Semester at Sea - Fall 2008

Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Final Goodbyes

2008-12-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-25T00:38:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-12T16:22:00.000-08:00

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….

Vietnam and Cambodia

2008-11-04T09:47:00.000-08:00

I had pretty high expectations coming into Vietnam and Cambodia – they were the two countries on our itinerary that I was most excited about going to. I think part of it is because of the movie Indochine. And if any of you reading this have seen it, you’d know exactly why. Anyway, this port exceeded all my expectations. I have never experienced such a range of emotions in one place. I have never laughed so hard, been so moved to tears, been as awed by natural and architectural beauty, or felt so welcomed in another place so far from home. We pulled into Ho Chi Minh City around noon last Thursday, after having spent a lazier-than-usual morning cruising up the Mekong River (at high tide) to get into the port. Kierstin, Danny, Ryan, Jen and I got off the boat for our one o’clock FDP visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels, and the first thing we saw was a group of beautiful Vietnamese women wearing long, colorful dresses, each one topped by one of the traditional straw hats you’d normally see dot the rows in the rice paddy. They held a giant banner that said WELCOME TO VIETNAM SEMESTER AT SEA!, and it was the first welcome of that caliber we’d ever received.

As we boarded the busses for the ride to the Cu Chi Tunnels, I wasn’t really aware of what I was in store for. We stopped first at a huge cemetery called the graveyard of 10,000 soldiers, not too far outside of Ho Chi Minh. Only 30% of the tombs had actually bodies buried beneath them, but each one had the name of a Vietnamese soldier who died or “went missing” during the war. Towards the front of the cemetery there was a larger-than-life statue of a Vietnamese mother holding the slain body of her son, a fallen soldier.

It reminded me very much of the Pietá, and to me it communicated much of the same message.
After the cemetery we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels, the system of underground tunnels the Viet Cong used to undermine American military efforts throughout the country. As our guide took us through the complex we saw the camouflaged entrance holes to the tunnels, almost exactly the size of my Macbook laptop, I kid you not. One of the tiniest, skinniest girls on our tour tried to fit into the tunnel, and even she had trouble. Apparently, in order to be in the Vietnamese army during the time, men had to weight under 50kg (I think that’s under 100lbs, not sure though) and could not exceed some absurdly small height limit as well. We saw the traps the Vietnamese army laid in the ground to nab American soldiers, ones that had actually been in use during the war. One of them was a VERY well camouflaged door-type deal that when you stepped on it, you fell through and were pierced through your entire body with giant needles poking up from the ground (maybe 3ft high). That was scary, considering I thought it was the entrance and almost stepped on it (I’m an idiot), before our guide restrained me…oops. We saw all of the other weapons, traps, and tanks used in the war, what the soldiers wore (their shoes were made out of Goodyear tires), women’s involvement in the war, etc. We then reached the firing range. I had heard the guns go off multiple times during the tour, but I wasn’t really aware of the fact that firing actual AK47s from the Vietnam War was a possibility on this tour. As Jen, Kierstin and I divvied up our bullets and put on our earmuffs, my palms started to sweat a little!

When it was my turn to shoot, I grabbed the gun (I had help with how to hold it), placed the butt against my shoulder and fired. It was the strangest feeling I have ever had. I was exhilarated, but at the same time, I remembered that this was one of the actual guns used and fired during the Vietnam War, perhaps the most devastating war of the century, and I was disgusted with myself. Over 5 million people from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the United States died during the war. The United States dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all of the bombs dropped by every country in World War II combined, in one fourth of the territory. That’s something to think about. After the shooting range we actually got to crawl through the tunnels, and oh my goodness I am claustrophobic! But I went down anyway and Jen had to coach me through the 300 meters of intense hyperventilation! It was TINY DOWN THERE! You had to crouch down, nearly bent over double, and sort of shuffle through a tiny tunnel with no way out for a LONG time. And, to make matters worse for those little Vietnamese men, for whom I’m sure it was a piece of cake because they’re probably half my size anyway, the tunnels were 40% SMALLER during the war than they are now. Holy I would be dying! Here's me in the tiniest space of my life...
The next day as we visited the War Remnants Museum, I was continually astonished and horrified by all the facts, figures, personal stories, and especially the photographs displayed around the museum. The smiling, bubbly disposition that I normally have quickly changed as I walked through that museum. I honestly have never been so moved by something in my life. By the end I had tears streaming down my cheeks as I stared at the many of faces of those women, men, and children slaughtered during the war. And after reading about the effects of Agent Orange, and experiencing a population still feeling the repercussions of that horror, I was never more ashamed of the United States in my life.

As I looked at the weapons exhibit I stared at the AK47s, still remembering how it felt in my hands, and I can’t really describe how I felt. Sad, upset, sickened, doesn’t really touch on it. Just tonight we had a panel of faculty, staff, and lifelong learners who were alive during the war share their experiences with anyone interested in listening. Some were faculty members at universities, some were students, some lost friends and family in the war, some were anti-war radicals, some were an inch away from being drafted, and just one was a veteran. As he told his story, tears pouring down his face, I couldn’t help but cry myself, one more time. It was amazing listening to him speak, and knowing that I will never be able to fully understand what that generation went through makes the whole thing all the more incomprehensible.
Breather.
Okay so now on to lighter topics. After the museum, Kierstin, Jess and I went to the Benh Thanh Market, the largest everything-in-the-world-you-could-ever-want market I have ever seen. You name it, they sold it. We picked out bracelets, paintings, DVDs, t-shirts, fabrics, and everything was SO CHEAP! I think this is where everyone spent unnecessary amounts of money. We got off the boat and found out that with the exchange rate against the dong, we were millionaires two times over with 120 American dollars. The boys threw out lots of dong jokes, too. “I have lots of dong” was quite the common phrase, haha. We found a tailor that my friend Sydney had recommended close to the market, gave them the fabrics, and I had two custom-made dresses made to fit my body for $20. TWO DRESSES. That was nuts. We explored the night markets; the hawker stalls, and ate some dank Vietnamese food. I have had my fair share of noodles, steamed rice, vegetables, spring rolls, and chicken. Yum.
The first night in Vietnam was very fun. All of our friends went out to a great dinner, where the Vietnamese waitress, who was the cutest thing ever, told me she thinks I look like Drew Barrymore. We tipped her well! All of our friends ended up at the same terrace club, so we had a great time.
The second night we experienced more of what Ho Chi Minh is like on a (somewhat) regular night. Apparently the police like to randomly come out to bars and clubs on Friday nights and shut them down. We stopped at 5 different places that were getting shut down by the police (meaning they either weren’t letting foreigners in, or they were forcing everybody out), before we met up with some local Vietnamese who showed us the place to go. The two Vietnamese boys, as it turns out, were actually born in the US, studied there, and came back to Vietnam to live after college. They were with a beautiful Brazilian girl, Izabelli, who happened to be an international model. They took us to one of their favorite local spots, Q Bar, which was verrrrrry interesting on Halloween night. But that’s another story. The favored mode of transportation in Ho Chi Minh in motorbike, so when we left, we each hopped on our own motorbike and rode back to the ship.

However, Kierstin decided she did not want to night to end there, so we all paid our drivers to take us on a tour of the city by night, which was actually awesome! We definitely got the insiders view of all the monuments and famous sites around the city.

The next morning Jess and I woke up and packed to leave for Cambodia. We flew into Phnom Penh that afternoon, and drove straight to the National Museum, full of Buddhist and Hindu artifacts. After the museum we boarded big boats to sail down the Mekong River at sunset. This one's along the river before the sun went down.

As the sun went down the city began to light up, and we could see the Royal Palace (where the king lives) highlighted against the city skyline. After our lazy river cruise, our guides had planned for us to stop at the Palm Tree Orphanage, opened by two Semester at Sea alum from many years ago. We didn’t know this at the time, but the orphans were all, in one way of another victims of the Cambodian genocide lead by the Khmer Rouge. While the Khmer Rouge was removed from power in 1979, they still operated as a resistance movement well into the 1990s, and continued their brutal massacres of the Cambodian people. Many of these kids’ parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and other relatives had been killed by the Khmer Rouge, and were taken in by the orphanage because there was no one left alive to take care of them. One of the saddest parts was the story I heard from a girl I met named Srysat, who was 18 years old and from a small village far outside of Phnom Penh. She told me that the Khmer Rouge killed both of her parents and her three older brothers. To this day she still does not know why or where their bodies are buried. Our tour guide for the Phnom Penh portion of our tour, Sakha, told me that he felt lucky that only his brother and parents had been killed because he knew many others who had lost all of their family. He felt fortunate he had escaped with “so little loss”. These stories were just astonishing.
We arrived at the orphanage with more goodies than we knew what to do with. I spent $50 at a local bookstore, which is a lot in Cambodia, on masks, party hats, coloring books, crayons, markets, paints, silly string, paper, colored pencils, balloons, books, and all sorts of other things. When we arrived you would have thought it was Christmas! They were so happy to see us, so welcoming, and so eager to play! With all the masks and party hats it looked like their own Halloween! This was the third orphanage/school experience that I have had on this trip and I am just sorry that I haven’t done more.
These kids have been through so much, much more than any of us will experience in a lifetime, and they are still so happy, so eager to learn, so grateful to have any opportunity thrown their way. They make me appreciate what I have so much more, and they have an inexplicable capacity to put a genuine smile on my face like nothing else I’ve ever really experienced.
The next day we took a tour of the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda in the morning. This is where the Cambodian king comes to stay when he is in town. It is also where his coronation takes place, and other important ceremonies in Cambodia’s capital city.

