Taiwan Day 1

Our last international port was supposed to be Japan, but because of the tsunami/earthquake we rerouted to Taiwan. People were unhappy. Everyone wanted to go to the Philippines, then South Korea, so when we got the third choice of the vast majority of the boat people were pissed.  I wanted to go to the Philippines as well. I can’t say that I had a good reason for it, it just sounded more exciting than Taiwan, but when I heard we were going to Taiwan I maintained a good attitude: I was going to go somewhere that I would have NEVER chosen to go otherwise, and I can go back to Japan and the Philippines if I want to.

When we arrived on the first day, I chose to go with my friend Whitney on her FDP to the National Palace Museum. The National Palace Museum is an art museum of the ROC in Taipei, the capital, and is one of the biggest art museums in the world. The permanent collection is over 650,000 pieces and they can show less than 10% of the collection at one.  The collection consists of many artifacts from the QING Dynasty that were collected by China’s emperors and fought over between China and Taiwan for many years. When the ROC moved to Taiwan in 1948 they took the collection with them and hid it in a mountainside and the PRC still claim that the collection belongs to them, but Taiwan refuses to return it and now has it on display for the public in the museum.

The museum was very cool. To be honest, I’m not really an ancient artifact kind of person but I definitely enjoyed it and was glad that I went. There was huge 8,000-year-old golden Buddha statues and a huge collection of jade.  I thought it was ok, but Whitney, who is an artist, LOVED IT, so for the more art-oriented people I think it, was a lot more powerful.  I did get a delicious caramel macchiato in the café. I understand coffee.

After the museum we were already in Taipei (we docked in Keelung) so me, D, Whitney and Emilio decided to just start walking and hoped to eventually meet up with everyone else.  We stopped in a gas station and bought some snacks and drinks and just started walking down the street. I had gotten a Mike’s Hard and wanted to ask the police man if I could drink it on the street (it was 6:30pm!) and it will took awhile for him to understand what I was even asking, and when he did he laughed at me! He was like “uh, yeah….” So that was cool.  No open container laws in Taiwan.

We walked and walked and eventually decided we were hungry so we went into this little place that had a bunch of food assembly-line style. I don’t think they had ever seen tourists in their life; it was extremely “local.”  We walked down the line and pointed to what we wanted and my strategy was “if it’s chicken, I’ll probably like it,” and avoided everything else.  Chicken seemed safe, and it was. And pretty good too.

We’d been walking probably close to two hours (and stopping in stores and to take pictures along the way) and hadn’t seen anything close to a hotel so we decided to take a cab to the one hotel that we knew the name of. We got there and it was $100 a room for one night, but they made it very clear that only two people could sleep in a room and we would need two rooms.  We walked across the street and saw this delightfully sketchy little hotel with the sweetest little lady working there. And I (me, yes me!) talked down a price in an establishment for the first time in my life! I got her down from $85 to $65 for the four of us and we had the cutest, sketchiest room. It’s not that it was sketchy, kind of just old, but we were very happy with it.  When SAS takes you on trips they put you up in the NICEST places. Way nicer than I would ever stay with friends, so it was nice to stay somewhere a little bit cheaper and sketchier and feel like we were actually traveling and not being pampered.

After we got settled we decided to walk! We walked through what appeared to be the local night market, which was interesting. There were a bunch of carnival games and street food.  Oh, the other thing about Taiwan, there are bakeries and pastry shops every 5 feet! They are more common than coffee shops in Seattle, it’s insane. So we walked through the market and went in and out of bakeries admiring all of the cakes until we decided we wanted to go out and realized we hadn’t seen a bar anywhere, all day.

