My Semester At Sea Adventure

Japan Pics

2007-05-14T02:17:00.000-07:00

Hiroshima Pictures

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(Two of these pictures are photos of pictures that I took in the peace museum)

Japan Pics

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Tokyo pics

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Tokyo pics

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Japan

2007-05-14T01:53:00.000-07:00

Japan

So I don’t feel like going into great depth about Japan because I don’t have much time. I do want to say that everyone I came into contact with was very helpful and kind. It was also really strange to be in Japan after being in so many third world places. We backpacked through Japan from city to city. Anyway I’m going to give you an overview of Japan! Friends and family - you can ask me all about it later….but here it goes!
We docked in Kobe, Japan and immediately got our Japanese Rail pass information figured out and then the 7 of us traveled by Japanese bullet train to Tokyo. Two nights and one day in Tokyo consisted of sushi boats, ending up in the Red light District, sleeping on a dirty linoleum floor in an internet café, an amazing view of the city, lots of walking, city full of life and lights, fashionistas, spending a night in a cubical hotel that reminded me of a morgue at first but then became oddly comfortably, more good food, visiting the smile and laughter art exhibit through the eras up until the present, Tokyo towers, modern art, lots of time in the subways, baseball game.
Kyoto turned out not what we expected because there was some indecision about where to stay for the night and then I left my camera in a taxi on the way to our hostel…but my friend saved the receipt randomly and the women who owned the hostel who spoke only Japanese helped us (my friend communicated with her through drawing pictures) called the taxi service and talked to them- I tried to talk to them but my Japanese wasn’t so hot. Then at 5 that evening the taxi driver came and brought me my CAMERA!!! I was soo happy I tried to offer him some money for all his trouble but he refused so I made him hug me and then I just went on a hugging spree and made everyone at the hostel hug me. I am a lucky girl I know!!! I couldn’t believe it!!! The rest of the day consisted of walking around a little bit, then an amazing dinner with the best tempura I’ve ever had, and then my first experience at the public bath house! That was a fun experience and I felt like well I am in Japan I guess it’s a must!!!
The next morning we took a bullet train from Kyoto to Hiroshima. Hiroshima was one of the places in Japan that was really important for me to go to. Paper cranes in the name of peace made by hands across the world display people’s call for world peace. It was an emotional challenge for me to visit Hiroshima and walk through the peace museum about the affects of the atomic bomb, but it also inspired me. The citizens of Hiroshima have taken a horrific event, and turned it into a lesson for the rest of the world. Two hundred thousand people were killed by the dropping of the atomic bomb and many more people have died over the years because of the lasting effects of radiation that causes many types of cancer. Instead of trying to get revenge for the suffering that they were caused the people of Hiroshima used their experiences as a way inspire the rest of the world to move towards being a peaceful world without war. The museum itself is called the Peace Memorial Museum and its main focus is on creating peace around the world and remembering what happened in Hiroshima so that we can prevent something similar to it happening in the future. I thought that the museum had a nice balance. It was informative, it pulled deep into your soul, but at the same time overlapping everything was a strong push and desire for peace around the world. I found it to be really inspiring and left Hiroshima in a much different mindset then I had expected I would. I rode the train back to Kobe with a feeling of hope and a desire to do what I can to help pursue and achieve peace in our world.
I will tell you all more about my travels in Japan when I get back home!

China Pics

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China Pics

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China Pics

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China Pics

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China Pics

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Hong Kong Photos

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Hong Kong Photos

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Hong Kong Photos

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Hong Kong Photos

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Hong Kong Photos

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Hong Kong and Qingdao, China!

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Hong Kong and China- PS sorry this isn’t in as much detail as usual!

My first impression of Hong Kong while pulling into port was surprise at how big the city was and how high the sky-scrappers reached as well as the mass amounts of commercial advertisement that was on them. The neat thing about Hong Kong is that there is the city that is always awake and full of life and then up in the hills about the city are ancient temples and houses of worship. My first day in Hong Kong I did a university visit and it was really nice because there were only a handful of us. We were able to eat amazing dim-sum and socialize with some students who go to university there. Later in the day we also got to learn how to make traditional dumplings and wrap them up in bamboo leaves. Everyone who showed us around were so kind and were happy to answer any questions we had. Unfortunately I was really sick so I was feeling really out of it the whole time. Once we got back from the university I felt even worse and was extremely dizzy, had a headache, and blurred vision. I think it was my body’s way of telling me that I had to slow down and get some sleep. I realized that I didn’t think I would be able to physically be ok to go with a few girls and take a train to Beijing to see the Great Wall the next day. I had already bought my train ticket but it was only $70. I was really torn over what to do, but I know my body and knew that if I didn’t rest then I wouldn’t’ be able to enjoy Japan which is a port I was really looking forward to. I think my body was telling me that I needed to rest because I hadn’t had more then 6hours of sleep except for one night since the beginning of February when we got on the ship. So I decided not to go to Beijing and instead go with the ship to Qingdao.
My second and last day in Qingdao a friend and I decided to go see the second largest Buddha in Southeast Asia that was on a nearby island called Lantau Island. My friend and I had an adventure getting there and ended up taking the wrong boats a number of times and got insanely lost. I wasn’t too much help because I was so out of it from being so sick. One of the best parts about visiting the giant Buddha statue was being able to see all the people who had come from all over the world to pay their respects to the Buddha as well. It was so massive and held such a presence that it was the first time in 2 days that I finally felt semi-decent and not so delusional. He was a huge bronze statue that was placed high above a hilltop with stairs leading up to him. There were two sets of three sculptures made of bronze at the base of the Buddha. They were all female statues that were facing the Buddha and each offering a different gift. He was so beautiful I immediately felt an overwhelming sense of peace and calmness by just being near him. The walkway at the base of the Buddha circled behind him and there was the most amazing view from the mountains down to the ocean.
At the same compound there was also a Monastery with monks who have taken a vow of silence. It was really nice to walk around all of the holly buildings and see the beautiful architecture and artwork. We were running tight on time and had to get back to the ship so we took the bus down the mountain back to a boat that would take us back to Hong Kong. The bus ride was intense to say the least! It was craziness! The roads were so tinny and windy but the driver seemed not to take that into account and flew down the hill like a bat out of hell! Lucky for us we caught the last fairy ride back to Hong Kong that would save us from getting Dock Time! We got back to the port area with about a half an hour to spear so my friend wanted to show me the Ladies’ Market. We took a taxi but mid-ride the taxi driver went back on our original agreed upon taxi fair and wanted us to pay an unreasonable amount so we made him pull over and let us out right there. He let us out in some random spot and it wasn’t feasible to get another taxi so we had to walk a while until we were in an area that we could find a taxi in. By this time it was getting late so we decided to take a cab back to the ship instead of the Ladies’ market. We made it back to the ship in time but they wouldn’t let me take my giant shoots of incense with me that I had bought at the Buddha compound. Not only would they not let me take the incense on they broke it in half over their leg in front of me! I didn’t think that was very nice. They said it was a fire hazard, but people can bring lighters on and all kinds of other things! Grrr! Oh well. So I enjoyed my time in Hong Kong it was too bad that I was sick but I was so glad that I was able to see the giant Buddha statue because I had an amazing time visiting it, and felt such a sense of wholeness and peace being in its presence.
After Hong Kong we went to Qingdao China. My first day there I went off with two friends to explore it. I think out of all the ports this one was the hardest to try to use English in. We sort of bounced around from place to place and had a really good day. We tried to look for an open outdoor market but no one understood what we meant when we asked and kept sending us to giant outdoor malls. So we gave up on the outdoor market and went to the central park and visited a giant Monastery. While we were there we made some new friends and they told us a good place to go for an open street market. After we left the monastery we headed in the direction they told us to and found a really cool outdoor market where people were selling all kinds of antiques. After shopping around for a while we decided to head back to the ship and drop off all of our stuff and get cleaned up and go back out later. When we went back out that night we discovered that everything really comes alive at night in Qingdao. The streets were filled with people buying things in an outdoor market. But it wasn’t the kind of outdoor market we were looking for; they were selling practical things so we weren’t too interested, but it was still fun to walk around and watch the whole scene unfold. The second and last day we were in Qinghai I did a temple tour trip sponsored by semester at sea. We went to Laoshan National Scenic Spot, which is the number one religious mountain along China’s coastline and the birthplace of Taoism. It’s the second largest Taoist Monastery in the world. We went to a lot of temple and there were tons of people and we were supposed to hike up all of these steps to the top of the monastery but we didn’t have time. We were able to hike up a little ways so that was nice. It was built during the Northern Song Dynasty from 960-1127 CE. The palace has a history of 1000 years. It was neat to walk around it all but there were soon many people it was overwhelming. After visiting that temple we went to a huge lunch and I must have eaten something that was really foreign and didn’t agree with me because I was on my deathbed for the next two days and couldn’t eat anything. Anyway we went to one more temple but it just happened to be the same temple I had gone to the day before, Zhanshan Temple. After visiting that temple we headed back to the ship. Overall my experience in Qingdao was interesting. I felt that the culture and the people were so different from the culture and the people I met in Hong Kong. There is just a very different feel to things in Qingdao then any other place I experienced. I’ve talked to a lot of people and we all felt that China as a whole has a culture that is so foreign to our Western understanding. Sorry this blog is so short but I’m running out of time to write on the ship! Take care!