The palatial complex was huge! So many different buildings, pagodas, gardens, temples, and statues – most of it covered in gold. In the Silver Pagoda, called so because the floor is made out of actual silver (each tile weighs 1kg), there was a statue of Buddha made out of pure 24 karat gold, and adorned with over 9, 584 diamonds. The largest diamond, on the Buddha’s forehead, is probably about half the size of my palm.
We left the Royal Palace and drove to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum building was originally a school, but when the Khmer Rouge took over, the stopped all education, so the building was used as Security Prison 21 (S-21), one of the most notorious torture prisons in Cambodia. All of the torture devices used were still in place, as well as the cells where prisoners were kept in detention before being taken to the Killing Fields to be murdered. In one of the buildings pictures of all the prisoners taken there (each one had to be documented upon entering) were up on the walls and large boards on wheels.

They put 10 of these picture boards in each room, with over 100 pictures per board. There were 3 stories to the building, about 8 rooms per floor. You do the math. About 2 million Cambodians were killed during the Khmer Rouge genocide. Men, women, children, teachers, intellectuals, government officials, essential anyone they believed to impede their goals (and their families). Prisoners could be detained as little as 2 days up to 2 months before being taken to the Killing Fields to be exterminated. In the museum there were large boards on the walls detailing the hundreds of different mass graves that were found, where they were located, and how many people they found inside them. Some had over 50,000. After the museum we went straight to the actual Killing Fields, and that was pretty disturbing.

The sites where the mass graves had been weren’t even marked because there were so many. They were just giant holes in the ground covered over with grass. There was a specific tree located next to a mass grave that our guide said was used specifically to kill children. They would swing their head against the tree until they died. The women were raped and murdered, with their husbands watching, and then they cut the men’s heads off. It was pretty horrific stuff. In the center of the fields there is a large white monument that as you approach, you can see is stacked floor-to-ceiling with the skulls of many of the victims buried at the Killing Fields. Underneath the skulls is a big pile of the clothes and other personal items of the victims found at the site. There is incense burning as you enter the glass doors, flowers strewn all over the steps, and signs of peace left by the many Cambodian schoolchildren who have since come to visit. Our guide explained that for many of them these offerings are, in a way, offerings to the spirits of their parents, who may or may not have been buried there, but they have no idea. They may be staring at the skull of their mom or dad when they enter, but they will never know.

So I wouldn’t exactly say that Phnom Penh was fun, but it was certainly moving, educational, and deeply sad. After the Killing Fields we drove to the airport to take our flight to Siem Reap. We arrived at sunset and drove straight to Angkor Wat, one of the temples built by the Khmer Empire somewhere between the 9th and 15th centuries. It’s most likely the postcard someone will send you when they go to Cambodia because it’s the most famous one. The sunset was absolutely beautiful, as they have been every night on this voyage. The sky just lights up in beautiful yellows, pinks, reds, blues, greens, and oranges – it literally looks like it is on fire, it is the coolest, most beautiful thing. This is my friend Josh's picture, but it was just so awesome I had to steal it!
Oh, and here's what Angkor Wat looks like in the day...also Josh's!

We walked around the temple a little bit, which was huge, before making our way to dinner and a cultural performance. On the way out though, the COOLEST thing happened. We ran into this very tame, actually quite sweet monkey that was roaming around outside the temple. He was actually so calm that he left people pet him! I got some great pictures really up close because he literally was within arms’ reach. God, I love monkeys!
Anywho, after dinner we went to the hotel before going out to experience Siem Reap by night, which we were told is the most amazing city in Cambodia by many people we had met. Two French guys we had met in Ho Chi Minh said it is one of their favorite cities in Asia. The two clubs in the city, named Angkor What? and Temple (clever, clever), were crawling with visiting foreigners. Angkor What? was awesome, and decorated all over the walls with writing of people who had visited before. We grabbed markers and each signed our names as big as we could on the wall. My name was spray painted big as day on the staircase too, so that was pretty awesome. Anyway, Siem Reap was really, really fun and we met some cool people. We ended up a local club where we realized that Cambodians really do like to dance, hahah it was quite an interesting sight.
The next morning we woke up early to visit Angkor Thom complex, the ancient city of the Khmer Empire.

We walked through the South Gate of Angkor Thom, which was ginormous, and had the four faces of Buddha carved around the sides, representing the all-seeing eye of Buddha, who sees in all four directions.

We arrived at the center of the city, where the king Jayavarman built his official state temple, Bayon. The temple is carved in high relief, with depictions of historical events, everyday life, mythological events, and over 200 faces of the bodhisattva of compassion, Lockesvara. The temple was really sweet, but the coolest part was how we got our tour. Via elephant, no big deal. It was awesome! Lots of Dumbos hanging around that joint. We got to feed them bananas which was so weird! Their trunks are honestly the most bizarre looking things I have ever seen!

Some girl thought it would be really funny if I stuck the banana in my teeth, so that it was sticking out towards the elephant, and tried to feed it that way. So naturally, I did, and without touching my mouth/facial area (ew), he grabbed it out of my mouth! Haha it was awesome! So the elephant ride was great, and the temple was pretty neat as well.

After Bayon, we went to see the Elephant Terrace, which was a big grass thing with lots of elephants carved around it…that’s about it! But the next part was SO COOL. We went to this part of the temple complex called Baphuon, which is still in the middle of the jungle, and has not yet been restored. As it turns out, this is the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed, how cool is that? Anyway, it’s a tumbling down and all the stones are loose and stuff, so it looks kind of like Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sweet. We got to climb all around in it, wherever we wanted to go, in hidden passageways, over tumbling building rocks, just all over! My friend Colby and I slightly reenacted the TV show, no big deal…I always wanted to go on it and be a Blue Barracuda…hahaha. Hm.

Alright so the Tomb Raider temple was awesome and it was built into the actual environment so that it looked liked trees were growing out of it! The roots of these hundred foot trees branched over the entire temple and they looked like snakes or vines they way they curled and wound their way around the stonework.

On the way back to the bus we sped-walked through screaming throngs of children trying to sell us their goods. Turns out “Lady, lady 3 for 1 dolla! Just 1 dolla!” is not such a good selling tactic when it looks like what you should be selling is worth about 50 cents….oh well.
So we left Cambodia after two full days of intense sightseeing, educational activities, and lots of fun! We got back to Vietnam half an hour before on-ship time, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say we were all sad to go! Not only were Vietnam and Cambodia SO MUCH FUN, they were beautiful countries with rich cultural histories. Because of the US’s involvement in both Vietnam and Cambodia (as much as they deny entering Cambodia) during the war, I think it was especially moving for me, as an American, to experience now the repercussions of our country’s actions. For everything we did, it is astonishing to me that as a large group of Americans were warmly welcomed into both Vietnam and Cambodia with open arms and open hearts. They truly are kind, generous, and clearly forgiving people. I will definitely miss flying down the streets of Ho Chi Minh city on a motorbike, passing by seemingly endless numbers of those triangle straw rice paddy hats…but I can’t really complain, can I? Hong Kong TOMORROW!

Malaysia

2008-10-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

After our experiences in India, I’m not quite sure anyone really knew what to expect from Malaysia. We had heard it was a land of beautiful white-sand beaches, amazing cuisine, pristine temples, and of course the Petronas Twin Towers – the largest twin towers in the world.

But the culture shock we had all experienced three days earlier was enough to turn any expectations we had right on their heads. Needing desperately to find another picture for my Cambodian visa after my China debacle, I got off the ship and headed to the nearest mall with Flynn to find a camera store. My god it was one of the largest, most beautiful malls I had ever seen. It was eight floors high, with every single type of electronics store known to mankind. They also had a complete food court – McDonalds, Famous Amos – the whole deal. After getting my passport pictures taken, and getting lost numerous times, we grabbed Brad from a nearby bookstore and headed out to grab some Malay cuisine, the specialty of Penang state. Our taxi driver took us to a tiny local restaurant where there was not another tourist for miles. Confused about the whole process initially, we hand-signaled our way to getting a meal of rice, chicken and vegetables, which we soon realized we were meant to eat without silverware. Interesting. Malaysia is a country of diverse religious and cultural background, with a population comprised mostly of Muslims, but with large Buddhist and Hindu contingents as well. Many of the people are of Chinese and Indian descent; so naturally, Malay food has quite the interesting mix of everything. But it was really delicious, just like we had been told it would be. After lunch we grabbed a cab to Kek Lok Si Temple, a Buddhist temple that sits high up on Penang Hill, and one of the most famous religious sites in Penang.

The name, meaning “Temple of Supreme Bliss”, is really fitting since the temple sits high above Penang’s capital city of Georgetown nestled between blue sky and lush forests. It’s pretty hard to miss considering the lavish and bright red, gold, blue, and green external decoration. Inside the temple the walls were lined floor to ceiling with thousands of miniature golden Buddhas, and the smell of incense filled the air. There were large alters with candles, flowers, and giant golden Buddha statues, complete with even more ornate carving and gilding. Purty.

On the way from the Temple of Supreme Bliss to the Temple of the Thousand Faces of Buddha we ran into some Chinese women, who decided that I would be a really good prop for their pictures. Without asking, they grabbed me and threw me into the pictures while Brad and Laura Flynn just stood there and laughed – typical. This always happens to me! On the way down from the lighthouse at Cape Point some random room accosted me, took my sunglasses off my face and kept yelling “Jamie!” until she realized after about ten minutes that no, I actually was not Jamie. My awkward laugh got me through both interesting experiences, not to worry.

So in this next temple we find that Buddha has multiple personality disorder. There is literally a Buddha for every single mood. Happy Buddha, sad Buddha, angry Buddha, hungry Buddha, hungry-for-revenge Buddha; he’s moody. So the temples were all well and good and beautiful and I got to put my Asian art knowledge to use – score.