We knew the name of one bar because Whitney had heard people were going there so we jumped in a cab there. It was called The Brass Monkey and it was basically an American Sports Bar filled with Taiwanese locals, with pool tables, foosball, and grill food. But the drinks were SO EXPENSIVE. $6 for a beer, $8 for a shot, $10 for a cocktail. This place was not night enough for that, so I put a one-drink limit on myself and Whitney ordered juice and spiked it.  Around 1:30 the bar closed and we were all tired so we decided to head back to the hotel room to hang out and go to sleep.

still alive

I realize I have made the biggest blog-mistake and have probably lost all of my reader-ship because I haven't updated in almost a month. It's been crazy though. A LOT going on. We disembark the day after tomorrow, which means back to regular life. However, if I haven't scared you off by my lack of entries keep checking back over the next two weeks because there will be A LOT going up. I am going to complete my port entries, write a little bit about the end of ship life, and about my re-entry back into the states. Y'all have stuck with me for three and a half months and if you're still around then don't give up yet.  Tomorrow is going to be extremely busy with finishing packing, convocation and then final good-byes, then off to Mackenzies' grandmas for two days, then back to Seattle, but amidst all of the hecticness I am going to get my thoughts down on paper, or a screen, or anything, especial the re-entry stuff because I'm sure I will have a lot of thoughts.

So stay tuned!!!

Oh, a few pieces of news just because I'm excited...

I have gotten one grade so far, for Global Studies, my least favorite class and I got an A-!!!
I also received an email from my professor about one of my assignments and he added on at the end "p.s. you got a 100.5% on the final exam! rock on."  Sooo I'm pretty psyched. I worked really hard in that class and it's nice to have it pay off. We had a huge paper and if I did as well as I think I did I should be golden :)

Taiwan, you lookin' mighty fine

Hello blog friends. It's been a whirlwind month of traveling from port to port to port. On the ship we call it Speed-Asia, like speed-dating, but with Asia.  We now have !!12!! days on the ship, our longest stretch yet, and it's going to be rough. I'm going to try and take this time to focus on studying, working out, and preparing to come back home. I also hope to have some reading material up for all of my lovely loyal followers in the next few days. For those of you I've spoken to, you know I didn't really like China. I'm not sure what/how I'm going to write about it.  I may end up glazing over it, at least for now, but I promise to finish my India writing and write about Taiwan which I LOVED.  Since we have finally finished all of our international ports, I put them in order from my favorite to least favorite and thought I would share that. I didn't include Mauritius because we only spent one day there and I spent it drinking on the beach, so I don't think I have a valid assessment of the country. In my defense, I wanted to go do a "Walk with Lions" program but it was Sunday so everything was closed. Also, to clarify, I liked everywhere except China. I wouldn't consider Vietnam my second-least-favorite country, I consider it my eighth-favorite.  But I consider China my least favorite. xo



1. India
2. South Africa
3. Taiwan
4. Ghana
5. Brazil
6. Singapore
7. Dominica
8. Vietnam
9. China

Hong Kong

Today was my first day in China.  Our schedule for China is a bit different than other ports. We docked in Hong Kong today, and the ship will set sail for Shang Hai tomorrow night.  The ship then arrives in Shang Hai on the 30th, and will leave the evening of April 1.  I am on an SAS trip to Beijing, which means I had today in Hong Kong, will leave for Beijing tomorrow, and stay there for four days, so I’ll miss the transit days (there are no classes) then I’ll get the last two days in Shang Hai. 

With only a day in Hong Kong Hassan and I decided we wanted to have a great adventurous day with no one holding us back so we chose to separate from the group and go out alone. The motto of the day was “forward is the way!” We could never turn around unless we really needed to, like when we had to find an atm and when we almost ended up eating lunch at somewhere called “Main Street USA.”

The day started by us disembarking the boat into the HUGEST MALL EVER. Seriously, the HUGEST. MALL. EVER. It was crazy and overwhelming and our only goal was to get out of it as quickly as possible.  We eventually found our way out and started wandering the (gorgeous, expensive) streets of Hong Kong. Our goal was to take a bus somewhere but the bus system was way too complicated so in the interest of saving time we jumped into a cab and asked to go the only place we knew the name of “Stanley Market.”  The ride there with traffic was about a half hour, and on the way we passed something called “Ocean Park.” We didn’t know anything about it except on the signs there were pandas and dolphins so we knew we had to go.

