Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Final Goodbyes

So I guess in the last couple weeks of Semester at Sea I let this blog sort of fall to the wayside…and so here’s my final installment, only a couple weeks too late! Better late than never they always say, though, right? Anyway, we left cold and windy Japan and headed south towards Hawaii, where we would spend the day on the beach for Thanksgiving.

Since we were only there a day, there wasn’t really much too it, except everyone’s extreme overuse of their cell phones since we had returned to the US (if only briefly). We got off the ship around 10am and headed to our first destination: Walmart. We were desperately craving chips with salsa and guacamole, candy, and your everyday snack foods. And boy, did we stock up! We knew exams were coming and that we would need sustenance other than the dining hall food to keep us going. I also needed to buy an external hard drive to store the over 10,000 pictures taken on this trip…much more than my computer could handle! On the way to Walmart we were sort of in a state of shock. People drove on the right side of the road (we’re some of the only ones that do so), there were shops we recognized, and everyone spoke English! So that was particularly exciting, especially after China where we had so much trouble getting around because of the language barriers. After Walmart we made a quick stop back at the ship to drop our stuff, and made our way to Waikiki to spend Thanksgiving day in the sun, on the beach, and in the water! For many of us it was the first time we had gotten the opportunity to swim in the water we had been sailing over for so long…and it felt great!

After a long, relaxing day on the beach in Hawaii, with some of us surfing, sailing, swimming, or just tanning, we all headed closer to the ship for dinner (to make sure we made the 9:00pm on ship time – we didn’t want any dock time in Costa Rica!). Indeed we tried to have Thanksgiving dinner at Hooters but we got there too late and headed to another waterfront restaurant instead.

After quite the long and complicated meal, we headed back to the ship a few at a time for some much-needed rest. After all, we did have school the next day.
The next 8 days or so from Hawaii to Costa Rica we filled with papers, finals, and lots of studying. The weather was getting warmer and warmer, and it was getting harder and harder to stay inside and study, so we adapted our methods. Up and out on the 7th deck early, study when the wind wasn’t blowing our notes away, and in by 3pm to get some real work done. Luckily for me, I finished exams on December 2nd, 12 days before we got off the boat, and 5 days before we reached Costa Rica, so I had the time to work on a really nice tan! It was also super fun to be out on the 7th deck all day during the day because different people would come up and visit when they weren’t studying, people would be playing in the pool with Frisbees or footballs, and the coolest thing of all was when people would bring their instruments (mainly guitars) outside and just sing and play for a while. I didn’t even need my ipod! There was always someone up there to talk to and keep me company, so that was great.

The other nice thing about my schedule was that I got to sleep in, go lay out, and stay outside until the sun went down every single day. I saw the most beautiful sunsets that lit up the sky almost every night!

I would be sitting with either my friends or a good book, holding my afternoon cup of tea, watching the sun go down around 5:00pm – it was just perfect.

There was also one night when 8 of us decided to do fine dining, an option I’m sorry I didn’t take more advantage of! We were in a separate room, at a beautifully set table, served a seemingly 6-course (surprising delicious) meal.

Rob and Eric, two of my guy friends that sang in a cappella with me, are perhaps the most entertaining boys I have ever met in my life, and it was a riot to hang with them for a couple of hours.
December 4th, three days before we got to Costa Rica, was Jesse’s 22nd birthday, so we set up a dinner in his favorite place – outside on deck 6 – and organized a cake and lots of people to sing happy birthday (even though he hates it). The chefs specially made him a HUGE Oreo ice-cream cake, which the boys proceeded to finish after I went off to a cappella practice.

Before we knew it, we had arrived in Costa Rica. Thankfully this time the tendering process wasn’t as bad as Malaysia had been, but it did provide a few problems! We got off the boat on the 7th to meet Laura Flynn’s mom and her friend Lorraine, who had taken a vacation to Costa Rica to visit our six friends. It was so nice to have them there – we had all forgotten what it was like to be able to see our moms! It definitely made me a tiny bit homesick; the first time I had felt that way the entire three and a half months I had been away. The 9 of us, Mrs. Heller, Lorraine, Christine, Jen, Jess, Kierstin, Laura Flynn, me, and our friend Emma, all made our way to the town of Jacó, about an hour or so from Port Caldera, where the ship was tendering. We stayed at a beautiful resort with tons of palm trees, mountains, and the ocean in the backdrop. After we ate lunch Jen, Christine, Mrs. Heller, Lorraine, Laura Flynn, and I all headed into the rainforest for a zip line canopy tour…and it was SO FUN! While we were walking towards the trees and platforms we could hear the group ahead of us screaming and laughing, so we knew we were in for a good time!

We all got strapped into our harnesses, and make the hike up into the trees to our first platform. There were a total of 14 platforms, with 7 zip lines in between. The highest platform was over 100ft up, almost over the tops of the trees! You could essentially do anything you wanted while on the zip line, granted you were comfortable. Lamar, one of our guides, told us we just needed to “protect our personalities” and make sure we didn’t get hurt while going upside-down, backwards, or a combination of both!