Cambodia Pictures

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Cambodia Pictures

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Cambodia Pictures

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Cambodia Pictures

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Cambodia Pictures

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Cambodia Pictures

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Cambodia Pictures

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Vietnam Pictures

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Vietnam Pictures

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Vietnam and Cambodia

2007-05-01T16:57:00.000-07:00

Vietnam and Cambodia

The first day in Vietnam I woke up early to watch as we traveled up the Saigon River. You could really understand by looking at the river what they mean when they say that the river is the peoples’ livelihood. There was so much action going on in the river in the early morning. People were shipping items up and down the river and back and forth between the riversides. Before the ship was cleared at 11:40 am the orphans from Terry and Marvel’s orphanage came on to perform for us. Their dances were amazing! They preformed traditional Cambodian dances in full costume. One of all the dancers who was the head dancer in some of the performances was very unique. She had a look that was very unusual; it was as if she knew a secret that no one else knew. The dancers were amazing and the outfits they wore were really intricate and beautiful.
Before I got off the ship I was running around trying to get all of my stuff together to leave for the day when I tripped over my computer cord and caused my computer to fall. My computer charger had snapped in half where it connects to the computer. Needless to say I was really upset and that sort of set me in a bummed out mood for the day.
After I got off the ship my friend and I decided to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Dai Great Temple in Tay Ninh. A shuttle from the ship drops you off in the center of town and once we got there our first priority was to find an international ATM. We spent an hour or so trying different ATMs and banks until we finally found one that worked for us. Right off the bat I was surprised by how developed Ho Chi Minh City was. I didn’t expect to see so many other international companies present and so many upscale stores. The street traffic there is crazy. You sort of just have to start walking in the crosswalks and the cars will eventually stop dead directly in front of you. It was a little scary at first but we got used to it after a while. After we got money out we found a taxi we bargained for an ok price and then set out towards the Cu Chi Tunnels. He decided to take us first to the temple but once we got to the temple we realized that it wasn’t the same temple we wanted to go to. It was a Dai Temple but it wasn’t the The Dai Great Temple. The reason we wanted to go to this particular temple was because it is supposed to be one of the most beautiful Temples in all of Asia. Once we were able to explain to him that this wasn’t the temple we meant he refused to take us to the Dai Great Temple. He said it was too far away but we knew other people from the ship who had taken taxis to it. After a bit of arguing we realized that it wasn’t going to happen and he was set on not taking us to the temple. So we quickly left the Dai temple because we didn’t want to be charged more for us to walk around it. It was a good thing we decided to leave the Dai temple so quickly because we got to the Cu Chi Tunnels at 4:30 only a half hour before it closed. We had a speed version tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels but it was still really crazy to be there. The Viet Kong used the Cu Chi Tunnels to fight the South Vietnamese and American troops during the Vietnam War. The tunnels travel on for 124 miles and they include trap doors, living areas, storage spaces, weapon factories, hospitals, command centers and kitchens. They were built by hand and have no wood or mental supports to keep them intact. They Viet Kong latterly had to travel through the tunnels on their stomachs because the tunnels were about 2 feet by 2 feet possibly a little more. It was really surreal for me to travel through the Cu Chi Tunnels and see all of the tools, weapons, and secrets of the Viet Kong when we as Americans were fighting against them and especially because I felt the war wasn’t something the US should have gotten involved in. We also saw the sites of the B-52 bombs and how the dents in the earth are still there. Because we had to move so quickly through the whole tour I didn’t really get to take it all in and make sense of it in my mind. I just felt really odd the whole time and sort of like I was in a twilight zone. We actually traveled through a larger replica of a portion of the tunnels. It was still very small but not nearly as small as the real tunnels. After seeing the Cu Chi Tunnels we headed back to the ship and it was a really confusing drive. There was a huge language barrier that was really hard to overcome. Once we got to the ship area our taxi driver couldn’t figure out how to actually get to the ship. We stopped on the side of the road at this big construction zone near the ship and the people there said that the entrance to the ship was closed and that we couldn’t get there. I knew that we would be able to get there one way or another so I was ready to walk when one construction worker said something to our taxi driver and somehow we managed to get to the ship. By the time I got there I was wiped out and just wanted to pack for Cambodia and go to sleep. It was a very confusing and trying first day in Vietnam and I was just ready to sleep it off.
The next day was a lot of travel and we ended up in Siem Reap Cambodia at 6:00 at night. We went straight from the airport to a big dinner and performance. The dinner was in a big Banquet Hall and there were tons of other Semester at Sea Cambodia Groups there it seemed. It was buffet style with endless amounts of food. We sat at really long tables that held about 30 people each and sat perpendicular to the stage. Halfway through our meal the dancers came on. They performed many of the same traditional Cambodian dances that I had seen the children from the orphanage perform the day before, but I thought that the children were much better dancers then the performers we saw that night. We did see some dances that I hadn’t seen the day before that were really neat. I really enjoy Cambodian Dance form. It’s very different from other dance forms. It is very graceful but very playful at the same time. That look of secrecy that I mentioned earlier when I talked about watching the orphans perform came up again when watching the performance at dinner. The food was really good and we were all really tired and ready to go to bed so after we ate we headed to the hotel to drop off our stuff and get settled in. My roommate and I decided that we would get up for the optional sunrise tour at the Angkor Wat temple that was leaving at 5 AM.
The next morning we woke up at 4:4o in the morning and dragged ourselves out of bed. Once we got to Angkor Wat it was really cloudy and was too overcast to see the sunrise so that was sort of a downer, but it was still really neat to be there. It was sort of interesting to be at the temple on such a gloomy morning because it brought up reminders of all that the people in Cambodia have gone through over the years. I still don’t know that much about Cambodia’s history because they didn’t really touch on that during my trip to Cambodia and I would like to learn more about Khmer Rouge regime and the mass destruction and horror that was caused by the regime. I would also like to learn more about the secret B-52 bombing raids conducted by the US during the Vietnam War. As the morning carried on and we continued to wander around Angkor Wat the clouds became even darker and eventually it began to rain. I felt that the mood that was set by the day was appropriate and almost better in a way then having a beautiful pink sunrise. We had to run back to the busses in the rain and then we headed back to the hotel to change and go to breakfast before more temple touring. After we ate we headed out to more temples. The first temple we saw was called Ta Prohm. This was my favorite temple out of all of them because it was old ruins that had been intertwined with nature. There were vines growing up and around the ancient walls and pieces of rubble. At certain places it looked like the temples had been grown around the trees when really the trees over the years had pushed their way up through the ground and the big rock blocks that made up the temple. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must have looked like when the temple was intact. These temples were so stunning; they were built with such meaning and have so much detail. I really wanted to spend more time at Ta Prohm temple but I we had to rush off to our next temple.
In front of every temple are tons and tons of small children and women who are trying to sell you souvenirs. It was sort of overwhelming and reminded me of some touristy parts of India where impoverished people go to try to sell you small bracelets and postcards to get enough money to put some food in their stomachs. It was so hard to see kids from ages 3 on surround you and try to sell you things that you already bought from kids at another temple because you felt you couldn’t say no to them. It was just a hard seen to take in.
Once we left Ta Prohm we got into small vans and drove past a few more and eventually went to Bayon temple. Bayon temple was huge and where as Ta Prohm was in a jungle setting Bayon was placed out in the open. We walked around Bayon temple and this temple had many levels you could walk up and it had pillars with each side showing a large face. After visiting Bayon temple we went to lunch at a small restaurant. The food was really good, and yes I Jessica, ate and enjoyed eggplant! After lunch we had a little time to walk down the street and go to a few outdoor markets. We got back on the bus and headed out for more temple viewing. We went back to Angkor Wat to walk around for 3 more hours. Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century and is one of the oldest and most intact temples of all the temples in Angkor. The temple was first built as a Hindu Temple and was built for King Suryavarman II but it became a Buddhist temple later on. The 5 towers represent the 5 mountain peaks where the Hindu God Vishnu lives. Angkor Wat is just in awesome and breathtaking temple to be around. It is massive and has so many different components to it. I think if I tried to describe it I wouldn’t do it justice. There was this one part in the very center of the temple where we climbed up these ridiculously steep stairs that were crumbling; it was basically a straight up and down trip up the stairs. Once you got up to the top you could look out and see the whole temple grounds below you. It was a beautiful view of all of Angkor Wat. It was so sacred to me to be in these temples and think about how they might have been used long ago when they were still intact.
When I was at the top most part of the temple I tripped and messed my ankle up! It was really stupid I didn’t even have something in my way I just tripped on the ground….such a Jessica move! But I really messed up my ankle and wasn’t sure how I was going to make it down those steep steps. I walked around the top of the temple until I found a place that looked like the safest and least painful place to walk down and took that route.
We got back on the bus and went back to the hotel and had an hour or two before we had to leave for dinner. We went to dinner at 7 at a very sheik restaurant. The food and the atmosphere were great!
The next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel and then at 7:30 we went to a floating village. This was my favorite part of my trip to Cambodia because we got to see some of the culture there. We took a long boat up the Mekong River up to this big opening where we came to a floating village. Once we were close to reaching the village these kids in small canoes and round baskets came paddling as fast as they could to our boat. We didn’t slow down at all and they struggled to reach us. The look of urgency in their faces and desperation in their eyes will stick with me. They finally reached our boat and we still didn’t slow down as they tried their best to clamp their hands onto the side of our boat. I couldn’t imagine leading the life that they have to lead.
The floating village had many buildings and houses including a church and a school. Most of the people who live there are fishermen. We went to a little shop in the village that had paintings and other items for sale. In the back of the shop was an alligator pit with 30 or so alligator crammed into a small pit. They breed them and then skin them and sell the skins to other companies in China to make purses, belts, shoes, and other accessories with.
The floating buildings have to be rebuilt every 3 or 4 years where as the houses that are along the roadside and river side that are on stilts have to be rebuilt every 30 or so years. Going to visit the village was one of my favorite parts about my Cambodia trip. It was the one time we were able to see aspects of the current culture in Cambodia and interact with the people a little bit.
After visiting the floating village we went back to the hotel and had lunch and then went out to see two more temples before heading back to the airport to go back to Ho Chi Minh City. I think we were all a little templed out by this point and a bunch of us found this orphanage that we wanted to go to instead and the group leaders said they were fine with that but as it turned out the orphanage was closed to visitors for the holidays. So we went to see the temples anyways. The temples we went to were neat and we were able to walk through room after room inside them. I was a little slow moving around though because my ankle hurt so badly from messing it up the day before. After seeing the last two temples we went to the airport. We got into Ho Chi Minh City that night.
I know that I am going to go back to Cambodia someday. I really wanted to go to Phnom Penh but I didn’t get that trip through Semester At Sea. It was still really neat to be in Cambodia but I felt like I didn’t get a grasp on the culture. I felt so separated from their culture being put up in a fancy hotel and being shuttled around from temple to temple on air conditioned busses. In all of the other countries I have been to I have had opportunities to really connect with some of the people who live there and get an insight into their lives and their culture, and I feel like I missed out on that in Cambodia. Everyone who went on the Semester At Sea Phnom Penh trip said that they had an amazing time and were able to get a good feel for the culture of Cambodia today as well as getting a feel for the degree of horror that the people had to go through during the Cambodian Genocide. I know that I will go back to Cambodia someday and I hope that the right people come with me to share that experience.
On last day in Vietnam was really fun but also very emotionally charged. I got to go on my first motorcycle ride ever! Even though taxies are available to take in Ho Chi Minh City motorcycle taxis are much faster and easier to come buy not to mention a whole lot cheaper too. Traffic in the city was insane!! There were literally people weaving in all directions around one another. The motorcycles would come so close to scrapping the cars around them when they were weaving in and out of traffic. It was really fun to ride the motorcycles…probably a lot more dangerous then in the US though because of the crazy traffic and no helmets…but it was really fun! Any way we took the motorcycle taxies to the War Remnants Museum that was about the Vietnam War.
The War Remnants Museum was really hard to take in. It was room after room of images and words about the destruction caused in Vietnam to the people and the environment because of the Vietnam War. After looking at the first 3 images tears were streaming down my face. I just felt overwhelmed by the whole scope of everything. The images I saw were so real and so cold. Being an American and standing looking at these brutal images of half intact corpses of Vietnamese people in a museum in Vietnam was all too real for me and hit me like a train. There was this one image that remains burned into my memory of an American GI holding up the remains of a Vietnamese person. The body the GI held up was once a person that had been torn apart by the war. In one hand the GI held up the individual by a piece of clothing, you could make out an arm as well as the Vietnamese person’s head dangling from the shirt. The GI is just looking at the wreckage of what he’s hold in his hands and his face appears to look like a face in question; he’s looking at what’s left of the Vietnamese person as if he had just found a dog that had been run over by a car. The coldness and truthfulness of this image really struck me hard and continues to stay with me. There were 7 rooms to the museum and after just passing though the first room I felt I was in a trance and full of all that I was emotionally capable of holding, but I knew I needed to keep going and take in as much as I could and let it sink in so I could process it later.
I came out of the museum feeling like a 200-pound weight had been set on my shoulders. As I looked around at all the other people who came out of the museum they too appeared to feel the same way that I did. It was an extremely overwhelming experience and I am still trying to make sense of all that I saw.
After about 4 hours or so we left the museum and traveled via motorcycle taxi to the post office to mail off some postcards; then we got dropped off down town so we could buy our Japanese Rail Passes. After we got all the technical stuff worked out and were set with our rail passes my friend and I went to the Ben Thanh Market. It was by far the busiest marketplaces I had been in since I started the Voyage. It was like a giant warehouse that had reached its maximum capacity and could no longer hold any more people. It also didn’t help that it was extremely hot! The market was divided up into sections with clothing, to purses, to fine dish wear, to jewelry and in the center of it all was food. The isles between the different sellers were ridiculously small and as you accumulated more stuff it became harder and harder to squeeze your way through the isles. I did get a large number of items there! It was really fun though and by this time in our trip around the world I had gotten better at bargaining and felt I wasn’t half bad at it. (I have to admit I started out a really bad bargainer- so me saying I’m not too bad at it now isn’t saying much I am still probably not getting as good of a deal as I could get). We ended up shopping for a really long time and needed to head back to the ship before on ship time.
I feel like I didn’t have enough time in Vietnam or in Cambodia to really get a feel for the culture. I was surprised by the strong Western influence in Vietnam, but it just shows how much foreign direct investment is there. It was interesting to me because while you had fancy department stores, restaurants and hotels you also saw women selling fruit and other foods on the streets out of giant woven baskets that they carried around on bamboo sticks over their shoulders. I don’t think I have been able to get used to the close proximity of rich and poor to one another in many of the countries we have visited. Oh how I love traveling around the world!