We eventually got to Stanley Market and wandered around looking at everything. I have been wanting to buy a Maj set of my own in China but I didn’t find any as pretty as my moms so I didn’t get one today, but I’m going to continue on my search! My goal is still to get a Maj game going in Seattle, I really do go through withdrawal when I’m at school.  After an hour of wandering we realized we were WAY marketed out and wanted to get lunch.

We passed a really nice, authentic looking Chinese place but wanted to see what else there was and the waterfront looked nice so we went down there, only to find the most American area ever. Everyone was eating burgers and the restaurants titles were things like “Main Street USA,” “The Pub” and “American Place.” Yeah, not our style.  This was the occasion we decided it was ok to backtrack and went back to the little Chinese place and got the most delicious food, we got spring rolls and lichi wine and noodles and poached chicken and custard donut things and it was all steaming hot and absolutely delicious.

After lunch we decided… OCEAN PARK TIME!!! Ocean Park is some kind of amusement park, there was an aquarium, pandas, sea lions, some rides and HELLA gift shops. At least one gift shop per other attraction.  The strange thing about it though was the median age of the park-goers. It was probably 15% families with children, 10% teenagers, 5% foreigners and the other 70%, I kid you not, were pushy middle aged people. I’m talking single men in business suits pushing in front of us at the aquarium and waiting in line to go on “The Flash,” an upside down turny ride.  The amount of older people there was ridiculous and we couldn’t quite figure it out but I guess people do different things for fun in China.

The aquarium had some cool stuff but was VERY overwhelming. Everyone was really excited and therefore kind of rude and pushy. I got shoved several times and people traveled in huge groups of maybe 15 and would crowd around exhibits for 15 minutes, then go to crowd around the next exhibit and a new group of 15 would take their place. I don’t want to be any un-pc assumptions or generalizations but it was very frustrating and I’ll let you form your own opinion. With children I understand that they want to see the cuddle fish, it was just strange to me to have to fight over space with people in their 50’s.  There were a bunch of baby hammer head sharks and giant sting rays and that was epic.

After the aquarium I got to see A PANDA EAT BAMBOO!!! It was sooooooooooo cute. Really, so cute. There was also a panda sleeping in a tree which I thought was adorable but no one else did, they were all crowded around the panda eating and didn’t care about the sleepy one. I thought they were both equally as cute but I guess the one with the bamboo did the first mention with the exclamation marks so maybe I agree with everyone else at the park.

After the pandas we road The Flash which was basically a giant ride that spins you around and turns you upside down. Normally at this age I wouldn’t go near this thing but the view you got of Hong Kong was amaaaazing and made the whole trip worth it.  There was one moment where at the top I was upside down looking at the city knowing I was on the other side of the world from where I started, that I got here on a boat across the ocean and that north and south don’t really mean anything, they’re just labels and the earth is floating somewhere in the galaxy and for that split second everything made sense, but Hassan thinks I just thought the ride would break and I would die. 

Following The Flash we tried to keep enjoying the park but got very overwhelmed with the massive amount of pushy groups of people and decided to leave. We couldn’t leave without riding the gandala over the mountain though! It was very cool but we had to wait in line for around 45 minutes and fight off this dude in a suit behind us who kept trying to inch past, but the view was awesome once we got up there. I almost freaked out when we started discussing what would happen if it broke up luckily everything turned out all right.

We left Ocean Park and at that point I kind of hit a wall. The waves were REALLY rough coming from Vietnam to China and I, along with the rest of the boat, barely slept. At one point Ashley and I were each literally thrown two feet into the air off of our beds a few times in a row, lights were falling down in the union. It’s been bad. It had finally got the best of me and we decided to get back to the boat and relax.

