well, if I do say so myself. And I am a great wing woman, if I do say so myself. Maybe the best ever. Hannah and Braxton and I went swimming and the current was really strong and I was the only one able to swim out and it was a pretty funny ten minutes watching them try to walk out on the coral. And all too soon the day had ended and all 80 of us or so climbed back into water taxis and back to our buses, where again we slept. Such simple lives we lead.

Once back on the ship we unfortunately didn’t have time to go back out to get T-shirts/postcards like we wanted to, so I now have a second country where I got no T-shirt and no postcards. Huge bummer. But it made me feel a lot better that it was BBQ night!!! We treasure these nights. The chicken was delicious, and tipsy dinners are always good. I would say 80% of the student body came back on the boat pretty hammered, which was perfect because that night was the opening ceremony for Sea Olympics!!!

Sea Olympics are an epic competition among the entire SAS boat, teachers and Life Long Learners and kids included. First prize is pretty huge: you are the first area to get off the boat when we arrive in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The stakes are high.

We are all divided into different seas. My sea, or my hall, is the Mediterranean Sea and our color is royal blue. Basically Sea Olympics is a whole day of competitions like dodgeball, volleyball, workout relay (how many situps, pushups, and chinups you can do and how long you can wallsit), mashed potato sculpting, team relays (orange pass, fireman’s drill, wheelbarrow), sudoku, Texas Hold Em, spelling bee, Twister, limbo, human knot, paper boat float, and finally, the grand finale, synchronized swimming. Anyone that knows me knows that I pretty much live for this stuff, and I had a great time.

Our team’s chosen mascot was the smurf, and we painted Eric’s entire body blue. Our flag consisted of a smurf blowing wind towards boats all titled with the different sea’s names. Our chant, that included some stomping and clapping and yelling, was, “Hey you! The ocean isn’t red green yellow white, I can keep this up all night, pink black purple BOO, I’m sorry but the ocean’s BLUE!”We all dressed up in all blue, painted our faces and our bods, and headed to the Union.

My team got front row seats which was pretty sweet. Everyone was cheering like crazy, every team was wearing their colors, everyone had their own made up mascots. I personally liked Gangreen for the green Aegean sea and yellow fever for the Yellow Sea. Their slogan was “No hope, no cure.”Pretty good. There were also ninjas, pirates, the red bull, and the pink panther.

They opened up the ceremony with some tribal drumming. Then we had mascot, flag, and chant judging. My team did pretty mediocre in the chant. Actually, as it would turn out, we did pretty mediocre in pretty much everything.

Then I watched “Slumdog Millionaire”which was good but nothing like what I expected.

The next day we awoke for a day full of festivities and no class. I again donned my blue gear and went to my first event, volleyball. It was pretty fierce, not really we all pretty much sucked, but it was a fun game and we lost when we went into three games. Next I went to the relay, where I participated in the orange pass and fireman’s relay. I think we got the bronze medal in that event.

After that I went to go practice with my team for synchronized swimming! I was sooo excited about this, I knew people were going to be hilarious and I was absolutely right. We practiced for awhile, then I went to go check out the workout relay which was pretty intense. Sexy Dean Les McCabe beat out all the kids in pull ups. He is a beast. And a nine year old girl beat everyone in the wall sit.

Finally it was time for synchro. Everyone’s routines were absolutely hilarious. Ours was probably middle range when it came to goodness and funniness, but I had a great time doing it. I can’t wait to show you guys the video. We used a few different songs, started out with Pass That Dutch, then I Want it That Way, then Single Ladies, then Umbrella where we all had umbrellas in the pool, then we finished up with I’m Blue. It was so fun. The whole day was a blast. Just like summer camp. Pretty much every day on this ship is just like summer camp, and I don’t mind that at all because I am getting old and my days of summer campish fun are numbered.

At closing ceremonies, everyone again gathered behind their mascots. Several more medals were given out, and then the top three teams were announced. It was actually a three way tie for third which is crazy, but the Adriatic Sea took it over all. Damn pink panthers. But they were a very unified team and they did have the best synchro for sure so I didn’t mind too much. We got third to last. So…yeah.

After closing ceremonies I grabbed Balderdash and invited Hannah’s crush to play with us. Wingwoman of the century. Six of us played for the next hour and a half and we only got a quarter way through the game, we were all that bad and slow. But it was a good time, and we finally adjourned when we were just too sick of it. Our favorite weird word of the night was “pahoehoe.”Apparently it is a Hawaiian word meaning hardened lava. But we liked to use it in sentences like, “Oh, that girl is such a pahoehoe”or “Mmm break me off some of that pahoehoe.”I’m pretty sure pahoehoe will now be a permanent part of our voyage.

After that I wrote a paper that I’ve been putting off, surprise surprise, but it only had to be two pages long so NBD.

Today was a pretty chill day, the weather outside is still blazing. I went to class then ate lunch which was yummy then took a little nap and awoke to it pouring outside. It only lasted for a few minutes, but it was nice. After dinner, which was also good, it was a good food day, Hannnah and I went and looked at the beautiful sunset and the stars forming in the sky. Then we watched a movie called “Earth”about 1947 when Britain handed over India to independence and divided the country, India and Pakistan. It was crazy and we left the Union feeling confused and uncomfortable. It was a terrible ending and everyone died.

So now we are trying to shake that off. We went up to pub night and the theme tonight is “Things that start with C.”That entertained us for about ten minutes. Cow, crossdresser, Captain Underwear, cowgirl, coffee, condom dispenser. Creative?

I thought I would finish up my blog and we are about to pull out some sort of game and play. The people around me are really enjoying the music I’m playing, mostly childhood relics.

India in three more days.

Hope you all are well. I miss and love you.

South Africa

2009-02-25T03:27:00.000-08:00

First day in South Africa. A few hours docking late. Seems to be something pretty commonly occurring actually. Sucks because this is my only full day in Cape Town. The view from the boat is spectacular, Table Mountain is shrouded in clouds, there are seals jumping around in the water everywhere.

Cape Town is a very special port and an absolutely amazing city. I have always wanted to go to South Africa, and Cape Town was more beautiful than anything I expected.

       The first day all of my friends were busy so I set out finding people to hang out with. I asked Justin if I could go geocaching with him. Geocaching is quite an interesting pastime. Basically he uses his GPS to take him to the coordinates of hidden treasures that people hide all over the world and register online for others to find! How interesting, right? He has found them everywhere and I really wanted to go treasure hunting with him. So we set out as soon as we could get off the ship. Our first find was unsuccessful unfortunately, but no worries, there were two more within a couple of miles. Our walk took us all over the place, into the main part of the city, on the outskirts, even up a mountain. We found our first cache in this field in the back of a circus school. Yeah, a circus school. The description for the cache included directions to record your own performance and leave a picture of it. The cache was instead of a tree, a little glass jar, we pulled it out and looked at what people had left, a log book with everyone’s name who had ever visited and little things like a Pez dispenser, pencil, stickers, and little cards that say the person’s “name”on them, like Cow N Chicken. He left his University of Vermont pen. We signed our names. That cache had been there since February 2008 and had been visited by many geocachers.

       We followed the GPS to our next cache, which just so happened to be all the way at the top of Signal Hill. I was in no way prepared to climb a mountain, and it ended up pretty embarrassing for me. Justin was in sandals and basically raced up the hill while I struggle to keep up. Once I was pretty much having an asthma attack so I had to stop for a little. Actually I’m pretty sure I have bronchitis because I am often out of breath for really little things, I mean I’m not that incredibly out of shape.

       Anyways after much sweating and panting we made it to the top, all the way to this abandoned cannon shelter, where we found the next cache hidden inside one of the bricks. This one was like a small Tupperware, and more items were in it because there was more space. It had been there since 2005! There were two logbooks inside. Everyone seemed to comment on whatever weather they had dealed with that day as well as the beautiful view. And the view was beautiful. Standing on top of that hill and feeling the breeze rush past me after that climb was very gratifying. We signed our names then climbed down again to catch a taxi. Justin went off to his MICE performance and I went to Long Street to meet up with Smith.

       Smith, Jessica, Heather, and Luisa had just finished eating, and we all explored the flea market for awhile. I bought some great gifts for people at home, as well as for myself, and grabbed some food and beer for the go. Smith and I brownbagged it as we hopped on the Red Bus Tour. I am so so happy I decided to do this tour. You see them in every big city in the world, but for this little time I had in Cape Town specifically, it was the perfect option. I saw so many things and places I would have never seen, and I really learned a lot! For the whole day it was only twelve dollars, or 120 rand, so worth it. We listened to the info as it went all over the city. We hopped off at Table Mountain but unfortunately it was cloudy on top so we decided to wait till another day so we could experience the great views. So we took some pictures and hopped back on. The bus next took us over to Hout Bay, one of the most beautiful beach areas I’ve ever seen. We hopped off here and had a great time exploring the beach. We really wanted calamari so we sat down at this great café and had some sea food and drinks. The drinks were incredibly strong and Smith and I shared a few and were laughing a lot by the time we left.

    We hopped back on the bus and Smith and I headed over to Mama Africa to meet up with Hannah, Kendra and Lexi for dinner. They were all booked up for dinner so we all had a seat at the bar. This restaurant was fantastic. We all started off with a springbok shot, which tastes just like mint ice cream. Then we had dinner, which consisted of crocodile, kudu, ostrich and springbok. Delicious. All of it. Especially the ostrich. We had some more drinks and listened to the AMAZING band. There were three xylophonists, a guitarist, a sax player, and the icing on the cake, baritone/opera-singer/Christina-Aguilera main singer Zwelibanzi. Hannah and I loved him, we made “I love you”motioning to him until he brought both of us on stage with him for a dance party. It was fantastic.

    We left from there around 9 and stopped into a bar for a little while, just happened to see Alicia and Caroline and Greg walking by, and traveled with them over to a club called Chrome which was selling shots for 1 rand each, or 10 whole cents. Wow. So we go into this club and it is entirely Arab, which is strange because I have barely seen an Arab person the entire day. And the dance floor is empty. But whatever Hannah and I change that rather quickly. We got out on the floor and did our best choreographed Zumba moves. Then Smith taught me the Texas two-step. Unfortunately I had to be up at 4 so we left rather early to head home to pack and all that good stuff.

    Set my alarm on my phone to get up. Unfortunately the clock on my phone was an hour off, and I woke up in a panic to my friend calling me telling me I was running late. AH! So I scrambled and got all my stuff together and ran upstairs. I made it fine, we headed to the airport, most everyone was hung over, some people hadn’t even gone to sleep. I had at least gotten three hours or so. Unfortunately I barely slept on the two hour plane ride or the three hour bus ride, but Smith slept pretty much the whole time so I just listened to my ipod and tried to rest. The part of the drive I do see is beautiful though. The countryside is everything you would imagine it to be.

    We finally get to our campsite. Our tents are pretty awesome, beds made, mattresses off the floor, even a little side table with a light on it. Mackenzie and I room together. At this point the heat is unbearable, maybe 100 with an incredible amount of humidity. Sitting down is too much, I have to stand to avoid the thigh and back sweat.

    But we all complained a bit too soon. I have had the immense pleasure of having near perfect and unusual weather for the season in every country I have gone to. Like in Spain, we had amazing weather in Cadiz. In Namibia, we went to the sand dunes at just the perfect time, when the weather was cool and there was cloud cover. And, in South Africa, we had three days of warm weather but often with cloud cover, making most of our stay completely comfortable and unusually cool!

    We hop into our safari cars and take off for an afternoon game drive, after grabbing a quick lunch of egg salad sandwiches, delicious green apples, chicken nuggets and juice and sodas. The food at this place was amazing and just kept getting better. So our driver was named Caz…little did we know that Caz is pretty much the most badass person I have ever encountered. In fact, I will go so far as to say she is a BAMF, and I have never used that word as a descriptor before in my life. She has been a safari guide for six years and grew up in the bush with her parents who were also both guides. She has some crazy stories and I will tell some of them later.

    So we first have a twenty minute ride over to the actual game park, Hluhluwe. The ride over passes by a very rural area where as far as I can see only poor black people live. Everyone is walking, and the couple of bikes I did see, the tires were completely gone so that the bike was running solely on rims. There are cows and goats all over the roads, we have to slow and honk at them so that they move. As we drive by some young boys yell at us in Afrikaans, “Don’t touch my cows! Leave my cows alone!”It is the young boys’jobs to care for the family cattle. I saw a boy that couldn’t possibly be older than five tending to a herd. Most people wave at us as we pass. I feel a bit stupid sitting there in a safari vehicle passing by all of this poverty. The houses are nestled all along the hills. The houses are more like shacks, but some are painted brilliant colors of blue and pink, and most have little enclosures for crops and cattle. Kids are walking in their school uniforms home from school. Caz informs us that most kids walk about three miles to school, and they really are kids. Not everyone that passes by us is nice, however. During the few drives from the park we had back and forth, once we had boys throw rocks at us. Caz immediately stopped the vehicle, got out, and started chasing them, and they ran like hell. She said that sometimes she’ll go get a rock, take her car back and go throw one back at them. Another boy flicked a switchblade as we drove by.

    Anyways, we get into the game reserve, and the first animals I spot are a family of warthogs all hanging out in a grassy patch. They had six babies, and all the babies crawled on their front legs to munch on grass. They were so cute! Next we encounter the African jumping gecko…there was this awesome gecko crawling around our seat. It tried to crawl on my leg so I moved my leg over, then it jumped like a foot and a half to the seat! Well being the girls we are we screamed, and Caz laughed, and we had a brush with a lizard. Caz said we would never make it in the bush. Next we ran into zebra. They are absolutely gorgeous, their designs are spectacular. We would see many of those before our trip was over.
Next we ran into four rhino feeding right by the road, about ten feet from our car. They were so huge and cool! We watched them for about five minutes, when suddenly we heard an elephant cry from somewhere in the distance. The rhinos were instantly alarmed, and all four of them startled and ran away! Watching them run was hilarious. Ca said the elephant cry had been a distress call and had come from five kilometers away. It sounded like it had come from no more than 100 feet away!

    We drove around for about three hours that day before returning to get ready for dinner. It was cool enough now to shower, so we did quickly, then they picked us up for dinner. It was pitch black, and the area we were in was entirely lit by candlelight. It was such a beautiful and romantic setting. We were the only guests there other than a French family. The food was all traditional African food and served in large quantities…many different meats, a delicious plate of many cheeses and crackers, and amazing desserts with all sorts of toppings. We ate and drank our fill and even got a little show when all of the workers came out and danced for us. After that we headed back and everyone hit the sack pretty early as we were all exhausted. Smith and Teresa and I sat around listening to music from our childhood and I went to sleep in my bug-free tent in shorts and a bra and feeling very content.