Malaysia Pics

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Malaysia Pics

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Malaysia Pics

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Malaysia Pics

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Malaysia Pics

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Malaysia Pics

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Malaysia!- Borneo

2007-04-19T00:06:00.000-07:00

Malaysia

Our first day in Malaysia we had about 4 or 5 hours to kill before we needed to be at the airport to possibly fly from Penang to Borneo. I say possibly because we knew that we had a ticket there, and had planned to stay with the Native Iban people while we were there, but we hadn’t been able to get a flight back yet. This port was different then other in that we couldn’t dock at the port but had to anchor our ship out in the ocean because of the strong current. We took our tender boats from our ship to the docks. This turned out to be a big hassle as there were about 1000 of us including all of the students, faculty and crew on the ship. Each tender only holds about 30 people so it was a long process to get everyone off the ship. Once we were got off the ship we were surrounded by taxi drivers all wanting to take you somewhere; it felt like India all over again. They followed us for a few blocks and then eventually gave up on us and moved on to hassling the next people. We walked a ways until we thought we had gone far away enough from most of the taxis so we could get a cheaper one that was already driving by. I was immediately surprised by how industrialized/ developed, and clean Malaysia was; I’m not sure if I just didn’t expect it or if it was because we had just come from India only a matter of days before and I hadn’t had enough time to process everything and prepare myself for the next port.
We headed out to lunch and then decided to go to Penang Hill because we had hear a lot of good things about it from our taxi driver and other locals. At Penang Hill you can either take a cable car train to the top of the hill or you can hike. We only had an a few hours or so before we needed to be at the airport and the cable car train came every 30 min, not to mention we had all of our stuff with us for Borneo so we decided to go with the Cable car train up to the top of Penang. Once our car was called we piled in the car with about 20-30 other people all squished and hot and headed up the mountain. On the way up we looked out the windows and could admire all of the lush vegetation; we also saw monkeys! It was a relief to get out of the Cable car at the top of the mountain and once we saw the view we knew it was worth the ride up there. You could see the whole city of Penang. At the top of the mountain there were mosques and temples that we explored. We took the cable car down a little later then we had expected so once we had to quickly find a cheep taxi ride to the airport. The cab driver who took us to the airport spoke English really well and he was able to give me information about a cultural bound syndrome in Malaysia that I had to interview people about for my Abnormal Psychology class. The syndrome I was studying is called Latah. He also told us about various aspects of the culture. Once we got to the airport we were able to book a flight back from Borneo, so I was really excited because everything worked out. Our plane landed in Kuching Borneo around 11 pm. We had a minor problem going through immigration because for some reason the immigration officials in Penang didn’t stamp our passports so the immigration officials in Kuching were wondering why. They let us go through anyway. We took a cab to our hostel and once we got there we were all surprised by how nice it was. I was expecting a shabby hole in the wall place with cots for beds, but it was actually really beautiful and it reminded me of an inn. They had an open living room for guests to relax, books and computers available, and all of the walls were lined with beautiful photographs. I asked one of the people who worked there about the photographs on the walls, and he said that they were all taken by the owners of the hostel on their many travels around the world. Upstairs they had a game room and a bar. The whole atmosphere was really cozy and a lot more than I had expected. Our stay there also included breakfast the following morning. The hostel was only 10 US dollars a night, which was really good for the kind of quality that we received. After hanging out at the hostel for a while and checking our email we went to bed.
When we woke up we had a small breakfast and quickly packed up all of our belongings. Around 8:30 Bong our guide arrived at the hostel to pick us up. We piled into his van and drove to the travel agency where we had made our arrangements through to pay them. After all of the financial matters had been dealt with Bong drove us to the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center. On the way he told us a little about himself he speaks 9 different languages and his real name is Bong but he is supposed to tell tourists to call him Bob because his boss says that it is easier for tourists. We asked what he preferred to be called and he said Bong so we insisted that we would call him Bong for the remainder of our time with him. I thought that was really interesting that his bosses felt they needed to alter his name so it would be easier for the clients. To me that is really disheartening.
The rehabilitation center was in a jungle setting. It was really neat because it has no barriers or boundaries so orangutans are free to come and go as the please because the rehabilitation center leads into the jungle. We stood with a lot of other tourists in a viewing location. The viewing location was located across the river from a platform that the orangutans were supposed to eat at. There was a fallen tree that was used as a bridge to connect both sides of the river. On the platform was a wide assortment of foods. We waited quietly for a long time to see an orangutan but to no avail. Someone who worked for the rehabilitation center crossed over the river to the platform and gave calls to the orangutans, but still none came. After a while Bong told us that if they haven’t already come by now they wouldn’t come any time soon. Sometimes the orangutans come for a visit and then don’t come back for 2 weeks or a month so you can never really be sure you will see one. We headed out of the jungle and back to our van. On the way back to the van 2 friends and I were far behind everyone else because we were walking too slow which turned out to be a good thing because all of the sudden a man jumped out of the bushes and waved his hands for us to come back. An orangutan had been spotted. We yelled for our friends ahead of us and took off running back into the jungle. We made it in time to see the orangutan. Once we got there we saw a male orangutan swinging from vines making his way over to the platform where food was. I was really surprised by how human like the orangutan’s movements were. I had learned all about the similarities between humans and orangutans in Anthropology and felt I had a good idea, but so really see the orangutan move in person was really something else. Once he made it to the platform he ate and watched us watching him, but after a while he eventually turned his back to us and ate. After he finished eating he swung on vines to a tree and sat there cleaning himself. Once he was finished cleaning himself he swung away vine by vine out into the thick of the jungle until we could no longer see him. I think my favorite part about watching him was how effortless he swung on vines; although he was really massive it was extremely graceful.
Once we left the orangutan rehabilitation center we headed back into the van and made our way to the Iban villages high up in the mountains. After a few hours of driving we stopped off at an open outdoor market where a lot of local people shop. The market was huge and had endless amounts of produce as well as jewelry, clothes, and hot food. Bong took us around the market and explained what all of the different types of foods were. Everyone in the market place stared at us and Bong said it was because they weren’t used to seeing such young foreign girls traveling in their area. This is the market that Bong bought all of our groceries from for our meals we had while visiting the Iban people. After the market we headed back on the road and eventually stopped for lunch at a main station. It was basically the last stores and restaurants you could buy stuff at before getting to the Iban people’s village. I think it was the same stop that they take all tourists to on these tours for lunch, because we went to the only restaurant there, which was filled with lots of European tourists. The whole complex sort of looked like large stalls in an open long barn with short ceilings. None of the small shops or the restaurant had doors but walls separated them from each other. We bought some small snacks at a store as well as a big case of snacks for our Iban hosts. It is customary to bring them a gift of some kind and they prefer to receive snacks. While were at lunch Bong was talking to some other guides who had just come from the Longhouses and he had learned a member of the Iban Long House in the particular Long House we were supposed to stay in had passed away only 3 days before. In the Iban culture the mourning period lasts for a week so they were only 3 days into their mourning period. He told us that he wasn’t sure if it would still be possible for us to go to that Iban house. We told him that we didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable or offend them, so if they didn’t want us to come we would understand. There were 2 options of Long Houses that we could have stayed in when we first booked the trip. To get to both you had to drive 4.5 hours from Kuching, but once there in order to get to the first Long House you only had to take a short walk across the river. This Long House usually sees more tourists. The second option was a Long House that we would have to travel 2.5 hours by motor boat up to get to and it was less touristy. To stay at this particular Long house we were told to bring sleeping bags as well as any other things we might need such as toilet paper. At the more touristy Long house they said that all this would be provided for us. When we planned the trip we opted to see the second Long house because we wanted to be in a less touristy area and be able to get a real feel for the way that the Iban people live and their culture. The Long house where the Iban person had died was the one that we wanted to go to. Once we got to the Iban villages Bong went to talk to some Iban people about our situation. Before Bong left to talk to them he informed us that if we were still able to stay with the Iban people in their Long house we would be required to pay a fine for breaking the rules and leaving before the mourning period had concluded. The fine was not that large so we decided to have Bong talk to the Iban people about us still staying in the Long House. Our primary concern was that we don’t offend the people who live there and intrude on their mourning. After talking to the Iban people Bong came back to tell us that he talked to them and they told him that not only would we be fined but so would a third party and it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to stay with them. So we ended up staying in the first Long House that was more touristy, but it was still a cultural experience.
The Long house appeared just as you would think. It was a very long building with a long hallway down the center inside, and one side of the house was lined with doors that were rooms where people lived and the other side of the house was all open to the outside and led out to decks. The guesthouse we stayed in was a Long house that had been altered. The building was shaped like the Iban people’s Long house. The inside had a narrow walkway and on either side of the house were boxed shaped cubbies with raised platforms. The platforms had plastic tarps or tablecloths that had been nailed down to the wood. On top of the plastic base were old single mattresses and one sheet to use. Both the traditional Long house and the guesthouse were raised up on stilts. In order to enter them you had to climb up this tiny plank that you had to put one foot in front of the other into cuts in the wood. It took a while for me to get used to walking up and down these planks, however the distance from the ground to the entrance of the Long house using the planks wasn’t that long. After we put all of our stuff in our cubbies we went to the traditional Long house to meet the Iban people and see the way they live. There were 24 different families living in this Long house. Inside there was a long central room where people would weave and play with children. On one side of the Long House were doors that led into each the families’ rooms and the other side was open every so open to the outside. Some of the walls had beautiful spiral designs on them made from bamboo. The side that was partially open had walls every so often with square holes cut out in them for windows to the to the deck. Out on the deck we saw how they make rice. When we met the Iban people they all smiled at us and were very kind. None of them spoke English but Bong spoke both of our languages.
After we visited the Iban people in their Longhouse we were free to relax or go down to the river for a swim. We were all dying from the heat and humidity, and really smelly from the 4.5 hour car ride so we decided to go for a swim in the river. There were wooden stairs that led down directly into the water. In the river men passed by on skinny long canoes some with motors and some without. There were also men on makeshift rafts paddling around. The men on the rafts offered to give us a ride so 3 of my friends took them up on their offer and climbed on the bamboo raft. I was content just sitting on the wooden steps and dangling my legs in the water. While I was sitting on the stairs some of the Iban women came over to wash their clothes in the river. They used the steps as a washboard and rinsed their clothes in the river. Once the clothes were all soapy they would either rinse them from the steps or would strap the clothes around their backs and swim around in the river. Some of the women tried to speak to us in their language and we would in turn look confused and then they would look at one another and giggle. It was so interesting to have our 2 groups of women one group young and one group old both hanging out by the river talking amongst ourselves in our own languages and trying to figure out more about the women who sat opposite of us. Bong wasn’t around so we had no translator and it was interesting to be left alone without any help. We were separated by a language barrier and were left to try to figure out more about each other. We had to try to understand one another by watching each other’s body language and expressions instead of through words.
After we came up from the river and got changed we hung out for a little while and I took a small nap. Besides us there were 3 other sets of tourists staying in the Longhouse guesthouse. We were soon called for dinner. Bong had helped the Iban women in the kitchen to prepare our dinner. Our dinner was really good and it included the best pineapple ever!!! All of the food that we ate was from the market we had stopped at earlier. The Iban people grow rice, breed chickens and pigs, and get the rest of their food from the forest. They get their income from harvesting and making rubber, oil palm, cocoa and pepper. After dinner we all went up to the Longhouse to view a performance by the Iban people. As soon as we got there they sat us down against the wall and passed out glasses of rice wine. Once everyone had a glass the Iban performers stood in front of us and together we raised our glasses and drank down our rice wine.
The costumes that the performers wore were very intricate. Bong told us that it takes 6 months to make a women’s costume. I really liked the metal headdresses that the women wore; they were made up of metal pieces of different levels. The dancers each performed one at a time each individually stepping forward to dance one after the next. The dancing was really slow and soothing in a way. Each dancer moved gracefully to the beat and the men used a shield as a prop while the women imitated the wings of a bird with their arms. After they finished performing for us they gave us all feather headdresses and asked us to dance with them. We then went up to the elders one by one and thanked them for their hospitality and offered the gifts we had brought. Along with the snacks we had bought at the small market a friend of mine had also brought all kinds of little games and toys along as well. While the women and children were separating all of the gifts that they had received into piles for the families the Iban people taught us games that they play. The game that I liked most was one that I was really scared to try at first. In this game one woman would sit on the ground and hold two very long pieces of bamboo still while another woman at opposite her and held the other two ends of the bamboo sticks. The second woman I was talking about would separate the bamboo sticks out and bang them on the ground two times and then smash them together and repeat the process over again. Now the scary part comes in. A participant would begin with both feet between the bamboo sticks and then step out with their left foot and then their right to the two beats, aiming to have both of their feet outside of the bamboo sticks when the woman smashed them together. When she opened the sticks again the participant would put their right foot between the sticks and then their left and then begin the process all over again. Once the participant got the hang of it the dance was speeded up faster and faster and you played the game until you couldn’t play anymore. I was really scared to try this game cause I was scared my feet and ankles would be smashed but once I played it I really liked it!
After we finished playing the games we all sat around the longhouse and hung out. We talked to Bong about the Iban culture and learned a lot about this particular Iban tribe. The chief of the Longhouse was in his mid to late 80’s and had been the chief since he was 19 years old. Apparently he was a really good headhunter in his day until the head hunting practice was stopped in the 1940’s. We were able to meet him and though he didn’t speak English we were able to communicate with him a little because we had Bong with us. The Chief showed us his sword that was once his fathers. It was very old and was stained with the blood of those they had killed. The case the covered the sword had locks of hair from their victims tied to the side of it. We had Bong tell him that we thought his house was beautiful and that we appreciated them letting us come to visit. He responded by saying that he appreciated us coming all this way to see them and he hoped that next time we came we would bring our friends. Bong told us how the Longhouses are influenced more and more by the changing times and some embrace the new technology and other things while others still live completely in the old way. We said goodnight to the Iban people and got ready for bed. While all 7 of us were sitting in one of our lofts and talking we noticed a giant spider that was about the size of my face- no joke!- that was on the wall right below one of my friends’ bed! The lights went out and none of us knew where this giant spider was so we enclosed our mattresses tightly under the mosquito netting when we went to bed. In the morning we all woke up very groggy and no one was able to sleep for more than 3 or 4 hours because we were so uncomfortable. We had a nice breakfast that included bananas in every way you could imagine to cook them.
We packed up all of our belongings and met Bong and some of the Iban people down by the river. The Iban man we were with showed us how to use a very long spit gun. We all took turns trying to hit these two pieces of fruit and I basically sucked at it! After our attempts to use the spit guns we began our short walk through the jungle. The man we were with showed us the system they use to collect rubber from the rubber trees. A really neat thing we were able to see while on our nature walk were ancient graves of their past ancestors. Most of the graves were marked by having a metal structure around them as well as objects and other prized possessions of the individual set up under the metal structure. The Iban people wanted to make sure that the diseased would not come back poor so they buried them with their prized possessions, or set the possessions on top of the graves. Bong told us that 40-60% of the Iban people are Christian and the others are mystics or of no religion. At the end of our jungle walk we were shown their animal traps and using leaves and sticks they demonstrated how they used them. I was really impressed by the traps because they were so intricate and looked like they would be really successful. They have had a lot of time to perfect the traps over their many generations so it makes sense that they would be so successful. We thanked the Iban man for showing us around and all piled into these long skinny canoes that had motors on the back. There were 4 of us in each canoe. They were really small and close to the surface of the water. The river was really wide and the scenery was beautiful. We sped down the river for a while and then stopped off at this little riverbank. We hung out there for a while and then Bong decided to take us on a jungle treck. We went tromping through the forest and we were fine until we got to this one place where we had to cross this little stream. In order to cross we had to hop from this wood plank onto land and try to bypass this really muddy spot. Everyone else went before me so I was able to see what method worked best to get the least muddy. The mud was like a sinkhole and once you stepped in it it seemed that you suck down forever. When it was my turn to go I leapt as far as I could and was able to make it over the bud hole without getting very muddy. We continued on our treck and all of the sudden we came across a random radio playing in the forest. I am not too sure what that was all about but we kept on trecking. Eventually we came to another creek that we were going to have to cross but this time there was a deep valley in between either side of the creek. Because of the rains both sides of the hills were really muddy so climbing up from the base of the creek was not an option. There was a big fallen log high above the creek but it was really slippery so Bong thought it would have been too dangerous to go over so we had to turn around. On our way back through the jungle to our canoes I saw three small vines that were twisted together and decided it would be a really great idea to swing from it. First I pulled on it to make sure it was strong and I was surprised it could hold my weight so I proceeded to try to swing from it. I ended up breaking the vine and went flying backwards and landed somewhere off in the bushes. Bong was really concerned about me cause I came close to falling down the mountain but I was just laughing. My shirt got all ripped up from my fall but it was really fun and I would do it again given the option. I wasn’t the only one who fell on our walk. Everyone tripped at least once and two of my friends fell down hills when we were walking it was actually really humorous. Knowing that we would have to cross over the small stream once again and avoid the muddy sinkhole, I collected bamboo sticks along our walk to make a bridge. I was really proud of myself when my little bridge idea worked out and I stayed clean.
Once we got back to the riverbank we got back in our canoes and set out into the river. It started pouring rain and all of our belongings were with us so everything got soaked. Luckily I had my camera in a zip-lock bag so I was able to keep it dry. The rain felt really good and was sort of convenient because it helped to clean all of the mud off of us. We stopped off at the school to pick up one of the canoe driver’s kids who was really adorable. While we were waiting for the rain to subside a little I was watching as kids walked home from school over a high, thin, swaying Foot Bridge. Watching them made me think about if I could ever imagine walking home from school when I was little the way that they did. I know that people of all ages are very similar all over the world but at the same time we are also so different. In my mind I compared the Iban kids’ environment and walk home from school with those of kids who live in large cities in the US and their walk home from school. I wondered how they would react if they were to switch places with one another for a day and how their new environments would impact them. We waited for the rain to clear up for a long time but it just continued to pound down so we decided to climb back into our canoes anyway and travel further down the river. Eventually we made our way back to the location where Bong and his van were waiting for us. We gathered up all of our belongings, which were just about as wet as us and piled into the van.
On our way back to Kuching we stopped off at the same small restaurant for lunch that we had stopped off at on our way to the Iban Longhouses. We also made another stop at a park that had a famous waterfall and a few Chinese temples. The waterfall dropped into a big swimming hole and there were endless small paths that brought you to various wooden bridges and temples. There was a structure in the park that was really neat. It was wooden structure that was built around a tree. Small staircases winded up around the tree and stopped at a platform at the top of the tree. You could tell that the structure hadn’t been checked kept up and was built 60 years ago, so once I was up at the top I didn’t stay to long because I didn’t really trust that the structure would hold us all up.
We got back to our hostel around 6:30 and Bong gave us an hour to take showers and get ready to go to dinner. He took us out to a Thai restaurant but wouldn’t come in for us to buy him dinner. My meal was a little odd. All that I wanted was pineapple so I got fresh fruit that was probably not the best thing to get at a Thai restaurant. When it came I wasn’t sure what to do with it because it was fruit as well as vegetables all mixed together with mass amounts of mayonnaise. Needless to say I couldn’t really eat it but my friends gave me some of their food so I was all right. After we ate Bong took us to a local outdoor food market and then we went to a bakery to get some desserts. We went to the waterfront next which was really pretty and we stopped by the Bizzar market that opens at 10pm and closes at 4 or 6 am. It’s an outdoor market sort of like a farmers market back home. They had a lot of fish and vegetables. We then went back to our hostel for the night.
The next day we had to get up early for our flight back to Penang where our boat was. It was a day of full travel because we had to first fly into Kuala Lumpur and then fly from there to Penang. Overall I had a good time and I thought it was really neat to be able to stay with the Iban people. It would have been an even better experience had we been able to stay with Iban people in the less touristy area. I do think that we still were able to learn a lot about the Iban people and their way of life. I think it would be neat to go to Borneo again and next time go to the Indonesian part of Borneo and see how it differs from the Malaysian part of Borneo.