We left to ride back to Georgetown and catch the tender to the boat to change and get ready before dinner.
Oh yeah, tendering. I forgot to explain the most annoying and frustrating experience of boat life. Apparently in some ports, like Penang, our little floating campus is too big to actually pull up to the dock, and when we saw the actual wooden planks Malaysia calls “docks” we understood why. Anyway, we have to sit out in the harbor and use our lifeboats to shuttle people back and forth to shore. The ride across the water takes only about fifteen minutes, and so you ask why is that so annoying? The process, my dears, is not fun. You have to arrive at the gangway 15 minutes before the tender leaves, and they leave from the boat on the hour and from the shore on the half-hour, so if you miss one and you need to be somewhere at a certain time, you’re in a little bit of bind.

Then you wait for the tender, wait for everyone to unload, load everyone on, sit in the hot boat until it gets cleared, then cross, and unload, etc. We did learn that our lifeboats do work nicely though, in case of emergency, which I suppose is a good thing. Anywho the tenders don’t run all day every day, and coming back from shore they stop at 1:00am…so if you miss that one, you sleep at the marina. Not so fun. Luckily I have responsible friends who get me places on time; my perpetual late tendency doesn’t work out so well.
Okay so that’s tendering in case anyone asks. We got back to the boat, showered, changed, and got ready to go out for a girls’ night since I wasn’t going to be with any of my girl friends for the next five days – I’ll explain. So apparently every Wednesday everywhere in Malaysia is ladies’ night. That is neat. I’m quite sure that Semester at Sea took over Georgetown’s central bar area as people held dance competitions on stage for free prizes, us included. That was fun.
The next morning I woke up to enjoy the fabulous life of tendering over to my 8:30am FDP – Prime Commodities of Malaysia. The plan was to visit a palm oil factory, rice paddy museum, and rubber tree plantation, and be back by 3pm. Perfect really, because my bus for Kuala Lumpur left at 4:30pm. Since I was traveling with my 3 best guy friends, Brad, Josh, and Jesse, and they seem to think that I’m responsible, I was put in charge of holding on to the bus tickets (this part of the story comes into play later). So first we’re off to visit the palm oil plantation, the commodity that is Malaysia’s largest export.

Along with Indonesia, the two countries produce 90% of the world’s palm oil. Which is a lot. Oh, and if you like eating palm oil, I would stop. It’s 51% saturated fat, and perhaps one of the worst oils you could eat! Good thing the US soybean lobbyists prevent mass import of palm oil to protect the soybean industry, or we’d all be super fat. So palm oil smells foul and has no taste whatsoever, but its greatly redeeming quality is that it can be used for biodiesel, and so people are hoping that it will be able to help with our energy crisis…I guess we shall see.

So we left the palm oil factory, drove 2 hours to get lunch at hawker stalls, then another half hour to a rice paddy museum. Yes, you can reread that to make sure I said what I meant – a museum about rice paddies. Doesn’t it sound thrilling?
Well I was all super excited about the rice when I found out that our FDP wasn’t going to get back until 6pm. That was not okay. So our guide had to arrange for me to take a cab back from Kedah, two hours away from Georgetown, by myself, in order to make my bus. So he calls a cab, the guy speaks not a single word of English, he puts me inside, assures me that he has told him the right place to go, and sends me on my way.

In retrospect, probably not a great idea. So we’re riding along and the guys pulls up to the ferry port and points to the ferry to Langkawi, a island about 2 hours north of Penang. I frantically try to tell him that I need to go to Penang, to Georgetown, to the pier, but he does not understand. I commence freak out stage. I finally say Georgetown enough times that he says he understands, so I get back in the cab, at this point around 2:30pm, still thinking that I had enough time to meet my friends on the pier at 3:45pm. He assures me it will only take an hour – I think “one hour” and “thank you” were about the only English phrases he knew, and clearly my Malay wasn’t too hot either. So we get back in the cab and he is moving a snails pace, I try to tell him to go faster, he doesn’t understand. I try every hand motion I possibly can, sign language, anything I can think of, it’s not working. 4:00pm rolls around and I am still 15 minutes away from pier, our bus leaves at 4:30pm, I have all the tickets, the driver won’t go faster, I am hysterically sobbing in the back because I think my friends will have left for Kuala Lumpur without me, I’m by myself with no cell phone, all in all not a great situation. Finally I make him stop, sprint from the cab to the pier where people sitting under the tent tell me the boys have already left. The tears pour a little bit harder, but some nice girl tells me they went to the bus station and to meet them there. I careened out of the tent yelling frantically for a cab, luckily a driver who speaks English speeds his butt off to get me to the station. I get there, tears coming down my face, and race over to the bus were Brad and Jesse are waiting there with a new addition to our trip, Amanda. You know when you’re sick or something goes wrong and you pick up the phone to talk to your mom and you cry even harder? Well this was sort of like that. Just seeing them standing there with bewildered expressions on their faces (I looked like a hot mess that’s for sure), and Brad coming over to give me a hug, made me cry a little bit harder. I knew that some point along this journey I would run into some problems somewhere, needless to say I thought my lost credit card and messed up Chinese visa would be the big issues, so I guess it’s all well and good that I had 7 minor heart attacks in a cab in Malaysia.
So after I calm down, we meet up with Josh and Jeff, who added on to our trip at the last minute as well. We hop into our “Super VIP” ($6 a ticket) bus, and settle in for our fun five-hour bus ride.

Jeff and I had some epic games of hangman, let me just tell you that.
We get into Kuala Lumpur, grab our packs from beneath the bus, and start to look for something to eat, and then somewhere to stay. After a VERY spicy meal (Frank you would have enjoyed it), we started traipsing around town looking for a hostel or hotel with open rooms. We end up at the Swiss Garden Hotel, where we get a 6-person room for $25 a night. Nice. I take my usual 20 minutes to get ready, finishing before the boys, a new claim to fame I have perfected on Semester at Sea for those of you doubting that ability, and we headed out to explore KL’s nightlife.

The next morning we got up early to go to the needle, a fairly new addition to Kuala Lumpur’s skyline. We rode up the 270 meters to the 360 degree viewing veranda and got to see over all of beautiful Kuala Lumpur. And yes, the towers as well (they were even more awesome at night! The needle lights up like the Eiffel Tower, too. It’s pretty sweet).

We left the needle to make a quick stop at the actual Petronas Towers before we had to board our bus to Tanah Rata, in the Cameron Highlands. The towers are HUGE and awesome, and my friend Jesse, who is an architecture freak and civil engineer, was just in his element the entire time, which was fun to watch. I’ve never seen someone get so excited about buildings before in my life.
So after a quick stop there, we grabbed out bags, checked out of the hotel, and made our way to the Cameron Highlands, about a 5-hour drive from KL. That actually happened to be a fun bus ride with a little more competitive hangman, and a very competitive game of euchre. It’s a four-person card game that Josh, my friend who grew up in Indiana, and Brad, from Kansas City, say is a must-learn Midwestern tradition…five hours later we landed in the highlands, a breezy 15 degrees cooler than sweltering KL and Georgetown. So refreshing! We made our way to our hostel, Daniel’s Lodge, which ended up being a very interesting and fun experience within itself. 6 of us shared a 4-bed sardine can of a room, less than ½ the size of our ship cabins, and those are small.

We asked Box, the elderly Malaysian man who ran the lodge, where a good place to get Chinese food would be, and he took us to his favorite restaurant, the Mayflower (interesting), ordered us a Steamboat, and essentially commenced what would be the death of me for the next 3 days. A steamboat is made up of a huge pan with a divider – one side filled with spicy broth, the other with chicken broth. Then they brought out raw jellyfish, squid, chicken, beef, crab, egg noodles, rice noodles, oysters, eggs, and a couple other things I probably blocked out. It’s kind of like a Melting Pot type deal where you throw things in, let them cook, and then eat them…but then again you are eating jellyfish (bad consistency if you’re wondering). Since we really had no idea what we were doing, made clear by the fact that three of the boys thought it would be a good idea to eat chili peppers (it was not), it took us about 2 hours to eat dinner.

We then went in a mad search for ice cream to cool off the boys tongues before heading back to inviting bungalow bar and bonfire at Daniel’s Lodge.

Hostels are super fun because not only are they a unique experience (toilets = holes in the ground with a hose to wipe in Malaysia; showers = spickett over said toilet; all are communal), you get to meet so many cool people from all over the world. We met some American kids from Loyola who had been studying abroad in Bangkok, lots of Australians, and some British as well.
The next morning, after having spent the night crammed into a tiny twin bed with Brad (that was not comfy), I awoke feeling very sick to my stomach – a feeling that lasted until today. That was unfortunate considering what goes in, must come out, in either direction, and like I said, the toilets were holes in the ground. Fun. Not to mention, Malaysia, and apparently Southeast Asia in general, don’t believe in toilet paper, so I was glad that when we ventured out on our jungle trek at 8am the next morning, Jesse thought to pack some for me, lest I should need it in the woods. By the time we reached the jungle I actually felt a lot better, and was super excited for what we were about to do. We were starting our three-hour trek into the highland jungle to see the world’s largest flower, and swim in some waterfalls – no way was I letting myself be sick for that.

So we started out in these badass old school hummers, off-roaded for a bit, walked up some steep mud slides the hummer could handle with all of us inside, and finally arrived at the start of the trail. We crossed bamboo bridges, ducked under and hopped over giant fallen trees, fell in the mud, sweated a lot, but overall, I really enjoyed be out and active in nature.

(Side note: this picture is me drinking out of a bamboo cup that our guides made for us. The stalks are divided into sections with fresh rain water trapped inside and the cut down some of them so we could drink!) It was so calm and beautiful, with just the seemingly far-off sounds of rushing water behind you. When we got to the flower, I must admit I was a little disappointed – it was ugly. And I mean UG-LY. And since I know you all are dying to see what it looks like, and since the picture of me with the flower was even uglier than the flower itself, here’s one of Josh and the world’s ugliest, biggest flower (If you can’t tell from the picture it’s a burnt-orange-esque color with lots of weird tumor type things on it).