Even Mrs. Heller and Lorraine tried it out! I also somehow acquired a nickname from Lamar. Since I was wearing yoga pants, and harnesses tend to accentuate certain features, my bottom appeared to be larger than it actually is (I hope). And since we were swinging in the trees like Tarzan and Jane, he decided that my new name would be Booty Jane. It stuck for the remainder of the day, if not the entire trip! After the zip lines there was a final belay, and we headed out of the forest and back to the hotel to get ready and meet our friends out in Jacó later that night. The town of Jacó is slightly seedy, lots of touristy shops selling the same types of things, and strange-looking bars and clubs (but with cheap drinks – perfect for college students), but the locals were nice, and we had a good time! The next day we spent by the pool, hanging out in the sun, and enjoying our last time to be in port together. Sad. But the weather was beautiful, all leading right up to the most gorgeous sunset.

Lorraine and Mrs. Heller took us to a very nice outdoor restaurant at another resort to get drinks, watch the sun go down, and then have a lovely dinner.

Jen was particularly happy because they had cheesecake! Afterwards we headed into town to do a little shopping before we showered and got ready to go out. By the time we were all ready, only three of us wanted to make the trip into to town for the night, but it was so worth it! My three best guy friends, Josh, Brad, and Jesse, had all been away on a rafting trip, and so I got to meet up with them, and spend my last night in Costa Rica with my boys! The next day we had a little more time by the pool and in the sun (mainly spent eating nachos and chips with guacamole), before we headed back to the ship, now docked in Puntarenas.
So Costa Rica was amazing! And while not exactly the most educational port, it was by far the most relaxing and also so much fun!
Back on the ship, everyone was done with classes at this point, so we had 5 days to hang out, go to our Ambassador’s Ball, transit the Panama Canal, and say our goodbyes. The day after we got back on the ship, December 10th, was the Ambassador’s Ball. It’s the final formal dance, where everyone dresses up really nicely, has a sit-down dinner, watches the entertainment (student performances), and dances the rest of the night away in the Union. All the boys looked so handsome in their suits (many of which came from Vietnam), and the girls looked beautiful. Our little six-pack, as we were called, of Jen, Christine, Jess, Kierstin, Laura Flynn, and me, had dinner all together at a big table just laughing, reminiscing, and having fun!

This picture would be us with Lazlo, one of the staff captains on the ship! The dance itself started around 10pm and ended at 1am, and it was so fun to hang out and let loose just one last time.

That night Jesse and I attempted to sleep outside with a bunch of people, and made it until around 4:30am…and then called it a quits! It was getting cold!
In just a few hours from then, our ship started her transit across the Panama Canal, a very cool experience to be a part of! We went through many series of locks, finally rising over 85ft above sea level, winding and curving along the Amazon look-a-like Canal. The entire process took all day, and at around 6pm we were pulling away from the last lock.

Up until this point, our a cappella group had been hard at work for hours every day putting the finishing touches on our songs, and figuring out choreography for our show, the night of December 12th. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but we had practice every day on the ship during the entire voyage for at least an hour a night, sometimes more, working to create a medley we would perform for the entire shipboard community. The afternoon of the 12th we had a couple hour mic practice and run-through, going through our 15-minute long medley the best we had ever done it! We decided on costumes, and met for one last practice from 6:30-7:30pm, before our show started at 8:00pm. I was an absolute nervous wreck. My solo was first, starting off the entire medley, and I had never sung alone in front of that many of my peers before. However, when I got to the show, I saw that Laura Flynn, Kierstin, Emma, Christine, Jess, Jen, Victoria, Nora, Cara, John, Phil and Diego had all reserved the front row seats to watch us perform! While it was scary to have all my good friends front-and-center, it was comforting as well! The show went amazingly, we got a standing ovation, and I’ve never gotten more compliments from people I didn’t know in my life!
The audio-visual guy, who has to attend every show on the ship, said ours was his favorite! Here’s a picture of the whole group. In the back row, starting from the left is Lauren, Allison, Erin, me, Dana, Adrienne, and Krista. Then for the boys from the left is Rob, Eric, Joey, Danny, Ryan, Mark, and Bobby on the very bottom…only missing Todd!

We had so much fun together as a group. I’ve never been a part of something where people from all over the world, from so many different backgrounds and groups of friends have come together out of a common interest and pure love for something, and created an amazing, unforgettable friendship and bond. A cappella is for sure one of the things I will miss the most about Semester at Sea.
After our show was the final pub night on the boat, and it was CROWDED! Everyone that still had on-ship drinking privileges was up on the 7th deck, just hanging out, playing Catch Phrase, or cards, and just enjoying one of the last nights all together.
That night and the next day were devoted to signing each other’s maps, writing in other’s journals, packing (which surprising didn’t take too long), and cleaning out our rooms. For Christina and I this was particularly sad. We had come to think of cabin 4147 as our little home away from home. And while we didn’t have the same group of friends, or hang out too much in port, Christina was one of my best friends on the ship in the most unconventional way. That fact that we weren’t in the same group of friends brought us closer because we were allowed to talk to each other and give unbiased opinions on situations and problems. We laughed daily, and she always kept me entertained. I am so glad that I decided to do the “random roommate” experience, she turned out to be one of the coolest people I have ever met, and she helped to grow as a person in more ways than she could know. Christina helped me to see the world differently because we are so inherently different, and for that I am truly thankful.