India Pics!

2007-04-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

India Pics!

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The District Governor is sitting next to me and my hostfamily is sitting behind me in this picture

India Pics!

2007-04-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

One of these pics is of me and Meg with our home stay family!

India Pics!

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India Pics!

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India Pics!

2007-04-08T18:04:00.000-07:00

India

2007-04-07T10:07:00.001-07:00

India-

I had written 3 pages about what I had done in India and had gotten to the end of my second day in India and realized that that wasn’t I wanted to tell you all. I know that you all want to know what I am doing, but India made such a huge impact on me that I decided that what I did in there wasn’t so important as the insights that India gave me, how it touched me, and what I learned from it. The impact that India has left on me will stay will with me, and I am still trying to sort through pictures in my mind, emotions and realizations that I have made because of India. Before I got to India I thought I had an idea of what poverty looked like but once I got to Chennai reality gave me a much clearer picture. Walking down the streets of the poor villages in Chennai was in explainable. The way that people have to live is unimaginable to me as a westerner. People will set up shacks anywhere that they can find room on the streets to use as houses. Some have to find their own drinking water and carry it back home with them. There are so many children who are forced to grow up so quickly and learn how to survive on their own. They have to face the harsh reality that is their life at such a young age. I would look into the eyes of children and be amazed by how old their eyes appeared to me; all they have had to deal with at such a young age is evident in them. They have been robbed of their childhood and had their optimism shattered.
One of the experiences that I had that I will go into depth to talk about was my first day in India. The first day I did a service project with Semester at Sea. We went to a Dalit village formally known as a village of the untouchables and worked with the community to improve their school. As soon as we got off the bus we were received by the community members with single roses, flower necklaces, a welcome banner, and a 6 piece marching band. The people of the community led us in a procession down the streets and to the school. On the way to the school kids were giggling and trying to get us to dance with them. The whole community had come out and there were swarms of people everywhere asking you what your name was and shaking your hand. I felt mixed emotions by the whole experience. This was my very first experience of India and I was sort of caught in a dichotomy of two worlds. On the one hand I was excited to lend a hand and do what I could to help and all of the smiles on the faces of both the adults and kids made me feel welcome and wanted. I knew that it was a very joyous event for all of us involved. Then on the other side of the coin I felt a deep sadness. The smiles that the people held on their faces could not hide the high levels of poverty. Chennai really shocks you and makes you face a harsh but accurate reality about the way people live in many countries around the world. As I was walking down the streets I felt overcome by emotions, it was for one so touching to be welcomed so warmly but then on the other hand it was unreal to see the sights on the sides of the streets. I think that feeling of an odd combination of extremely different emotions will stick in my mind and heart. Once we got to the school we were ushered into a meeting room where chairs were set up for us to sit. There were even newspaper photographers taking pictures of the whole thing…I have to admit the whole thing was a little unreal. A speech was given to us and the speaker talked about what it meant to them that we had come to help them clean up their school. He said that we could have gotten off the ship and gone to explore the city but instead we decided to come to a poorer area and lend a hand; he said that this was touching to him and everyone in the community. After his speech we had two performances one by school children and another by a dancer who preformed a traditional Indian dance. We then moved outside and began our work. I was a painter and worked on repainting the outside walls of the school. Other students sanded the walls, or did various odd jobs. We worked for about 3 hours or so, and during that time two schoolgirls kept me company and we attempted to speak to one another but found it very difficult because of the language barrier. They asked me to sing them a song while I was working so I sang “Sweet Low,” to them and they smiled and said it was beautiful. I loved doing the service project. It was one of my favorite Semester at Sea sponsored trips I have done so far.
I did a home stay with a family in Chennai that was put together by the Rotary club chapter of Chennai. My family was amazing and don’t worry, I will share all my stories with you more in depth when I get home. I am already halfway into my second journal so all of the details are there. Anyway the first night that I stayed with my home stay family they took us to the 25th anniversary of the Chennai Rotary chapter. At the event they had many guest speakers that were amazing; one of who was District Governor J.B. Kamdar. I was lucky enough to have heard him speak at a function earlier in the evening that all of the students who were doing a home stay attended. At both functions the Governor spoke about the importance of individuals reaching out and helping those who are less fortunate then themselves. He talked about how we might think what we are doing is a single drop in the ocean but in actuality that ocean would not be the same ocean without that single drop. He also said that there are different kinds of people in the world, those who work with their hands are farmers, those who work with their hearts are missionaries, those who work with their minds are scientists, those who work with their heart and mind are philosophers, those who work with their hands and mind are surgeons, those who work with their heart and hands are artists, but those who work with their hands, hearts, and minds are visionaries. I found his speech very inspiring and thought that it seemed to share many of the same messages that Gandhi sent out throughout India as well as the rest of the world. One of the biggest things I noticed while in Chennai was how the upper and middle classes feel that it is their duty to help those who are less fortunate, and these ideas come from Gandhi’s philosophy and influence. In all of the other ports I was in I felt that the upper and middle classes left the job of helping the poor up to NGO’s or Government organizations. They tended to disassociate themselves from the problem of poverty and I feel that many people in the US tend to do the same thing. People who live in individually based cultures especially tend to worry about their own needs first as well as the needs of their friends and family but forget that they are part of a larger community that they are responsible for as well. Talking to individuals at the Rotary club function really showed me that in Chennai if you are better off then others it is your responsibility to reach out and help those who are worse off then yourself. Being surrounded by people who were rallying to make a difference in other people’s lives even on a small scale, really got me thinking about how I have helped in my community back in the States in the past and how I can help out more in the future. I realized that for the most part, the community volunteer work that I have done has consisted of just me going out into the community to help others, but if reaching out and lending a helping hand to those less fortunate then myself is something that I believe strongly in then for one I better start doing it more frequently and two it is really important to get my friends and family involved in it as well. Another man that spoke at the 25th anniversary function was Rtn. PDG K.R. Ravindran who is the trustee of the Rotary foundation. He is from Sri Lanka and spearheaded an effort to raise a billion dollars in order to rebuild 29 schools that were destroyed by the tsunami in 2004. I felt that his speech was very powerful and made a lot of sense in this day in age. One of his quotes that I liked was, “The values of our life can be measured by the time we spend touching hearts, valuing one another, and wiping away tears.” He emphasized that we can’t just give handouts to people and expect change to occur, instead we need to build structures for ways that the poor can create their own wealth. He used the example of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh that has created an enormous amount of social change. It has helped to empower women to create their own reliable income and made them responsible for building up their own finances. The bank was started by one individual and it loans out money to individual women who are part of a larger group of 5 women. Each woman is responsible for paying her payments back to the bank on time and if she is late on her payments the other 4 women who are in her group are not allowed to get out more loans, so she has even more incentive to pay the loan back. The interest rates are really low and there are 2.5 million borrowers of the bank in Bangladesh; 98% of the loans have all been paid back. Rtn. PDG K.R. Ravindran message made a lot of sense to me and I feel that giving tools to people to build their own wealth and making them accountable for their own finances and building a better life for themselves is the direction in which we should continue to move in.
Another experience that I found to be really touching occurred on my second to last day in India. For my psychology of women class I had to interview 4 Indian women about their views of women in India including, what qualities and roles the ideal Indian woman has and plays in society, how men and women are treated differently in society if at all, what the expectations of women are in India, how women’s roles have changed in the last 40 years, how women in India differ from women in the US, and what steps need to be taken to improve women’s lives in India. One of my interviewees opened up to me and told me her person story. I felt touched that she talked about her private life with me because from my experience and past knowledge women in India are much more reserved then women in the US. She answered all of my questions and gave me good insight, but the part of our conversation that meant the most to me was that she told me her personal story. She talked about how she had been separated from her husband for the last 7 years because of his alcohol abuse and has 7 year old daughter and a 10 year old son who she is raising on her own. She is working two jobs to support her children, having to get up at 5 AM every morning and go to bed at 11PM at night. In India divorces and separations are not looked upon very highly so she has to battle the stigma that comes along with her being a single mom. She has been living in her mother’s house with her mother but her father recently passed away so the house is going to her brother. Her brother is getting married and doesn’t want her to live in the house with her children anymore. She poured out her fears to me about how she is not sure what she will do once she has to leave and where her and her children will go. I know that this type of situation happens in the US but in the context of India it makes everything that much more difficult. I wanted to tell her that everything would be alright and I did tell her that I personally felt that in life there are ups and there are downs and things always seem to have a way of working out in the end, we get stronger and wiser from the battles we face in life. But I felt like honestly who am I to tell her that everything will be alright? I couldn’t imagine myself in her situation. I feel like I would be more justified in making that statement to someone in the US but in India it’s a whole different playing field. I will never forget the look of urgency and despair in her eyes as she told me that she wasn’t sure what she would do once she and her children were thrown out on the streets.
India opened my eyes to a lot of things. India showed me that for the most part people around the world don’t live like us in the US, and going into this trip I knew that but it is an entirely different thing when you view that first hand. If over 1 billion people out of 6.5 billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day what does that say about our world? People in this world don’t get what they deserve; the fairy-tale that we have created in the US about working hard always leads you to success isn’t always applicable in the rest of the world. That sort of thinking works only when resources are readily available and there is an infrastructure set up that allows people to move up economically. The inequalities that are present in our would today should not still be here; how can we spend so much money in industries for consumer products, other luxuries, and wars, when a large number of people in our world are starving. This is a problem that is becoming more and more pertinent as we use up the world’s natural resources and must begin to work together as a whole to devise plans for how to preserve what we haven’t already destroyed. A peasant who is using slash and burn methods in the Amazon region of Brazil isn’t going to be so concerned about the area that is being affected by his tactics and what his and other’s actions will mean on a larger scale, but he will be concerned with getting the funds for the next meal for his family and himself. If 20% of the Amazon is now gone and it is expected that another 20% will be gone by the year 2025 we need to step up to the plate and work immediately to save what we can. In a lecture that Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave in my perspectives on peace class he spoke about how if the US spent a fraction of the 127 billion dollars that they have recently decided to spend on the Iraq war, instead on clean drinking water everyone on the planet would have access to clean drinking water. Water born illnesses that are present would no longer exist, but instead we choose to spend that money on as The Archbishop says, mass weapons of death. Everything in the world is interconnected, in order to fix one facet of life we need to think about how our actions and possible solutions to that problem will affect other areas of life as well.
The people that I met in India whether they were rich, poor, from a low caste system or from a high caste system received all of the Semester at Sea students with so much warmth, compassion and love. Everyone was touched by the people in India and amazed by their generosity and hospitality. Rickshaw drivers would invite students to their houses for lunch when they were living in a 6 ft by 6 ft concrete room with 5 other family members and had hardly enough food for themselves. They didn’t allow their poverty to keep them from giving to others. I couldn’t imagine a taxi cab driver in the US inviting me over to their house for lunch or dinner; that desire to give and reach out to people is just not evident in the US to the extent that it is in India. India’s generosity, kindness, and level of philanthropy is contagious. After visiting India many people’s eyes have been opened including my own. I always knew that I wanted to create positive social change in the lives of others but India has put a fire in my heart that pushes me to delve into this task wholeheartedly with out turning back. I can only imagine what places like Cambodia in the rest of my journey will add to my perspective of life and my desire to help others. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”- Mahatma Gandhi