After trekking a little bit more we arrived at a beautiful, serene waterfall with built-in caves (almost the near-death of Jesse, but that’s another story). We got to swim and relax for a while in the cool water, a nice refreshing contrast to the sweaty heat of the hike. The boys found some caves, decided it would be a good idea to army-crawl up them, and wiggled their way onto the top of the waterfall.

Josh and Jeff jumped off into the rocky/water abyss below, miraculously surviving, but Brad and Jesse decided it would probably be a better idea to go back down through the cave. Ha. So Brad comes down, and all is fine, but when Jesse goes, he by accident knocks a small rock out of place, that in turn causes a giant boulder to fall on top of him, inside a tiny cave. Luckily he had the quick idea to try to go underneath the boulder and swim out before he got totally crushed. Since he didn’t come out for a while the boys got a little nervous, calling his name, but there was no response. Finally he emerged, scraped down his whole back, arms bleeding, but okay. I don’t think his heart stopped palpitating for a couple hours afterwards. Scary.
After Jesse’s near-death experience we hiked back down the mountain, got back into the hummers, and went to visit a nearby aborigine village. The village visit was really interesting, and we learned all about how the government and local NGO’s help provide them with education, healthcare, and housing. The coolest part though, was that we got to use the chief of the village’s blowgun to try to hit a faraway target (I did)! I lobby that we replace darts with blowguns, much more fun. We left the village, and stopped for lunch before visiting BOH tea plantation (short for best of the highlands). And it was beautiful!

Honestly the view of sprawling hills and valleys covered with lush fields of bright green tea leaves splashed here and there with the occasional house was just breath taking. The dark green hills reached up to the deep blue sky, and were settled over with a light blanket of fog; it looked surreal. We took a tour of the factory and got to see the entire process from tea leaves being picked right up until packaging. We went onto the veranda, and sat looking out over the hills while sipping mugs of hot, freshly brewed tea.

Then our guide Spencer took us all down to the fields themselves, talked a little bit about the plantation and the tea-producing industry in the Cameron Highlands, and let us wander around and explore for a bit before heading off once again. This time we drove to a butterfly farm some ways off the main road. It wasn’t really just a butterfly farm though. I got to see some GIANT bugs – giant leaf bugs, giant grasshoppers, giant rhinoceros beetles – weird stuff. I got to hold a gecko, a scorpion, a turtle, and some butterflies.

But that kind of stuff, especially the scorpion, gives me the heebie jeebies so I was itching to get out of there fast! We made our last stop of the day at a strawberry farm outside town at sunset. Unfortunately we couldn’t pick strawberries that late, but they had homemade strawberry ice cream we got to eat while watching the sunset, and it was really good! Being on Semester at Sea really has made me appreciate sunrise and sunset more and more. I have never been surrounded by such beautiful scenery all the time.

It truly is amazing, and I find myself thinking every day how lucky I am that I get to be living this on a day-to-day basis.
After an extremely long and full day of hiking, swimming, eating and sightseeing, we headed back to the lodge, grabbed dinner, enjoyed the bonfire for a little bit, and then went to bed. The next morning we woke up early for our drive back to Georgetown, and we prepared to leave Malaysia. It truly was a beautiful country with tons to offer. I enjoyed all the people, the places, the food (except the steamboat, which was the death of me), and the amazing scenery.
So we pull into Ho Chi Minh city tomorrow…how cool is that I can wake up and actually say “Gooooooooood morning Vietnam!”

Yeah, I’m that big of a dork.

India

2008-10-21T03:05:00.001-07:00

After decompressing for a couple days post-India, I am still at a loss of what to write. I don’t really know if there is any way that I can convey what I am feeling, thinking, and processing right now. I don’t know if there’s a way I can communicate the devastation, poverty, oppression, and disease that I saw almost all day, every day. Before I arrived, I was told that if you come to India, you leave either loving it or hating it. On the ship right now there are a lot of mixed emotions about that. And I can tell you that after the first day of being in India I thought I would hate it. I can’t explain the transformation I have gone through. I now know that not only will make it a point to come back to India sometime in my life, but that I feel some sort of weird obligation to do so. There is so much sadness there, but all the people, especially the children, seem so happy. Happy to be living, learning, and most of all, happy to be able to interact with Americans. This trip was one of the most rewarding that I have had on Semester at Sea and as corny as it sounds I really do feel changed. Hopefully detailing my experience there will help to understand that.
The first day we arrived in Chennai, Laura Flynn, Brad, Josh, Dan and I rode into town to grab some lunch and do some quick shopping before we all headed in our separate directions. It’s funny how in these countries you can go to the ATM, pull out a hundred bucks, and actually have thousands in local currency. I get overwhelmed sometimes! Anyway, back on track. Everything in this country is so cheap. I swear I am going to be the best Santa that ever lived when I get home. The boys left the shop with some interesting outfits – they all bought tunics and Indian pants to go along with them. However, they weren’t the only ones, and when I got back to the ship to depart for my 4 day trip to the Taj Mahal and Varanasi, many of my other guy friends had the full ensemble – turbans of some sort, tunics, pashminas, pants, and Indian shoes. They wore them everywhere! One of my friends Chris even said that while we were laughing at him, he noticed a lot of “Indian chicks checking him out”…nice. Anyway, we went to lunch and I had my new favorite food – naan. I’m sure it’s common in the states, but I had never had it before coming to India and it is up there with my top five foods. I mean, up there with sushi and cheese, and that’s pretty high. Naan is this amazingly wonderful buttered flatbread that is warm and delicious and if you haven’t tried it, do so immediately. I think it’s what sustained me this whole trip. That, and my constant diet of Pepto Bismal, because everyone was insanely worried about getting traveler’s diarrhea from the food. Contrary to what most people think, not all Indian food is curry. Surprising, huh? There’s actually lots of good chicken dishes, lamb, potatoes, rice, etc. Yumminess.
So after our amazing lunch we raced back to the boat because I was late, per usual, for my trip departure. I made it, thank God, and I was off on what were some of the most interesting, exhausting, exhilarating days of my life. The first night we flew from Chennai to Delhi, checked into our hotel late and hopped into bed because our 4:30am wake up did not sound too appealing. The next morning Christine, my roommate, and I were of course the last people on the bus because I woke up at 4:45am, exactly when we were supposed to be on the bus, awesome. We drove to the train station to get on the train that would take us to Agra for the day.

On the way I saw probably hundreds of people sleeping the filthy streets, with either little or no blankets to cover them. Not that being cold was a problem – India was HOT – but still. There were infants, pregnant mothers, deformed children, and the elderly all lying somewhere along the road trying to shield themselves from the lights and awful stench of cow manure and pee that haunted the streets. I swear I have never seen a dirtier country in my life. In the train station I was continually plagued with sights of children and no limbs, extremely malnourished, or with some awful disease like elephantiasis.
They would pull on our clothes pleading for something to eat, not even money, just food. They were grateful even to have water. Finally the train came and I passed out for the two-hour ride to Agra.
Once we arrived, we got on a bus and drove another hour or so to Fatehpur Sikri, the abandoned city built by Emperor Akbar, the third Moghul emperor of India. The entire palace complex, which served as the capital of India for twelve years, was made out of red sandstone, and was gigantic!

There were beautiful gardens, pools, fountains, multi-level housing complexes, and many open courtyards where the emperor, his three wives and his hundreds of concubines used to live. Emperor Akbar built the city in honor of a Muslim saint who had prophesized that after years and years of only having girls, that he would finally have a son. When that came true, he built the palace in this saint’s honor.

After being accosted by hawkers and frustratingly annoying salespeople, one of whom decided that he liked my ring and demanded that I give it to him, we got back into the bus and headed out for lunch and then to Agra Fort.

It was here that I had my first view of the fabled Taj Mahal. The fort was built earlier than the Taj, but by the same emperor, in order to protect the Moghul kingdom from invasion. This emperor, Emperor Shah Jahan, after the death of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, for whom the Taj Mahal was built, was overthrown by his own son, imprisoned in the fort, and died after 8 years of captivity there. Sadly his plans for an even more glorious black Taj Mahal across the river from the one he did build were thwarted because of his son. Frustrating. A black one would have been so cool. After waiting the entire day to see the Taj, we left the fort and geared up the see the monument we had all been waiting for.
How do I describe this? I looked like I walked into a postcard. Or better yet – one of those awesome pictures you see in National Geographic or on Google image search. It honestly did not look real.

After tons and tons and tons of pictures, we walked down the long reflecting pool, getting closer to the marble wonder. Again, contrary to belief, the Taj is not a temple, but rather a mausoleum for Mumtaz, Shah Jahan’s wife. He created this perfectly symmetrical, marble building as a testament to the permanence of their love, and after hundreds of years it’s still standing, so it looks like she was one awesome wife. Luckily the sun was going down as we were on our visit, and we got to see the building with the sunset as a backdrop, it truly was amazing. When you get up to the upper level of the Taj you have to either remove your shoes (seemed to me to be a common theme in India – no one wears shoes! It’s the most bizarre thing), or put on some super-sweet booties. Needless to say, I opted for the booties. Brad and I snaked through the long line to enter, and finally got to see the marble-encased caskets of the Emperor and his beloved inside.

The marble detailing was so incredible and intricate that I have no doubt the decades it took to construct this building were spent hard at work. After lots more pictures and awe-struck facial expressions, we boarded the buses again to get dinner and get back on the train for trip back to Delhi.