    The next morning we woke up to the sound of drums around 6 am. Smith and I took an early morning walk and were attacked by caterpillars hanging on strings off the trees and a million gnats. We all got up, put on safari gear, and hopped in the jeeps. We ate a delicious breakfast with lots of fresh fruit and headed out on the road by 7. We were on a game drive until about 4 that afternoon. The weather all morning was amazing, nice and cool. The first thing we see are a herd of about 30 elephant crossing the road right in front of us! Babies and everything. It was amazing, they were so close! They were just scuttling along, Caz said they were kind of skittish and that she was paying close attention to the women because they are the most aggressive. Suddenly one of the big adult females turns on us and gives a warning yell, then starts charging! Caz started the car in a flash and quickly backed up. The elephant backed off, but Caz said we were seconds away from a potentially very dangerous situation. Fun!

    We saw a ton of giraffe all day long. The coolest giraffe sighting were of these five all hanging out, three of which were right in the road and could care less that we wanted to get by. Caz would scoot the car up by them and they would slowly and barely move out of the way. They were snobs. We loved it. We also saw the herd of elephant all playing in the watering hole. And two water buffalo having a mudbath.

    I think possibly the funniest thing on the planet could be personifying animals. And trust me, I did a lot of it. I invited others to join but nobody thought it was quite as enjoyable as I did. My favorite was when the water buffalo opened her mouth and I said, “Oh yuck, got a fly in here.”Haha.

    The coolest thing by far we saw was a huge male elephant that we just happened t run into on the road. He walked on the road as we backed up for about 2 miles! It was amazing just watching him eat, play in the water, his huge trunk scraping the ground. He was also in heat, so Caz was very cautious of him. We thought he was peeing, but turns out that’s just a huge glob of testosterone. And then, all of the sudden, he flashed us! Elephant penis is pretty huge. Apparently they can control them, like slap it against their bellies and stuff. It was probably as long as my lower leg and a little smaller around than my thigh. It was pretty funny. The boys said they were going to show off theirs in return, but they felt intimidated haha. It was scary at times too because he was about five feet from the car at times and he was gigantic and could easily flip us if he wanted to, but Caz watched him carefully, and he just walked us down the road. It was really great.

    Unfortunately we never did see any lions or leopards, but we had an amazing time nonetheless. It got extremely hot only for about an hour, and the rest of the day was so pleasant. Dinner was at the lodge, delicious once again, and we all got pretty tipsy at this dinner. So afterwards we hopped in a car with Peter, who took us straight over to the pool. The night consisted of skinnydipping, playing “never have I ever,”listening to good music, singing, and playing mafia. It was a great night. Smith and I were drunk enough that we felt comfortable laying on the ground, not a very good idea, but we stargazed for awhile with Win and I woke up about 30 minutes later still on the ground haha. After that it was bedtime, sleeping outside was not a good idea.

    The next morning we were up at 5:30 am, again to the sound of drums. We had a quick breakfast, walked over to the pond to check out the crocodile, then had a 3 hour bus ride and two hour plane ride back. We were back in Cape Town by noon. So I took off with some people to go to the District Six Museum, which is a museum about a neighborhood that was demolished during apartheid to clear all of the black people out. Most of the area remains covered in grass today. Next we hit up Long Street to the flea market again, but they were closing up and I didn’t nearly have enough shopping time. South Africa was the first country I didn’t get a T-shirt or postcards in. ☹

    So we all sat down in a café and had delicious pita sandwiches and drinks and coffees. Mmm. Then back to the boat to get ready to go out for dinner and nighttime festivities.

    The next day I visited a township called Kayelitsha. Townships were originally places groups of people were forced to live during apartheid, and Khayelitsha is one of the biggest. Today townships remain some of the poorest as well as racially segregated areas, and also the most dangerous. The experience was great. Everywhere I went in South Africa I was surrounded by music. It was a Sunday so there were church services going on. I got to sit in on two of them. They were beautiful and the voices of the people were very moving. I particularly enjoyed the black Jesus. I loved listening to the preacher speak Afrikaans and hearing the congregation break out in laughter. The children were my favorite part. They clamored all over us to get gifts of stickers and candy. One little girl gave me one of her stickers, which moved me to tears. Another little girl grabbed my hand and walked with me for quite some time. That hand felt so supportive to me.

    We visited Vicky’s B&B and talked to Vicky herself, then had a walking tour of the township. We came on a very special day. South Africa is about to have elections and one of the candidates, Zuma, was speaking in Khayelitsha that day. People were being bussed in from miles around to hear him speak. We could just see the auditorium and it was packed. People were yelling and cheering and wearing supportive T-shirts everywhere. Everyone raised their fists in the air and shouted “Viva Zuma!”It was funny because SAS tells us specifically to avoid rallies of any type, and here we were right in the middle of one, taking pictures. It was a great sight to see, these people gathering behind a candidate they believe in. The current South African president, Mbecki, has been a huge disappointment for the people after Nelson Mandela. Mbecki has put forward such measures as denying the seriousness of AIDS in the country.

    I still hadn’t seen Table Mountain so Sarah, who shaved her head, and I took a taxi to the mountain to take the cable car up. Unfortunately it was closed and would be for the rest of the day due to high winds. Very disappointing as it was my last chance to go up. So we decided to go to the botanical gardens instead, called Kirstenbosch. They were so beautiful, Sarah and I were both really enjoying taking photographs. It was a very peaceful place on a wonderfully warm day, families were everywhere, I was that creeper taking pictures of the little kids. There was a concert going on too, the philharmonic orchestra of the area or something like that. On our way out, I ran into Canadian John, who we skydived with in Namibia! Small world huh?

    When we finally returned it was time to get back on the boat.

    Now we are en route to Mauritius, which is basically going to be a day of sunlounging. It is a very popular celeb vacay spot, hopefully I’ll run into Perez.

    We had our first global studies test and I’m pretty sure I failed it but so did everyone else so no worries. I got a B on my first art test and an A on my first Islam quiz. Sweet.

Namibia

2009-02-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

Feb 16
       First of all, I have no voice right now. And I haven’t for three days. At first I enjoyed singing Britney Spears songs and laughing at how I sounded, just like I used to do in eighth grade if any of my elementary classmates may recall, but by this point, I am overly frustrated. Tomorrow morning my vocal chords better be ready for action. I’m lossenging them back to health.
       We have one day now before we get to South Africa, the country I am most excited to be at on this whole trip! I am anticipating amazing things.
       But maybe I should tell you about the amazing things that happened in Namibia first. I am going to go through it step by step because there were a lot of firsts had as well as a lot of challenging emotional moments, and I really want to write down my feelings while they are still rather fresh.
       We dock at Namibia and are first told that they are stamping our passports, but they happened to only bring one stamp, so it might be a couple of hours. Very efficient. It’s okay though because we have a diplomatic briefing to go to. They tell us general cultural outlines of Namibia. The country is as big as Texas and is populated by only 2 million people. Just think about it for a second. Nobody lives there. That’s what makes it awesome. Animals live there instead of humans. Good for them.
       So a black man speaks to us, he is from New York and has lived in Namibia in his diplomatic position for two and a half years. The crime label for Namibia is high, having only recently come down from critical. The crime level in South Africa, in comparison, is critical. He tells us this charming story about the night he heard a scratching at his window, went to open, and there found a man all in a black who proceeded to stab him with a screwdriver through the window. So he picked up a wicker chair and battled him for seven minutes! That is a very long time, especially in crisis mode. But finally, after a valiant chair battle, the guy fled. But he ended his talk by telling us not to be scared, just wise. Good advice I guess, but kind of hard to follow after he just told us a story about a guy in Namibia that was ballsy enough to rob a guy with just a screwdriver, and not even that, but freaking stab it through the window at him then proceed to still try and get in. Ballsy.
       So off we go feeling very safe.
       We all flocked to the seventh deck where we could see, far below us on the port deck, a girl’s children’s choir singing to us. It was an innocent and beautiful sight. There were perhaps fifteen girls singing, one playing a drum, all dressed in kind of Wilma Flinstone-esque outfits in animal prints. There are some very young girls, perhaps 6, and they are the best dancers, by far. What is it with African children? Are they just born with the beat? Are any of them not? They were great, the songs were in the local language, Afrikans, and were very culturally unique. The girls were all so animated. They had these great choreographed dance moves, and then had some songs where each girl got a chance to break it down freestyle. When we were able to exit the boat, which was much sooner than we thought, we were able to talk with them, hug them, and take pictures with them. They were so sweet and smiling and loved posing with us.
       The children in all of these countries always make a lasting impression on me. It just kind of blows my mind that there are actually people that grow up in other countries. Do you know what I mean? Like, I am amazed by every person I meet that grew up in a different country, because that is a totally foreign concept to me. No pun intended.
       I start on the trek out of the port with Nancy, Katherine, Tessa, and Whitney. This walk out of the port, at a normal pace, is no less than 25 minutes. Gotta love ports. In fact everything about our port city, Walvis Bay, just seemed very roundabout to me. From the ship I could see the bay about three quarters of a mile away, if only I could find a route to walk to it. But there is none, so you have to take a five minute taxi ride.
       We explore town for a few hours. The people are very friendly. I have definitely felt more welcomed in Namibia than anywhere else. We had not one but three separate people, some policemen some not, come up to us and tell us to keep our purses close to us because there were bad people around. And a lot of other people just came up to chat with us. And still many other people asked us for money.
       We made our way back to the bus after walking around town for a few hours and eating lunch by the bay at a restaurant called The Raft. There we had two of the most delicious pizza I have ever tasted. The bay is beautiful and many different birds, huge pelicans, and seals can be seen everywhere.
       We packed up our stuff quickly and changed to make our way to Dune 7. We headed there, a group of ten of us in one taxi van. We bartered with the guy and he agreed to drive us to the dunes, sit for three hours until we were done, and then drive us to Swakopmund, for 80 Namibian dollars each. 80 Namibian dollars= 8 American dollars. Think about it. It was an amazing deal and he was so nice.
       So we have this thirty minute drive through the desert to get to the dunes. The drive is beautiful, ocean on one side, endless stretching desert on the other, with these little bushes growing about every ten feet. When we finally get to the dunes, I am amazed. The san dune is the size of a small mountain, bigger than anything I expected. And soon I would be flying down it. We stop at this little hut where you can rent the sandboarding equipment, go ATVing, and other things. Also a bar. This little hut is the only thing for miles and miles. They also had a freshly kept patch of grass. That really cracked me up. I wanted to rent a snowboard at first, but it was 40 dollars compared to the 5 dollars to rent a sandboard, and going down with a snowboard was apparently very slow, hard, and not worth it. So I rented a sandboard, which is basically a big piece of wood. A board of wood, about five foot long, two and a half feet wide. You lay down on this board on your stomach, headfirst. Crazy.
       All ten of us hop in this truck with our beers, all squished in and cozy, and the driver takes off and drives us about halfway up the dune, which is already really really high. From there we hike to the top. The hike is tough but I was happy for the exercise, and the view is gorgeous. The dunes are eerily beautiful, the wind threw the sand right over the side of the cliff. The left side of the mountain was more curvy, that’s where I figured we would go down. Wrong. We were going off of the extremely steep, almost straight down side. Oh my god. It is so high up, I thin about 300 meters. Which means it is so far down. On the left side are trees and on the right side there is an ominous bush and some wooden pegs, so we needed to go down the center path. Even the center path isn’t so great because there is this rocky patch that you may or may not go right over depending on how fast you are going.
       Oh well here we go!
       I was the third person to go down, and everyone said I went really fast. I wasn’t that scared until about halfway down…that was when I had a pretty serious face on because I realized how fast I was going, and after I caught air after hitting a bump I was really getting nervous. So I just dug my toes in some to slow myself down a little, but it really didn’t help. At all. So I was at the fate of the sand gods as I sped along. I ended up coming to rest just barely before the rocky patch. I scratched up my knuckles and elbows some, but all in all it was a blast, and five of us got another ride up to go again! I have a great video of it I’ll show you later, it really shows how high up we are.
       We go back down and decide to go WATERBALLING. I caps lock this word because it was so so so so fun. Basically it is this huge hamster ball that they put some water inside of. Then you go in it and roll down a cliff. Hahaha it was fantastic. Nancy, Mary, Alicia and I all went together, all at the same time! The first time we had no idea what to expect, so when they pushed us off this 15 foot cliff we screamed but we loved it, it was a blast. The ball rolls but the water slips along with you so you stay in one place. We liked it so much we did it again!
       This entire day of fun only cost me thirty dollars, including taxi. Way worth it. Everything is very cheap in Namibia. A lot of people went ATVing but I didn’t want to because our insurance through the ship program does not cover us for motor vehicle accidents as we are not supposed to rent them. We also aren’t supposed to any extreme sports though so oh well.
       I spent my Valentine’s Day with a group of great girls, and we have a great video of us all cheering our beers and saying Happy Valentine’s Day ladies.
       Finally we make our way to Swakopmund. The taxi drops the girls off at their hostel and Alicia and I off at the house. It is a beautiful home, two story, three bedroom, three bath, kitchen and living room. Nicely furnished. Pretty much beach front. It was like Spring Break 09 in San Diego. A ton of kids rented beach houses all along this area. One house that I went to a couple of times had 40 people in it. It happened to be the house right behind Brangelina’s beach home. That’s how nice these homes are. The whole city is really nice, it is a mostly German town, with German architecture. German, English, and Afrikans are all widely spoken in Namibia, and the tourists that frequent the country most are German. All of the menus are in German and English.
       So we settle in, watch the sunset, I take a shower and walk downstairs to a home cooked dinner being served to me, macaroni and hot dogs on regular bread. Kind of strange but we made it work. We had about 10 people stay in the house this night…Taylor, Alicia, Rosalee, Megan, Chazz, Nate, Justin, Leah, me, maybe someone else I’m leaving out. The alcohol supply was high, and we all partook. We had a couple of visitors that night, two guys from South Africa that were living in Namibia, they brought over three bottles so we loved them. After hanging out at the house for a couple of hours we decided to head over to the house with 40 people where they were apparently having a party.
       Also the 14th was Anthony and I’s one year anniversary, so I was a little sad off and on. But I was able to talk to him for awhile and that was nice.
       We hung out at the house for awhile, I knew a few people staying over there, then we walked back to our house around 1 am. That was when all of the real drama ensued. Somehow Nate got left behind the group, and when he finally found his way back to the house, he had sliced his foot open pretty badly. Badly enough that an insane night of trying to find him medical care ensued. Alicia made many many phone calls to MedEx, our insurance, hospitals in the area, and so on. Quote from Alicia, “It is ridiculous how hard it is to get medical treatment in this country.”She called the emergency number for the Walvis Bay police because we didn’t have the Swakopmund number. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the number for either the Swakopmund police department or the hospital. WHAT??? None of us could believe it. This town is only thirty minutes away! That’s Africa for you. The other problem was getting a taxi, or any transportation, to the hospital, when they finally found a hospital that was even open. The nearest place to even possibly get a taxi was a fifteen minute walk away, and Nate definitely wouldn’t make it. They finally were able to get an ambulance to come pick him up, after many phone calls and a lot of hard work, and they would have to pay for it. So Taylor, Alicia, and Nate finally get to the hospital around 4 am. It is dark. No one is there. They bang on the door and a woman comes to get them. Alicia said it was exactly what you would picture an African hospital looking like. Bugs everywhere. Old fashioned equipment. A doctor finally did see them and flushed out a still drunken Nate’s wound, pulling objects out of it. He then got five stitches. They paid him about 100 dollars, and none of us really carry that much cash, so they asked to pay in credit card, and they were not too happy about that. Basically everyone they talked to anywhere wasn’t helpful in any way or nice. Except for MedEx, which is a great insurance program. And thankfully, the doctor gave all of them a ride home. Alicia fell asleep at 5:45 am.
       By the way, I pretty much slept through all of this.