The last night on the boat was the commencement ceremony for seniors graduating this semester. About 20 students took Semester at Sea as their last semester in college, and the entire community had a ceremony to honor them. But it was more than that. Talented student musicians had written songs about Semester at Sea, and performed them on guitar and piano. My friends Allison and Adrienne sang a duet that brought me to tears. As a speaker from each of the faculty, staff, and student body got up to wish us well and say final goodbyes, everyone came to the realization that it was actually over. A four-letter we had been avoiding for the past week. After the ceremony, the shipboard photographer, Brittany, made an hour-long slideshow of photographs she had taken on the ship, and in each port. It was really amazing.
Our friends had decided a few days before that the last night was no night for sleeping, so about 10 of us stayed up all night playing an epic 6 and a half hour game of charades. It was some of the most fun I’ve had on the ship! I think when we started getting down to phrases like “haunted agricultural facility” and “presidential weenie roast”, we knew we should have instituted this game as a weekly tradition on the boat. What fun it would have been to have had an ongoing boys versus girls charades tournament for four months!
At about 6:30am or so the pilot boat from the Miami harbor pulled alongside the MV Explorer. As the sun came up over the city, tears fell down many cheeks – boys and girls alike – including mine. This wonderful, life-changing experience I never wanted to end would be over in just a few hours.

On the ship I witnessed amazing sites, events, and cultures. I met people who have challenged me, made me grow, and will remain in my heart for a lifetime. And finally, I recognize that I have grown as a person, in more ways than I could have hoped for or imagined.

Since the Arabian Sea was last off the boat, I had the tough task of watching every single one of my friends get off before me. First Jess, Christine, and Diego, then Josh, Jesse, and Victoria, then Laura Flynn, Kierstin, and Kelly. Then Brad, Mark and Jen left, and I only had Christina. I guess it was fitting really, that I would spend my last moments on the boat with the one person who probably knows me the best, whether or not I knew it, or appreciated it at the time.
Luckily after we got off the boat I had a few hours before catching my flight, so Cara, Nora, Victoria, Eric, John, Rob, Phil, me, Josh, and a few others got a chance to grab lunch and say one more round of goodbyes before we all went our separate ways. In the airport Christine and Kierstin, along with Christine’s mom, were all waiting for me as I sobbed my way through security lines and airport gates. On the plane I was a mess, to say the least. I was alone, and thinking nonstop about how the past four months of my life had been the greatest ever. But when I got to Regan Airport, and saw my family at the end of the terminal, it felt a little better.
Now that I’ve been home a little over a week, I’ve had plenty of time to think back and reflect on what I’ve been through, accomplished, and experienced. It was a jam-packed three and a half months, and no doubt it’s going to take much more time to decompress, but I am starting to see how this whole thing has changed me. In both subtle and overt ways, I am different, and as much as I owe that to each country and culture I have visited, I owe it as well to the people I met, who have so deeply influenced and changed my life.
So, now that I am done writing about this amazing trip of a lifetime, I hope what I have shared with you has given you a taste of what the world has to offer. There are truly incredible places to visit, people to meet, and cultures to understand, and through education and travel, we can better appreciate them. I hope that I have somehow influenced to change your life in some way. I both saw and met so many starving, poverty-stricken people that remain optimistic about what life has to offer, and despite their hardships, always have a smile on their face. So stay happy, appreciate what you have, and maybe share that with others. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, a hospital, a homeless shelter, and you will see that by creating joy in others’ lives, you create it in your own.
And finally, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year to all!


Love,
Sarah

Japan

I never realized the benefit of writing blogs immediately after leaving a country…until now. Last night we crossed the international dateline, which means that we repeated November 22nd. So ha, I will have spent more time in 2008 than you…I think. Anyway, it was weird to go to bed one night and be 15 hours ahead of home, and then wake up the next and be 8 hours behind…but with all the clock advances and time changes on this boat, I’m getting used to it. Today on the ship was our day off, which was amazing because I got to sleep in until noon…something I don’t think I’ve done yet on this voyage. I also got to take a glorious nap in the afternoon, and then spent late afternoon with a cup of tea and a book watching the sunset (4:30pm…). Tonight was the Students of Service auction, benefiting the organization chosen by the students, Operation Hunger. Going into it we thought it was going to be stupid stuff like sweatshirts and Semester at Sea gear, but they did it up. Stays at homes were donated in Finland, Norway, Spain, Israel Nova Scotia, Napa Valley, and Malibu…to name a few. Laura Flynn, Victoria and I got so into that we decided to donate something of our own…a “weekend cultural tour of Charlottesville” for the winner and two friends. We are planning a wine tasting tour, a hike of Humpback Rock, a visit to Monticello, dining at some of Charlottesville’s great restaurants, tubing down the James River and a bar crawl down the corner. We were so nervous it would be some random person we didn’t know, but thankfully Victoria’s friend Timmy won it and is planning on bringing our two friends Rob and Eric, so it will be really fun! Anyway, enough about ship life, we left Japan 5 days ago and arrive in Hawaii in 5…I can’t wait to be on the beach in Waikiki for Thanksgiving!
Okay, so back track 5 days and let’s go to Japan. This is honestly one of the coolest, most amazing countries on the planet. I swear, I would move there in a heartbeat.