All was fine until we ended up back in that stupid massive mall. We got SO LOST. We literally wandered around for about an hour trying to get to the gangway and find the boat and I was soooo exhausted and overwhelmed and just wanted to get into my bed that when we finally found it I almost cried, only except there was a sit down pizza hut so we decided to reward ourselves in an American way and get pizza. It was delicious of course but by the end I literally could barely keep my eyes open let alone hold a conversation so i dragged myself back to the boat afterward and got into bed and that’s where I’ve remained for the past four hours. I haven’t slept yet but definitely feel more rested.  I feel a little bit guilty about not going out my one night in Hong Kong but I just wasn’t up for it tonight. I am going to spend the next four days tarveling through Beijing and I want to be well rested for it. Besides, things are EXPENSIVE here. And I don’t need to waste money so I can feel terrible tomorrow. I very rarely have the room to myself and the boat in silence so this relaxation has been nice.

That’s about it. I will try to update about Beijing as we got along so I don’t get behind as I have in the past with entries.  Hope everyone is doing well! Sorry about the lack of pictures, facebook was blocked in Vietnam and is blocked in China as well. That’s how you know there’s something screwy with a government…  I’ll have them up as soon as I can!

Vietnam Part 2

The third day in the morning I went back to the market to buy this painting I had decided not to get the day before because I wanted to sleep on it. I decided for $15 it was worth it and the lady knocked it down to $12.  I had also seen the most amazing carry-on suitcase the day before that I wanted to get but couldn’t find it ANYWHERE. I should have known not to sleep on something I loved, I ended up looking for it the rest of the week and couldn’t find it so maybe in China. It was a tan color with maps of different parts of the world all over it, it was perfect.  Perhaps next time.

In the afternoon I decided to get a mani/pedi.  Everyone says this is what you do in Vietnam.  I was stupid and didn’t come outside with the name of the place, I just asked the driver to take me there which I should have been smarter than to do in Vietnam. In India that’s fine, they may try to overcharge you but they’re honest and good-hearted (at least in my experience) but in Vietnam not so much. The guy took me to this broken down salon with construction being done on the whole front. The lady told me it would be 400,000 ($20) dong for a manicure and pedicure which I KNEW wasn’t right, that’s more than I pay at home at my Vietnamese salon, it shouldn’t have been more than 200,00 and I said so. We agreed on 300,000. I knew I was overpaying but thought it was still pretty cheap and it would be worth it. She made me pay immediately which I did and assumed she would take me into the back and into the salon part. Nope… she takes out a fold out table, a bucket of water, some nail polish remover, five colors and a nail file. She literally dipped my hands in water, filed one of them and started to paint them this ugly pink color.  All the while she kept stopping to go outside and talk to the construction guys. I told her it was taking too long and I had to go and wanted to cancel the pedicure but she said a manicure was the same price as a manicure/pedicure and I couldn’t have my money back.  Damn.  As much as I wanted to book it out of there I wanted my moneys worth and I wanted that stupid lady to touch my feet so I took the pedicure.  I finally got out of there hot and exhausted and pissed off with the worst manicure of my life but once again, learning experience.

It turns out that a lot of people in Vietnam scam foreigners by offering services that are known to be good in Vietnam, but by being pushy and confusing and with the language barrier people get confused and they end up getting ripped off. My friend Tatiana tried to get an hour massage but had a lady rub her back for 20 minutes, leave for 10, come back for 10 and then leave to give some other people pedicures.

I got back to the boat to take a nap but Andrew called and wanted to hang out so I put my stuff down, changed and went back to the Rex to meet him. We jumped into a cab and asked the driver to take us to a “nice Vietnamese restaurant” and luckily this guy pulled through. We went somewhere that appeared really nice and got the most delicious chicken, duck, appetizers and cocktails for around $20 altogether.  Afterwards we noticed a sign for massages across the street.  It was in a nice building so we determined it was safe and not a scam.  We each got 1 hour massages for 139,000 dong… about $7.25.  And they were GREAT!  I haven’t been able to crack my back since, it was definitely one of the best massages I have ever gotten, I fell asleep halfway through, and when I left the girl a 50,000 dong tip, or $2.50, she just about fell over. Andrews girl did offer him a “happy ending” although he turned it down, I’m pretty sure he’s the only American guy to ever do that, but he has very strong views about prostitution and I respect him for that.