Mauritius Pics

2007-04-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

Mauritius Pics

2007-04-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

Mauritius

2007-04-01T18:21:00.001-07:00

Sorry it’s taken me so long to put stuff up about Mauritius but it has just been crazy on the ship. Mauritius was sort of an odd port for us to go to on Semester as Sea because it isn’t a country that fits in with the rest of our itinerary in that it isn’t a place that has a huge dichotomy with respect to levels of inequality or wealth in their country. Nor did I feel that Mauritius was a huge cultural experience for us. Mauritius is a mixture of various cultures all of which we will be experiencing to a greater extent in our other ports. Some of the cultures that are present in Mauritius are Indian, and many Asian cultures. Originally we were supposed to be going to Burma instead of Mauritius. Never the less I still had a really good time in Mauritius but it was more of a time for everyone to catch up on resting and relaxing. Knowing that all the Semester at Sea Students were planning on renting Villas in one area in Mauritius a bunch of friends and I decided to rent bungalows on the north side of Mauritius. It’s fun to be around other semester at sea students but at the same time it was really nice to have a break from everyone and be in an area that wasn’t infested with tons of Semester at Sea students.
We arrived in Mauritius late because of the bad weather between South Africa and Mauritius. Once we got off the ship we split up to get money changed and go to the bank. After we dealt with all of our technical business a few friends and I walked around the streets to find a good place to eat. We ended up asking a local where a good Indian food restaurant was, and they pointed us in the direction of a really good restaurant. The restaurant was a small hidden Indian restaurant that was sooo good!!! We had all different types of what the in the US we call curry but in India is not called curry, and nan. After lunch we went to an Internet café to try and book a place to stay for the night as well as the following night. Before we got off the ship we were told that Internet all over Mauritius was free and we all were really excited about free Internet but once we got there we realized that it wasn’t!!! Anyway we were able to book two nights at a bungalow on the North Shore of the island. We took a water taxi to get back to the town from the ship and packed up all of our stuff to go. We took a taxi to the bungalow but that was an adventure in itself. Our taxi driver had grown up here his whole life but wasn’t sure how to get to our bungalow. The ride was supposed to take only 20 to 30 min but we were lost and the office at the bungalow place closed really soon so we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to be let into our room. Eventually we found our way to the bungalows and when we got there only the security guard was there. He was able to locate the owner for us so she could let us into our bungalow. It was dark out so we didn’t get that good of a look at it but I was sure that it was wonderful! We were so starving though so she directed us to a restaurant that was walking distance away. Lucky she warned us that the food was not something to write home about because it was probably one of the worst meals any of us have ever had! We couldn’t have gone to another restaurant because taxis weren’t widely available in that area as it’s more a local’s spot. One of our friends surprised us at our bungalow after dinner so that was really fun! We were so glad that she was glad that she got our note to meet us on her cabin door and was able to get there ok. Our bungalow was so adorable though it had a little kitchen and table, with a living room that had two single beds in it, a bathroom, and a bedroom with a king size bed in it. We did have an ant problem though and when one of my friends woke up the next morning we discovered ants all over her bed….not too fun!
Our second day we got up at walked to a small convenient store down the road from our bungalow but they didn’t have much in the way of food but we were able to get enough things to make a semi decent breakfast. I made everyone French toast but it turned out odd because of how thin the bread was and we didn’t have syrup only honey! After breakfast we sat outside on our little porch admiring our quant little bungalow and garden. The garden was gorgeous it was tropical and seemed to hide and nestle in the bungalow. The beach was located just a hop- skip and a jump away! The short path to the beach leads you around on a twisting trail that curves around old buildings with tropical vines growing up them. All of the sudden you turn a corner on the path and out of no where is a beautiful setting with the beach, chairs, grass, and furniture to relax. The water was a beautiful light shade of blue. At the beach I was able to work on my blog about South Africa and was able to put in a sizable dent. One friend and I tried to go snorkeling in the water because she was able to rent snorkel equipment and I had brought mine from home. It was fun to go snorkeling but we weren’t in any of the areas that there are coral reefs. Mauritius is known for it’s amazing coral reefs, so I as sad that I didn’t get a chance to experience them. I think the whole time I was out I saw a total of three fish and a buried railroad track. The water was very cloudy and extremely salty! I took the time in Mauritius to rejuvenate myself and give myself a little break because life on Semester at Sea has felt like a continuous race. At port you never want to waste any time so you’re always doing something and on the ship I am constantly working on school work, and I only get 6 or so hours of sleep a night which is not regular for me. I am used to sleeping for 8 or 9 hours a night so when I get back to the states I am planning on sleeping for a week! Anyway back to Mauritius. There were 5 of us total staying at the bungalow and myself and two other friends set out to go grocery shopping. We were planning on taking the bus into town but it comes at random times and doesn’t leave until it’s full. While we were waiting for the bus a taxi came along and we were able to bargain him down to a good price to take us to the larger town, Grand Bay, where you can buy food. Once he dropped us off we walked around the town a little but it was too touristy for our taste so we set out for the grocery store. We went to the Super U, which is a gigantic store that has everything from food, to paper products to clothes and everything else under the sun. We ended up walking around the store for hours shopping and ended up with a massive amount of food, that we were somehow able to fit into our backpacks and handbags for the trip back to the bungalow. On the cab ride to Grand Bay we had only paid 75 rupees which is a little over 2 US dollars and on the way back cabs were trying to charge us 300 rupees so we walked until we were able to find a bus stop. Wow the bus ride was crazy!!! The drivers drive so fast and one of my friends joked that she felt like she was on the bus that is in one of the Harry Potter books- hope you get my reference! The ride was so bumpy and speedy. It turned out to be only 60 rupees for all of us, which was nice! By the time we got back to the bungalow it was really dark out and our friends who were waiting for us were wondering where we were the whole time. For the rest of the night we just hung out and cooked dinner, and ate an enormous amount of chocolate!!! Four of us all squeezed into the king size bed because of the ants in one of the beds in the living room.
The last day in Mauritius one of my friends figured out a plan for us to go on a short half hour walk into the entrance of one of Mauritius’ parks that has a series of seven waterfalls. We all thought it sounded like a good plan so we got our stuff ready and took a cab. One of my friends wanted to stay at the Bungalow though because she wasn’t feeling too well and we only expected to be gone about three hours so she said she’d be fine there by herself. Once we left we were really confused when our taxi driver stopped to hail down a man on a bike to go ahead of us that we proceeded to follow. Eventually the taxi stopped on a dirt road set between two sides of sugar cane fields. Our taxi driver told us that the man on the bike was going to be our guide though the falls. We were hesitant at first and weren’t sure if we were just going to be ripped off for something that we could have very well accomplished it on our own. We asked them if it was possible for us to go without a guide and they said that we could but that everyone goes with a guide. Because we had not ended up where we thought we would be we felt that we didn’t have that many choices we asked how much the guide charged and he seemed reasonable, so we went ahead with the guide. We were all confused as we walked towards the sugar cane fields and we made sure our guide was on the same page as us and that we were going to the falls. He assured us that we were both thinking of the same place, Tamorindan Falls, so we continued on our path. Once we got to the end of the sugar cane fields our guide motioned for us to follow him down a steep vertical path that was almost nonexistent. We carefully followed him down, and you could tell that we were heading somewhere and that the rest of the hike was going to be an adventure. It reminded me of a Helbush hike! When we got to the first waterfall we were all blown away by its beauty. The rock literally came to an immediate stop and the water made a drastic drop downward. The view beyond the waterfall was breathtaking, with huge green mountains in the distance and a deep valley below that consisted of a river flowing through 6 other waterfalls. We hiked to the base of the waterfall and it was interesting because when we hiked down we went behind the waterfall in a deep cavern. I have never seen such a large and far backdrop behind a waterfall before in my life. We all climbed up the rocks and went into the waterfall bracing ourselves against the rocks. It was odd because all of the sudden the water would practically stop in some places because of the wind but continue to pound down against the rocks in other places. We then continued to hike down to the next waterfalls. On our way I accidentally stepped in a giant mud whole and lost my sandal, it disappeared somewhere in the sink whole, but luckily our guide was able to retrieve it for me! The whole way down we joked about all of the liability papers that we would have had to sign if we were doing this hike in the US. As the hike progressed things seemed to get more and more dangerous yet fun, and we eventually got to one part where in order to get down from one cliff to the next level we had to climb into a tree and shimmy our way down. Our guide was very careful with us and helped us with every step along the way, making sure we didn’t slip off the cliff. He said that he takes people through this same hike 4 times a day, which is a lot of such a long hike. When we got to the fourth waterfall I just sat at the edge of the rock shelf that dropped down 150 feet or so and admired all of the beauty that was around me. I could have just sat in that moment looking out at the natural beauty around me forever. It was definitely one of the most beautiful places that that I have ever been in my life. Being surrounded by so much natural beauty and endless space with no one else around but the wildlife made me feel a sense of ease. Unfortunately we had to turn around and couldn’t make it to the remaining 3 waterfalls because we had no idea that our excursion would take so long and our friend was back at the bungalow waiting for us so we had to head back. We had already been gone for about 2 hours and the cab ride took 45 min each way plus we were all starving and wanted to grab something to eat on our way back. Our guide led us back to the road where our taxi was waiting for us. Our journey back up to the road was almost a straight uphill walk with no real path. If you didn’t pull your way up holding on to small trees or roots I think you would have fallen backwards down the hill. We got back to the cab and we thanked our guide for his help and paid him for his services. Knowing that we didn’t have that much cash on us he lowered the price that he was charging us, which was really nice of him. Our cab driver took us to one of his favorite Indian restaurants but once we got there they informed us that more people had come earlier in the day then they expected and didn’t have enough food left to feed us, so our cab driver drove us to another restaurant. The second restaurant didn’t look as good as the first but none of us had eaten all day so no matter what the food was still better then nothing. We arrived back at the bungalow and our poor friend was still there waiting for us, we had gotten back 4 hours later then we expected!!! We felt so bad, we sort of thought that after a while she might have given up on us and taken a cab back to the ship, but she waited for us the whole time! We quickly packed up all of our belongings, paid the owners and took the same cab back to the town that the ship was located in. We went to the Internet café, which had an insane line, and I went to go use the phones. After we finished up with last minute phone calls and emails we took a water taxi back to the ship. We got back to the ship just before on ship time in one piece. I did enjoy my time in Mauritius, and my favorite part about my time there was our trip to the waterfall. I think that the way the waterfall hike turned out was so much more fun then what we originally thought we were getting ourselves into. I was also glad that I got to rest a little, but again Semester at Sea is not about vacationing in various ports so it was still sort of a random port for us to go to.

South Africa Pics!

2007-04-01T18:12:00.000-07:00

South Africa Pics!

2007-03-23T02:47:00.000-07:00

South Africa Pics!

2007-03-23T02:42:00.000-07:00

More South Africa Pics

2007-03-23T02:33:00.000-07:00

South Africa Pics!

2007-03-23T02:05:00.000-07:00

South Africa!