Namibia cont.

2009-02-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

So onto the next day! Alicia and I awake at the tender hour of 7:15 am and make the long walk over to the gas station to catch a taxi. On the way she fills me in on the madness of the previous night.
       We catch a taxi to the hostel to meet up with Tessa, Nancy and Katherine. All of us kick around and eat breakfast until a car comes to pick us up to take us to our next adventure, which is…get ready for it Mom... SKYDIVING!!!!!!
       When we climbed into that van that’s when it first really hit us…holy s***, I am heading to an airport to jump out of a plane right now. We drove out to this middle of nowhere place. The “airport”is basically a big dirt area with a couple of buildings. They run their skydiving out of a pub. No big deal. But I did see a sign that said “No drinking and skydiving.”We paid and signed our lives away, then got a literally five minute training segment. Five minutes to jump out of a plane. Insanity. But that’s all we needed. We put on our jump suits and headed to the jump site! In our group were Nancy, Tessa, Katherine, McKenzie, Maverick, this Canadian guy named John, and this South Korean guy named Kang. Kang had never skydived before and could barely speak English! But the girls met him at the hostel and he just asked to join us. Isn’t he crazy? John was a really nice guy, him and his friends were finishing up a three week tour of African countries, he showed us a pretty sweet video of lions having sex. Maybe I’ll get to see the miracle of life in action in the wild of Africa!
       So the drive to the jump site is funny because we are REALLY in the middle of nowhere now. I can’t see a single thing but desert, and we are pretty much four wheeling it. We were like…and this is the drive to our death. When we finally get there, “there”is two shacks and a shaded area. And a firepit. That’s it. This is where the airplane will come in and take off and where we will land from our jumps. We all sit around anxiously waiting for the plane to get there. We had all decided to get a video of our jumps, so for each jumper two more workers were needed, one cameraman who jumps out right before us, and one tandem jumper who is strapped onto our backs. So each plane load could take two jumpers. They chose who went with who. Katherine ended up going first. We heard her screams from hundreds of feet in the air! She came down and was totally elated, and it just made us more excited. Each plane ride took about 25 minutes. Finally it was my turn! And I just happened to be going up with Kang. Hahaha.
       My jumping partner was named Mias and he was a very touchy feely guy, but my life was in his hands and I trusted him. I kind of had to. He was really nice though. The plane was very small and the door was open the whole time. We were all crammed in, by the time I was getting ready to jump out my feet were pretty asleep. The view was beautiful and I just tried to take it all in, I really wasn’t even that nervous surprisingly, just excited and anticipatory. So finally, he tells me to get ready. I shuffle up by the door and he straps onto me and puts on my goggles for me. This was the insane part. The cameraman hangs out of the door, then Mias put his right leg out the door, and I did the same. Then I put my left knee just on the edge, sitting on my left foot. Then I was looking outside of the plane! And the next thing I knew, Mias leaned back, then pushed out, and I was falling! Flying! The wind in my face! I let my arms and legs go and just felt the rush. It was amazing and something I have never felt before. We fell for a very long 35 seconds before he pulled the parachute. That was actually a really scary part too because it feels as though you’re being released rather than pulled up. From that point on, it was all coasting. Mias gave me the reins and let me turn us in fast circles all the way down. And then we landed, and all was well in the world!
       Everyone had a blast, there was one mishap though, but thankfully nothing too serious. Alicia’s first chute was all twisted up, and her guy had to cut it and use their backup chute. Very scary. I gave her a huge hug when I found out that had happened, but she just thought it was a cool story to tell.
       We went back to the pub, had a few drinks and food for an hour or two while watching our DVDs and cracking up, then got our DVDs and photos and left.
Alicia and I decided to head back to the house because we were both tired, and Alicia especially was exhausted. Unfortunately, when we got there, we were locked out. They had left us a note but no key. And no door open. And no window open. Very very frustrating. First sign to us that we were not too high on the priority list for them, though I do understand that we should have figured that out with them beforehand, but what with Alicia being at the hospital and everything, it just didn’t happen. So instead of sleeping and showering and having some quiet time, we headed over to our friend’s beach house again. We tried to sleep but it was too loud, so we just sat around talking with people. Then we headed back to our house because everyone was on their way home from the dunes. We all go in the house, and no one says a single thing about the fact that we waited for four hours, and we were the last ones to shower. But we shake it off and don’t say anything, it’s not worth it. I felt a lot better after I showered and got ready to go out that night.
It was another frustrating night, we couldn’t get a taxi, no restaurants were open and everyone but me wanted to eat, then we finally got to a restaurant, it was closed, they called a taxi for us, he took four of us first then was going to come back for the rest of us. He didn’t come back for forty minutes. And the place he took us to eat was just a gas station. So Alicia and I take off to a bar we heard might be open. It’s a Sunday so the town of Swakopmund is literally dead. There was not a single shop open, nothing. And no one was on the streets but all the SAS kids. So we see one bar open, and of course it is swarming with SAS kids. Not my idea of a good time. I can get picked up on by an American guy at home right? Kidding. And by this point I had completely lost my voice. I was hoping to maybe meet a few people but I couldn’t even speak, so it was very frustrating. We stayed for about an hour then took off. The bartenders were sweating like crazy, I know for a fact it will be their busiest night at least until the next SAS shipment of kids comes in.
So we get home and everyone is still up just kind of hanging out. We hang out for awhile, but when it gets around 2 am Alicia and I are ready to go to sleep. I go downstairs and ask everyone if we could have a bed that night since we didn’t get one the night before. My answer is complete silence. So that’s a no. Their solution is to move upstairs to watch the movie so we can go to sleep on the couches. Thanks, I guess. Leah, who I really like, did offer hers up, and so did Megan. But that’s about it. Just really disappointing and the final sign to me that I wasn’t considered a part of this house or even an actual friend, though I paid just as much as everyone else did. I’m just tired of being under someone else’s run of things, and I’m not going to do it anymore if I can help it. It was kind of sad though, I just miss traveling with people that love me and are actually interested in my best interests. I really felt like just common courtesies were missing. I didn’t feel welcome there and I won’t be traveling with them again, which is unfortunate because Taylor is Melissa’s other best friend and I really do want to get to know her, but she is probably always going to traveling with that group.
Anyways, enough negativity. Alicia and I woke up at 8 am and hiked thirty minutes on the beach to this hotel and spa to get wonderful massages. My sickness was ridiculous this morning. I couldn’t breathe at all and my cough was terrible. All through the massage I struggled. But the fact that it was only 23 dollars for an hour made me feel pretty good! But my masseuse was great and she worked on my respiratory system and put eucalyptus on my chest and back and helped me breathe some in, and it actually really really helped. I felt much better the rest of the day.
Alicia and I got a cab back to Walvis Bay and stopped by the boat. Nancy and I set out to go kayaking, but unfortunately the place was closed. On the way there, though, something pretty shocking occurred. We witnessed a man get hit by a car. Nancy and the cab driver actually saw it, and I saw the man on the floor about a second after it happened. It was horrifying. The man was lying on the ground on his side, half sitting up, gripping his chest. It was clear he was in immense pain and shock. He was hit pretty hard. His hands were bloodied. A black woman ran over to him, talking to him, until she was holding him and crying. Another man was holding him too. A huge crowd gathered around him, watching. No way I was getting out of that car to go witness this man’s demise. Human nature seems so unnatural sometimes. An ambulance came within about a minute and a half. We eventually drove away. I cried for about ten minutes. It was just so shocking and a huge reality check. Someone on Semester at Sea died last semester in Hong Kong when he was struck by a car. It was just a big reminder of our mortality and how important it is to stay alert and take care of each other. More the reason for me to travel with people I trust.
It felt very strange to go on with our day after that, and I was shaken up for quite awhile. We just walked around town, bought some postcards and souvenirs, ate a great meal of this amazing sandwich with egg, mince, onion, tomato, and cheese, then headed back to the boat.
Namibia was a beautiful and unique country. A lot of SAS kids ruined it though, a group of about 100 kids got kicked out of a hotel for being too rowdy at the bars and so on, and some kids were kicked out of their beach houses. It’s disappointing to see that that is all that kids from my age group care about. I mean, I am doing my share of drinking, but I am not belligerent, yelling, obnoxious, or disrespectful. Ever. Just control yourself. It’s not that hard. Being on the ship sometimes makes me lose faith in humanity a little, or at least my own age group. But being off it, immersed in all of these amazing cultures, helps me regain it again.
I am so tired now and really need to go to bed. Today we didn’t have class, just a lot of meetings about South Africa and a mustering drill. And TACOS FOR LUNCH!!! My back is sunburned because I fell asleep and I am mad about it.
And tomorrow morning…SOUTH AFRICA!
Tomorrow: Watch the sunrise from the ship at 6:30 am. Geocaching with Justin till noon. Meeting up with Smith at noon and taking the red bus tour around the city. Dinner at Mama Africa with Hannah at 6:30. Going out.
Thursday: 4:15 AM meetup time for my safari. Two hour flight. Three days of seeing amazing animals.
Sunday: Khayelitsha township visit.

This country is going to amaze me.

2009-02-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

Feb 13
       Oh my gooooood. I am so ill and so ready to be in Namibia. This stretch went by much more slowly for me than the last stretch did. But now we are finally in Africa! It is going to be three days of extreme sports for me. Tomorrow I am going sandboarding with a bunch of friends, kind of like snowboarding in the giant sand dunes. The next day I am doing something very fun, but also very secret. I’ll tell you after. And the third day I am probably going to try to go kayaking around the bay before heading back on the ship for our one day trek to South Africa. I decided not to go shark diving in South Africa because the day I was going to do it will be the only day I can spend in Cape Town. It definitely would have been something awesome and exciting and I was all signed up, but I feel that day could be used in a more culturally fulfilling way. The next three days I am going on a safari! And the last day I am in South Africa I will be visiting a township all day. I know Africa is going to be a very special and exciting experience. And they speak English. Sweet.
       In Namibia I will be staying in a house in a town called Swakopmund with about 7 people. It’s $100 a night haha. Swakopmund is a heavily German town, as is a large section of Namibia. The town has a brewery in it, so I assume I will be getting into some mischief as well. Actually I also heard that some people have rented out a row of houses and are throwing…a kegger! How college. I didn’t think I would be experiencing a kegger on this voyage haha.
       I aced all three quizzes I had this week. This semester should be a breeze.
       Last night we hit up pub night and played Thumper for about a solid hour. And it really did take that whole hour for it to get old. Tonight we are all going to watch Wall-E and this season’s episodes of The Office! They are playing them in the Union. We also have our logistical preport where they tell us all the stuff to watch out for and blabla.
       I’m going to try to get to bed early tonight as I know it’s the most sleep I’ll have in awhile and my head feels like it’s dying and I am exhausted despite having slept till 11:30 this morning.
       My group of friends and I exchanged Secret Valentine’s.. and Hannah got me. Thank God.
       Just finished watching two episodes of The Office. And now I’m heading to bed. Early morning manana.

2009-02-12T06:42:00.000-08:00

Feb 12
Today I am feeling very sick and sad.

2009-02-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

Feb 11
       Last night I sawr a film…as I recall it was a foreign film. Actually it was a documentary called “Cocaine Cowboys”and it was all about how Miami was overrun by druglords in the 80s and became the most violent city in America, with over 700 homicides a year just in the city alone. It was so entertaining and funny and interesting. One of the students on the ship just happens to be writing the biography of the main hitman in the film who will be in jail for life. WHAT??? How did he just decide he was going to do that? It blows my mind, I have to meet him and ask how he one day was like you know what I’m going to write that man in jail then write his biography. And why did the guy let some white kid write it?? Crazy. Seriously there are some very impressive kids on the ship.
       Today was a good day. Went to breakfast which is now extended till 9 yessss and then to global studies. Then tanned for two hours. Then studied for a bio quiz which I aced. In the afternoon Hannah and I went to a workout class on the ship called P90X. It was really intense, and it was made much more intense by the fact that all 25 of us were crammed into a very small room, filling the room with heavy and rancid smelling sweat. Gross. It was just too hot and too cramped and we don’t know if we can do it again. But it was a great workout. After dinner tonight Caroline, Greg, Alicia, Nate and I played LIFE. It was a pretty good time, I was a salesperson, entertainer, and tech analyst throughout my lifetime and I married a woman and had one kid. And I shaved my head in my twenties. Haha. About halfway through our game though this random jam session started in the piano lounge where we were sitting. There was a guitarist, pianist, bass guitarist, electric guitarist and a couple of singers. They played a lot of songs and they were all so talented, just picking up on the songs and running with it. The show lasted about an hour and put me in the best mood.
       Then Leah and I went to write Valentine’s cards for everyone who we like a lot on the ship. I wrote one for all of my crushes. Hannah, Caroline, Alicia, Taylor, and Leah. All of these beautiful women in my life.
       And now Hannah and I are in my room lying in bed (together) watching a nature documentary. “The Challenges of Birth.”Awesome.
       Also. I HAVE NO CLOTHING. I hate SAS for telling me not to bring clothes. Laundry is legitimately done around once a month. What the hell. I have all this storage place and no freaking clothing. I didn’t bring nearly enough sweats, I only have one freaking sports bra and I work out every day. It is so so frustrating. We gave them our laundry two days ago and will be lucky to get it back tomorrow. We have nothing left. I had to borrow socks from Caroline. I am seriously down to one shirt. I worked out the other night in embarrassing heart pajama shorts. I’m getting desperate.
    Two... more... days....

2009-02-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

Feb 10
       Sailor’s Log- Day 5 At Sea
       The shipboard community is going crazy here. All we have to do is eat and sleep. Not even Disney movies can distract us. Some of us spend up to seven hours at a time suntanning to pass the time. Homework? Only as a last resort.
       I have three quizzes in the next three days so I’m having a fun time preparing for those.
       The last few days have definitely been long but also entertaining. We have watched Aladdin and the Lion King. Two nights ago we hit up pub night and it turned out to be a pretty excellent night. It was the most people I’ve ever seen at pub night, maybe 300 kids, super loud, the “MOD”crew, or mediocre dancers, all came out in crazy eighties wear and started a dance party. Smith and I decided to finally spoke the cigars we got in Spain and we ventured out to the smoker’s deck. Interesting place, the smoker’s deck. Definitely interesting people. I seem to meet every person from the University of Vermont on this ship, and I met a guy there from UVM who happens to make about $30,000 off of the syrup business he and his boss started. He said he’ll ship me some to Cali. Huh.
       The next day was Neptune Day! And I’ve already written about that. It was a really fun day, I’m still getting used to my naked head though. I get cold inside. The weather is absolutely perfect now, I think I’m going to move to Africa. Wait…I’m pretty sure I have this same weather in San Diego. But it is very hot and humid, about 82 degrees, including the water! We all finally ventured into the pool which felt amazing after being in the sun for hours on end. I’m finally getting my Latina skin back. They had a delicious American dinner of hot dogs and burgers and ribs, all barbecue style.Neptune Day might have possibly been the longest day in my life. Sometimes I’m just hoping to nap for a couple of hours just to pass the time. We are always up super early and up late…it.. just…goes…on…and …on. But it is beautiful and now that the weather is warm again there are ongoing wars for deck chairs and sunny spots. Dinners spent sitting outside are very enjoyable.