The day was exhausting and everywhere I went I was being hawked by vendors and beggars right and left. There were dirty, deathly skinny animals at every turn (another weird thing about India – the cows are sacred, and everywhere, even in the middle of the road, but they do not look to be treated so nicely. Not so fat these heifers), tons of trash lining the streets, people relieving themselves out in the open, and malnourished children tugging at my sleeve, and my heartstrings, hoping to survive another day off my discarded food. At that point, I really didn’t know what to think at all.
We got to sleep in the next morning…till 5:30am. Awesome. For those of you who know my morning patterns, let’s just put it this way, I am not a morning person. But after this trip I have no doubt that I will be able to fall asleep anywhere, at any time, in any position, and be perfectly content. I’m quite certain I got 12 hours of sleep for 5 whole days. So we got up early, drove to the airport and caught a flight to Varanasi, the holy city of the Hindus. On the way from the airport to the actual city, we stopped at Sarnath, the site where Buddha preached his first sermon after achieving enlightenment.
This ancient city, now in ruins except for the giant stupa (which supposedly hold’s some of the Buddha’s possessions), is as holy to Buddhists as Varanasi is to the Hindus. Along with the Buddha’s birthplace and death place, Sarnath is one of the three places that Buddhists make pilgrimages to during their lifetime.

We left Sarnath, boarded what I felt was my new home, our bus, and drove a while to Varanasi. After settling into the hotel we left for our nighttime activity: seeing the holy rituals performed on the banks of the Ganges River. For Hindus, Mother Ganga is worshipped as a goddess who has to power to cleanse a person of their sins and hopefully relieve the dead from the cycle of rebirth so central to the Hindu faith. Every evening at dusk hundreds of people gather on the banks of the river to partake in an hour-long ritual ceremony complete with Brahmin priests waving around incense, beating drums, and lighting things on fire. It was an awesome thing to watch. It was just like going to church for them.
To and from the river we went two-by-two, very Noah’s Ark style, in rickshaws pulled by tiny Indian men. Our rickshaw driver, Michael (no joke), explained to us how he had two wives, and that he only had to pay 100 rupees for each of them – that amounts to 2 dollars a wife. Absurd isn’t it? A member of the lowest Indian caste, Michael was a sudra, those whose traditional duty it is to serve the other three castes. He was extremely poor, very thin, and could not afford a home for his wives and three children so he had to live with his parents and his brother and his brother’s family as well. He explained that he already had three children, all girls, but that he was going to wait until he had at least a few boys to stop having children.

For poor Indians large families are their source of income, of security. Children mean revenue – for the farmers, they can help with daily chores, or can become laborers for other farmers and earn money, for the urban poor children mean more people to beg, or to work menial jobs for some source of income. It is also common that children in some families will die because of malnutrition, so families compensate by having more. This is why India is so overpopulated, or so I learned in my Globalization and Development class. People aren’t poor because they have large families; they have large families because they’re poor. Interesting, I think. Our guide throughout the trip, Harsh Sawhney, attempted to explain to me why family planning doesn’t work in India. It’s because a) people aren’t educated about birth control and how it works, so they either refuse to use it, or use it improperly, thus it fails to work, and they spread amongst other women that it doesn’t work; b) women’s husbands refuse to allow it; c) culturally boys are worth more, so couples will have kids until they have multiple boys; d) most women don’t even have access to birth control in the first place; e) it is frowned upon in rural communities because large families are the way of life, the key to survival. All in all, India’s population, which is mostly extremely poor, living on less than one dollar a day, will continue to grow because more children seem to by the key to survival. Okay sorry for the educational side-note, I just think it’s so interesting because the West has common misconceptions about why things are the way they are in India, and I like to find out the truth. Anyway, back to the rickshaw ride. It was so awesome. Everything in India is so colorful! Right down to the saris worn by women and young girls as they walk down the street. It was awesome to pass through a huge outdoor Indian street market at night, see women buying fabrics for their saris, see men bartering for fruits and vegetables, and pass by the not-so-occasional cow sitting in the middle of a busy road.

As we were riding back, my friend Nea, who was with me in the rickshaw, turns to me and goes, “Oh my god, we just got hit by a car!” It was so slight that I hadn’t noticed, but she was definitely right; our rickshaw had gotten tapped by a silver Mercedes. What ensued happened in mere seconds that I can’t really recall all the details, but I just remember a staredown between our driver and the driver of the car, the car pulling off the side of the road, the driver getting out, coming over to our rickshaw and punching our rickshaw driver in the face and knocking him onto the ground! I was petrified because the huge, angry Indian man looked like the rickshaw driver wouldn’t be the only one getting hit, but luckily our driver hopped back onto the bike and pedaled away as fast as he could. I later asked our driver if this kind of street violence was rare, and he said sadly no, people from upper castes treat people from lower castes with absolutely no respect, with no regard for the laws. Poor Michael.
Early the next morning, 4:30am early, we got back on the bus to go down to the Ganges for another ceremony. At dawn, all the local Hindus come down to the river to bathe because they believe that the river has the power to cleanse a person of their sins. The water, perhaps the most disgusting water I have ever seen, is a filthy brown color with all types of gross things mixed in.
3 sewage plants from Varanasi pump into the river, all the trash from the banks is swept into the river, and not to mention – there are dead animal and human bodies in there too (I’ll get back to that later). So, it’s nasty and these people submerge themselves in it, wash their whole bodies with it, and drink it. Foul. So anyway, we get to the river before sunrise, board large river canoes and row out into the river to watch the ritual from the water, and see the beautiful sunrise. Actually, perhaps the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen.
We also each bought a small flower candle to light, make a wish with, and set afloat in the river. It was really cool to see a sea of floating flowers going down the banks of the river.

So back to the dead bodies thing. Varanasi is one of the holiest cities to Hindus, and those who are lucky enough, go there to die. They are cremated on giant funeral pyres, and their ashes are spread into the river in hopes that the river will relieve them from the cycle of rebirth. However, only those people with sons are allowed to be cremated because it requires a son to perform the last rites. Therefore, pregnant women, infants, children, or anyone without a son who wants to free themselves from the karmic cycle is simply dumped into the river. This was perhaps one of the most disturbing parts of the trip for me because as we approached the bank to get off the boat, the body of a toddler boy, probably no more than 3, floated dangerously close to our boat.

I had so many physical and emotional reactions to that scene that it’s hard to describe. Even now when I think about it, I gag. Everyone was pretty shaken up afterwards, and the winding walk through markets and small alleyways was spent in a pretty solemn silence. We boarded the buses to start our long day home of two flights, multiple bus rides, long lines, and finally sleep. Back in Delhi, before boarding our flight to Varanasi, we took a small city tour, seeing all the embassies, the Presidential Palace, the Parliament, and then a Sikh temple. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Before entering the temple we had to enter a small room where we removed our shoes – not something I was exactly thrilled about in India. As we entered the beautiful gold-domed building, the sound of chants and drumming grew louder. As we approached the alter, men and women were prostrating themselves to the Holy Scriptures (the basis of their religion, there is no god). Sikh temples are open daily from 5:00am to 10:00pm because the full book of scriptures must be read from beginning to end every day, and that is how long it takes to do so. We visited the temple around sundown, which was gorgeous.

Outside the temple was a large reflecting pool with white-stone buildings around it. Men and women, all with their heads covered (I had to cover mine, too), we walking around, washing themselves in the pool, and blessing themselves with the holy water.

Afterward, we left the temple, boarded the buses, and started the long journey back to the ship.
We arrived at the ship around 2am, so I was not thrilled when my alarm sounded at 6am the next morning…FDP time. I put on my conservative clothing (pants) and prepared to walk out into the smelly sauna that is India. We arrived at the Sri Sayee Vivekananda Vidyalaya School, a secondary school that serves the poor communities of Chennai, is built entirely upon donations, and provides very cheap, but well-rounded educations to children who otherwise would not have the opportunity to learn. The second we stepped inside and a little girl in a pink dress handed me a rose, my smile did not disappear once from my face. It was by far the best experience I had in India. These little kids were so cute and funny, interested and curious, wanting to learn about America, taking pictures with us, giving us gifts. I have never been so overwhelmed with unprompted kindness and generosity, especially from those that come from so little. The school itself could have used some work, but since it runs totally on donations, sacrifices must be made. Overall there are 690 students, ranging in age from 3 to 18. My interesting experience started with the lower kindergarten classroom, mostly three-year-olds, who did not speak at all, let alone a word of English. Getting them to understand why we were there and what we trying to do with our mounds of play dough and hundreds of crayons was interesting, but as we moved up in age amongst the classrooms, the students understood more and our efforts were fully validated. My friend Kelly and I taught the students the Hokey Pokey, the US national anthem, the Macarena, head, shoulders, knees, and toes, and essentially anything from our childhoods we could remember. The Hokey Pokey was a HUGE hit! They in turn shared some of what they knew with us – karate, gymnastics, nursery rhymes in Hindi, songs, etc. Every time a little 5-year-old Hindi girl sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider to me in broken English, my grin just widened. It’s hard to explain how this experience changed my whole view about India, but it did. It was so eye opening in so many ways, and it made me think about all we have to be thankful for as Americans, and what we can do to help other peoples around the world. So, that being said, I am canvassing for donations for the school, really of any kind. If you decide that you want to donate, and any amount is greatly appreciated, please write me an email and I will give you more information about the school, the children, how to donate, etc. If you would like to send school supplies I will give information on how to do that as well. It really is a wonderful program and every little bit, every small donation helps to send another child to school, to give another child a future.So all in all I wouldn’t really say India was fun, I’d say it was a great cultural experience. Going into it I sort of assumed it would be like that, but I was unprepared for how I would be changed in the end. So this was kind of a sappy one, but I guess it had to come from India…now onto Malaysia tomorrow! Temples, and beaches, and jungle…can’t wait!