There and South Africa. We got into Japan on the 14th and I left the boat to go on my one night, two-day home stay. I was really nervous because a) I don’t speak Japanese (now much more than before, that’s for sure), b) I didn’t know if they spoke English (it turns out very little), and c) I was going alone, not with another Semester at Sea student, like most of the home stay programs had been. We got off the boat and went to meet our families. My okasa, or mother, Akiko, was super cute and had brought 3 of her friends with her to meet me! Unfortunately her kids are already in college and her husband works in Tokyo (we were in Kobe), so it would have been just the two of us otherwise. We left port and drove to Nishinomiya, her hometown, which is tucked between Osaka and Kobe. We met with three other families from the home stay organization, called the Hippo Club (still not sure why), and went to a Japanese noodle restaurant.
Luckily the other two families had little kids! My friend Amanda’s family had one little girl named Yuki, and my friend Molly’s family had little Yu, who was 3, and Suito, who was 4, both boys. After a lunch of traditional Japanese noodles, called udon, we went to visit a Shinto shrine. We walked through large orange gates, through winding paths, and approached the steps of the shrine, but before we could go in we had to wash our hands and face to cleanse ourselves.

After that we each took a coin, made a prayer and rang the bell at the entrance to the shrine. As is the deal with most Japanese shrines, there were beautiful gardens with coy ponds, turtles, egrets and lots of beautiful greenery. We spent an hour walking around the ponds, feeding the fish, and enjoying the brisk winds of fall.

(P.S. Is Yu not the most adorable boy ever?) This was the second time during the entire voyage we had seen leaves change color, which made me a little homesick for the beautiful autumns at UVA! After the shrine we spent a leisurely afternoon at a food market, where we enjoyed some interesting Japanese desserts. Apparently the Japanese are BIG fans of bean paste…um, ew. If you ever go, be careful – what appears to be chocolate, not always is; that’s just my little warning. After doing some great shopping at the 100 yen store (I got this really sweet pair of glasses that have now become my "Asian Accessory" – I literally wear them ALL the time) we perused the ginormous grocery store while our moms shopped for dinner. When we got back to Molly’s family’s house, it had turned into Molly, Molly’s mom, Akiko, Yu, Suito, and me. On the agenda for the night: homemade temaki sushi handrolls and takoyaki (octopus dumplings that sound foul but are amazing).

Our moms (seen above! my mom is on the left) created this amazing array of 8 different kinds of fish, including salmon, yellowtail, tuna, snapper, octopus, and crab. They laid out pieces of nori, or dried seaweed, a steaming bowl of sticky rice, big wads of wasabi, piles of ginger, and saucers of soy sauce. Molly and I grabbed our plates and chopsticks and had at it!

After multiple rounds of fresh and delicious sushi we had takoyaki. These dumplings are made in a special wrought iron pan with batter, onion, and diced octopus, and then are topped with a thicker, sweeter version of Worcestershire sauce, a bit of Japanese mayonnaise, flakes of nori and katsuobushi, some dried fish flakes or something. And honestly it sounds disgusting, but it was truly unbelievably awesome.

After dinner, Molly’s mom brewed us homemade green tea while we played hide and ghost seek with the kids.
Unfortunately after a while my mom and I had to leave to go to the local Hippo Club meeting, where I was shown off like a hot commodity. Since the main purpose of this group is learning about other cultures and languages, I had to introduce myself in all the languages I speak – English, French, Spanish, and my newly learned introduction in Japanese. Going around the circle, people introduced themselves in Malaysian, Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, and other random, random languages. Apparently all members of this club can hold an introductory conversation in 19 languages…no big deal. As the clock started to approach 9:30pm I felt myself become really old really fast. I was yawning up a storm and couldn’t wait to hit my tatami mat and go to sleep! Luckily Akiko realized that my brain was no longer functioning after holding conversations in 5 different languages (my tiny bit of Mandarin came into play), and we hopped in the car. As we approached her neighborhood she informed me we needed to stop at the grocery again…I took a short nap while she shopped for half an hour. After that we made about 5 more stops before we were FINALLY going home…or so I thought. As we pulled into her neighborhood around midnight she informed me we had just one more stop…and it was so worth it! We drove up to the top of her neighborhood, one of the highest in Nishinomiya, trespassed on private property and saw the coolest view ever! It was the entire span of Osaka, Kobe, and little Nishinomiya – the entire skyline of all three cities. That woke me up fast! It was gorgeous. I don’t think I got to bed until about 2:30am that morning…not my plan, but whatever. We got back to Akiko’s house where her son was watching her little cocker spaniel Leo, almost as cute as Phoebe, but not quite. Sadly her speaks less English than she does, so that conversation was a no-go. Instead I knocked out some reading in my tiny little bamboo room on my actually really comfortable tatami sleeping mat arrangement.

And to give you an idea of how great of a mom Akiko really was…she let me sleep till our late morning tea ceremony and lunch. When I got up my friend Amanda’s family, with little Yuki, came over with some of Akiko’s friends for a traditional Japanese tea ceremony and a delicious lunch of homemade okonomiyaki, a Japanese dish native to the Kansai (Osaka) region. I didn’t wake up and put on normal clothes though, oh no. I wore a bright red kimono with white designs and a yellow obi – it was awesome! They taught me how to make tea, the proper ceremonial methods for drinking it, thanking the host, etc. Mine didn’t taste too great though…oh well.
We then had some rice balls and pastries for dessert. I definitely ate too much! The end of the lunch brought the exchanging of gifts, apparently a big deal in Japanese culture. I gave Akiko tea from the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, and some great soaps from Cambodia. For her son and daughter, I got them Semester at Sea t-shirts, and for her husband, a SAS hat. In return I got some weird handkerchief and a translucent folder with trees on it haha…it was very strange, but sweet. Akiko then drove me from her house back to the ship, where we said our goodbyes and I met my friends for the next leg of my Japanese journey.
Victoria, Nora, Alki, Cara, Julien and I caught a train from the nearby Kobe station to Osaka around 5pm. I’m quite certain our hotel was in the ghetto. But luckily three other boys from the ship, Batu, Jerry, and Juan were all staying in the same place with Batu’s Japanese friend Tomoko, who was from Osaka. She was great to have! Oh, and here’s a picture of our sardine can of a bamboo room that Victoria, Cara and I shared…comfy!