And now for the funniest email I have ever received:

Jan Anthony to her eldest daughter Jillian:

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND???????????????????????????
YOU ARE GOING TO SOOOOOOOOOOOOO REGRET DOING THAT JILLIAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU ARE INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY DID YOU FEEL YOU HAD TO DO THAT?????????????
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT.................COULD YOU HAVE AT LEAST THOUGHT ABOUT IT A LITTLE AND MAYBE JUST GONE SHORT?????????????????
YOU ARE GOING TO BE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SORRY YOU DID THAT. YOU ARE CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT DID YOU ACCOMPLISH BY SHAVING YOUR HEAD JILLIAN??????????????
WHAT IS THE POINT????????????????
iT WILL TAKE YOU A YEAR TO GROW YOUR HAIR BACK AND IT MAY CHANGE YOUR TEXTURE OF YOUR HAIR.
YOU ARE NUTS!”

Wow Mom. Glad to know I have your support. She also left me this sincere facebook message which I laughed about for about five minutes straight.

"Jillian, are you out of your mind?
You are going to regret that decision.
Now for the rest of your amazing travels, you will be BALD!"

HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHA. Oh Mom…

I didn’t shave my head.
Are you kidding? Me get rid of my only temptress quality???
But seriously, is hair that big of a deal? What if I had really shaved my head? Pretty sad for me that that is my mom’s reaction…but I’m also pretty sure Anthony purposely didn’t email me about it to wait and see if I was lying or not so as to not walk into a trap. Smart thinking, baby.

2009-02-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Jan 9
       Today is Neptune Day!!! The day we cross the equator. Unfortunately the REAL day we cross the equator is tomorrow, but who cares I guess. All sorts of activities were had today. We were all awoken at 8 am by King Neptune and his gang of shellbacks parading through the halls with drums and whistles and banging on our door then threatening us with cellophane spears. The pollywogs all assembled on the seventh deck to pay respect to King Neptune through initiation. We all got in our bathing suits and went through initiation, which includes having fish guts poured on our heads, kissing the king’s ring and bowing to the queen, and jumping into the pool. And then…shaving our heads.
       I SHAVED MY HEAD!!!! I can’t wait to show you guys pictures!!! It is crazy and insane but I did it and it feels very freeing!!! AHHHHH! There were about 15 girls that shaved their heads and we are all bald and beautiful.
       And the entire rest of the day was spent suntanning and I made sure to block up my newly bald head. Everyone who had hair longer than eight inches and decided to either cut it short or shave it could donate their hair, and that’s what I did.
Surpise!!!!

2009-02-06T09:17:00.000-08:00

Jan 6
I forgot to write about something really funny that Hannah reminded me of. The pamphlets at the mosque in Casablanca were hilarious. It was like they went on freetranslation.com and typed in the words and French then used whatever came out. Hilarious.

Like this sentence: The work of the Moucharabieh limiting these mezzanines is of a very high fineness.

Interesting. Lots of fineness.
You would think a multi million dollar mosque that caters to tourists would be able to afford a translator for their pamphlets. Guess not.

2009-02-06T05:27:00.000-08:00

Just one more quick disclaimer. Yes, I see my typos and that I spelled "our""are."I am embarrassed about it and really need to start proofreading these things before I send them. Please overlook them and don't judge me, haha I am usually very anal about these things and it makes me mad when I see that I sent these entries in with typos and then cannot edit them. Urrrrgh.

MOROCCO

2009-02-06T05:15:00.001-08:00

Jan 5
       I am exhausted after three whirlwind days in Morocco but I can’t wait to catch everyone up on what I’ve been up to. But first shower, dinner, and nap.

Okay. Ate my fill, I was starving, and now I am ready to start cataloging the last few days of my life that has suddenly become a nonstop learning experience.

Alright, starting from Fenruary 2nd…
       We lost a day in Morocco but this turned out to be a really great day. I hung out with friends and laughed a lot, ate lunch with the cameraman who is on his third SAS voyage, and both voyages he was on before this were ones where disasters struck, the first being when Asia had SARS and they had to reroute to Japan and then Alaska, and the second being when the ship was caught in an intense storm and a 60 foot wave knocked out the tower and the engines. The ship was extremely close to evacuating everyone and the ship had to be repaired for weeks while SAS, of their own expense, FLEW all passengers to Asia for the entire time the ship was being repaired and put them up in four star hotels. This is his third voyage and people are just waiting around for something crazy to happen, but anyways he is a really nice guy and very interesting, and he has interviewed our group several times in different places. Hearing about those crazy SAS incidents is very scary but also reassuring that SAS and ISE really do take care of their students first before anything else. They are not here to jip us or see us hurt.
       Okay I have to just interrupt this journal entry for a minute. Our TV has one channel that plots are course and is constantly playing techno music, and it is the most hilarious thing ever. The stewards turn it on and blast it in every cabin they go into, and we always turn it in when we’re in the mood for a good laugh. Right now a song from Night at the Roxbury is playing. Anyways…
       So that day was just hanging out, and they announced they would have an open mic night, and I had planned on changing the lyrics to a popular song and performing it at an open mic, and my friend Greg suggested the song “No Air.”So we set to work writing new lyrics for it. The end product was genius. After we were done I went to the gym and had a great workout, I am really feeling more in shape and healthy since I’ve been working out for about a month now. And every day I’m in a country I am constantly moving, I have to cover several miles every day. I just feel stronger in general and it feels good.
       So then we got all gussied up, went to a talk about avoiding being pickpocketed which made us all paranoid, then open mic night began. We were slated for fourth. There are some extremely talented people on the ship. Many kids write and sing their own songs, on the piano or guitar, a couple of people we are amazed that they aren’t on the radio already. They are some really funny people as well, one kid performed stand up comedy and he was great! Greg and I go up pretending we wrote a song then No Air came on and we had the lyrics we wrote on a powerpoint behind us while we sang the words. I’ll put the video up and link it when I have the chance, but for now I’ll post the lyrics.

Tell me how I’m sposed to live with no land

It was so tough before Cadiz
Hitting the walls it hurt my knees
Plus puking everywhere was like living in a world with no land
ooooooh

Four drinks for me is not enough
I can’t walk when the seas are rough
Wish I could steal a boat to get myself to land

BUT HOW
DO YOU EXPECT ME
TO LIVE THIS LIFE ON THE SEA
all this water all around me is making me crazy

tell me how I’m sposed to live with no land
can’t live can’t breathe without land
Les McCabe don’t you understand
There’s no land no laaaand

Got me out here in the waters so deep
Lose an hour every night there’s no sleep
Guess I’ll go watch the MICE band
Cuz there’s no land, no laaand

No land land
no land land
no land land

I hopped a train north to Madrid
Tapas vino I’m lovin it
That Spanish gypsie cast a spell on me for real

Somehow I’m still awake at five
Churros and chocolate keep me alive
I don’t know Spanish but the guy in the club didn’t even care

So how
do you expect me
to get back on the MV
cuz Espana all around me it’s so hard for me to leave

Tell me how I’m sposed to live with no land
can’t live can’t breathe without land
Captain Jeremy don’t you understand
there’s no land no land

Got me out here in the waters so deep
Estrogen everywhere makes me weak
If there’s no more men I’m gonna scream
No men no men

no men men
women men
no land land

B R E A K ***

LAAAAAAAND

Tell me how we’re sposed to go without fuel
Can’t see Morocco without fuel
Wanna ride a camel or mule
NO FUEL NO FUEL

Sometimes it gets really hard
That’s what she saiiiiid
I can’t wait to get off
she said she saiiiid

What were doing for six hours last night
I’m sick of card games all night
Watched the superbowl until it got light
NOT TIGHT not tight

Got me out here in the waters so deep
If we don’t get there soon I’m gonna weep
Off this ship I might leap
time to sleep time to sleep

No land land
no land land
noooo lan
Les McCabe……

So I’m sure it’s not as awesome without actually seeing it, but let me tell you, it was a HIT! We got the only standing ovation of the night, and everyone was falling over with laughter. Greg and I have gotten countless compliments and we plan on writing a new one for every open mic night. We had a great time doing it and everyone was asking us to put the lyrics up on the public serve right away. Good times!
       Also, the last stretch coming into Morocco was extremely rocky, so we all sat in Tymitz Square near the purser’s desk and rolled around, sliding from one end to the other with the waves. It was hilarious and should happen again tonight on takeoff, so we are all going to put socks on and go enjoy the slip n slide.
       Oh also something happened this night that I figured my friends would appreciate. I had met this guy the night before that was doing all of these really cool things, like using his GPS to find hidden treasures that people leave all over the world and using this home exchange program to stay places in every country we were going to. He was an interesting guy and we talked for awhile, and I met him when my hair was up in a greasy ponytail and in sweats. So the next night I see him, except for this night my hair is down and down and I’m wearing makeup. I say hi to him and he looks at me quizzically, “Do I know you? Have we met?”Ummmm yeah we met last night? had a conversation? I’m Jillian? “…Oooh! You’re Jillian. Your hair looks really nice.”HAHAHA he didn’t recognize me in makeup and with my hair down! Man that is the first time that’s ever happened to me. I mean I know hair and makeup adds two attractiveness points for me, but really, I barely wear makeup when I do, I mean I definitely don’t think it is that extreme of a change. It was kind of like that time the guy at the party looked at me and said, “I thought there were going to be attractive girls here.”
       The next morning Nancy, Katherine, Tessa and I journeyed to Morocco’s capital, Rabat. Morocco is definitely the most different country I have experienced to date, culturally, socially, just in every way really. It is a Muslim country that speaks predominantly French and Arabic, and maybe bits of Spanish and English here and there if you’re lucky. Well I speak zero French or Arabic and neither did any of the THREE BLONDES I was traveling with. I say they are blond not to say that they are dumb or anything like that, but to say that I am traveling in an Arabic country with four women, which already ensures that we will be harassed, but also that I am with three white blonde girls, which means we will be harassed by men and people looking to gouge us even more.
       It was a challenging atmosphere from the minute we got off the boat. The port we had docked in, Casablanca, was gigantic, and SAS did a bad job of telling us where to go. We just kind of bobbed along with the hundreds of other SASers trying to find the train station, which is where we are all headed. In the midst of hundreds of gigantic trucks, giant cranes, a cruise ship three times the size of ours, dirt and muck from a lot of rain, men yelling and whistling at us, “hello, hello, America, spice girls, Christina Aguilera, Shakira, skinny, sistah.”It was chaos. Just generally really dirty. SAS told us the train station was ten minutes away. Wrong. Just to get out of the port it is a solid twenty minute walk. After that, we have no freaking idea where to go because the train station is being renovated and is not where it used to be. Well great. So we stop by a bank and I take out Moroccan money since I don’t have any, the Dirham. It is about 8 and a half dirham to one American dollar. I would end up spending more money in Morocco than I did in Spain, but that is only because I had a prepaid trip in Spain and therefore all of my hotel and meals were included. At the bank I saw the wife of the Moroccan speaker I had eaten with, and she was extremely helpful to us, asking for directions in French and showing us how to get to the station.
       Once we got to the station, it was trouble once again. Everything was in Arabic or French, we couldn’t figure out which train went where, what was the arrival time or departure time. We finally just went up to the ticket counter and said, “one, Rabat.”The ticket cost about four dollars for an hour train ride. The train ride was fine, I slept for some of it. Katherine and Tessa go to Point Loma and we discussed why they hate the school and are transferring to Boston next year, and Nancy, who goes to USD too, talked about being from South Dakota and how much of a culture shock it is. But you know what’s really a culture shock? Morocco.
       We get off at Rabat and already like the atmosphere better. I had written down a few names of sights to see off of wikitravel. First we walked down the street to the souq, or marketplace. It was so…I honestly don’t even know the word to correctly describe what I’m thinking. Primitive. Crowded. Something I’ve only seen in movies. Remarkable. Intimidating. The market we visited was much more of a “local’s”marketplace than the one I would visit in Marrakech. It would be really hard to adequately describe the essence of the scene. Food in piles sitting on just a sack on the floor. Goat heads roasting, entire cow legs sitting out with flies all over them. Fish being gutted and descaled on a dirty wooden panel. Spices in huge piles. Sweet breads being sold with bees swarming all over them. Small alleyways with smarmy characters, the women in outfits from everything from something you would see in everyday Spain to fully covered with only their eyes showing. Men dressed in jeans and shirts to traditional robes and fez hats. We spent some time walking through and that was our first true taste of Moroccan culture.
Next we set out to find a taxi to the Kasbah. We got to the Kasbah and weren’t quite sure how to get in…we didn’t want to offend anyone. We had been told not to take pictures near any policemen or military buildings and to be respectful of religious areas. So we kind of inched near the area and this guy sort of ushered us in, saying that it closed in an hour for prayers. So we are following this kind of sketchy guy in, but he speaks English really well so we are sticking with him. He starts giving us a tour, and we know we are going to have to pay, but our mistake was in not asking how much right up front. He showed us around to all the different areas. The Kasbah was beautiful. It is a community that has shifted religious meaning through the years, first Jewish, then Portuguese, and now Muslim. The walls are painted a bright blue on bottom and white on top, like half and half, kind of like traditional Grecian colors. The blue color was to keep mosquitoes away, because apparently they are deterred by blue. I dunno, I mean the guy could have been lying about everything he said, but he gave us a pretty solid tour and even would pick plants out and have us smell them and tell us what foods they are used in in Moroccan culture. I kept them and stuck them in my journal, lemon grass, germanium, and something else. The Kasbah overlooked the ocean, and the view was beautiful. He showed us all of the historical sites in the town. Then he charged us 220 dirham, or somewhere around 25 dollars. Definitely more than we would have paid, but that taught me the lesson of always being assertive about things such as that from then on.
At one point he asked us, “Are you Chinese? You take as many pictures as the Chinese do!”And you know what, our tour guide in Spain told us that too. A little bit racist. A little bit funny.
       From the Kasbah we took the fifteen minute walk over to the tower of Hassan II and the Mosoleum. I don’t know who this Hassan II character is but there are mosques and such for him all over the place. The tower was iconic and used to be part of a grand palace, the ruins of which still stand in the area. After seeing this area we were hungry and looking for something safe to eat. We stopped into a hotel but it was far too expensive so we caught a taxi back to the area around the train station and had a pizza haha. I stopped by the post office and got some stamps, then we caught a train back to Casablanca to get back for our dinner with a Moroccan family in time.
       All of the people doing dinners with families went into groups of four, five, six, seven, or nine. The four of us were the only group of four, and we got lucky beyond belief with the family we got. The wife picked us up and she was immediately sweet, and a good friend of the wife of the Moroccan speaker. She took us on a tour of the...