South Africa

2008-10-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

So, Cape Town. Whoa. Long story short – it was awesome! I had been looking forward to going there since I heard it was on the itinerary because Amy had spent 6 months at University of Stellanbosch, only 45 minutes away. I decided to most everything independently with a small group of boys and girls since Amy had given me a list a year long of stuff to do there. No safari for me, but I had an action-packed, culturally rich experience, that’s for sure. So let’s see, where do I start? We got into Cape Town last Friday morning, all of which I spent at the Chinese consulate in Cape Town getting a new visa for China since mine had the wrong dates on it…typical. The consulate was by far the weirdest place I went in Cape Town. It was in this residential area, but it was literally a shack made of plywood, with no walls and serious mushroom problems growing up from the floor haha…nasty! Anyway, after leaving my passport in the hands of some random, questionable consulate, I made my way back to the boat to meet up with our group hiking Table Mountain. And let me just tell you, when I say hike, I mean HIKE. That was by far one of the harder physical activities I’ve done on this trip. As we approached the mountain, me in my very minimal hiking gear, our taxi driver asked us if we were taking the funicular up the mountain or if we were hiking. When we said hiking, he laughed in our faces – awesome. So we started the two and a half hour ascent, with me surprisingly in the lead. Don’t worry I didn’t stay there the whole time…I was hiking with Brad and Jesse, two boys who go to school in Boulder, they quickly took over. Super intense does not begin to describe this “little hike” I had gotten myself into.

It was pretty much straight up into some craggy mountains, but boy was it beautiful! Next to Cape Point, Table Mountain is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been. But more of that later. So we’re hiking up this deep crevasse and water, apparently from melting snow, as I was told, is coming down all over the place.

But not to worry, after only one hour of what was meant to be a two and a half hour hike, we made it to the top! AND IT WAS AWESOME!

View of all of Cape Town, we could even see our ship from there. But it was freezing and I was sweaty – not a good combination!

So I took donations for extra clothes as the six of us spent one and a half hours up on the top of the mountain with a couple bottles of great South African wine.
As the sun went in, we decided to take the funicular on the way back down the mountain and headed back to the ship. We changed super quick, and Brad, Jesse, Josh and I headed out to Long Street to grab dinner. Long Street is a “hoot” as some would say, super hippie and awesome, I loved it! Lots of cool shops, little hotels, backpackers, restaurants, and bars.
The next day we got up, walked around the Waterfront a little bit, which was two minutes from where our ship was docked. We had such a great location! The Waterfront was really nice – much better than Walvis Bay or Salvador, which both reeked! After putzing around for a while, we made our way 45 minutes out of Cape Town to Skydive Cape Town, and I prepared myself to jump out of a plane at 9,000ft. I pulled on my orange jumpsuit, got strapped into my harness, and waited to meet my tandem master.

Julian, a native of Johannesburg, had actually spent a good deal of time in the US, skydiving in Boulder. He was so cool! He had super long blond dreads, and a great accent, not to mention he was very reassuring about my soon-to-come free fall. We went up into the tiniest plane I’ve ever seen and I was attached to Julian when we approached our jumping height.

Kierstin went first, and after watching her and Laura Flynn get sucked out into the sky, it was my turn! We were poised on the edge of the plane, and with no warning we just….dropped! I SCREAMED MY HEAD OFF BUT IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! Julian had a camera, so I’m pretty sure I’ve got it on video, but free falling for 35 seconds over Table Mountain was the sickest thing I’ve ever done. Julian then pulled the parachute, and I floated for about 5 minutes, seeing Table Mountain, Cape Point, the ocean, just everything!

I cannot even begin to describe the adrenaline rush of that fall, or the high of simply floating above the world. I’m addicted!
Okay, so adrenaline rushes were key on this trip. The next day we got up at 5:30am to take a 2-hour bus ride to Gaansbai, the whale watching and shark diving spot of the Western Cape. After seeing a few blue whales next to our boat, we waited until the water was sufficiently chummed, and baited some great white sharks!! I was in the first group to get into the cage, along with Jen, Kierstin, and Laura Flynn. I think I started hyperventilating I was so nervous! We got into the freezing water, wet-suited from head to foot.

I came within 6 INCHES OF A GREAT WHITE SHARK! Isn’t that NUTS?? I think so. We got some great shots. They would come up and ram the cage and sometimes our limbs would occasionally just float out into serious shark territory!
One of them got his fin caught in the cage next to my friend Kelly and was thrashing about at her face! But luckily, no accidents!
We then went to a small island in the bay, one that is apparently home to 60,000 cape fur seals. And yes, they were super cute and adorable BUT THEY SMELLED SO BAD!! Haha I am not even kidding, it was actually sort of foul. But tons of them were playing in the water next to the boat and they were just so awesome and jumpy!

So we thought the exciting part of our day was over when the boat docked and we boarded our van to come back to Cape Town. But oh no, no, no – we were wrong! So we’re on the highway, about 5 minutes outside of Cape Town, and in the middle of rush hour, on a six-lane highway, our van just BREAKS DOWN. Hahaha I’m sorry I know it’s not funny, but it really kind of is, and I could not stop laughing. I mean, it was really scary, but all turned out okay, AND as we were staring across the street at I guess was some sort of nature reserve, we saw a zebra and wildebeasts! So, all in all, great day full of wonderful animal encounters!
The next day we headed out to Stellanbosch to meet Francie, for those of you who don’t know her, she’s a friend from UVA, studying abroad at the University of Stellanbosch.

We went wine tasting at a couple just beautiful vineyards, went out to dinner in town, spent some time in her dorms, (where Amy was!), and then went out to a local pub, called Tollies. It was so much fun! It’s a great college town, it was SO nice to see a friend from home, and to be able to picture where my sister spent so much of her time.
Hm…so now getting to the most beautiful day of my trip. We went to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. On the way there it was slightly uncomfortable, considering I was squished in the back of a tiny, tiny car with 4 other boys. But who cares, I got to see baboons, whales, and penguins!! So after walking up and around the lighthouse, we went out to the actual point, the southernmost tip of Africa.

We saw the line where the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans merge, lots of whales along the sides of the point, and just the most beautiful sights you could ever hope to see in your life. It honestly made me appreciate nature so much more, I am too lucky to have been able to experience this.

After the point, the 10 of us that went up to Cape Point were leaving the park and ran into a large family of baboons on the side of the road! There were a couple babies, who were adorable!! They were just sitting there, eating grass, chilling on the side of the road…very neat! So we left the park and headed to Boulders Beach, the home of many African penguins, also called Jackass penguins…best name ever. They were SO CUTE!! Just waddling around, making weird noises, and definitely posing for the cameras…they are now one of my top favorite animals, along with the toco toucan (as I’m sure you remember from Brazil).

I awoke the next morning with an early start – I had not yet been to Robben Island and I was determined to make it there before leaving Cape Town. A few days before I had gone to find tickets, and left heartbroken because they were sold out until the day after our ship was leaving. I could have cried. I just had my mom’s words ringing in my ears, “When you go to Cape Town, you cannot miss Robben Island”. So at around 8:15am, Josh and I made our way over to Nelson Mandela gateway to stand in line and wait (with fingers crossed) for cancellations. After waiting and waiting and waiting, we got up to the window and got the last two tickets sold!! We sprinted from the ticket office, through security, down the gangway and hopped onto the ship as they were pulling the walkway away from the dock!

I could not wipe the smile off my face for about 20 minutes. Robben Island was the #1 thing I wanted to see in Cape Town and I had made it! The tour of the island itself was really interesting, we got to meet a former prisoner who is friends with Nelson Mandela, go into Nelson Mandela’s cell, see where he buried his manuscript of his book, Long Walk to Freedom, and go into the quarry where he spent his days working. There was a small cave in the back of the quarry, which they told us served as the “University of Robben Island” and the first Parliament of the new South Africa. This cave was the one place where the prisoners could gather without being seen by the guards, and they could discuss politics, share their knowledge, and educate one another. Overall, it was a very educational and interesting experience, and I’m so glad I got to see it. After Robben Island, Josh and I grabbed a quick lunch, met up with some friends, and went back out to Stellanbosch to do a little bit more wine tasting.

This time it was definitely more legitimate, with people telling us how to progress from wine to wine, what to look for in each wine in terms of taste, legs, aroma, etc. The first vineyard, Beyerskloof, had a bomb cheese platter that to me, a cheese fiend and addict, tasted like a small piece of heaven. Long story short, the cheese on the boat is not so great. The second vineyard we went to, Spier, was part vineyard, part cheetah conservation reserve – so random, right? Well yeah, except it was awesome! I got to go into an open area with 5 BABY CHEETAHS and pet them!!! IT WAS AWESOME! They were the cutest little cats and purred like maniacs, one even rolled over when I petted him! I believe his name was Disney, another one was Belle, another Abu…you get the idea (cheetahs after my own Disney-lover’s heart).

We left the cheetah reserve in a hurry, told the cab to drive like wild to make it back to the ship because we had a special speech to go to. Just another day on Semester at Sea but Desmond Tutu came to speak to us…no big deal or anything. False – it was unbelievable! He is actually really cute and funny in real life, and gave a super inspirational speech about how we as young Americans have a duty to make the right decision in the elections, get out of the war, and start to further aid the international community, but it came out way more elegantly than that.