2007-03-18T04:03:00.000-07:00

March 18 2007
South Africa was awesome!!! There was soo much to do and unfortunately I wasn’t able to get all of it in but I had such a good time with what I did do. We arrived in South Africa on Friday March 2, I got up early to watch us come in to port and was able to see the sunrise over Table Mountain!!! It was soo beautiful! We were greeted by a member of South Africa’s government who would be considered to the equivalent of a governor in the US. His speech was completely moving and I wish I could have recorded it! He spoke about the importance of going out of your own comfort zones and cultural boundaries to learn about other cultures. He made a point that today in our fast paced technologically absorbed world we might read a short blip or see pictures and think we know all that we need to now about any given religion, culture, country etc. In the days before the internet and other types of global technology people had to actually immerse themselves in the culture or read up on the cultures a lot in order to know a good amount about them. He talked about how lucky we Semester at Sea kids are to be able to explore all of these amazing cultures and to have the willingness and desire to break through all of our cultural boundaries and false ideas about other people and their culture. He talked about how in the end when everything has been said and done we are all connected and all apart of one another.
The first thing I did in Cape Town was to go to Robbin Island where all of the political prisoners from the Apartheid were kept up until 1991 when the prison was closed. There are still people living on the island and about 10 or so students attend primary school on the island. I can’t think of words to describe the feeling you get when walking down the hallways of the jail and knowing that so many people were locked up inside of these cells unjustly for years on end. Walking through the narrow corridor of the jail with 7-8 foot by 7-8 foot cellblocks lining the walls left you with a sense of tension. We got a tour via bus of Robbin Island itself and were taken to various sites such as the quarry where prisoners had to dig up limestone in the intense heat for hours. Our tour of the actual prison facility was given on foot and was administered by an ex-political prisoner. He sat us down in a room for about 20 minutes and told us his personal experiences of the Apartheid and how he got involved in the struggle against it. If the Apartheid hadn’t ended he would be scheduled to be released from prison this fall and would have spent a total of 25 years in prison. Today him and a number of other ex-political prisoners give tours of Robbin Island and work alongside ex-prison guards who work in various places such as the post office; this to me is one example of how far South Africa has come since the Apartheid. Standing in the prison and looking directly into the prison where Nelson Mandela was held was an experience that I will never forget. To me that moment was irreplaceable, and something that will remain a strong memory for me.
Later that evening I was supposed to go on an SAS sponsored trip called Music Township. My friends and I who were going on it were all very excited about it because we were going to be part of a traditional African Drumming circle in a Township and then either go to someone’s home or a local restaurant for traditional South African cuisine, and lastly follow that by going to a Tavern where we would dance with locals to traditional South African music. Well our night turned out really different then what we expected! We drove on a bus through 3 townships and didn’t stop to meet the people or anything. We didn’t get to do the drumming circle and we were dropped off at a bar and pool haul that was located behind an auto mechanic shop. So you could imagine we were all a little disappointed. Our trip leader told us that she would try to get us at least a partial refund but I found out today that they are only refunding us $8 and the trip cost $106 per person.
I went with friends to Green Market Square on two different days during my stay in South Africa. Greek Market Square is sort of like the outdoor market that we went to in Brazil. People sell everything from jewelry, clothing, wooden sculptures, handbags, tapestries, masks and many other items. I enjoy bargaining for items and thing I may be getting a little bit better at it then I was before coming on this trip. Long Street is also a main area in Cape Town that has many restaurants and shops to go to. One of the last days we were in Cape Town before heading out back into the ocean on our way to our next port we stopped of in a boutique and I ended up having a really good conversation with a woman about the Apartheid. She was a White woman who had lived in South Africa for a long time and fought alongside Black South African’s and others to dismantle the Apartheid. She spoke about how after the Apartheid had ended everyone was concerned with where the country was going to go, and if there was going to be immense bloodshed and all out war. She was very concerned about her country and those in it and went to a local church to pray. When she entered the church it was empty except for one person who was praying. When she realized that the man who was praying all by himself in the church was Archbishop Desmond Tutu she said she felt at ease and knew that everything would be ok. She took it as a sign that the country would be all right. She found peace from the possible aftermath of the Apartheid and a sense of calmness at that moment. I thought it was so special that she shared her story with me and she was one of the people in South Africa that I was lucky enough to form some sort of connection with.
On March 4th I left for a Safari to Kruger National Park. There were only 18 of us so that was nice. We flew into Kruger airport and got to the lodge around 3:30 in the afternoon. I was really surprised when we got to the lodge we were staying at because I didn’t think it was going to be so nice. I thought we were going to be put into a ma an Pop hotel style place, but instead it was this gorgeous lodge. We each stayed with a roommate in our own cottages. The lodge was private and had an amazing view that overlooked the Crocodile River and the mountains above it. After we got to our rooms and unpacked our belongings we headed out in our open 4x4 vehicles on an evening game drive. There was a leopard sighting but by the time we got there the leopard had left. On that drive we saw a heard of buffalo, countless empella- a type of antelope and they are everywhere!, a rhino, and boars. It was really nice to drive out in the open with nothing but beautiful land and watch the sun set down over the mountains. When we got back to the lodge an amazing feast was waiting for us and after eating ship food for so many days on end the food at the feast was like heaven!!! They had everything you could ever want! The next morning we had to get up at 4:15 for our early morning game drive, but we didn’t end up leaving the lodge till 6 am because of a few complications. We were out all day from 6 till 3:30, although we stopped to eat our breakfast and lunch that we brought along with us. The scenery alone was amazing. The land seemed like it stretched out forever and there was much more greenery then I had expected there to be. Watching animals in their natural environment is so different then seeing them in the zoo. The giraffes and elephants came up so close to our vehicle; they would cross either right in front of us or behind us. I was surprised by how short some of the elephant’s tusks were that I saw. I loved looking at the differing textures of the animal’s skin and fir. You really do get to see a different glimpse of the animals when you see them in their natural environment. Overall we saw bushbucks, klipspringers, Impela- those are the ones that are all over, waterbucks, and kudu. Those are all various types of antelope. We also saw giraffes, elephants, buffalos, bushpigs, warthogs, zebras, white rhinoceros, black rhinoceros, blackbacked jackel, and vervet monkeys. Some of the many birds we saw were lesser striped swallow, southern yellow-billed hornbill, lilac breasted rollers, and many more birds. I think of all the birds we saw the lilac breasted roller was my favorite it was extremely colorful, I’ll try to include a picture of it here. That evening about 9 of us went on an evening game drive. The sunset again was amazing and we were able to see a number of animals the most exciting of which was a leopard. Leopards are supposed to be one of the hardest animals to see and we were lucky enough to see one up close. We were nearing the end of our drive and it was already really dark outside, with the stars the moon and many many bugs out. The moon was a beautiful crimson red. We noticed an animal about 3 feet away from our vehicle heading in the same direction. Eventually it moved out into the brush and I wasn’t able to get a good picture of it because my camera can’t handle night pictures very well. We were all very excited to see the leopard and we actually got to watch it for a long time because it crouched down in the brush and watched us watching us. That evening we saw 4 out of 5 of the big 5 and we saw hippos as well. We were told that out of all of the animals hippos are the most dangerous because they only know one way to walk to and from the waterholes and if a human or an animal would be to get in their way they will bite it in half in order to keep moving along their way. The only animal we didn’t see after all 3 game drives was a lion. We were all a little bummed about that but it was extremely special to see a leopard. We headed back to the lodge and had another amazing dinner followed by a performance. For the performance men were dressed up with feathers in their hair, loincloths, and fur around their calves and arms. The women in the performance were wearing red fabric and played big drums. There were girls who were about 12 years old or so that wore loose beaded skirts and were topless. Each group of people took turns in center stage dancing while both of the other groups sang. Their music was beautiful and you could feel it start in your toes and then rise up through the rest of your body. My trip to Kruger was a lot of fun and someday I hope to go on another safari, and maybe next time I’ll go to a new place in South Africa or another country in Africa.
One day while walking around Long Street we got caught in the rain and made our way through the rain to South Africa’s National Gallery. There was a big exhibit on AIDS that I found very informative and touching. A description of AIDS in South Africa said that out of 8000 people who die everyday world wide from AIDS 1000 of them are living in South Africa, and in the last 25 years 25 million people have died from AIDS. All if the pieces of artwork were moving but there were two pieces that I really liked. The first piece was two photographs side by side. One of the pictures was of a man who was naked in his bed and was clearly on his last string about to die from AIDS and the picture next to it was of a mural on the side of a road on an overpass. At the top of the mural was the quote, “I’m tired of Mbeki saying HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.” I thought this piece was so powerful because it spoke truths about the South African President and his unwillingness to previously legalize antiviral drugs to fight AIDS in South Africa due to his belief that HIV does not cause AIDS, but that AIDS is caused by factors such as poverty. He was misinformed about the cause of AIDS by an American scientist whom other American scientists disagreed with. Antiviral drugs were not made legal and available in South Africa until just recently in 2004, so it’s no wonder that South Africa has one of the highest if not the highest rate of AIDS in the world. To have a victim of AIDS next to the picture of the mural gave a face to the issue and made it more real. The second piece that I liked in the AIDS exhibit was done by a woman who went to an AIDS clinic in South Africa and took photos of all of the patients. The patients ranged in ages from babies to the elderly. She developed the pictures and then made carbon copies of them with smoke (I’m not too sure about the exact process). The artist said that her intention was to show how the fragility of the photos and how easy they are to break symbolizes the fragility of the AIDS patients. I really enjoyed walking around the Gallery and we were there for quite some time. We then went to the District 6 Museum, which was awesome! The museum was in a small building but it was very interactive and was jam-packed full of things to look at and read about District 6. One of the displays was of a Barber Shop that used to be in District 6 before it was bulldozed. The Barber Shop exhibit was set up like a little hairdresser shop and had the original owner’s voice playing in the background talking about the shop. I wish we could have spent more time in the District 6 Museum but we got there only 15 or 20 min before closing.
The waterfront area where our ship was located reminded me of Pier 39 and San Francisco. It was very touristy and had a lot of Western and European influences. Cape Town is such a wealthy part of South Africa but at the same time the wealth is not distributed evenly across all of Cape Town. If you take a short 10 min drive from the main area in Cape Town you will come across numerous Townships that people still live in and the people who live there are almost exclusively Black. Though the formal laws of the Apartheid have ended there are still many inequalities present in South Africa. Blacks still have lower paying jobs, achieve lower levels of education, have higher unemployment rates, own less land, among other things in comparison to Whites. The lasting effects of historical discrimination against Blacks in South Africa are being alleviated little by little with the help of the Government and organizations such as Operation Hunger. Some of the improvements that the Government has made in South Africa include free primary school education for all, free health care for those ages 0-6, and Affirmative Action policies such as giving a certain percentage of land to Black South Africans. After being discriminated against and given little to no rights for basically 300 years, since the time of the Dutch take over, Black South African’s are trying to cope with forms of discrimination of the past that still affect them today, such as inheritance and land ownership. People living in the Townships in South African often live in single roomed buildings that look like shacks and are located basically on top of one another. Some of the Townships don’t have electricity or even running water. It was crazy to me to see such a stark difference in poverty between downtown Cape Town and the Townships. It’s just hard for me to comprehend how such vast differences in quality of living exist in such close proximity to one another. They say that Cape Town is very different from the rest of South Africa and if seeing the Townships there had such an effect on me and made me really think about things and put them into perspective I couldn’t imagine what my reactions would be to seeing other parts of South Africa as well as other countries in Africa. Seeing people in these situations I feel moved to do something about it even though I’m one person I feel like I want to do something, anything to help people in South Africa who are impoverished and or who have AIDS.
One of the really enjoyable and powerful experiences I had was doing the SAS sponsored Operation Hunger trip. Operation Hunger goes into small communities or Townships in South Africa to work with the families and community members to improve their living situations. They focus primarily on health concerns, especially the health of the children in the community. I did Operation Hunger the last day I was in South Africa. We went to a preschool, a middle school-though high school, and a Rastafarian Township. There must have been 60 or so kids aging from babies to 5 year olds at the preschool. The kids were so adorable and we were bouncing off the walls to play with us. We played all kids of games with them and there were smiles and laughs all around. The kids were really interested in us and loved to play with our hair and be picked up and swung around in circles. They were really affectionate and wanted to be as close to you as possible at all times. I just thought they were the cutest kids ever! Near the end of our time all of the kids got together and sang us a song and we sung back for them. Our next stop was a middle school with a high school. Before we really got to meet the kids we went into one classroom that was empty and learned a little bit about what Operation Hunger had been doing in the Rastafarian Community, which was our next stop. I noticed that in the classroom there was countless student made posters and other projects about AIDS and AIDS awareness. We met up with all of the students and faculty in a square outside. We didn’t get a chance to interact with the students which I would have liked but we did watch a performance that they put on for us. There were about 3 separate performances and each one had it’s own unique qualities. All of the students had such natural rhythm and dancing and singing seemed to come so easy to them. I have to say this was definitely a part of the day that made me really emotional. As I’ve said before there is something about music from the heart and soul that just resonates with me and gets me every time. One performance in particular really moved me and it was an all girls singing performance with a little bit of dancing. I don’t even know how to begin describing it and I tried to take a video of it with my camera but it came out without sound! Anyway it was one of those times when you feel all of your emotions in your chest and you feel so full of life and love. After the performances we went out to a rest stop to eat our lunches we had brought along. Our next stop was the Rastafarian Township. Operation Hunger had been working with this township for a little while to develop ways to better their community especially the health of their children. There had been two other Semester at Sea sponsored trips that visited and worked with the Township community before my group got there. The first day Semester at Sea and Operation hunger was at the Rastafarian Community they weighed the kids in the township with the permission of the community leaders and families of the children, and figured out which children were extremely malnourished and needed immediate aid and which kids were at risk for becoming malnourished. The second time that Semester at Sea and Operation Hunger workers visited they told the community members their results from weighing the children. The then talked with the various groups within the community including the men, the women, and the youth about what some of the main problems within the community were. The Rastafarian community came up with many problems including poverty, sick people, not enough child care, overcrowding, unemployment, unclean environment, youth not feeling loved by the community, and people sometimes having to go without food. The day that my Semester at Sea group went with Operation Hunger to the Township only a small group of 5 or 6 students and teachers were able to work with the community to continue to address the issues that they discussed earlier and the possible solutions to them. Together, community members, the group of 6 from SAS, and Operation Hunger workers brainstormed about what a larger problem was that linked many of their problems together and was a problem that they could manage to work with. They knew that they couldn’t focus on every problem but they could focus on one problem that might, if solved help to clear up other problems. The community decided that unemployment was the big issue that they wanted to work on tackling first. Once again Operation Hunger workers, SAS, and community members worked together to think about ways to combat unemployment. Together they were able to establish a plan of action starting with focusing on craftwork. Currently craft workers in the Rastafarian community are working independently but they felt it would be more profitable for them to work together. Their next step would be to access their strengths and weaknesses as a group and to figure out how they could improve. They would then need to look at their marketing strategy and brainstorm about how to acquire materials for their craftwork. Eventually they intend to branch out and sell their products nationally using the internet. This is one example of how Operation Hunger works to improve communities. They realize that everything is connected within a community and that if you improve one sector of it it will inevitable positively affect another. One of the most important aspects of Operation Hunger and other organizations like it is that it doesn’t just throw money at a problem, instead they encourage the community members to figure out their own problems and solutions while giving them the tools to do so. By letting the communities figure out what changes need to be made and how to go about it the communities have much more control over the decision making process and have a better chance at continuing to improve their lives once Operation Hunger leaves.
While our Operation Hunger representative, the 5 or 6 SAS people, and the handful of community leaders worked together to solve the issues of their community and find solutions to them; the rest of us walked around the township and interacted with all of the people who live there. We were really lucky to be able to explore the Township and communicate with all of the people there because they don’t usually allow people from other areas to come into their community and learn more about them. There was one little boy who was tied at my hip the whole time and wouldn’t let go of my hand. He was an 11-year-old boy but he looked much younger due to being malnourished. He was such a little show off he made me laugh so much! The community was extremely welcoming and wanted us to get a well-rounded impression of their culture and the way that they live. I felt honored to be able to see a glimpse of life that is so different from any other culture that I had witnessed before. I couldn’t imagine so many people in the US welcoming strangers into their lives so much and allowing them to see such personal aspects of it as well.
At the end of our visit with the Rastafarian community the little girls of the community put on a performance for us. The man who choreographed the dance that we watched has been trying to incorporate dance and song into the lives of the children in the community. The little girls wore matching skirts made up of various strips of colorful fabric. Their dance was so adorable! I really wish I could have videotaped these things to show all of you. After the performance I was sitting down next to a young woman and her 6-month-old baby. The baby looked like she was only 3 or so months old because of the lack of adequate healthcare that’s available for her and her mom. I got to talking to the woman and she told me her story or herself, her baby, and her boyfriend and how it’s hard to be such a young mom. She told me that she one day hopes to see America. I really enjoyed talking to her because it was a serious conversation but we also ended up laughing a lot. As I was getting on the bus to leave she wanted to take a picture the three of us (me, herself, and her baby). I was touched that she wanted a picture of the 3 of us because to me that meant that our conversation left something on her as well. After we took the picture she told me she would love to see me again and maybe that we would meet again in America.
Overall my time in South Africa was a lot of fun and brought up many emotions for me. The only thing that I was sad about was not having a chance to hike up Table Mountain. Everyday that we had free time and tried to hike up the mountain in was closed due to the wind! I really enjoyed South Africa but I know that it’s really different then all other countries in Africa and someday I would love to spend a month or so in another country in Africa such as Kenya, or Ethiopia, so I can really see a different side of Africa then what I’ve already seen. Well I miss you all back home and I’m enjoying my second day in Mauritius right now and I’m sure you’ll be reading about that in a week or so! Hope all is well with everyone! I always love to get emails and letters are especially fun!!!