2009-02-06T05:15:00.000-08:00

Morocco cont...

surrounding town, showing us the mosque of Hassan II in Casablanca, the second largest mosque in the world next to the mosque in Mecca. It is only 13 years old and looked absolutely luminous at night. We took some pictures, it was freezing out and I was only in a sweater, then she took us around to some of the nicer neighborhoods and showed us the beach hangouts and clubs nestled on the hilltops. I asked her what they wear when they go to the beach, perhaps a stupid question, but supposedly Muslim countries are supposed to be very modest, chaste, forbidden to drink alcohol, but I never saw someone pray during the call to prayer a single time, there was alcohol in many places, and our mom said that everyone at the beach wore “bikinis of course, or topless.”Oh, okay.
       Then we get to her house. WOW. These people are filthy rich. The house is exquisitely decorated. The family speaks French to each other, and they are also rather fluent in Arabic and English. It was completely surreal sitting down to eat with this family speaking French all around me. There was the wife, who was sweet and tried very hard to speak English with us. The dad, who reminded Katherine very much of her own dad and made her a little homesick. He was hilarious and so warm. They have two kids, a daughter who is 28 and was recently married in May and a son who is 26 and was recently engaged. They were both rather quiet, but also very friendly. The daughter could have been a French model. Her pro tennis player husband arrived and was the hit of the party. He studied in Missouri and Miami on tennis scholarships. He was so great, he turned on Snoop Dogg and said it reminded him of his time in the States, and warned us about smoking the weed in Tangier. Then Abba came on and the entire table started dancing and singing. There was also a Philippine cook/maid named Liza who spoke great English and was very sweet.
       The meal was SUMPTUOUS. We began with appetizers of vegetables soaked in some sort of salt water, sounds weird but it was amazing, and then chestnuts that had been roasted…you guessed it, on an open fire. But seriously…they really were. And vodka and pear juice. Then we sat down to dinner. First course, delicious bread, spinach mix, the best eggplant mix I’ve ever tasted, fish, and soybeans. And delicious Moroccan wine. Everything tasted great.
       Next was the main course, cous cous. But definitely not the cous cous in a box like my mom makes. A gigantic dish was brought out and placed in the middle of the table. On top of the cous cous sat five different types of whole vegetables that had been soaked in some sort of amazing broth, as well as lamb. I took pictures because I have honestly never seen food served like this in any fashion. After the cous cous, which all nine of us combined barely finished half of, that’s how much there was, they brought out our last course, which was a dessert of another ridiculous sized bowl of the freshest fruit I have seen in about a month. I went right for the mangoes, and the pear melted in my mouth. After dinner we all just sat down and watched French news and chatted. They let me use skype which I happily used to talk to Anthony and my mom. The wife and brother finally brought us back to the boat around midnight. It was a great night and probably one of the best experiences I will have on this trip. But then again after what I have experienced in only two countries I can only imagine what is to come for me in the next few months.
       And another funny little racist comment from Morocco…they had a little black dog named Naomi, and the daughter explained to us, “Because she is black like Naomi Campbell.”haha.
       The next morning I had a super early wake up time of 5:30 AM to catch our 6:50 AM train at the larger Casablanca train station. We needed that entire time too. The four of us were out making the long walk to the main road before dawn, so in mostly dark. The trucks and cranes were all hovering menacingly and only a couple of people were about which made it worse rather than better. Then the call for prayer started going off, and it sounds a little like a tornado siren. Eerie. We were practically jogging to get out of the port, that was a very very long walk for us. Caught a taxi to the larger train station and got our first class tickets to Marrakech to meet up with Hannah, Caroline, Taylor, Greg, Nate, Brady, Stacy, Brendan, Aaron, and a few other people that were all staying in a riad there together. The train ride was about three hours and I slept for a couple hours of it.
       We taxied to the riad and found it after searching for awhile. The place was great, the rooms were very nice and there was a great rooftop view. Hannah and I shared a room with a couple of guys, and we got the honeymoon bed all to ourselves. It just seemed funny to me that someone would actually honeymoon there, but the guestbook held records of all the couples that had been there before us. Hannah and I had a magical night and we can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together.
       Anyways, the whole group trekked over to the souq, which was very different from the last one I had been to. First of all it was much much bigger, and the stores were in a way more organized and orderly, but in other ways things were crazier than they were in Rabat. Marrakech is apparently a huge tourist destination but I saw many more locals at this marketplace than tourists, especially surrounding the street performers. There were snake charmers that would forcefully place their cobras around your neck then force you to pay for it, women with henna syringes that would grab your hand and start painting before you said no, men with monkeys in diapers, musicians playing primitive instruments, acrobats, and men and children alike telling stories alongside animals such as hawks or chameleons and a huge circle of people gathering around them just to listen to the tale. That was something that I was amazed by…storytelling is a lost art form in the US, but here the people are standing captivated by whatever images the person is twisting in the air through his words.
       We spent probably about four hours throughout the day at the market. There was just so much to see and so many great things to buy! We all experienced the sultry art form of bargaining. I think I did a pretty good job of it, I could have saved myself maybe another 10-15 dollars but overall I was proud with my skills. Sometimes if you named a price too low they would get mad and shoo you out of their store. My most intense experience was bartering with this guy for these two rings that I really wanted. I named a very low price and he seemed legitimately insulted. “Be honest! This is real silver! I am being honest with you you need to be honest!”And when I wanted go past 150 riad he turned me away. But about a minute after I walked away I had sincere buyer’s remorse for not getting them, then had a hell of a time finding that specific shop again. I eventually did with the help of friends and ended up buying them both for 240 riad, or about 30 dollars. They were worth it, I felt so happy after I successfully retrieved them haha. I also bought a couple of Moroccan glasses, couple of magnets and postcards, couple shirts, and these very cute keychains for friends when I get back. It was a very interesting day in the market and we all came back with some great items. We had lunch at a traditional place along with about 100 SAS people that were in Marrakech on their designated organized trips. Brendan had rabbit and somebody else had pigeon. Just like chicken, right? I couldn’t help but wonder if this meat was bought from a store of the fashion I had seen in Rabat and within Marrakech’s marketplace, just slabs of meat laying out, flies all over them.
       After the market we headed over to the Palacio Bial, which was a ruined palace. We took some great pics and checked out the huge storks that have made their nests along the palace peaks.
       We made the walk back to our riad and relaxed for a little before heading out to a hookah bar. This was a very stressful time for all of us.
       Rule number one: never travel with more than five people in one group. Ever.
       Rule number two: never travel with stressful or paranoid people.
       Rule number three: roll with the punches. Be flexible.
       We went out to grab a cab and we were on a little bit of a sketchy corner, and there were fourteen of us, and one guy agreed to drive us all there, he would make three trips, each trip for forty dirham. So the first taxi goes, and people start to freak out. Oh my god how do we even know if this guy is coming back this is so sketchy oh my god look at that guy he is scaring me we are like sitting ducks here this is so stupid hagdoasdosabdoabsjf. Ugh. I couldn’t stand it. It was a little bit of an intimidating situation, but looking back on it, we were being so dumb. I mean if we had just gone around the corner we would be on the main boulevard and we were all together and we were freaking out for no reason, but some people definitely more than others. Hannah and I just gripped arms and stayed put, we knew the cab driver would come back. And he did and he got all of us there safely and from then on I pledged not to travel with a couple of the people we were with.
       The rest of the night I hung out with Hannah, Caroline, Greg and Brendan. Perfect amount of people and a really enjoyable time. We drank delicious mint tea everywhere we went, it is the Moroccan delicacy and everyone that usually hates tea was addicted to the stuff, especially Hannah who couldn’t stop talking about mint tea. We had hookah, the strongest I have ever had before. I was wired for the rest of the night. After that we headed to a hotel bar where a lot of SAS kids were and we drank and ate a little, we got a pizza and it was literally gone in 30 seconds. Ravenous. Then we headed back to the riad. Greg and Caroline wanted to go sit up on the roof and hang out more, but Hannah and I had gone up to the roof already, seen the stars, and then said okay well we did that, and headed to bed. But instead of actually going to sleep her and I stayed up for at least another hour talking in the honeymoon bed. Even after we stopped talking I lied awake for a long time, I just couldn’t sleep. Seems to be a common thing for me lately.
       Next morning, up at 6:45. Love it, not. I was already awake when the alarm went off. Went downstairs to have breakfast, as our riad was a B&B. Delicious mint tea and fresh fresh OJ, many different types of bread with honey, marmalade, orange and strawberry spread. Took off from there to catch our 9:00 train back to Marrakech. Talked the whole way home and slept for about half of it. Took a taxi to the mosque in Casablanca, the second largest in the world. It was very rainy and very windy, probably the strongest wind I have ever felt in my life. It was a struggle to walk against it. We took a tour of the mosque after waiting around for an hour or so. It was beautiful inside and it was interesting to see their bathing areas, or hammam. After that half of the group headed over to Rick’s Café from the movie Casablanca. We walked the half hour there only to find it was closed. Poop. So we just walked back to the ship since we only had about three hours till on ship time. Half hour back to the boat in the pouring rain, my feet are soaked, but it was just Hannah and Win and I and we really enjoyed the walk, and I know it would be my last time walking on land for eight long days.
       Back on the boat, call Mom and Anthony, pig out on dinner, then we all settled into Tymitz Square where there is a big tile floor to slide around when we exited the harbor because we know we would be sliding all over the place. We were sliding from one end of the floor to the other, and one time we all smashed into the wall in a pile. After that I got out because I didn’t want to get hurt. A couple of people did get injured in various areas around the ship, one bashed her face on a chair, another apparently got a concussion. We went back to our room and our dresser was flipped over, everything had fallen, there were papers and bras everywhere even though Caroline and I had thought we hunkered down pretty well. Apparently not. So we cleaned up and had ten people over in our room to watch Aladdin, which is a very racist movie but we identified with some things in it after visiting Morocco. It made me think of home friends a lot and how much I sincerely miss sitting on the couch watching The Lion King or A Goofy Movie or (insert Disney movie here) with my besties.
       And now. Eight days of class.
       I love and miss you all.

“I might be sorry but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it at the time.”

2009-02-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

Jan 2
        Today was one of the most simple and simply good days I have had in a very long time.

        I feel healthy and whole.

2009-02-02T05:42:00.000-08:00

Jan 2
        Here we are. On the ship. Still. We refueled sometime in the wee hours last night, but weather is rough and we won’t be into Morocco until this evening, and we can’t disembark until tomorrow. Bummer, especially for people who had trips booked. In the large scheme of things this is one of the few ports where I would be okay with this happening, so I’m rather lucky and today will be a pretty fun day.
        We watched the superbowl last night. There are some very diehard fans including sexy Les, our dean, who rooted for Pittsburgh. The first feed we got was an American feed and it was pretty fuzzy, so they switched it over to a German feed which was much better picture quality but also really funny because it was in German. And no American commercials, which was the big draw for me, so I pieced out when it was about half over.
        We played Apples to Apples for hours last night, but we switched it up and all wrote down our own words every round to be judged. It was pretty hilarious. Tonight there is an open mic and Greg and I will be doing a very special performance… I will post it later… be excited.

2009-02-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

February 1
Wow. It is freaking February. I can’t believe it.
Today was a limboland day. We can see two bodies of land out the window: Gibraltar and Morocco. We can’t step foot on either one though. Tomorrow begins my grand Moroccan adventure. Day 1: Casablanca. Day 2: Rabat and dinner with a Moroccan family in Casablanca. Day 3: Marrakech. Day 4: Back to Casablanca and the boat. I’ve got every day planned out with different friends and already have a hostel, or riad, booked for the third night. It’s actually more of a bed and breakfast. Really looking forward to doing some serious independent traveling.
The weather was crazy too. Cold and window all day until the afternoon when it brightened up for about an hour, and now it’s been POURING for about two hours. So we all just sat inside and played never have I ever and ate our lives away. How juvenile. And fun.
At lunch they served sherbert!!!! YESSSSS. And I sat down with our Moroccan speaker and his wife and they told me all about life in Morocco, they have lived there for 17 years and raised three kids there who now all go to college in the States, one who goes to Azusa Pacific, which obviously is about five minutes from my house in good ol San Dimas, so we were able to meet on common ground about that. I was very surprised that a girl who had lived in France and Morocco all her life decided to attend… ASU??? Very strange, but they said it has a great art program and is actually highly ranked. Who knew?

Great. Just got back from global studies and it was announced that today when the fueling ship was by us for like two hours, it never actually gave us fuel. So we have to stick around here for the night and probably for a long while tomorrow as well. They said they would hope to have us into Casablanca by TOMORROW EVENING! WTF MATE. A whole day in Morocco gone. But at least I didn’t have anything substantial planned tomorrow, and since I’m coming home very early on the 5th I can still explore Casablanca on that day. Gawwwwwwwwwd tomorrow is going to be a long day. At least I can sleep a lot. And work out. I ate an INCREDIBLE amount of food today. I broke into my Goldfish today, after finishing the Cheez It party mix. The first box at least. We got leftover birthday cake and dinner tonight and I’m about to keel over.
Alright well the superbowl is on at 11 so I’ll hit that up. And play games. Woo. I wish I were in Spain dancing amongst the Spaniards until dawn.