After our massages we headed back to the boat and changed and went to one of the port bars with everyone to wait for Hassan and Whitney to come back from Cambodia. Eventually they got back and I went out to Apolacylpse with some friends. What was supposed to be a fun night was still fun I guess but was once again ruined for me by people who can’t hold themselves together.  A girl got too drunk and I ended up babysitting her all night which is fine, I don’t mind being there for my friends, but eventually  when endearing stumbling turned into barging out of a hotel room and walking alone down alleys I was not happy anymore. I literally chased this girl barefoot and dragged her back to the hotel and spent two hours trying to reason with her. At around 4:30 am she was being irrational and making phone calls to go home and I couldn’t deal with it anymore so I tagged Hassan in and went to the room to try and get some sleep. That was the first and last time I will get a hotel room in port. It’s elaborate, a liability, dramatic and I really like my own bed. At least when we go back to the ship people contain themselves but when they know they have a hotel room they tend to get way too drunk.

Maybe I’m being too high and mighty because I know that everyone drinks, that I drink, that I have been too drunk and it’s a normal part of college and adult life but I have standards and I wish other people did too, this isn’t freshmen year, we’re not 18.  I got too drunk the first night in Dominica and promised myself right there it wouldn’t happen again and I would not have to be taken care of again on this trip and I have held to that. I am more than happy to take care of someone once, twice, but the same girl shouldn’t have to be taken care of every night in the same port, it’s not fair to everyone else.  Several people in Vietnam didn’t show up for their commitments with me or other people or their FDPs because they were too hungover and I’m not ok with that.  You need to at least show up to cancel and not leave people hanging.  Anyway, that’s my rant. To clarify, I am not against drinking or my friends drinking or anything like that, I just  think we’re at an age where it needs to be done responsibly.  Especially when we have so little time. If someone wants to waste 1 of 5 days in a country hungover, 20% of their time that’s their thing but I’m not going to waste my time.

Anyway, Hassan took over and talked some sense into her which as good. I fell asleep around 5 and woke up around 6:30 with the sun. I had barely slept but didn’t really feel comfortable in the room so I decided to try and skype Rollie. I packed up my computer into my industrial protection strength pacsafe backpack, put on my fanny pack and was off.  This was the first time I had to cross a road in Vietnam by myself. The roads are CRAZY. Cyclists back and forth constantly. You have to just walk across the street very slowly at a steady pace and they’ll go around you or so I’m told.  I never quite figured it out and was terrified so I developed my own method. Find an old Vietnamese person, stand shoulder to shoulder with them, do whatever they do and no matter what don’t look at the bikes an inch away from your stomach. 

Even though I only walked about 10 minutes away from the hotel I ended up in the least touristy place possible. Everyone was staring at me, no one spoke any English and normal life was just going about. It was cool to see it without the influence of people trying to sell things or get me on their bike or cab or whatever, to just exist in the environment and see how it worked. Eventually I found an outdoor café with a sign that said “wifi” so I went in and sat down. After a lot of gesturing I managed to get what I think was iced coffee although it was very strong and I could barely drink it.  They did have a sweet wifi connection though and I got to skype for close to an hour with no problems which is very rare. 

After the skype date I wanted to cry at the thought of trying to cross the street again so I just grabbed a motorbike back to the hotel and woke everyone up. We walked around for awhile and ended up stumbling into a really expensive mall where I wouldn’t touch anything although I did buy a delicious homemade donut.  The hard thing about Ho Chi Minh is that literally all there is to do is party and shop. To do anything cultural aside from the War museum you have to go at least 3 hours outside the city and I just wasn’t in the mood to do that, I wanted to relax, I have traveled out of every port so far and just wanted to kick it. 