Brazil Pictures

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Brazil pictures

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Brazil!

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3/1/07
Brazil…

What to say about Brazil???? Color, creativity, poverty, community, celebration, pride, and soul are all words that come to mind from my experiences through Brazil. While in Brazil I was able to visit a number of places and do a number of activities.
We were in Brazil during carnival so life was a big party and a little hectic at times. Before we got off the ship we were warned about the dangers of Brazil that exist and how those dangers are magnified during Carnival. I was glad they warned us so I was sure to take the appropriate precautions, such as wearing a money belt, not taking a really nice digital camera, not wearing any jewelry, etc. I think everyone was fine in Brazil as long as they were smart about being a cautious, however a number of groups of people were held at knifepoint and robbed. How had a bad experience….I lost my debit/credit card!!! Yup I know how did I do that? Well I lost it the 3rd day I was there and luckily the Executive Dean was able to track it down and return it to me the afternoon we were leaving Brazil. It turns out that I dropped it on a bus that we took back from the circus which is where I suspected I lost it. I am a lucky lady and will hold all of my valuables extremely close to me from here on out, taking care to check and make sure I have everything with me before exiting an area.
Here’s a detailed description from an email I wrote of my first few days in port:
We got to Salvador on Saturday morning after going to bed at 1 or 2 Friday night. We woke up at 5 am so we could watch the sunrise from the ship…but it was really cloudy. Then we left the ship around 10 or so and a bunch of us walked all around the Mercado Modelo. The Mercado Modelo reminded me of the straw market in the Bahamas. It consisted of an indoor market packed with all different items, buyers and sellers everywhere, and an outdoor market that housed different and the same sort of items sold in the indoor market. I enjoyed looking through all the items that the sellers had to offer from instruments, jewelry, artwork, postcards, pottery, clothing, travel knickknacks, hand made signs, and all sorts of other items. My favorite part about the Mercado was not the things they were selling but watching the relationships and communication between individuals both Brazilians and foreigners.
After the walking around the Mercado Modelo we took the elevator up to the upper level and walked around up there. There was so much carnival going on! All regular stores were closed during carnival including the post offices. It was really busy during the day and crazy at night. We walked around for a long time up top in the Pelourinho district and it was difficult for me to see some of the people who were so impoverished. There was one guy who at first I thought was a kid because he was very short and then I looked at him again and his feet were huge and his face looked older, so I knew that he was probably in his late teens and would have been much taller if he wasn’t so malnourished. There were also people laying in the streets.
On the other hand a lot of people were very festive, they were all dressed up in bright colors getting ready for Carnival to begin that night. We came across a lot of little kids dressed up for carnival! After we stopped off to get a snack a few of us walked back to the ship to drop off a friend because she had an SAS trip to get to. After we walked her back 2 friends and I took a cab to the Church of Nasso Senhor do Bonfirm. Our cab driver was very generous, saying that he’d wait for us and wouldn’t charge us extra for waiting. The church was really neat it had a small room with countless plastic body parts hanging from the ceiling. Pictures of people who vary in race, gender, age, and other unique characteristics lined the walls of the room. If someone had a physical or emotional ailment they could buy a plastic body part that corresponds to the area of their discomfort, and then add it to the other plastic body parts that were hanging from the ceiling. By hanging a replica of your inflicted body part you are able to call upon Saint Nosso Senhor do Bonfim to heal you. All of the photos that lined the room in the church were of people who had been cured or healed by the saint after they hanged a replica of their pained body part .If someone has a head ache or some other ailment then they buy a plastic replica of the matching body part the hurts and it gets hanged from the ceiling in this room and then you are supposedly healed. So all the people’s pictures lining the walls were of those who had been healed.
After the church our friend the cab driver took us to this old fort that we wanted to see. He got out of the taxi and walked around with us explaining to us in Portuguese about the temple. Trying to understand him was interesting…but it was ok because one of my friends knew a little Italian and the other friend I was with knew Spanish, so between them we were able to decipher what he was talking about. I guess the fort was the old Capital of Brazil before they built the new capital in Brasília. Our taxi friend took us back to the Mercado and the whole trip was only 15 US $!!! So we tipped him and went back to the Mercado to shop and walk around.
There’s a Martial art dance form in Brazil called Capoeira and it was invented during the slave days when Brazil was controlled by Portugal. Slaves were not allowed to do martial arts so they turned it into a dance form so that they could still practice without their slaveholders knowing. It’s really popular in Brazil right now, and it helps give street kids a positive direction to head in. In the Mercado Square there were some young boys doing Capoeira. One of the friends I was with thought she’d join in because she’s a gymnast so we took pictures of them and it was fun! Then we went back to the ship because I had to be back at 5 for an SAS trip to Carnival Electronico.
Carnival Electronico, was really really intense!!! 29 of us from SAS were on the trip and we were all wearing bright orange tank tops. We got to the Beach carnival (there are 3 main carnival paths in Salvador) and there were 1000 or so other people in the same bright orange tank top. All of us were squashed like sardines against one another following this giant semi truck called a bloco with Jamil, singing live atop it. Jamil is a very big sensation in Brazil so everyone around us knew all the words to his songs and were singing at the tops of their lungs. All of the people wearing orange shirts including myself were in a roped off section with security following us as we walked so that no viewers on the side could jump into our crowd. I found that being part of carnival was crazier then just watching it in that you had to keep your guard up. I have never had so many guys forcibly approach me in my entire life…Local guys would grab you all over, forcing themselves on you in an attempt to kiss you. By the end of it all the other girls and myself were throwing elbows to get away from them. Boys on the ship tried to help out by saying they were our boyfriends so we wouldn’t get hassled as bad. Myself and one other person ran into this local guy that helped us out and kept guys away. We had to walk for 7 hours strait and it was only a 2-mile distance so we were walking very slowly the whole time. For those of you Santa Cruz folks it was like Pink Umbrella man speed!!! My back was killing me!!! By the end of it 9 people went back to the ship early but I couldn’t cause all my stuff was on the bus. Everyone was on edge and I just had to keep telling myself to take it as a lesson in patience and as a chance to observe my surroundings. We finally got back to the ship around 3:30 in the morning so I had a long day the first night in Brazil.
One thing that stuck out to me about Carnival is that although they say that it’s a time for everyone to break all socioeconomic classes and come together to be anything and anyone they want to be, I felt that some people such as the very impoverished didn’t fully get to experience that. While walking with the other innumerable people through carnival on Carnival Electronico every so often you would see a person many times children with huge garbage bags collecting all of the beer cans and water bottles that were carelessly thrown in the streets. These people were barefoot walking through muck that I washed my shoes for 2 hours trying to get off. They were trampled over and thrown out of the ropes by the police. I remember dancing along shoulder to shoulder with sweaty strangers and a person who was basically buried beneath a blur of endless orange tank tops was reaching down to the ground and picking up these cans. That is an image that really stood out in my head for me and I will continue to think about it and what it means to me
The next morning I got up at 7:30 for breakfast then went back to bed at 8:30 till 10:30. Then I washed my clothes and shoes from the night before because there was beer and other people’s sweat, rain, and what ever else on me. I met some girls for lunch and then we went up to the Pelourinho district but the elevator had such a long line to get up so we ended up walking up the very steep hill to the Pelourinho district. We went to some stores and ended up meeting some guys and girls who were in their late 20’s early 30s who were from the States. They were renting a flat up above the street that the beach carnival is on (where I was the night before). Some of them came just to watch the week of carnival while others were going to be backpacking around South America for 5 months. They invited us to come join them in watching the carnival from their flat and we felt that they were really neat people who we were comfortable with. After making plans to hang out with them later we went to the internet café and then went back to the ship and hung out. One of our new friends we met earlier called us and so all 11 of us girls took a cab to the Barra district, where the beach carnival was.
Once we got dropped of we made buddy systems and chained our arms together so that no one would get lost or pick-pocketed. We got lost and couldn’t call our friend because we could only receive call and not make outgoing calls, but then we found this local guy who was in the carnival later on. He guided us through the streets and we eventually ended up getting to the flat with everyone in one piece.
My experience at carnival as a viewer was very different in comparison to my experience as a participant. Everything was much more relaxing and laid back. The view from the apartment was amazing. We could see all the blocos approaching followed by people in coordinated colors dancing. The participants in the carnival looked like different oceans of color. It was beautiful to see everyone perform their coordinated dances behind the blocos all together and to also see them as individuals each adding their own element of beauty. When we went down to the carnival and danced it was much more fun for me than the night before. I didn’t feel threatened as I did the night before and I felt that I could just relax and have fun. We had so much fun with our new friends, we Latin dancing, signing, talking about life overall and leaning over the windows that over look the streets to enjoy the sights of Carnival. We didn’t get back to the ship till 3 or so in the morning and then I had to get up at 7 the next morning. I was supposed to get up at 7 but accidentally overslept till 7:40 and almost missed my trip to the Companhia Picolino Circus!!! But I was able to make the trip to the circus and it was amazing!!
In Brazil many kids become homeless as young as seven or eight years of age and this poses a big poverty problem for Brazil. Many kids become homeless as young as seven or eight years of age. The Picolino Circus is the oldest circus in Brazil and it helps to get kids off of the streets of Brazil by giving them direction and putting something positive into their lives. The Picolino Circus group is currently working with 300 kids, and countless other students have gone through the program in the past. The street kids who go to Picolino’s circus for training receive daily meals at practices and are encouraged to attend public school. Most importantly the kids realize that they can accomplish something and begin to feel that it’s possible for them to escape their poverty. Picolino’s circus creates peace in each of the children’s lives who are involved by giving them direction and hope.
When we went to the circus we were taught by trainers who were all street kids before joining the Picolino Circus. The circus was so much fun!!! We did aerial dancing, type rope walking, unicycling, went on the trapeze, did tumbling with a trampoline, and learned how to juggle. Only one of the trainers and our tour guide spoke English but I felt that the trainers did a really nice job of demonstrating how to do the activities. My two favorite activities were aerial dancing and playing on the trapeze.
The day after the circus I went with about 10 people to Itaparica Island. We took an hour-long farie ride to get there and I had to borrow money from people because I still had no idea as to the location of my ATM card. When we got to the island we were trying to figure out where the beach was, and then we ran into a professor and his family and they told us to take a taxi to a certain beach that was supposed to be really nice. We found two taxi drivers to take us to the beach. Looking out the window of the cab we saw groups of people wearing outfits for carnival that looked like they were made out of bed sheets. Their outfits fully covered their bodies and they wore hats that covered their faces and had 3 parts of fabric coming off of them. There were also a lot of people lounging in the sun on the sides of the road enjoying carnival and their time off from work. Once we got to the beach there were tons of people there all enjoying the sunshine and eating good food. We hung out at the beach for 2 or 3 hours until we took cabs back to the farey depot. The line for farie tickets was crazy, everyone was pushing one another and we made a human chain so we didn’t lose anyone. Eventually we got our tickets for the farie and took it back to the main land.
The last day we were in Salvador was the first day that the city returned to normal because Carnival had ended the night before. A bunch of us went walking through the town and it was so different from what we experienced while Carnival was going on. The streets looked dead compared to how they looked while carnival was going on but I had no idea about what the city looked like on a regular basis. I really want to go back and visit other parts of Brazil. It’s funny when I go to each port I always leave with an urge to come back visit all the different parts I couldn’t fit into my schedule with SAS. I really want to come back to Brazil and explore the Amazon, Rio, Lencois, and Boipeba Island.
When I got back on the ship the night we were leaving I was having dinner with some friends and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu- how many people can say that!!!!! Anyway I asked him what his favorite part of Brazil was and he said it was Rio. He then asked me what my favorite part about Brazil was and I told him it was the people. Although life was crazy during carnival and some people had difficult experiences such as being robbed or being sexually harassed in carnival, for the most part the overall population of people were very kind. They all came together to celebrate life and to celebrate community. The people in Brazil are very open to telling you about their life and the people in it. We came across so many helpful people who went completely out of their way to aid us in our travels through Brazil.

Puerto Rico Pics!

2007-02-23T10:59:00.000-08:00

More pics from Puerto Rico

2007-02-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

Pics from Puerto Rico

2007-02-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

Please send me letters

2007-02-21T09:44:00.000-08:00

Please send me mail so I can feel sepecial and know how you all are here´s the link for where my mail should be send at port:

http://www.semesteratsea.com/voyages/spring2007/sp2007_communicatewship.html

Ok I need to figure out how to resize my pics so I can send them to all of you on here! Take care

Puerto Rico- sorry photos are not uploading!!!!!