So we stopped by the corner convenience store on the way to downtown Osaka, picked up some Strong Sevens, and hopped on the metro. When we arrived it looked like Times Square. The amount and brilliance of the lights was out of control…someone could seriously have a seizure.

Since there were about 14 of us at this point, we split up for dinner with plans to meet up again before Karaoke – perhaps my favorite activity of all time. Our original group of six picked out a small sushi restaurant and parked ourselves for a while, enjoying great tempura, sashimi, miso soup and sushi rolls. Finally the time came for karaoke, which was AWESOME! In these karaoke halls you rent out a room with multiple big, flat-screen TVs and the option of singing any song known to mankind. Amongst our choices, Love is a Battlefield, Hit Me With Your Best Shot (classics), some Mariah Carey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc. You get the gist. Essentially it was my jam. I love any excuse to sing!

Afterwards we followed Tomoko to some of her favorite spots in Osaka, which is actually a great city at night. Of course we stopped at Japanese McDonalds on the way home, which has come to be a common experience in all of these countries…and yes, the menus are changed! Exciting news, I know. For instance, in Japan they have some weird Ebi Filet-O, an alternate version of the Filet-O-Fish…clever. In India, they serve no beef products, as would be expected. And in South Africa corn is a staple to the McDonald’s menu. Oh, AND McDonalds is open 24 hours a day and delivers in ALL ASIAN COUNTRIES.

Why we don’t have this in the US is beyond me. So that was all super fun, but I swear sleeping in that tiny bamboo cell felt not only claustrophobic, but somewhat like a sauna as well. Fab.
We woke up the next morning, the three of us in our room is very awkward positions, left the hotel and grabbed a train to Kyoto. Once there we took another train straight to Tokyo and got in around early evening. I went to my hotel, where I was meeting Kierstin, Laura Flynn, Jen, Jess, and Christine at our room. We have sharing one double bed amongst six girls down to a science, that’s for sure! Once the girls showed up we went out to find some dinner. And what did we find? Good old TGI Friday’s. At this point I had eaten too much sushi to warrant any more for at least 24 hours and nachos, chicken wings and a Caesar salad were sounding quite amazing. And let me tell you something, they were. I have never been happier in my life to see that TGI Friday’s waiter in his striped outfit and flare.

While there we met two American baseball players (Mom, tell Tucker to read this part because I know he doesn’t) who had been playing on teams in Taiwan for the past 10 months. One had played previously for the Rockies and Padres and decided that he needed a change of pace, wanted to travel, and came to play in Asia. He said that he had been having a great time…the sport seems to be growing out of control in this area. Stadiums are popping up like Starbucks – all over the joint. Sunday nights are typically slow in Tokyo, but the Rapponggi district was full of Semester at Sea students and other tourists, so there was a good deal open.

Honestly though, I’ve never felt more hassled in my life to enter clubs. Kierstin and I started pretending that we only spoke French to escape these people and what happens? They find the one person on their staff that speaks French as well…so no dice there. It has become a general fallback method, however.
The next morning we got up and went out to explore Tokyo. We had an AMAZING lunch of fresh sushi, prepared right in front of us, and headed to the Harajuku district.

If any of you are Gwen Stefani fans, you know what I’m talking about. I have never seen weirder clothes or hairstyles in one concentrated place in my life. Whoa. But the area was very trendy and there was some great shopping. I can now dress as a full Asian – that is quite exciting. After a good afternoon in Harajuku we came back, and my friends headed to The Who concert. Not something I was totally interested in, and I was glad that I had spent the afternoon in Harajuku rather than in line for three hours getting tickets…Anyway, while they went to the concert I met up with my guy friends from Stanford and we grabbed dinner at a real Mongolian barbeque. It was so delicious.

They bring you all kinds of chicken, steak, random beef cuts, vegetables, noodles, etc. to cook on the grill set up in the middle of your table. I even ate cow tongue. YUM! That’s my adventurous food choice (along with octopus) for Japan. Afterwards we headed to the Absolut Ice Bar Tokyo, probably one of the coolest (pun intended) bars I have ever been to. Before you walk in they make you put on this giant silver parka with a fur hood and attached gloves. Once inside you understand why. IT IS FREEZING! Everything, and I mean everything, is made out of ice – the floor, ceiling, walls, chairs, tables, the bar itself, even the cups. Take a look at this picture, and you will understand.

I also just loved the parkas, I sort of wanted to steal one. The bar is so cold that you can only stay in for 45 minutes, and that’s definitely a good thing because I was starting to freeze my patootie off.