I went back to the boat for lunch and all of a sudden my exhaustion from only sleeping three hours the night before hit me and I decided to take a nap. I passed out until about 6 when my friend Amy called me so we could go pick up our dresses. I woke up still delirious but we made it to the tailor.  My dress is cute and fits well but the tailor took a lot of creative liberties in toning down how elaborate the dress was so it really looks nothing like the picture.  It’s still cute, but it’s kind of low cut but also kind of long so I’m not sure what to do with it yet. I’m sure it will be a nice spring in Seattle dress and I’m excited to wear it when I get home.

We walked around the market for a bit but at around 9 I was exhausted so I just went back to the boat.  I had missed dinner so I went up to the 7th deck to get a pizza and Bill Cuff, who directs a lot of the surface trips on the boat, was up there.  I went on my service trip in India with him and have talked to him a few times since. He asked what I was getting and I said a pizza and he said “You know what, I’m going to buy it for you, just for being the kind of person you are.”  Skipping out on going out and going back to the boat turned out to be one of my best decisions. I sat on the deck talking to Bill for over an hour all about people on the boat, relationships, personal growth, decisions, service work and all sorts of things and it was really great. I’ve never really had a “mentor” before but I really respect him and he’s definitely becoming someone I trust and is helping me process some of the things I’m seeing and doing on this trip.  At around 10:30 we said goodnight and I went back to my room and passed out.

I woke up pretty early on our fifth and last day in Vietnam. I called Whitney to see if she wanted me to take her to the market since she had just gotten back from Cambodia. She wanted to sleep awhile longer, so we agreed to meet at 10:45 and I watched my 50 cent “Easy A” and cleaned my room.  At 11 her, D and I left to wander and shop. We got some really good sandwiches, bought some snacks for the boat and got some last minute gifts. After an hour Whitney left to go to the War museum and D and I decided to try again at mani/pedis. She had a brochure for somewhere so we thought it would be more legitimate. Oh BOY it was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hands down the most awesome mani/pedi I have ever gotten. You could get the basics for under $10, but for $34 I got the hand/foot spa package and it was soooo wonderful.  I had one girl doing my manicure while another did my feet and they did all of the scraping and washing and those little scrubby beads and dipped my everything in wax, it was awesome and MORE than worth it.  My feet have never looked better.

Afterwards we headed back to the boat. D was tired and got right on but I decided to head to the port bar to do some last minute internet and youtubing and hang out with some friends.  I got back on the boat at 5:30, exhausted, and was passed out in my bed by 7.

Some people loved Vietnam and can’t wait to go back. I would like to see more cultural aspects of it but I did more than enough going out/shopping and was sick of it by the end.  I don’t think Vietnam is on the top of my list for places to return to and that’s ok.  India and Cape Town are still my favorites, but we’ll be in China tomorrow and I’m excited for that.

Vietnam Part 1

I've been trying to do my blogs in order but Vietnam is done and Singapore and India Days 5 and 6 aren't so I'm just going to post Vietnam now because there's a chance the other three won't be done until after China, where I'll be TOMORROW!!! Enjoy!


Vietnam was good.  It wasn’t great but it was good.  When we left India I was digging my nails into the ground, leaving parts of me left and right as I was dragged back to the boat but leaving Ho chi Minh I picked up my bags, waved good-bye and walked across the gangway without looking back.

In every country we’ve visited so far we have been warned extensively about the safety and about getting ripped off and everyone became kind of desensitized to it but in Vietnam shit went down. Although I got ripped off a few times nothing too bad happened. My friend Alice was pulled off of a motorbike and scraped up the side of her face when someone on another motorbike tried to grab her purse that was wrapped around her arm.  My friend Paige had her purse snatched by someone as a motorbike as she walked down the road, and another girl named Michelle was dragged about 15 feet down the road and scraped up her entire shoulder when someone tried to grab her messenger back that was over her shoulder.