2007-02-21T05:57:00.000-08:00

2/21/07
Hello everyone I'm sorry but my pictures aren't uploading for some reason but I'll try to figure it out and load them soon!!! Sorry it’s taken me so long to write about Puerto Rico, but school on the ship has been really hectic….I have an insane amount of reading. Everyone has been complaining about the workload; I guess that when they moved from being sponsored by Univ. of Pittsburgh to Univ. of Virginia the workload increased as well. I think I’m reading for school almost every moment on the ship, which can get to be a bit too much at times, Brazil has been a nice break so far!!! Puerto Rico was amazing! We got into Puerto Rico last Wednesday at 6:50 and I woke up early to take pictures as we approached Puerto Rico. The first sight I saw was Fort Morro surrounded by the sunrise. Around 8 am the Governor of Puerto Rico came and spoke to us on the ship. I enjoyed listening to his speech and was also happy to hear his point of view on Puerto Rico and its relationship to the US as a commonwealth. The Governor emphasized that even though Puerto Ricans are US citizens they are Puerto Rican’s first and foremost. He said that they have their own cultural nation and are proud of their lifestyles, traditions, customs, and history. Following the Governor’s speech we had to present our passports to the Puerto Rican customs agents on board the ship to be cleared. We were finally able to get off the ship around 10:30 a.m. or so. A bunch of friends and I walked all over old San Juan during the day. I’ve included a bunch of pictures from that day. We led our own tour around old San Juan and got a feel for the area. I loved the narrow roads that were nestled between two sides of brightly colored buildings. We stumbled upon a beautiful fountain down by the water and then made our way back up to the town. We walked up a narrow street with many mangrove trees that led up to a church, so we decided to go inside and check the church out. There was a service going on in the church and people were singing in Spanish. The whole atmosphere was very peaceful and like a breath of fresh air. After the visiting the church we went to lunch at a restaurant called Plaza Garibaldi that was really good and yes I had nachos of course!!! After lunch we walked around some more and made our way up to one of the two forts, San Cristobal. San Cristobal was used for defense against foreign invasion and was finished being built in the 1780’s. The view over looking the city from San Cristobal was awesome! Next we went to a store where we could buy snakes and I was also finally able to get some flip-flops, sunglasses, and sunscreen so I was a happy camper! After an afternoon spent in old San Juan we headed back to the ship to get dinner and get ready to go out later. Around 6 or so I left for a trip to Bioluminescent Bay. The bus ride was really bumpy and there was a lot of traffic because the Caribbean baseball series was going on, but our trip was well worth it! We got to Bioluminescent Bay around 9 or 10 and everyone piled into two person kayaks. I just happened to be in the same kayak as the man that my mom, sister and I met on the fairy over to Harbor Island, so it was really fun to chat with one another about the trip so far and catch up. We kayaked through a narrow channel that was lined on either side by huge mangrove trees and eventually ended up in the bioluminescent bay. The mangrove trees branched out to meet one another in the middle of the channel above you. I am in love with mangrove trees and just think that they are gorgeous. Bioluminescence at a very high concentration only happens in a handful of places around the world and three of them are in Puerto Rico. When you put your hand in the water and you move it slowly it looks like there are tiny beads of neon light running up and down your hand and if you move your hand quickly it looks like your hand is surrounded by a cloud of neon light. Apparently Aristotle is said to have described it by saying, “You strike the sea with a rod by night and the water is seen to shine.” There’s no way to describe it, it’s like magical fairy dust that’s all around you. We got to get out of our kayaks and swim around in the Bioluminescence Bay with our life jackets. Bioluminescence is caused by billions of single celled living organisms each releasing their oxygen when pressure is applied onto their cell wall. It takes about a half an hour for each organism to get enough oxygen once again so it can emit it’s light again. It was an amazingly beautiful experience! We ended up getting back late from the Bioluminescence Bay trip and I accidentally forgot my bathing suit bottoms on the bus…yes those were my second pair of bathing suit bottoms I’ve lost since I left home. The following day, Feb. 8th I got up early for an 8-mile bike trip and was a little groggy because I only had about 5 hours of sleep. We biked along the coast on a raised wooden boardwalk that was surrounded by trees. Every so often we’d pass small houses on one side of the board walk that were painted vibrant colors and I wanted to take pictures of them but I am not so good at taking good pictures and balancing on my bike at the same time. The area we biked through reminded me of some parts of Costa Rica. After 4 miles of bike riding which only felt like 5 min we ended up at a small beach that no one else was on. We had 45 mins to hang out on the beach and relax. Someone found a coconut and cut it open to share with everyone. We turned our bikes around and biked back the same way we came. After we got back to the bike rental we gave our bikes back and went down to the beach to hang out for an hour or so. I thought the beach was really pretty. The water was clear and only came up to your as waist at deep the deepest parts. It led out to a rock barrier that the waves would crash over. Just above the rock barrier were tide pools with all sorts of life forms. After the beach we headed back to the ship; once I got there I took a 2-hour nap and then left with some friends for Old San Juan to go out to dinner. Before we got to dinner we stopped off at a store and I met this women who really impacted me. The women worked in the store and we started talking about things and then one thing led to another and she began to tell me about herself and her challenges. She was a 27-year-old full time student in her last semester of college to get her B.A., but she was also working full time and raising a one-year-old baby girl all on her own. She said that she plans to go on and get her Masters in social studies so she can teach. Her partner and her recently separated in December and since then she’s been raising her daughter on her own so any money that she can bring in goes towards her daughter. I was just so impressed by what a strong person she was and how she faces all these challenges yet she has faith in herself. I told her that I was touched by her story and really appreciated hearing about her life. She said that she didn’t get anything for her Birthday so she was buying two gifts for her self from the store. Hearing her story I became very emotional as did she, and then she told me something that really hit home for me. She said that in every port I go to I will meet some person from that place that I will make some kind of connection with. She told me that I needed to take that moment and hold it so that I could always remember it and know how special it was. By the end of the conversation we were both very teary eyed. I know that there are many other women in her situation or in much worse situations all around the world but I know that her story will stick with me because I really felt I made a connection with her. I always felt that I would meet someone in every port and to have her tell me that she felt that way too and to make a point to tell me to hold every moment that I have with each person I meet dear meant a lot to me. So after we left the store we went to dinner at Barrachina, which just happens to be the place where the Pina Colada was invented in 1963 and we all know how much I love Pina Coladas. The funny thing was that going into the restaurant we didn’t even know that it was the birthplace of the Pina Colada. We feasted and then headed back to the ship to take showers and get ready to go out. About 6 of us left the ship around 9 or 10 and took a cab up to the bar district in Old San Juan, but once we got there we were overwhelmed by how many Semester at Sea kids were running around. We felt like Semester at Sea had taken over the town and there was no way to get a vibe for the local bar scene because it was just bizerk everywhere. We really just wanted to go somewhere that was popular with the locals and not many SAS kids were at where we could try our hand at Latin Dance. We didn’t end up finding any place and Jenna and I soon became tired of looking and decided to call it quits around 1 and head back to the ship. The next day, which was our last day in Puerto Rico, I went on a hike through the rain forest at 8 in the morning. Our tour guide was this really funny German woman who had moved to Puerto Rico a long time ago. She was very upbeat and gave us tons of information about Puerto Rico. The vegetation on the hike was very lush and great to look at but the hike itself was not all that exciting. I wouldn’t call it a hike, it was more like a stroll through the rainforest on a small pavthed path that was surrounded by beautiful plants and trees. We walked to the El Yunque waterfall and stayed to play in the waterfall for about a half an hour until we continued on our stroll through the rainforest. It would have been nice to do a real hike through the rain forest and climb al the way up to the top of the mountain so you could see the view, but I’m beginning to learn about which trips I would rather do with Semester at Sea and which trips I think would be better to do independently. After our hike we went out to lunch at a local restaurant down the street and the owners were so kind! When we got there they already had everything prepared because they knew we were coming. The food was sooo good! After lunch we took our bus to a huge beach that was also a park as well. There were tons of people there but the water was really nice and beach seemed to go on forever. We came back to the ship and then a bunch of us left to go send our postcards out and get some dinner. We ended up eating at this nice restaurant out on the street. We were all in a big hurry because we had to be on the ship by 9 P.M. and for every minute you’re late you get 10 min of dock time, meaning you can’t get off for 10 min increments at the next port. We weren’t sure how long the line would be to get through security to get back on the ship and we were trying to get back by 7:30 but were worried we would get back late. We got our check with our food and paid while we were still eating. Once everyone was done we ran to get a taxi to get back to the ship. As we were rushing away a local man yelled to us that we had to pay and we turned around and yelled back that we already did, he thought we were dinning and ditching. Well we made it back to the ship with plenty of time to spare and now we can get an idea about how busy it is to get back on the ship for Brazil. Some ports we are stopping in though we can’t get close to land so we have to drop anchor and use our life boats to get to and from the ship and I bet that those lines will be long. Overall I had a great time in Puerto Rico. I think my favorite things were the all of the brilliant colored buildings scrunched next to one another that lined the narrow streets, Bioluminescence Bay, and meeting that woman and having that connection with her. Well I hope all is well, you can contact me if you all have time, and I’ll check all of my internet stuff when I can, especially at port because it’s so cheap. It’s our last day in Brazil today and I’m going to go to the internet café this afternoon to check emails and what not because it’s only $1.50 for 40 min of internet use compared to 40 cents a min on the ship. I’ll try to write about Brazil soon, and I’ve been writing pages in my journal everyday so that I can be able to transcribe a lot of it for you all up here so I can remember everything! I also wanted to apologize for my writing in this blog because I know that it’s horrible, but I’m just trying to write as much as I can as quickly as I can and get it all done. I’m sort of embarrassed to put such poor writing up on the internet but at the same time I want to keep you all informed!

On The Ship

2007-02-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

This is my first full day on the ship! We set off at 5:00 pm Bahaman time, or 2:00 pm California time on February 4th. So far things have been really good! The ship is very nice; it’s set up sort of like a cruse ship but instead of having a casino or other regular cruse ship rooms we have classrooms and meeting rooms: ie student union. We also have a pool and a spa….yes I can get a wide variety of massages, my nails done, go in the sauna or steam room as well as other things! I used the fitness center last night and it was kind of a balancing act to run on the treadmill while the ship is rocking but it worked out. I haven’t gotten seasick yet but knock on wood! The only time I got a little seasick was during lecture/orientations. All of the people on the ship are really nice. Everyone is excited to be here and get the trip started! I’ve met so many people and it’s hard to put names and faces together when I run into them again! I like my roommate a lot; she’s one of 80 students who go to University of Boulder Colorado and is on SAS, so she knows a lot of people here. There are 702 students, which is the largest amount of students that SAS has ever had. Before we left yesterday we had a mandatory safety procedure and it took forever!!!!!! Once we got that out of the way we were able to head out. We ate dinner and then went to a welcome orientation where both the Executive Dean and the Academic Dean spoke. Our last meeting was at 9:30 last night with our seas (each floor is divided up into different seas with about 80 students per sea. Sometime during the voyage we have a day of Sea Olympics where each sea competes against one another in various activities. There are tons of meetings planned for today from 9 am to 9 pm with small breaks for lunch and dinner in between. We start classes tomorrow and then on Wednesday we’ll be at Puerto Rico our first port!!!! I’m excited but also a little nervous about the classes but I’m sure everything will turn out fine! I’m looking forward to blending the knowledge from both the classroom and port to better understand the world and the people in it. We have yet to meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I’m surprised we haven’t been formally introduced to him in one of our orientations, but I hope I get to meet him soon! I hope everyone is doing well back home and I’ll write more after Puerto Rico. You can write me emails or send me letters I’ll try and get the addresses for my various ports up soon.

Harbor Island

2007-01-31T09:23:00.000-08:00

Harbor Island is a beautiful place all around! The people are genuinely nice, the pace of life is easy and relaxing, the beaches are spectacular and the pina coladas are the best any of us, my mom sis and I, have ever tried! We arrived on Harbor Island on Monday and were staying at a hotel in Nassau on Saturday and Sunday. We took a fairy for 2 hours form Nassau to Harbor Island. We met a very nice man on the way over to Harbor Island who is also going to be going on Semester at Sea. He is going as a spouse, his wife is the head of the mental health department on the ship. He has been kind enough to show us around a little and hook us up with a good golf cart rental place. Almost everyone on the Island drives golf carts around because the Island is only 3 miles long. We are staying in a big yellow house on Harbor Island that has amazing views of the ocean on two sides of the house. Along with the house came a membership to the Coral Sands resort which is where we have been spending part of our afternoons laying in the pink sand. The sand on Harbor Island is the softest sand I have ever walked in! It feels like your walking in flour and when you look closely at it you will see that it is made up of pure white sand mixed with a few drops of pink coral. The pic of the flower and the pond that I've included are both pictures I took at the Pink Sands resort, which is where we ate lunch yesterday. The picture of sunset is taken from the Marina which is where we had drinks and tried fried conch with our new friend yesterday. We leave here on Thursday and go to Atlantis which will be a big change from Harbor Island. I know that I will definitely come and visit Harbor Island again. It's one of those places where you loose sense of time and everything else but the sun, beach, and the people fall away from your mind to leave you relaxed and at peace. Hope all is well back home! Take care!

The Voyage

2007-01-27T03:24:00.000-08:00

At 3:45 this morning I will be on my way to the airport to catch a flight to the Bahamas with my mom and sister. We will be spending a week in the Bahamas enjoying ourselves before I set off on my Semester at Sea trip on Feb. 4th. Not only will 700 other students be joining me on this adventure of a lifetime, but so will Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is best known for his work against the apartheid. I get to travel the world, have amazing experiences, meet awesome people and I also get the chance to be influenced by a key peace figure in today’s world. I will be taking classes on the ship that include, Global Studies, Abnormal Psychology, Psychology of Women, and Perspectives on Peace. This will be a very powerful experience to say the least, and I hope to write as much about my adventure as I can!