So we left, made our to Rapponggi district, and found tons of Semester at Sea kids crowding the streets. Okay, and I’ll put it this way – Tokyo’s nightlife is unreal. It cannot even be described it is so fun! The whole city is like New York on steroids.
The afternoon we had to make our way back to the ship, which took a little bit longer than the expected half an hour. 3 hours later Jess, Christine and I arrived in Yokohama, our port, and boarded the ship. Driving through Yokohama was way cute though; it looked like a little Bethesda, Maryland or something. Lots of people just walking around enjoying the beautiful fall day.So this blog took me a little time to get out, but I figured I had time. It’s actually more fun this way because I get to relive every moment of being in each country way after it’s actually over. I can’t believe we are going to be done in 3 weeks. I’m not ready. I don’t want to go home yet, I’m no where near being ready for that. And family – don’t get me wrong, I miss you tons, I do, but I don’t want to leave my friends, the ship, this awesome family that I’ve made while being away. Each and every experience has been amazing and has taught me something not only about each place I have visited, but also about who I am. I totally believe in this whole “changed” aspect of study abroad with Semester at Sea. This has changed how I view the world, how I live my life day-to-day, and what I plan to do when I graduate. I just feel obligated to help in any way that I can. Whether than be the Peace Corps, Operation Hunger, or something else, I’m not sure yet, but I’m eager to find out.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Enjoy being together with your family and friends. Mom, Dad, Frank, Amy, Jeremy, Tucker, I wish I could be there with you all! Cheers a glass at dinner for me :) I might be somewhere along the beach in Waikiki…

Hong Kong and China

The first thing I thought when I got off the boat in Hong Kong and entered the giant shopping mall right off the gangway was “Welcome to 1.3 billion people”. I have never been so crowded anywhere in my life! The subway in Shanghai, Tiananmen Square in Beijing, shopping in Hong Kong…lots and lots of Chinese people! When we got off the boat in Hong Kong we took the Star Ferry over to the island from where we were docked in Kowloon.

Jess, Diego, Gabriel (both from Mexico…they have the coolest accents), and I walked around a bit and then made our way up to the famous site of Hong Kong: Victoria Peak.

We took the tram up the practically vertical hill, after posing with Madam Tussaud’s Jackie Chan statue, and when we reached the top it was one of the coolest views of a city I have ever seen. You could literally see EVERYTHING! The entire city was sprawling out before us; we could even see our ship! It was awesome to see Hong Kong draped in a hazy fog with the sun barely peaking through the clouds. On the other side of the peak was a beautiful bay with the setting sun reflecting on its surface…a beautiful place to spend our first afternoon in China!

The peak was interesting…a lot of touristy things, including China’s installment of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant! I just had to buy a tshirt…anywho we descended from the peak after happy hour, and went back to boat to change before heading out. We got to see the beautiful Hong Kong light show, put on every night around 8pm, before going to Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong’s restaurant and bar district.

The main streets of the district were crazy with lights and tons of people running around. We bought light-up sunglasses and bunny ears, being sold by the hundreds on the streets, and headed to Agave, a Mexican restaurant and tequila bar, so Diego and Gabe could have a taste of home!

We had all been missing guac like nobody’s business so having authentic chips, salsa and guac, nachos and quesadillas was AMAZING!! Diego took a bite and said he felt like he was home! All of Semester at Sea was essentially out on the two main streets of Lan Kwai Fong so it was fun to walk around and hang around outside the bars along the cobblestone streets and in nearby parks.

After experiencing Hong Kong’s seemingly never-ending nightlife, we spent the next day doing a little shopping (we bought some very cool, very Asian, panda hats), finding a hotel (eventually staying at “Mingle Place”, I kid you not), and enjoying the fact that our six best girlfriends were traveling all together for the first time! We had all done small groups or individual stuff with one another, but we had not been all together at the same time before, so that was really fun! We went out to a girls’ dinner and roamed around Lan Kwai Fong for our last night in Hong Kong.

Side note, some of the Loyola kids we had hung out with in Malaysia happened to be in Hong Kong that night and I ran into them in the streets! Random…
Getting to the airport at 6:00am for our 8:00am flight to Beijing was a little bit of a struggle, but we made it in plenty of time, totally unsuspecting of the news we were about to get and the blow our entire shipboard community would receive. Apparently the night before, a boy on our voyage named Kurt had been struck and killed by a drunk driver in Hong Kong. When we arrived at the gate for our flight all of the other Semester at Sea kids there were either crying, too shocked to comprehend, and staring at their computer screens trying to read our ship’s press release. Although I didn’t personally know Kurt well, his death hits close to home. He lived on my hall, he was in the cultural ambassadors club with me, he was Brad’s workout buddy. It’s hard to fathom that we’ve lost a fellow student, a member of this big, traveling family, and at this point everyone is trying to cope, continue to enjoy our journey, while keeping in mind how vulnerable we really are.
After a plane ride from hell (Kierstin decided to drape herself ALL OVER me and Jess and kicked me in the head in her sleep a few times…) we arrived in FREEZING COLD Beijing!

However, transportation from the airport was not as easy as we had thought…no taxis…and no one that worked there spoke English, a factor that became a very common thread in our travels. We eventually found a nice man who spoke English and he directed us towards the bus that would take us downtown to Tiananmen Square. After taking the bus we had to find a cab (not easy to hail because the drivers don’t ever want to stop and pick you up, and if they do they rarely take you all the way to where you want to go!), and get to our hotel, perhaps the strangest place I have ever stayed in my life. We found numerous random pairs of shoes around the room – on the bedside table, next to the door, etc. It was bizarre. We left the hotel to try to get to the Forbidden City before it closed, but no dice. Luckily we ran into a man named Paul, who helped us organize a tour for the rest of the afternoon and the next day. He took us down to the Temple of Heaven, maybe one of the coolest spots in Beijing. In the park that surrounds the temple many locals come to play cards, sing, dance, perform tai chi, picnic, see friends, and just hang out. It was a great taste of local culture. The temple itself is amazing, and it was especially cool for me to see since I had studied it in Chinese art class at UVA.