2009-01-31T14:42:00.000-08:00

Jan 31
        There’s only two types of guys out there, ones that can handle me, and the ones that are scared.
        The wise words of Britney Spears.
        So anyways, I’m now sitting on the ship, exhausted but happy as a little clam. My Spain adventure was all I had hoped it would be and I will be in Morocco the day after tomorrow. Now that I have embarked and disembarked at a port seemingly in the flash of an eye I am finally truly happy to be here and have recentered myself around the goals I have for this trip. This is all about me, for me, and I have to remember that, always. No regrets.
        So I wanted to write a little more about details I’ve left out. First of all the weather in Cadiz was absolutely perfect. It is winter in Spain, and though I definitely encountered some frigid weather, Cadiz was an exception. We wore jackets out, and after some time walking around, we were sweating and had to take them off. The sky was clear, the sun was beating down, and it was like walking along on a fall day in San Diego.
        Cordoba was beautiful, a smaller version of Sevilla, I’ll have to write the details of where we went later I am a little too tired to remember, it’s all a blur. La catedral, Alcazar… and I am leaving something else out. I walked around town by myself in search of the perfect jacket, but never found one. The weather on this day was FRIGID. Until about 3 when we climbed on the buses and the sun beat through the windows. More sleeeeep. Wake up for the end of the drive. The Spanish countryside stretches around me, green hillsides, fields of trees, and suddenly I look up and see the whitest mountains I’ve ever seen. I hadn’t even been aware we were going towards the mountains and I was immediately really excited. The minute we reached town I knew Granada would be my favorite place we visited. I really wish I could post pictures to give you a visual of what I’m talking about. The town is nestled below the mountains and stretches along for several miles. La Alhambra, and our hotel called Alixares I believe, is perched on a hillside that gives a breathtaking view of the city below. All white houses, each one unique. I was so excited to be there. I was the first one off my bus, dropped my stuff in my room, grabbed my journal, and walked outside to catch the last hour of light. I walked along trying to find a place to watch the sunset and write in peace. La Alhambra was about a minute’s walk from my hotel. I wandered down, checking out the shops and hotels alongside the road. I couldn’t figure out how to get to an area to watch the sunset, so I stopped and asked a man, “Donde puedo mirar el sol?” or Where can I watch the sun? He laughed and raised his eyebrows and said, “El sol?” I laughed and said si, the sky. He told me the only place to see it was very far away, so I thanked him and sit down on a bus stop bench. I opened up my journal and wrote for the next hour as the sky changed colors through the trees. Spanish people kept coming up to me to ask me for directions, and I would smile and say, “Lo siento, no hablo espanol.” Then they would smile and walk away. One guy sat with me on the bench for awhile and we talked a little in Spanish, then he hopped on the bus, hasta luego.
        After dinner we all decided we wanted to go into town and enjoy some nightlife. I hadn’t really had a huge night out yet so I was down for anything. We got all hussied up and called for three cabs. There were 11 of us, and the cabs waited while everyone got downstairs. Unfortunately, we didn’t know the meters were running. So we got into the cab already having an eight euro bill. Sweet. So I jokingly argued with the cab driver, and when I got out I said, “No gustamos ti.” or we don't like you. He laughed and told us to have fun.
        We walked by a hookah bar and a couple of friends and I got very excited. We went in and sat with three SAS guys, all named Ryan haha, for a couple of minutes until we realized that the place didn’t have alcohol. Adios! Next we went into an Irish pub, where we had a great time. We did lots of Jager shots, had Spanish beer, and some vodka and pineapple juice. Between the five of us it was only a 32 euro tab, the guy gave us about ten free drinks. Well that made up for the eight extra cab euros! I made friends with these two great girls Danielle (another one) and Kelly. They were really fun girls and I can’t wait to hang out with them again. We started talking to some guys from Baton Rouge who live in Spain and teach English. One guy was absolutely hilarious so we hung out with them a little and I asked them all about their jobs. The funny guy told us he was a DJ, then a stripper, but I’m pretty sure he just teaches English. I want to do what they are doing. I want to go live in a Spanish country for AT LEAST six months. That is the only way I will ever really learn the language, and it really is one of my dreams to KNOW Spanish. REMEMBER THIS JILLIAN: GO LIVE IN A SPANISH COUNTRY. JUST DO IT. DON’T LET ANYTHING STOP YOU.
        So we leave the bar and head over to a discoteque, Granada Diez. This place was a blast. There were a lot of Americans and Spanish people there. We were all dancing and having a great time. It’s amazing how friendly everyone is once you get a few drinks in. I started talking to one Spanish guy, keep in mind all of these conversations are in Spanish and therefore rather simple, and he told me that all of his friends had girlfriends so they didn’t want to dance. So when one of them, I don’t remember his name so I will call him Juan Pollo, came over and started dancing with us, I told him what his friend had said and asked jokingly, “You don’t have a girlfriend?” and he said, “No, I’m too ugly.” Hahahahhaa. It was funny because he was not ugly, quite the opposite. So all of us girls danced and had a great time, I practiced my Spanish as much as I could, then it was right around 3 am and people were ready to head out because most of them had pulled an allnighter the night before. I grabbed a cab back with Kelly and Danielle and this other SAS girl hopped in our cab too. She wouldn’t stop talking about Heinz, who apparently we had forced her away from. “I was just about to get with that guy. WHY did you guys make me come home? Heinz was SO HOT. He was DUTCH you guys. I have to go back to him!” Hahahahaha it was great.
        Got home and went on the computer for a long time, ended up in bed around five. Facebook chatted with Anthony’s brother haha that was a good time. And a bunch of other people actually, including Chris who gave me tips on Morocco because he was just there. Uploaded some pictures from Spain.
        The next morning was our latest one yet, we didn’t have to leave until 9:45, and La Alhambra was my favorite place of all just as I knew it would be. It was a beautiful castle of the old Muslim rulers. The view was spectacular, the gardens were so peaceful. I imagined living there amongst the king’s four wives and 200 concubines. To live in a place as beautiful as this, I might consider being a concubine. I wish I had stayed in Granada longer and been able to head up to the mountains. I felt great on this day despite a night of drinking, and despite the intense cold. It was 6 degrees Celsius, which is almost freezing. And I was in jeans and a sweatshirt. But we survived it. I took so many wonderful pictures. The town reminded me of the town we visited in Germany, the name of which escapes me at the moment.
        The drive home was beautiful and long, about four hours. I only slept for about an hour so I really got to see the countryside this time. It was raining for about half of it. The air in Granada was so crisp, it smelled so fresh, just like after a fresh snowfall in Mammoth. Maybe I would do better in the cold than I think I would. It’s just a different feeling in the cold, somewhere so remote and beautiful like that.
        Back on the boat, met up with friends I haven’t seen for a few days and we all exchanged glorious stories. Dinner was the best one I have had yet. We planned out Morocco a little more, seeing as we get there the day after tomorrow!
        I finally feel captivated by the experience I’ve embarked upon.

“In case you never noticed, the path you never chose has chosen you.”

2009-01-30T12:43:00.001-08:00

Jan 29
Cadiz. SO HAPPY TO SEE LAND. Don’t get to bed till 3 because I am up talking with the girls. Tired, but it was worth it. Work out in the morning while everyone is in line. Gym is empty for once. Disembark. LAND! SPAIN!
Wander Cadiz for hours and hours. Quaint town. Pretty beach. With pretty girls Hannah Alicia and Caroline. Laugh all day long. Churros and chocolate. Café. Tapas. Paella. FREE WIFI. So Spanish right now.
Go to flamenco night. Really skinny tall Spaniard guy that looks like Johnny Depp and whose eyes sear into my soul. The women are hot too. Truly an art form and very glad I went. Baby bull fight, little cow was so cute. Rode over there with Douglas who showed me that there may be one or two guys on this voyage interested in things other than drinking and hooking up. Maybe. More new friends. Hung out with Taylor. Love her.
In bed late again, up early again.

Jan 30 in the wee hours of the AM
Today was a quality day. I visited Sevilla which was beautiful. Gorgeous. Quaint. Really reminded me of little neighborhoods of Italy and pathways in Guanajuato, MX. I got some great pictures and made a ton of friends. There were two two hour bus rides today and I slept right through both of them. Last night was kind of deadzo in Cadiz so I skyped mom and Anthony for a little while then came home, but still probably only got about four and a half hours sleep due to the early wake up call.
Had breakfast with Smith and Doug, caught the bus, was able to nab a seat by myself, slept the whole damn way after watching the gorgeous pink sunrise come up over the water. Got there, hopped out to see La Plaza de Espana. Gorg. Then over to La Catedral de Santa Maria. More gorg. Remains of Cristobal Colon, or Christopher Columbus for you English folk. Walking the streets was my favorite part, the alleyways are small, only scooters can fit through or daring cars that press us up against walls. The doors and walls are painted vibrant colors. The buildings take on personalities of their own. Vines stretch out from windows onto the streets, inviting glances and thoughts of days that passed long before our own time.
Lunch was in a very sweet restaurant. We hung out with the animals mounted on the walls, the bull head was my personal favorite. I ate with Smith and Heather. Smith has a great camera with him, as do some other kids on the trip, and I love looking at his photos. We had a glass of Spanish wine, delicious pan, pollo con patatas y ajo, jamon, champinones (didn’t like those much), calamari, y un postre. Deliciosa! Talked about celeb gossip and specifically Perez Hilton during lunch and immediately regretted it. Bimbo.
Sevilla is all about oranges. Spain is all about oranges. Orange trees everywhere. The aroma is wonderful. Spain is also all about stray cats.
Next was the Alcazar, originally a Moorish building. Lots of Moorish buildings. Need to remember that for my art class. Beautiful. Orange trees everywhere. Orange trees are Seville’s thing. I can just imagine how it looked in its glory days… turquoise and blues splashed all over the walls, just vibrating with color.
Everyone in our group is really mature. The guys ask intelligent questions like, “Donde esta los gypsies?” and pretend to be crucified under a statue of the crucifixion. Changing the way Europeans see American youth one mature act at a time.
Another bus ride. Another nap.
Got to Cordoba. Checked into hotel. Roommate girl Marlee. Know her, sweet. Walk around two for two hours with new friends, TJ, Thomas, Sam, Beth, and Marlee. TJ is from Boston, subsequently I talked a lot about Melissa and Bedford like I know what I am talking about. Found the Forever 21 of Spain, Zara. Must go back. Loved it. I ask how phone cards have been working for everyone and Thomas tells me he doesn’t have one because he won’t be talking to his parents, that they’re happy he’s gone and having the time of their lives. Mental note: Thankful to have parents that love and miss me, I love my mom and dad and will call them a lot because I love them!
Get back to hotel. My feet. Are. Killing. Me. My left big toe is literally about to crack off. Anthony- wore the Reeboks. I think they did okay since I wore tall socks, but seriously, certain parts of my feet are dead. Dead. Dunzo. I have two more days of this so I need to step it up. My right calf is definitely pulled.
Showered and ate dinner. Called my mom who refuses to answer her phone. Looking good. Go out to the bars with everyone. I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO SPEAKS ANY SPANISH. AT ALL. And I had the best night ever. I talked to locals and was once again impressed with how much Spanish I actually do know once I let go of being scared of being wrong. The Spanish men are taken with my wit. Get them to dance with the girls. Go to another bar. Order drinks for everyone. Make more friends. I am the only one that speaks a lick of Spanish. Thoroughly enjoying it. Meet a girl named Danielle from Alabama that I think I love. She is funny. She is gorgeous. She is engaged. She is 22. Learning new things every day. She inspires me to be who I want to be. “A girl should do what she wants.” Damn straight, Danielle, I need to start doing that.
Leave bar, early again tomorrow, goodnight.

2009-01-27T04:38:00.000-08:00

Jan 27
I have met some really cool people in the last couple of days and am looking forward to meeting more on my trip in Spain, because I won’t know anyone, at least not that well.
Oh yeah, tomorrow… SPAIN! We are all itching to get off the boat. We can’t believe we’ve only been here a week. Everyone is doing different things all over the country. Some are going to Madrid, others Barcelona, and some are just mixing it up like I am. Tomorrow I will be exploring Cadiz on my own, probably with the girls. At night I’m going to a flamenco show, then probably out clubbing. The next morning I head off on my SAS trip for three days. I’ll be visiting Sevilla, Cordoba and Granada. I’ll write more details about where exactly I’m going when I get back, but expect lots of buildings haha. I’ve always wanted to go to Spain, and it was actually my chosen study abroad location for a really long time. I know it is going to be a really beautiful country, as well as a huge cultural destination. “The New Europe.” So I guess now I get the best of both worlds… a glimpse of Spain as well as the rest of the world.
More whales spotted today. More disappointment for me. All I’ve seen out the window was a buoy. But even that was kind of cool after seeing nothing but water for days and days.
We are going to wake up very early tomorrow morning to watch the land come in. Some people have been saying we might even see land tonight, so maybe I’ll be staying up late instead.
We are also starting to plan out what we want to do in Morocco. It’s a little difficult for me to do what I want to do because I’m having dinner with a Moroccan family on the second night we are there, so it kind of cuts my traveling possibilities in half. But so far I’m thinking explore Casablanca for a couple of days with a big group of people we’ve got going (Taylor and her group of friends), go to the dinner, hitch a train that night to Marrakech, spend the third day in Marrakech, then travel early in the morning back to Casablanca. That way we won’t have any traveling on that third day and we can just sightsee. Alicia is doing a camel camping trip. Pretty sweet.
The independent planning is kind of exciting. In Namibia Alicia and I and a few other girls we’ve met through Nancy, another girl that goes to USD, are going to go skydiving in Swakopmund. Apparently there isn’t much to do in Walvis Bay so that’s where everyone goes.
Oh and I found my watch! Very exciting and essential news. White sports bra, sunglasses, and vid cam still MIA however. My mom says I left the vid cam sitting by the phone at home. Big surprise. But at least I have video capability on my camera, about a half hour’s worth, so that should suffice to take footage of some very special things. And I think I saw some kid with my sunglasses but I can’t exactly say they’re mine because they are pretty generic.
Our ship has a fully equipped spa on it, like massages, facials, sauna, full hair salon, all that. So I’m gonna hit it up and get my eyebrows done today haha. After I work out.
I met my Vicarious Voyage partner last night, Phillip, and he was cool with the theme of food, thank god haha. So I’ll be trying to collect pictures of food, menus, other things to send over to the kids. He says he isn’t a very creative guy either though so those poor kids are in for some poorly drawn diagrams and four-year-old boy writing.
Pub night last night was a good time, Caroline and I had a great hour long talk about life again, and basically I just want to say again how very lucky I am to have found friends like I have in my sorority and that I am on a trip of a lifetime with some amazing women by my side. AXO’s bid day was Sunday and we are so excited to find out who our new girls are! It’s sad we won’t be around to get to know them for awhile, especially because this time last year was when I met Hannah and Caroline and Imelda and Carson and all those other girls that I am obsessed with.
No class for nine days now! Pretty exciting. I miss all of you and will probably update in a few days once I’m back from Spain! Adios!

You can’t tell me that you don’t miss Bobby, you can’t tell me that you don’t love Bobby, noooo mooooore…..

2009-01-26T15:45:00.000-08:00

today. was a good day.
and that's all i really have to say about that...

and. one day till spain...
and ........ VOLDEMORT.

2009-01-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

Jan 26
AHHHHHH! The ship is rocking so much today. The seas are calmer than ever but the huge swells are exactly perpendicular to us. Caroline said all of our stuff in our room fell on the floor today. I heard today that it could have taken us only three days to get to Spain, but we have to have more class days. What the heck! Just cut out those extra free days at sea we get and get us home sooner! More people are seeing whales. Guess who hasn’t seen one still? Me.
I got pretty homesick yesterday. Apparently everyone else did too. It was kind of funny how it worked out. Caroline and I were both laying in bed, she was writing her mom an email while I was reading old letters from home, and we were both tearing up but neither of us wanted the other to know. So we hid it until Alicia, Caroline, Hannah, and I all admitted that we had been really homesick and pooey that day. I just need to be in Spain already. Only a littllllleeee bit longer. We all took super long naps today, though I went to all of my classes. After tomorrow I don’t have class for about two weeks!