I even got a picture with him! And, as I’m sure you can tell, I was quite an afterthought in this picture, but I could care less because I was in a picture with Archbishop Desmond Tutu! One of the leaders of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee for reparations of human rights violations in apartheid, a pioneer along with Nelson Mandela for black equality in South Africa.
After Desmond Tutu’s speech, I had another very interesting lecture. Amy Biehl, who was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa, was stoned to death in Guguletu Township in 1993 during a student uprising. Four men were arrested and convicted, and spent 5 years or more in jail before asking for amnesty from the TRC in 1998 with the support of Amy Biehl’s parents. 2 of her murderers, who now work for the Amy Biehl Foundation, and have a great relationship with her family, came aboard the ship to speak to us about apartheid, her murder, their attempts at reconciliation and self-forgiveness, and what they are doing now to help her foundation. It was by far one of the most interesting speeches I have ever heard in my life.
Our last day in Cape Town was spent in and around the Waterfront, since we had to be on the boat by 1:30pm. It was a beautiful day, and the views of Table Mountain were breath-taking. I was so sad to leave Cape Town, and I can only hope that I will get to go back one day! Amy – let’s move there together, okay?

Namibia

2008-10-01T12:15:00.000-07:00

I think it’s safe to say that most Americans consider Namibia a sort of random country in terms of international travel. When I recited the list of ports to my friends and family before I left for Semester at Sea, the port of Walvis Bay, Namibia often elicited the response, “Namibia? What is that?” Namibia is often overlooked due to its much more famous neighbor, South Africa. But to be honest, it is by far the most amazing place I have ever been. And I know that exaggerate a lot, but Namibia is hands down my favorite country in the world so far. And here’s why: the people are SO NICE! I have never met a local population that was so laid back, accommodating, generous, and just overall pleasant.

When we got into port on Friday, we walked into the town of Walvis Bay to explore before heading to our final destination, the town of Swakopmund. Upon entering the gates of Walvis Bay, we noticed a giant sign for KFC, interestingly enough the only American fast food restaurant chain in Namibia. McDonald’s does not exist, which I thought was weird. After taking a walking tour of Walvis Bay, which probably took 20 minutes (the town is tiny), we grabbed some lunch, went back to the ship, grabbed our backpacks and headed up to Swakopmund – essentially, heaven.

Swakopmund is about 30km up the coast from Walvis Bay, and still retains a distinct German flavor. It is nestled in between the ocean to the west and the Namib Desert to the east. Upon arriving with Apis (a-piece), our cab driver, we proceeded to try to get into every hostel known to mankind in the town, but since Semester at Sea had somewhat invaded, there was nothing available. Finally we found a small bed and breakfast, called Brigadoon, and the four of us settled into a very cozy two-person room with our own small balcony, complete with table and chairs. What are the chances?

First things first – we headed to the nearest pub for a pint of the locally brewed Hansa beer, one of the things Swakop, as the locals say, is famous for. For those of you wondering, it tasted kind of fruity, but was really good. After getting back to the hotel, we decided it would be a good idea to book our activities for the next few days; so we went into the reception, where Margaret, maybe one of the nicest women I’ve ever met, booked everything for us. She said not to worry about transportation, she would arrange for our activity guides to come pick us up right at our room.
So after a night out to Rafter’s, another pub in town, we got up bright and early Saturday morning to going sand boarding in the desert.

We arrived, strapped into our boots, and hiked with our sand boards up a GIANT dune. We had to stop midway to catch our breath, and take pictures, obviously. We got to the stop and literally the site before my eyes took my breath away. Just desert and rolling sand dunes as far as the eye could see. It was astonishing and from behind me, as more people trudged up the mountain, the only words I could hear were “oh my God, oh my God”. After learning how to properly wax my board and keep my balance, I hopped in and sailed down the dune just like anyone would snowboard down a mountain – what an adrenaline rush!!

Luckily the first time I didn’t fall, so I had to guts to do it again and again – until my butt was actually numb from falling (haha, ouch). I then switched from the stand up sand board to the lie-down, essentially a giant piece of sand paper that was smooth on one side. One of our guides, John, laid down on the mat and Laura Flynn and I rode down a seemingly almost vertical dune sitting on his back…ahhhh it was AWESOME!!!

The walking back up was not exactly fun though. However, that was one of the most interesting walks of my life. We talked to John about the lasting effects of the apartheid system in Namibia, and how there is really not much racial conflict – as opposed to South Africa. He said that he grew up playing with white children, speaking their language (Afrikaans), and was their equal. There are generally equal opportunities for men and women, whites and blacks alike. We spoke to a woman, Leah, who was from Windhoek, and had moved to Swakop to take up a position in Namibian Wildlife Resorts, a company that runs the country’s national parks. What was interesting however, was what John told us about Angolan-Namibian controversy. His father is from Angola and his mother is Namibian, and since he lives in Namibia, he must used his mother’s surname instead of his father’s, because if he was to use an Angolan name in Namibia, he would have no opportunity at all to get a job. When we asked him why, he explained that it had to do with problems concerning the forced flight of Namibian indigenous groups, such as the Herero and the Ovahimba, into Angolan territory. I couldn’t quite understand through his thick Afrikaner accent, but apparently there is a lot of animosity that remains between the Namibian government, and the native groups that were forced out. He talked to us about the use of Afrikaans as the predominant language in Namibia, a direct result of South African rule post-WWI. Another woman that we met, Jenny, described herself as a Baster, someone of mixed indigenous heritage – meaning that her parents were from two different indigenous tribes. They speak different native languages, and so use Afrikaans to communicate with one another.
Anyway, that was the start of many interesting conversations I was to have during this trip. When we got back from sand boarding, we left almost immediately to go land sailing, which is exactly what it sounds like. You fly super fast across the desert in these small, one-person carts complete with boom, sail, and rigging to tighten and loosen the sail in order to harness the wind.
Now that was fun! You could get up to 60km/hr, and our guide told us even faster when the wind was strong. I think I was laughing almost the entire time – we had quite the ridiculous outfits on. That night we went to yet another local establishment called the Gruner Kranz – another strong piece of evidence to this town’s German heritage!
Debbie, a woman who works at the bed and breakfast, kept asking us day after day if we could come eat at her little café in town, called the Mad Cow. She was so helpful with accommodating our needs, helping us organize our activities, and making sure we didn’t sleep in past our wake-up calls! She became our Namibian mom, and so we eat most of meals at her restaurant, and ended up spending our entire last afternoon/evening with her and her son, Luke. Sunday morning we headed to Mad Cow to grab some lunch before going quad biking, hands down the most fun we had on the trip!

I was the only one to take a manual ATV, which was fun because it went really, really fast, but ending up being a mistake because I stalled out in the middle of the dunes more times than I would like to admit! Spyker, our guide, had to manually pull me out a couple times of a particularly powdery dune…
After our final adrenaline rush, we decided to spend our last day a little more calmly, playing what the guidebook likes to call “Lawrence of Arabia” in the desert. That would be code for camel riding. And yes, it was hysterical!

My camel, Olga, seemed to be particularly flatulent, something that Laura Flynn, who was behind me in line, did not seem to like to much…but I’m telling you, this was the funniest experience. First off – camels are loud, and make really strange noises. Second – it is a pretty big distance from kneeling camel to standing camel and that was a little bit scary being halfway in between! The best part of the whole thing though was that I had to wear a turban. I think the picture speaks for itself.

After camel riding, we spent the rest of our last full day, 8 hours to be exact, at Mad Cow with our “Namibian family”. Debbie and Luke – I hope you are checking our blogs!! And if so, we miss you! You all made our trip that much more amazing!
Basically, if I could convince my family to go somewhere on vacation, it would be Namibia. I do not exaggerate when I say I have never met a nicer local population – even when I lost my credit card, it was returned to me! I had some of the most interesting, hilarious, crazy, incredible experiences of my life in this country and I can honestly say, with no hint of exaggeration or sarcasm, that I cannot wait until I find myself in Namibia again.

2 days until Cape Town…much more to come from there!

Brazil

2008-09-13T08:25:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday I got myself up at 5:15am to go up on deck and watch the sunrise over our first port, Salvador, Brazil. What an amazing thing it was to see the skyline of this old colonial city in the morning light!

After I went back to bed and awaited pulling into port, customs, etc, we finally got off the boat around 11am. We walked right out of the dock into the Cidade Baxia, or Lower City of Salvador. Not much goes on in the lower part, so we took the city’s famed elevator to the Cidade Alta, or Upper City. As an art history major, it was really cool for me to see the lasting colonial Portuguese architectural influence. Some of the churches and buildings were just beautiful.

I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but the day we got into port was Brazilian Independence Day. We wound our way among some side streets and stumbled upon a huge parade complete with soldiers, police officers, fire fighters, public officials, marching bands, and dancers! It went on for miles and miles. After the parade we found a small square with lots of little authentic Brazilian shops filled floor-to-ceiling with some of the most beautiful art I have ever seen.

The highlight of this however, was that we met a woman named Illada, who was a practicing member of Candomblé, one of the most popular Brazilian religions, which resembles Santoría. We had been learning about Candomblé in our religion global class, so it was really cool to have our guide around the city be a woman dressed in traditional garb. She took us to her terreiro, or house of worship, and explained all about orixás, their spirits, and spirit possession, etc. It was really awesome! That night we went to dinner in the Barra region of Salvador and found a small salsa, samba, and reggae club, where a Brazilian woman offered to teach us to dance…I’m still really bad!

The next morning got off to an early start…5:00am to be exact. Our bus for the airport for our flight to Iguaçu Falls left at 5:30am…enough said. However, by 1:30pm that afternoon we were hiking along the Brazilian side of the falls. Okay, life advice according to me (which you obviously should take): if you have not gone to Iguaçu Falls, make it a point to get there in your life! It was by far the most amazing thing I have ever seen. It is indescribable – neither words nor pictures do it justice! Wider than Niagara and taller than Victoria, it is easily the most wonderful set of water falls in the world.

We walked along wooden platforms until we were practically hanging out over the falls! It got so wet from all the mist and spray that we had to wear rain jackets, and I have never seen more rainbows in one place than I did at Iguaçu.