The temple was where the emperor came three times a year to make sacrifices and pray for a good harvest. After the temple we crossed the street to the nearby pearl market where saltwater and freshwater pearls are available for unbelievably great prices….we’re talking $20 for a Tahitian saltwater black pearl necklace. China was cheappppp! We left the pearl market, raced back to the hotel to change, and headed out to experience a big piece of Chinese culture – an acrobatics show. And it was weird. Really weird. Some spinning plates, other juggling extravaganzas and some cool flippy things.
Lots of balancing other people in precarious positions on seemingly weak parts of the body. And surprisingly they messed up quite a lot…clearly lots of work to do before they can go to the Olympics!
After the show our interesting adventure began. In case you all were wondering, I can now speak Mandarin, a few phrases at least. We hopped in a cab, and tried to tell the driver where to go, meaning I tried to sound out the name of a restaurant. No luck. Hm…so since not a single cab driver in all of Beijing (or Shanghai for that matter) speaks English I set to work in my handy phrase book trying to find some way to communicate to this man where we needed to go. For a quite hilarious thirty minutes, I threw out random phrases at this man such as “dinner”, “food”, “chopsticks”…finally he understood what I wanted, so I repeated the name of the restaurant and the street name and we were on our way! When he figured it out my reaction was to say “perfect!” pretty emphatically, which by the driver in my tone of voice – he thought it was hilarious. I told him what it meant (henhao), and he was super excited to have learned some English. So I decided that since I has had so much fun communicating with him, I would try some more. So I threw out “children?”, “son?”, “daughter?”, etc. and waited for a response…none of which I understood. I wish someone had it on video, it maybe was the funniest semi-conversation I’ve ever had. The restaurant ended up being in a very remote/random area of Beijing, and no one inside spoke English. Wine was extremely hard to come by (as was the check). Finally we figured everything out and were off. Kierstin wanted to stop at the Intercontinental Hotel on the way back to our own hotel so she could use a proper bathroom…everywhere we had been that day had been holes in the ground, per usual Asia. I swear each one of us wanted to sleep in the bathroom of the Intercontinental is was SO much nicer than our hotel! We stole their rolls of toilet paper.
The next morning we woke up early to start our full-day tour of Beijing and the Great Wall!! We met our guide, Sunny, who was this adorable 26-year-old girl from Beijing, and headed out into winter. It was quite a shock since we had just come from humid Vietnam and Malaysia. She took us to Tiananmen Square, explained about the statue in the middle, talked about all the surrounding buildings, the most interesting of which houses Mao’s embalmed body.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to see the body, and we headed over to the Forbidden City, by far the coolest thing. The city itself is huge! There are so many different buildings, gateways, gardens, statues, etc. We walked through the main gateway and over one of the five bridges that span the encircling moat. Naturally we posed for a picture with the giant Mao poster.

We walked through the numerous gates, all whose names are running together in my head because they essentially sound/mean the same thing. Gate of Harmony, Gate of Middle Harmony, Gate of Supreme Harmony…something along those lines. The buildings have been beautifully restored and the red, gold, blue, and decoration just popped! All the buildings were red with a gold roof, the colors of the emperor. We saw where the emperor performed important ceremonies, where his concubines lived, where his eunuchs lived, where the empress lived, where the bridal ceremonies took place, where the emperor took naps, you name it, we saw it.
Boy had a room for everything. We ended in a beautiful garden with some of the oldest trees on earth, literally. So that was way cool. We left the Forbidden City and started to make our way towards the Great Wall, about an hour and a half away. We stopped at a silk factory on the way, where we got to try to pull the silk fibers and make them into sheets…we were awful! Then we stopped at a jade factory, where we got to learn about the entire extraction and production processes of jade objects and jewelry.
Finally THE GREAT WALL!! Oh my god. I can’t even explain how cool it was. We went to the Mutianyu section, took a chairlift up the steepest mountain of life, and landed on the wall. The sign we read said that this section of the wall is built on a 1,000m-high mountain range (hence the chair lift), some of the sections laid out on cliffs! The wall was meant to look like a flying dragon as it snaked across the mountain peaks.

We commenced the climb up the wall, and it literally is a CLIMB! By the time Jess and I got to the top (lazy bones Kierstin and Laura Flynn stopped halfway up), we were sweating bullets, but were euphoric. It was by far one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. Since we’ve missed out on most of fall along our voyage we were so excited to see the leaves change color in China. Red, green, orange, and yellow trees enveloped the Wall and covered the mountains. The air was fresh and brisk, it reminded me of why I love fall so much. So there’s not really much else to say about the wall. It was beautiful and awesome and incredible.

They also had the coolest way to get down instead of the chair lift….a toboggan. Probably the most awesome ride ever. P.S. Isn’t it weird that I’ve seen 2 of the 7 wonders of the world on this trip? Pretty exciting!
We left the wall and made our way back to Beijing to see the Olympic stadiums, including the bird’s nest and the water cube. For someone that was so absolutely addicted to the Olympics while they were on, and my parents can both attest to that, it was such an awesome experience to see those venues!