2009-01-25T08:57:00.000-08:00

Jan 25
Last night got my assignment for vicarious voyage, I have a first grade class in Hillsborough, CA. No idea where that’s at. My partner didn’t show up so I’m hoping to be assigned to a new one. Also, the teacher of the class’s email didn’t work, so I have to email the guy about that. Anyways, I think my theme is going to be food. I mean honestly what else would my theme be?
I also went to Newspaper Writing, but apparently the guy who created the club didn’t feel like he or she needed to show up, so it was me and a couple other chicks and the communication coordinator, so I got his info down and I’ll probably be posting some stories on the SAS official blog.
Another pub night last night, pretty good times, Caroline and I came back to the room and talked about life for a good hour haha. Didn’t sleep barely at all again but surprisingly I stayed awake for both global studies and Islam today. Global studies was really interesting. It was taught by a guy who has written sixteen books about Spain and he showed beautiful pictures of the places I will soon be visiting! Islam wasn’t that interesting, but I find that if I think about something that interests ME, usually not something even remotely connected to the class, I can stay awake! So that’s the plan.
I didn’t get the fun little island excursion I signed up for in Mauritius, so now Hannah and I are doing a hiking and beach trip that day. Should be a good time.
It’s getting chilly outside now, as I knew it would. The seas have been really calm for about three days now, but the swells today are ginormous!! Working out was an especially interesting time today… one minute I was running downhill, the next I was running uphill. It’s crazy to look at the ocean out here. It just goes on and on forever, huge swell after swell. And the ship dips extremely side to side. But the sea is calm, just always moving towards some far off destination.
I’m realizing all of the things I left at home now.
-watch (actually really need this one)
-white sports bra (how did I forget that??)
-video camera (did I deliberately leave that at home I can’t remember??)
And I have already lost a pair of sunglasses, the new black ones I bought to replace the white ones. Ugh. Now I only have my thug life ones.
I had a very strange dream about my grandma last night… made me miss her a lot. I just can’t believe I won’t be getting any letters from her while on this trip.
Thanks for your emails guys, they really really make my day.
The whale watch continues…

2009-01-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

Jan 24
I’m about to head to my Vicarious Voyage meeting. I’m excited to find out what age group I’ll be in contact with and how to get the ball rolling on that. And I’m joining Newspaper Writing Club, not sure what that will be all about but we will see.
Today was a nice day, Caroline and I slept until 11:30 am. oops. Neither of us slept at all last night so we didn’t feel guilty. Caroline was doing all sorts of weird talking in her sleep and then her knees locked up on her and she went around the room hopping saying “ow ow ow ow ow ow.” I thought she was sleepwalking though so I just rolled with it.
The clocks switch again tonight so I’m going to try and get to bed by 11, or 12 since the clocks switch. So much to do, so little time to sleep. At least today wasn’t as long as the days usually are. I’m just not used to getting up this early. But hey, on the way back the clocks will move backward and that will be sweet sweet justice. Apparently sometime after we cross the equator we lose an entire day. Like… the day just doesn’t exist. Craaaaazy haha. They have slowed the boat down because they don’t want us to get to Spain early and lose a day of classes. We don’t really appreciate that.
I watched my first sunset tonight. I know, hard to believe. It was gorgeous. We sat at a table with a bunch of people we have met and I got some amazing pictures. More people saw whales today! I’m really jealous.
Gearing up for that first night in Spain… very excited! The weather should start getting chillier now.

2009-01-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

Jan 23
Another day at sea! Getting through my two morning classes today was a sincere struggle. Global studies has not been interesting like I thought it would be and my Islam class was all lecture today. I can’t do all lecture classes, I will fall asleep every time. Just let me talk a little. Even taking notes I can’t stay awake, I’ll get halfway through a sentence, nod off, then have no idea what I was writing. And it’s like a squiggle mark instead of a word. Then I try to creepily look at the person next to me’s notes, and they don’t ever really like that. I guess I’ll get coffee every morning from now on. I don’t really think it’s a lack of sleep, even though the clocks have steadily been moving forward, I just don’t function well before 10 am and I’m probably not adjusted yet to this clock system. When I wake up in the mornings it’s like 2 am America time. AMERICA!
Today the weather was so gorgeous, the sea was very calm too. Hannah and Alicia and I tanned for a long time but I’m just not the Latina I used to be. Tomorrow marks only four more days till ESPANA! I’m getting very excited to go on adventures and see land again. Some people have seen whales and I am so so jealous. Hannah and I have a great game where we yell whale and see how many people look. It’s usually a lot, in case you were wondering.
Tonight was open mic night and a lot of people are really talented and hilarious. There was one guy who looks straight up like Cory Matthews and he played this weird piano/flute thing but he was like a stand up comedian. And one of our resident four-year-olds sang a sweet song dressed in full sailor outfit. Hannah and I think we will do “Han-Han, Jill-Jill, and the calls of the wild.” Animal sounds. I’m definitely going to write a song and perform it on some mic night, I just have to choose what I wanna set it to. I was thinking either “SOS” by Rihanna and switching it to SAS. Clever, I know. Or Colt 45 by Afroman. Always a good one.
Anyways no sickness today. Today was full of laughter and I am obsessed with Hannah and Caroline.
Taylor and I talked about Melissa soooo much tonight and I am missing you roomie. ☹
Last night was my first pub night experience, it was pretty grand, played Thumper with a great group of kids and was the koala bear. Then I came back to my room and used some of internet minutes haha. Can’t wait to hear people’s voices again, I miss you guys.
Tomorrow there’s a lot going on too. I have three classes and at night all the activities we signed up for are having meetings, so I’ll be bouncing around. Night!

2009-01-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

Okay so tonight was my first night drinking on the ship.. and I loved it! The drinks are miniscule but whatever, we all worked around it and socialized and had a great time… I got an email from Becca which pretty much just made my life. I wanna go to sleeeeeep cuz I have school tomorrow but I love you all. Goodnight.

2009-01-22T05:52:00.000-08:00

Jan 22
Yesterday was another long day, early mornings and late nights. Class in the morning is tough, man. Especially because the clocks are being set forward an hour every single night on the way to Spain. I try to get to bed by midnight while I still can. I know this entire semester of my life will include very limited sleeping time. I’m not sleeping that well yet, either, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it soon.
Yesterday I had my first seasickness experience, or it might have just been because I was dehydrated. I went up to breakfast feeling fine, when all of the sudden I knew I had to throw up. So I quickly walked to the bathroom on the other side of the ship and on the way there I started losing my vision and hearing, so I knew I was about to faint. I made it to the bathroom okay and sat down for a few minutes and then I was alright. While I was sitting there a girl came into the next stall and threw up. So after that I bought a refillable water bottle emblazoned with the SAS logo and I put on a little bit of a seasickness patch. I felt fine the rest of the day and even worked out at night. That was an interesting experience as well. I’ve never run with the ground constantly moving. At night I busted out my Apples to Apples travel case, thanks mom, and we played for a long time with a bunch of people, even the sexy dean of our ship Les haha. We also had the activities fair and I signed up for a few things. Looking forward to fitness classes, everyone knows how much I love those. And Vicarious Voyage should be really interesting as well. I’ll be keeping in contact with a classroom of K-12 somewhere in the world. I think the theme I’m going to pick is art, as I know a little something about it and I feel art will be a prevalent part of my trip. It’s everywhere!
This morning I was sitting in class eating an apple when I was like… yeah I gotta throw up. Haha. So I did and now I feel better. It’s strange though I feel fine I’m not sure why this keeps happening… oh well! I will have my other two classes for the first time today. My classes are Global Studies (studies of every country we are traveling to), Biology, Migration of Art, and Classical Islam. They should all be interesting and actually challenging. It’s weird to even have school, I’m just supposed to be on vacation? I’m just kidding, but it is hard to get into the right mindset. The ocean stretches around me and it is absolutely gorgeous. The weather is great and I love lying out. I’m also trying to meet people so I’m putting a lot of energy into hangout time. But now I have homework so I have to keep up with homework time! Only 6 days till Spain…

2009-01-20T19:56:00.000-08:00

Jan 20 cont
Tomorrow begins first day of classes. We all watched the inauguration today and it was a little bit emotional, especially considering where I am right now and what I am doing. Obama had some great things to say and he has more challenges and expectations on him than any president yet. We’ll see if he lives up to his words. Tonight we had a little inauguration party with desserts and cake and little champagne flutes. And fresh fruit! But I missed out on all of the grapes and was pretty bummed out. I made some more friends during dinner and then played a bunch of card games with some people Taylor knows. It will get easier every day and soon I’ll be best friends with everyone.
We have to sign up for a time slot to use the gym since there are 1000 people and like ten machines, so I signed up for tomorrow. Hannah and Caroline and I are going to try to work out a time we can all go every day. Doing the elliptical while constantly swaying will be a challenge though. We are walking around like we’re drunk 24/7. It’s a good time though and definitely a different experience, but I’m sure I’ll be ready to get off the boat once I’m in Spain.
I’ve been a little seasick but not too bad. It actually hits me worst when I get on the computer, so I’m gonna get off soon. Some people have it really bad… one girl threw up in the main room in front of everyone, poor girl.
Alright I’m off to bed because the clocks move forward one hour pretty much every night from now on and I have class every day at 9:20 am. Maybe this trip will make an early riser out of me…… or maybe I will sleep through class.

2009-01-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

hope this will work! checking to see if i can post to my blog directly through my free email.

Bon Voyage!

2009-01-20T13:02:00.001-08:00

Jan 19
Boarded the ship! Said bye to mom and dad.. unfortunately I couldn’t spot my mom’s pink shirt when our ship was taking off. Caroline and I have settled into our room. Watching the land fade into the distance was very surreal. We watched our first sunset and the flying fish going in and out of the water. I’m meeting people everywhere I go and I’m so excited to make some amazing friends. I’m very happy to have Hannah and Caroline with me though.
I’m so tired right now but I’ve still got a long night ahead of me, lots of meetings and stuff. We did our lifeboat drill. Good times. Me and Caroline were the only ones who wore hats like we were instructed to do so and in turn looked like men.
Had our first dinner together with this guy Riley. Talked about Bear Gryllz a lot haha.
Tomorrow will be another full day of meetings and orientations and blablabla. But I am very excited to finally be here! I really like our room and I know this is going to be everything I have expected it to be.

Jan 20
Lots of orientation meetings today. We really enjoyed watching a guy’s head bobbing from falling asleep the whole time. The room is really cold and we are really tired so sometimes my eyes shut a little bit as well. The weather is great today and we tanned for awhile.
It feels like freshman year all over again with all of the repetitive introductions and conversations, and it’s all a little uncomfortable. I want to be past this part and just be friends with everyone! I’m looking forward to starting classes so it can be a little more of a normal schedule rather than wandering around aimlessly and continually sitting with random people so I can try and meet my friend soulmates that are somewhere on this ship. Till then though I’m chillin with Hannah and Caroline and Lexi, which is superb all in itself.

2009-01-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

Here I am at the Bahamas... tired and going to bed soon.

Yesterday was an emotional day saying bye to everyone... I'm ready to just be on the ship already.

Some sun and fun tomorrow.

2009-01-11T18:26:00.000-08:00

Four days... four freaking days! I cannot even believe that I am finally here.

Preparing for a semester around the world

2008-12-11T18:38:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days I have been ravenously reading my friends' blogs who are on semester at sea right this second and are days away from completing their voyage. I'm gathering tips from friends on anything and everything and getting all sorts of emotions. I can't believe in just barely over a month, I will be leaving for the Bahamas, then onto a trip around the world. It's insane! This semester has gone by in a flash, just like last semester did. The slower I want it to go, the faster it goes. I'm having a hard time letting go of my life here, but day by day I am getting more and more excited to go on my adventure. I know it will change my life, and that I will come back a better person. It's like freshman year all over again. Everyone going on SAS from all over the country is on the facebook group, adding each other on facebook, planning meet and greets. I look at their faces and wonder, just like I did the summer before freshman year, which of these people will be my friends, and how will I meet them? I know it will all happen so easily, I have no worries I will find a great group of people to hang out with. Not to mention I already have some great friends going with me! My roommate is going to be Caroline, one of my FAVORITE people in my sorority. Two other girls from my sorority, Alicia and Hannah, are also going. Hannah and Caroline are besties, and the three of us hang out a lot, and this will hopefully be a chance for me to get to know Alicia a lot better. Another girl who used to be my best friend in AXO, Alexis, is going too! She transferred to Oregon U last year, but now we will be reunited! In an even funnier twist of fate, Melissa's roommate from last year at UMass is going too! Her name is Taylor and her and I are very excited to meet and hang out, while Mel is jealous haha. Small world!

This week we had our pre-departure meeting at school. There are about 17 of us going from USD, as compared to the 45 that go in the fall. There will be 740 students aboard this semester. We also found out this week that our trip itinerary has changed! NOW WE ARE GOING TO SOUTH AFRICA!!! I am beyond excited, because I was sincerely disappointed when my voyage wasn't headed there. So I couldn't be happier, really.

I'm counting down the days already and really really freaking out, but trying to remind myself that San Diego will always be here, but a trip around the world with some of my best friends definitely won't be. I just need to calm down and enjoy it.

Bahamas.... one month and counting.

ONE WEEK LEFT!!!