After finishing our hike on the Brazilian side, we headed back to the hotel to prepare for our dinner at a Brazilian barbecue. This type of eating is famous in Argentina and Brazilian and essentially all you do is eat tons, and tons, and tons of meat.

Any kind you can think of! It is unlimited and the variety of meats they have is kind of overwhelming. This dinner was especially great though because we also got to see a show of music and dance from each country in South America – the tango, salsa, samba – you name it, I saw it!
The next day we boarded our bus to travel into Argentina for the day. We entered the national park where the falls are on the Argentinean side, and took a safari-jungle ride to meet the boats that were taking us down the river. No animals in the jungle, slightly disappointing, but I’m hoping I can make up for that in Africa!

After the trek we boarded our boats to white-water raft into the falls, by far the most awesome part of the trip. We put everything but our bathing suits into waterproof bags and we went STRAIGHT into the falls! I was soaking wet but it was AMAZING!!

After that, we hiked around the Argentinean side of the falls, went to an Argentinean barbecue for lunch, where Evita was playing endlessly on the speaker system, and finally ended up at the most famous part of the falls – the Devil’s Throat. The sheer power of the water at the top of these falls was ridiculous. Our guide explains that ¼ of the entire Paraná river is at the Devil’s Throat at any one point in time.

It is about 7 meters high, and the water is 5 meters deep at the bottom because the volcanic rock making up the falls has not been eroded. According to the guide, the mist rising from this part of the falls can be seen from 3km away – that’s about 2 miles! The sound was also awesome and really soothing.
After leaving the falls we made our way to a small Argentinean Indian village.

The people, called Guraní, used to be foragers, but have settled next to a large Argentinean city, unfortunately causing them to assimilate and lose parts of their culture. They no longer have all the capacities to make their own medicinal remedies; they go to the pharmacy and get pills like we do. Carlos, our guide, explain to us that an anthropological university in Canada has formed a relationship with these people in order to try to help them preserve their culture, while still continuing to modernize so that they survive. We learned about their religious, economic, social, and legal systems – all different from Argentinean society. It’s true that they were very poverty-stricken, living in houses without running water and minimal electricity, but you could never tell that from looking at them. The kids were running around (without shoes) on the muddy ground with huge grins on their faces, playing games.

They were fascinated by our digital cameras and took every chance they got to look at themselves on our camera screens. It was so adorable. It was interesting though, because they don’t yet speak Spanish, they do not learned Spanish until they’re 5 in their school system. They only spoke their Indian dialect, none of which I understood at all, so I never learned any of their names. But this one little boy I absolutely adored and when I picked him up, he wouldn’t let me put him down until we left. It was so cute! The funniest part was that they had somehow heard about Spiderman, and one of them was wearing a Spiderman t-shirt, so in every picture they took they would pretend to shoot spider webs out of their wrists.

After the humbling experience of visiting the village the day before, our final day was spent at another amazing site – Itaípu Dam. It is the world’s largest hydroelectric dam, supplying energy to all of the homes in Paraguay and 75% of the homes in Brazil – over 10 million people.

Our final stop was at an aviary, where we got to see all the birds native to South America – including toucans, macaws, and many types of parrots. They also had giant anacondas, thank god they were behind glass cages! At the end I got to hold a macaw, a boa constrictor, and posed with a toucan! It was so fun and cool and the toco toucan is definitely my new favorite bird.

After we came back from Iguaçu, my final day in Brazil was spent in Cachoeira, a small town that is viewed as the sort of Mecca of the Candomblé religion. The Bahia region of Brazil (where Cacheoira and Salvador are) is where most of the slaves were brought during the Portuguese enslavement of Western Africans. Most of the slaves were brought to plantations outside Cachoeira, which is why most of the Brazilians from this region today are of Afro-Brazilian descent. Anyway, when the slaves came over they were told they were no longer allowed to practice their religion and had to convert to Catholicism. Instead of doing this, they pretended to worship Jesus and Mary, but were really using them as covers for worshipping Xangó and Lemanja. Because of this, there has been a growing syncretism between the two religions, so that now many members of Candomblé terreiros are Catholic. We visited the Sisterhood of Good Death, where the Candomblé initiates explained all of this to us.

We also visited an MST land reform project and got to see different families and what they plant to eat and then to sell at the public markets. Our final stop was at a cigar factory, where we got to see exactly how each cigar is made from beginning to end.
So all in all Brazil was a pretty cool place to visit! Like I said, pictures don’t do any of it justice, but I hope these help you see a little bit of what I experienced!! We are now in the middle of the Atlantic, beginning our crossing to Walvis Bay, Namibia. Africa in only 6 DAYS!!

Neptune Day

2008-09-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I probably should have written this when the event actually happened, but as we all know, I lose track of time and things tend to get delayed…Anyway, here goes my story of crossing the equator. So last Thursday, September 4th, at 8:30pm to be exact, the MV Explorer crossed the equator. We had quite the festivities to celebrate it, too. Everyone was out on deck, awaiting the captain to sound the famed horn signaling that we were, at that exact moment, crossing the threshold between north and south. There was screaming, shouting, a countdown and everything. I swear I almost thought it was New Years.

We had the next day of classes off to extend the into Neptune Day. Everyone was awoken early by the sounds of banging pots and pans and singing down the halls. We opened our door to see what was going on, and sure enough the cabin stewards were dressed in aluminum foil outfits resembling Roman soldiers…very insane.

We went up on deck where King Neptune, also known as Professor Rosencrantz, was giving a speech about welcoming us “pollywogs” to the ceremony that could turn us into “shellbecks”, beings protected from harm from all the sharks, dolphins, whales, and mermaids in the sea. Definitely a first for me. Apparently it is a tradition among sailors to shave their heads as they cross the equator for good luck – people on the ship took this to heart. 80 people, including professors, life-long learners, living-learning coordinators and students shaved their heads! Even 10 girls partook in the action. The number of shaven heads and mohawks on the ship now is quite staggering.

After all the heads were bald, we had our special ceremony. This consisted of us getting two different types of kool aid (aka fish guts) poured on our heads, and then we jumped into the salt-water filled pool. Then we had to get out, kiss a dead fish (yes, it was foul), kiss Neptune’s ring, get knighted, and become a shellbeck. That was a very interesting day, that’s for sure!

Shipboard Living

2008-09-04T05:35:00.000-07:00

Well, in case you were wondering, life on the ship is amazing! It still hasn’t hit me yet that I will be doing this for the next four months. Already the experience is unbelievable! We started classes on Sunday, and I love all of mine. I am taking the two Global Studies courses, Religion, Politics, and Society, as well as the Rise of New Great Powers. Both of my teachers are UVa professors, which is cool. I feel right at home. My World Nutrition professor is also a UVa professor, so they add to the small contingent of UVa kids on the ship (there are only 6!). I can’t believe more UVa kids don’t look into this program. You get direct credit while going around the world to experience new and different cultures. Most of the kids, including my roommate, Christina, are from Colorado or California, which I love because it’s different from what I’m used to, and I am definitely branching out.
The rooms are a little smaller than I expected, but they’re pretty cozy. There is lots of storage space, so that’s not a problem, but it’s funny that the door to our room, the door to our bathroom, and the door to our closet cannot be open at the same time in any combination – there simply is no space!

We have a big window between our beds and it’s so neat to look out and just see miles and miles of ocean. The water is SO blue! Well, it was – until it starting mixing with the darker waters of the Amazon. Whenever we pass land, we can turn on the TV and it will tell us exactly where we are, and what islands we are passing. We’re passing northern Brazil as we speak…

Anywho, the rocking of the ship did take a little getting used to. We had to reroute in order to bypass Hurricane Hannah, but we still felt the repercussions. The second night I got really sick but ever since then it’s been great! I do still laugh though when people (including me) lose their balance and run into walls or stumble around classrooms hahaha…I guess it takes a while to get one’s “sea legs”. It’s nice at night though because the waves sort of rock me to sleep; it’s hard to wake myself up! We have sunny weather every day, and it’s getter hotter, which stands to reason since we will be passing the equator tomorrow! Which is also Neptune Day. Apparently when you cross the equator sailors have a tradition, Neptune Day, where they shave their heads for good luck and safe travels. Semester at Sea devotes a full day to this tradition, with all sorts of equator-centric activities. I highly doubt I will partake in the head-shaving tradition, but I hope some boys will! It was weird to have last night be the last time we could see the North Star until we arrive in India! In the southern hemisphere it’s too far below the hemisphere to see!

On Sunday we arrive in Salvador, Brazil, where I am taking a trip to Iguaçu Falls, on the boarder of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. From what I’ve heard, they are the most beautiful and majestic falls in the world – I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures! I’m also doing a trip lead by a professor of mine into Cachoeira, a small rural village on the Paraguaçú River, to see how rural Brazilian farmers live. I am so excited! I’m trying to think if there’s anything else new going on, but it’s been pretty uneventful…it’s really hard to get good internet service out at sea, but I will try to post when I can!

More to come from Brazil!

Sarah

Preparing for Departure...

2008-08-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

So I have exactly a week left to go before I depart for the Bahamas! Currently the upstairs hallway in our house is filled with clothes, travel guide books, and every piece of travel paraphernalia you could ever imagine a person would want to take with them...ever. I highly doubt this will fit into one duffel bag, so more than likely, half it will be going back into my closet. I am definitely getting nervous as the date for the ship to leave approaches, but it's a nervous-excitement, as I prepare to embark on the journey and adventure of a lifetime! Since I'm not exactly what I would call a "blogger", I am no expert at keeping an online journal, and just wanted to get a head start before I leave the country. Included is Semester at Sea's map of the Fall 2008 voyage, and where I will be headed over the next 4 months or so.

More to come once I actually get on the ship...