We took some quick pictures and headed off to our last stop in Beijing, a small teahouse where we got to do a tea-tasting of authentic Chinese teas…then it was off to the airport!
Our flight was delayed so we arrived in Shanghai a little later than expected, but we checked into our hostel, which was great because it was like a camp cabin. It had 3 sets of bunk beds complete with fans, hooks for clothes, lockers, a Western-style toilet (yay!), and a somewhat normal shower. These were big plusses compared to previous hotels and my hostel in Malaysia…wow. We headed out to the Bund, the famous collection of old 1920s era buildings (mostly old banks, but with lots of restaurants, clubs, and bars in there as well), that flank the river separating Pudong from the rest of Shanghai. On the other side of the river was the famous Shanghai city skyline complete with the Pearl Tower (the one with lots of randomly places spheres) and some building that looks like a bottle-opener. Take a look.
Shanghai is fully of swanky restaurants and even swankier bars and clubs with overpriced drinks and even more overpriced appetizers, but I guess that’s the way it goes in one of Asia’s most modern and developing cities.
The next day we left the hostel in order to meet the ship so we could drop our stuff before heading out for the day…only, when we got to where the ship was supposed to be…it wasn’t. Apparently while sailing from Hong Kong to Shanghai the boat encountered 15-18ft swells, the worst weather it had seen on the voyage. Thank god I wasn’t there! Anywho, I decided not to wait around, called my good friend Maggie from UVA who is studying abroad in Shanghai, and met her for lunch. It was SO NICE to see a friend from school, just a little reminder of home! I hadn’t seen Maggie since May, so it was awesome to catch up. She is doing great and LOVES Shanghai! She’s studying at a university in northern Shanghai (Fundong, I think), and has one roommate from Duke, the other is Chinese. Before going she didn’t speak a single word of Chinese, she had never taken a class. Now that she’s been there since June…she speaks it really well! I was so impressed! It was nice to go around town with her, I felt so much more confident I would arrive at where I needed to be…other times, you could never be too sure! So Maggie and I ate lunch at a cute little American restaurant, which was awesome because I had been craving a salad! China only likes fast food and fried food (dumplings, spring rolls, etc), which is good for some time and then your body starts to hate you. We grabbed a cab back to the ship so she could see my home, I dropped my stuff, and we were off for the night.

First we headed to Cloud Nine, the so-called “highest bar in Asia”. It is on the 87th floor of the Jing Mao building and gives you the most awesome view of the entire city of Shanghai. Like Victoria Peak for Hong Kong, but instead of looking out over the city from afar, you are right in the middle. It was really cool to see all the buildings light up at night. We left Cloud Nine and headed to Face Bar, a restaurant set in an old colonial style home in the French Concession district. It is actually a converted opium den from colonial times, complete with beds and lounges. It was some great Thai food too! Then we went back to Maggie’s apartment so I could see where she lived, meet her roommates, and call my mom to let her know I was alive. Then out again to Barbarossa, an interesting little Mediterranean place set in the middle of a lake in the middle of a park, only accessible by bridges. Our final destination, after our wonderful romantic evening of just us two, was Bar Rouge, to meet up with Victoria so we could have our three Theta sisters together! Woop Woop! That was really fun!

The next morning Maggie and I left her apartment and while she got coffee I perused the DVD store. 20 DVDs for $1 each…doesn’t get much better than that! I think Maggie thought I was going to buy the whole store…oops. Then we headed to the Yu Gardens and Bazaar, down in Old Shanghai. It was some of the coolest, most authentic Chinese architecture that I have seen! The buildings were white with black roofs, all overhanging, decorated with large Chinese characters in gold. In the middle of a large pond was a two-story teahouse, only accessible by sharp-angled bridges, which Maggie told me are to ward away evil spirits since they can’t turn corners…

We decided to grab lunch in this little hole-in-the-wall dim sum restaurant, and that was an interesting experience. There was no menu, it was one of those types of places that if you didn’t speak Mandarin, you didn’t eat there. There were items written in characters on plaques above the cash register with a price, and that was it. I had no idea what she was ordering for me! The other interesting part of this lunch was that it was communal seating…you sit anywhere there’s an open seat. So we ate lunch with three old Chinese women…in slight silence since they didn’t speak English (really no one in China does), and clearly my phrases “Do you speak English?” and “my name is Sarah” in Mandarin were not sufficient! But the dumplings. Oh my lord they were SO GOOD. Steamed soup dumplings. Yummmmmmy! My appetite was a little thrown off though by the way my Chinese tablemates were eating. Rules/manners/grace of any kind does not exist at the Chinese table. They eat with their heads practically in the bowl, shoveling as much food as they can into their mouths as quickly as they can, like someone’s gonna steal it! I contemplated doing it just to gage reactions. After lunch we walked around Shanghai some more, along the Bund and the river, until it was time for me to hop in a cab and head back to the ship…if any cab driver understood how to get me there!
All three of the cities I saw in China were amazing! They each had their own bit of character, something different. Hong Kong is definitely the New York, Beijing is more filled with culture and history, and Shanghai is the city that looks on the verge of the space age. Overall I loved the city of Beijing the most because there was so much to do and experience. The Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, the zoo, the pearl market, the night markets, the Great Wall – this list goes on! I will definitely find my way back somehow, there’s still so much left to see! However my experience in Shanghai was one-of-a-kind because I got to share it with someone from home. It was easy, comfortable, a nice change of pace, and just fun to be around a friend I had known longer than 2 months! Maggie really made Shanghai great for me!
We get into Japan tomorrow and this is the port that I am probably looking forward to the most! I watched Memoirs of a Geisha yesterday in preparation….