2008-07-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

I absolutely cannot believe how time has gone. Here I am on my last Monday at school. I spent the last week in Lake Powell in the states con la familia, so I have sorta checked out of Mexico. But I am definitely going to make the best of my last week here. Saturday Erin and I went out to dinne rwith our parents. Yesterday they took us to see la barranca, a beautiful national park full of lush rainforest and three rushing waterfalls. I slept SOOOO MUCH once I got home. It felt so good to sleep. Today I am going to el mercado con mi hermano, tomorrow to licha libre, which is wrestling, con mis maestros, and the rest of the nights I will be partying it up to celebrate the end of our adventures. Oh and studying for my final on friday. Then I´m HOME HOME HOME on Saturday! I am excited to be back with my family and back in the states.
So let me update about Guanajuato. It was absolutely my favorite place to visit since I have been here in Mexico. The bus ride was about four hours and you can instantly tell once you are there. All of the houses are brightly colored! Pinks blues yellows greens oranges. All the little houses are nestled closely against one another amongst the rolling hills. It is very colonial, and though it is a tourist attraction, it is a real city. My favorite part was visiting all of the Mexican businesses, especially restaurants. I had the best pizza of my entire life at this little place right by our hotel. We stayed in hotel San Diego, ironic? I roomed with Erin, Kate, and Jaclyn, and we just had a blast. The first night we got there, Thursday, we went to this salsa place that was an absolute hole in the wall. There were all 150 of us... and like four locals. It was great, my favorite teacher, Aguilar, was there dancing it up with all of us. Jaguar style. He's crazy. He always leads the tours and throws up his hands like claws and makes jaguar sounds, to indicate we shoudl follow him. Love him.
Friday we did a whole bunch of toury things. We toured the city, the mummy museum, the mines, some shops, and Diego rivera's house. The mummy museum was crazy. Something in the soil in Guanajuato makes mummies out of carcasses in only five years. There were a lot of little baby mummies. And one pregnant mother and fetus. The mine was cool too. We all donned hard hats and climbed on down. Everywhere we go there are gorgeous churches. The sky in Guanajuato seemed SO HUGE!!! After our tours we settled into this little place for lunch ON TOP OF THE CITY!!! It was amazing. You could see everything. The sun was beaming. I had great company. The beers were 8 for $6 haha. Couldn't really ask for anything better. We ate there and then trekked down to our hotel, napped, and went out. I was pretty tired so I only stayed at the packed club for about an hour. I was in by midnight, a very early night indeed. Oh but before we did that we did this amazing thing with the entire group where we followed a traveling mariachi band through the streets, singing along with them. It was fantastic. They made the boys stand to one side while they serendaded the women. Then we went to a famous kissing step. you have to kiss on it or you get very bad luck. I kissed a couple of my guy friends and Aguilar on the cheek haha. Made me miss Anthony a little bit, though.
Saturday we headed to San Miguel de Allende, another town where many US citizens retire. The town was obviously very rich. It was the most American-looking place we have been so far, and I didn't really like that. We had a little tour then were free to look through the town. The shops were incredibly expensive, with clothing for $80 and up. I was like, take me back to TJ!! Haha. It was just obviously VERY touristy. The church was, however, very beautiful. The ice cream was delicious. The restaurant we all went to was first class all the way. And I got to see a partial mural by Siqueiros which was cool because I always wonder how the hell they begin those gigantic projects. Overall, though, I would have rather spent the day in Guanajuato. We ate again at the same beautiful spot once we got back, then sleep, then clubbing again. This night I was just not feeling it. This guy from the USD group was a total jerk to me for no reason, I don't even know him. He was just drunk but it put a damper on the night. So instead me and my girls went and got 4 am pizza. perfect.
The next day we took a little walking tour of the city, El Teatro Juarez, a bar where there is a built in peeing fountain, etc. We went to the mercado there, huge indoor market, and shopped a little, then hopped on the bus and headed home. I fell in love with Guanajuato and really wish my family could have met me out there. Maybe next year.
Then of course I had a normal week of school, going out, writing two papers, taking a midterm. bla bla. I went to a kiddie amusement park with Jaclyn and my rich local friend Pepe one day and that was fun. And on Friday we all went wakeboarding at Lake Chapala. BEAUTIFUL! It looks just like Costa Rica in Jurassic Park. The water was so so so warm. It was so fun. There is nothing I love more than being on a boat on the water. But that whole day all I could think about was how my friends and family were all together and I wasn't with them!
Needless to say, Powell was a blast as always, despite some mishaps. I am excited for my last week here, and excited to be home. :)

week three!

2008-06-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

time is completely flying by here. it is ridiculous. i can't believe i am halfway done!! Well i'll do a quick update before i take off for guanajuato.
This weekend was Puerto Vallarta! Not exactly a cultural trip but I knew it was going to be a blast. After a five hour bus ride we arrived at our five star hotel! It was really beautiful. A whole bunch of little casitas. Private pools. The beach ten steps away. Thursday night we all just kind of stayed in and I made the tragic mistake of sitting outside for three hours at night in a dress. I was SAVAGED by mosquitos. I got over 200 bites, most on my lower legs. So obviously that was unpleasant when I woke up the next morning and realized what had happened. I have always reacted badly to bites so I was worried but I was able to enjoy a full day of fun poolside on Friday. we were out there in our suits all day. I got a wonderful tan and we were all very pleasantly drunk and annoying the old people that were there. Friday was a hilarious day. tons of swimming, hanging with friends, some people went jet skiing or banana boating. At night we went downtown to the street with all the clubs on it. We went to this club called Zoo and by this time my bites were really starting to bug me. I hadn't itched too much that day, but once I drank that night I just itched away... with dire consequences. When I got home and looked at my legs I realized they were completely covered in blisters. I still don't even understand how that happened, but it was so. I soaked my legs in the tub for awhile then just went to bed. The next morning when I woke up there was definitely no improvement. It was disgusting. I looked like I had leprosy and the blisters were huge. So that day I spent the day in jeans and itching cream. But I didn't let it stop my fun.
Instead of hanging by the pool I met up with my FILTHY rich local friends and went on their SEVENTY FOOT YACHT!!! It was ridiculous. It was a few of us USD girls and a ton of high society Mexicans. They pay for everything for the group of girls they hang out with most, even their weekend trips, and let them stay in their beautiful homes in all these locations! It was so beautiful, I mean when they said yacht I figured something small. This is a yacht for beyond millionaires. The guys are fun and it is cool to hang outwith locals, not to mention live the foreign rich life. This one guy Pepe had his private jet flown in so he could fly home. Ha!
After we got off the boat we got ready to go out that night. I kept jeans on and we headed over to this club Christine. It was my favorite club so far. The set up was great. Open bar, circular terraces and a dancefloor in the center that occasionally had cool air burst down and confetti and great lighting. It was a really chill atmosphere and I really enjoyed it. We danced all night and finally went home. Open bar is never a good thing for college kids though and several people got hurt that night. One guy fell down the stairs, one girl tore a ligament, and one girl fell through the glass at the club! I don't even know how that happened. everyone is okay though. That night I stayed up till five talking with friends, and after ordering DELICIOUS pizza at 230 in the morning. It was a swell night.
The next day we basically packed up and left. But when I woke up... my foot was swollen to doubel its size!!! Now I was getting kind of nervous. I went straight to the hospital as soon as I got back to Guad and he just gave me Allegra. Yesterday was the first day that the swelling was finally all gone, thank god. but i still look somewhat like a leper. Not cute.
I will write more when I get back from Guanajuato! Love you all!

the adventure continues

2008-06-16T23:12:00.000-07:00

Ok so I have a ton to update about. I will try to hit up the high points.

Last week was my first full week of school, which is really only four days, and Thursdays are shortened. Sweet. I am now basically two thirds of the way done with my religion class, which feels pretty good. And I currently have around a 98% haha. The "crazy Nazi german woman", haha Chris, is actually pretty amazing. She's just like a feisty grandma. German grandma. German being the key word. She loves the Germanic peoples, yes she does. But the class is actually interesting and includes philosophy to discuss the existence of God and proofs for the existence of God. Right now we are on atheism. Today there was an argument presented where a philosopher looked at believing in God like gambling: if you do believe in God, and there is an afterlife, then you win! If you do believe in God, and there isn't an afterlife, then you lose nothing. Interesting, but not quite the way I would like to look at my choice of religion. My other class is a class on the three main Mexican muralists who painted during the Mexican revolution. I love art so I am loving it. My teacher is a renowned Mexican archaeological scholar from Guadalajara. He teaches at Cal State Los Angeles and has written 25 books and is on the history channel all the time. He is a baller. I've gone on a bunch of tours with him now and he always calls our group the Jaguars, then holds up his hand like a claw and growls. Yeah.

So enough about school. On Tuesday we went to this fun club/bar called Wall Street and had a great time. It is very easy to make new friends here. We just dance all night, come home, and wake up for school three hours later. Haha that is the life. It is a pretty grueling schedule though. We take a LOT of siestas, anywhere we can, anytime we can. On the bus there and back home. As soon as we get home. We strip into pajamas and go right to sleep. Then wake up and eat. And repeat! Ahhhhhhh.

So on Thursday we left for Mexico City. The bus ride was 8 hours long and I slept/tried to sleep for most of it. We finally got into the city at night time. It is the second biggest city in the world with 27 million people! I can't even comprehend that. Five minutes from the hotel something kinda scary happened. The bus stopped at a light and a whole bunch of young boys came out of this store and descended on our bus. They all started reaching in their pockets as if reaching for guns. Then they started throwing rocks and bottles at all of our windows and yelling at us. I just ducked down because if a bottle was going to come through the window I didn't want it hitting me in the face. But we drove away and got safely to our hotel. Another scary thing happened to girls in our Guad group as well. They were coming home from a night clubbing in Guad, in a taxi, and two cars came up on them on either side and chased them with guns for 45 minutes. The girls were really really shaken up, which is totally understandable. One might be leaving soon. But those kind of things can happen anywhere.

Anyways back to Mexico City. So right before we left I found out they had me signed up to room with a boy named Justin. HAHA. So I was like SWEET! No I'm kidding I had them change it right away. So we get to the hotel and it is GORGEOUS. One of the nicest I've ever seen. It's a five star. I got to my room to find a note from my GIRL roommate named Lee saying she was already out with her friends. Cool. But rather than seeing her later that night... she never came. The entire weekend. So I had my own room! Which I didn't mind at all. Perfectly fine with me.

So we did a ton of traveling and walking in Mexico DF, but the high points were definitely the pyramids and the Basilica de Guadalupe. The pyramids were very impressive and it was amazing to learn about Aztec culture. We climbed both the sun and moon pyramids and walked about 8 miles that day. I think the next day we went to the Basilica de Guadalupe which was beautiful as well. The church was built after a sighting of the Virgin Mary. The story goes that her image was miraculously painted onto a coat, and the coat still hangs in the basilica today. The buildings were beautiful. All the while though the underlying theme was hegemony. The Aztec and Mayan and other indigenous cultures were forced to accept the views of various cultures that came to conquer them, including the Spanish, French and Americans. There was a very interesting sculpture in the gardens of the basilica that showed a lot of Aztec peoples worshipping the Virgin Mary. Apparently over time the two important female figures, the Mother Goddess of Aztec religion and the Virgin Mary, have mended into one. But I couldn't help but think that if I was an Aztec I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be depicted as such. Religion is very interesting. Hegemony is everywhere.

We also visited the archaeological museum, which my art teacher explained everything about, and a small town to see Frida Kahlo's house, though I was so exhausted that day that I didn't go in. It was a grueling schedule all weekend. We all went out Friday night so of course I got like three hours of sleep. And the other nights of course we stayed up late too. But no matter what, every single morning I was awake by 7:30 at the latest to catch breakfast and the bus. But all in all I am glad that I went, especially since it was a hard decision for me. I was very awake on Sunday however and got to see the beautiful countryside on the ride back. There are some very beautiful sights here in Mexico.

Since then it's been back to the grind. I have kind of a hard time sleeping here. I can't seem to fall asleep early, and remember we wake up at 6:30 am every day. Oh well, I am managing. Went out to Wall Street again last night and Jaclyn lost her camera. It was my other roommate's 21st birthday and, of course, she got really sick. She has a little poisoning today, no bueno.

Today was a GREAT day because I didn't have my first class so I slept in!!! AMAZING!!! Then I went to my second class then on a field trip with my art class. It was an hour ride there but it was so worth it. We saw circular pyramids of another ancient people then walked a couple of miles through the agave plants that are used to make tequila. We ended up in this really cute small town and had authentic nieve, or ice cream. SOOOO GOOD!!! I miss otter pops so much haha. The trip was probably one of the things I have enjoyed most so far.

Tomorrow we are off to Puerto Vallarta! It is going to be ridiculous, I already know, but a very good time. I am loving speaking Spanish here so much, it is amazing how much I have improved in so little time. It is inspiring me to pick it up as my minor again. I don't know, but all I know is one day I really hope to be fluent in Spanish. It will take work, but I can do it. This really makes me want to intern in El Salvador for a summer. I love the language and I am really improving. My family is so nice and they are really fun and interesting to talk to. I am finally really comfortable here, actually. It's home, for now.

Wish me luck in Puerto!!!

2008-06-09T15:04:00.001-07:00

First real day of school today. Had my classes, Art History and The Problem of God. Art History will be fun, but the next three weeks will be quite difficult with the crap class Problem of God on my hands. The teacher is an insane nazi german woman. I actually really enjoy the spice she brings, but the essays she is making us do and the style she is making us right in is stupid. Oh well, it's only three weeks, then the next three weeks I can kick back a little. Work out at school after my first class.

Last night Jaclyn and I went to Chili's at the mall to watch the Lakers game. EVERYONE was supposed to go there, but unfortunately they weren't even showing the game! They must have had at least fifty USD kids show up looking for the game. So we wandered around for a couple of hours, got some really tart ice cream, chilled with some guys. Then we took a cab back home and stopped into this hamburger place right down our street... and the game was on! So we got to see the end, and also have the best hamburgers of our life. SO GOOD. But along with good food apparently comes a really bad stomach ache because I am some sort of sick today. It's okay. I already went to the health center and got free meds, I just have to record what I'm eating and feeling, and, uh, expelling hahahha.

Tomorrow is Jaclyn's 20th bday so we are going to go out tonight and celebrate, and probably tomorrow too. Tonight we might go bowling haha and then free martinis at this bar. Me gustan cosas que son gratis! Ok, that is incorrect grammar, but oh well. I think I will go take a nap now because waking up for that bus is really, really, really difficult.

Oh and, I just can't decide whether to go on the Mexico City trip or not! I don't want to give up Puerto Vallarta or Guanajuato, but I know Mexico City is the most culturally valuable. You know... it's the capital... second largest city in the world... bla bla bla haha. But honestly, it's a crazy busy weekend and I would rather stay home, spend time with teh family, and explore Guadalajara by myself. Do the things I want to do, since I can't during the week. YO NO SE!!!

GUAD!!!

2008-06-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

I am just finishing up a delicious ice cream from the handmade ice cream shop around the corner. I am sitting in my room at my house in Guadalajara. We are in the Jalisco district in a rich neighborhood. My house is a freakin pent house. It's huge and really pretty. Our mama is named Toni. She is so so sweet and welcoming! Really a great woman. So far I've met almost all of her family, a few of which live here, including her husband, mother who is 87, and two son. Grandma is so feisty. She proudly told us that she was 87, and she shushed me when I tried to tie the shows of the resident two year old, Marietta. Her mom is Angelica, Toni's daughter. Angelica also has a 7 year old son named Pablo. The kids are cute, I hope to see them often. It is hard to tell who actually lives here and who doesn't, since they are in and out all of the time.

My first couple of days have been pretty exciting. Jaclyn and I got to our house and picked our room first, and there's some pretty sweet guns and knives and crossbows on the walls. The house is so eclectic, there are knick knacks everywhere. Definitely combination of old people/70s/Latin style. There is a bathtub that can fit four people. You know we're gonna all try it out at once! Mama gave us our house rules, don't come in after 3, no boys in the bedroom, let us know if you'll be missing a meal or coming home late, y mi casa es su casa. Pretty simple. Apparently a girl last year snuck boys in, NO BUENO!!!!

This morning was our first day of school. We woke up around 7:15 from the loud ringing bells from the church down the street. Sleeping was interesting. The bed is ROCK HARD and it is sweltering hot at night. Also our fan creaks nonstop. But then Jaclyn fixed it this morning. Oh well I have to wake up around 7 every morning anyways. We went out to our bus stop ten minutes early today and guess what.. we STILL missed it. So we had to take a mad taxi ride to school. After that we had orientation and I went to classes and made new friends and explored ITESO, my school. It's really pretty, I'll write more about it later.

After, we took the bus home, and we were SWELTERING HOT. It is an hour ride home and an hour ride there. FIRST AND LAST. Sucks so much. It's ok because I guess that gives me more time to study on the way there and/or sleep.

We just got home from our first night of clubbing! So so so fun. We got a free ride there and a free ride back, both from locals! And now I think we've made local friends so they can take us out. SWEET!!!!

Okay, buenas noches!