The first day in Vietnam I had an FDP for my journalism class where we went to visit a UPI photographer during the Vietnam War and then went to the Vietnam War Remnants Museum, formerly known as the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes.  Visiting the photographer was very cool.  We went to his home and sat barefoot in a circle on his port where he showed us some of his work and answered questions. For anyone who has seen the famous picture of the monk in lotus position who lit burning after he lit himself on fire, this man took that picture.  After visiting him we went to the museum which was very tough for me. I wrote a little bit about it in my last entry but it was definitely a trip and absolutely the most important thing I saw in Vietnam. It was just floor after floor of pictures.  My dad compared it to the Holocaust Museum and it was definitely similar to that, but what almost made this more difficult is that I felt responsible. At Yad Vesham it was “How could someone do this to us?” and at the Vietnam War Remnants Museum it was “How could we do this to other people?”  Soldiers would go into villages on rampages and just kill women and children.  Maybe it didn’t go exactly like that, but there were pictures of children with gun wounds, of dead women holding dead babies, it was very stressful.  There was also an entire floor dedicated to victims of Agent Orange, people in the worst shape I’ve ever seen for generations after the war. Fourth Generation babies born today are still being effected by the Vietnam War both in Vietnam and the US. It is extremely sad.  One of the most touching moments of the day for me was walking out of the museum, the first floor is open to the outside and it was pouring rain so maybe a hundred people all of different ethnicities speaking different languages were huddled on the steps waiting for the rain to slow so they could leave and an acoustic version of Let It Be was playing with a harmonica carrying the melody and I just felt very connected to everyone in the world, it’s so easy to look past wars and natural disasters and everything else where the numbers are statistics because they’re just that, statistics, and we are such a small percent of the world that we think it will never happen to us and it lessens what happens to the people it does happen to, but the people in Japan or Libya or anywhere else could have been me, could have been Jake, Rollie, Aunt Amy, Erin, Ben, any one of my family or friends or it could have been someone who I could have met in the future, a friend or lover or teacher, and I was just filled with really contradicting overwhelming feelings of love and loss.

After my FDP I went back to the boat and tried to relax and get into a right headspace for the night.  All of my friends had gotten pretty drunk early in the day so it was tough to find everyone and get organized because very few of us have phones but eventually I found everyone at the Rex Hotel and since we knew everyone from SAS was going to a club called Apocalypse Now we went to Lush and were the only white people there. Score. 

We had a good time hanging out and drinking until my friend Victor, who likes to flaunt his wealth by buying bottle after bottle, threw up so we started to head out.  We walked outside and a guy started yelling out of the window of his cab at my friend Aidan.  His comments were kind of derogatory, kind of flirtatious and she loves attention so she kind of went with it.  My friend Andrew then walked over towards the car and said something, I’m not sure what, I think he was defending Aidan and he guy called him a “faggot” and got out of the car. The next few moments were blurry but the next thing I knew Aidan and D were holding the other guy back and I was holding Andrew back and the guy was screaming at him “You white fucks don’t own the world before, you’re nothing” and a lot of other derogatory things to that nature.  Andrew is a skinny 18 year old kid and this guy was at least 35, I have no clue what he was doing messing with a child but it was pretty bad, they kept yelling at each other and trying to fight for about 15 minutes until we got the guy into his can and left.  Andrew was pretty shook up about it but even more upset we wouldn’t let him fight, but getting thrown in Vietnamese jail isn’t worth proving any kind of point, and in this case I have no clue what the point would have been. I know white people are disliked in a lot of parts of the world but even as a white woman I have always been treated nicely and with respect so this was the first time I had seen outward racism.

Eventually we got everyone back to Victor’s hotel room and ordered about five plates of French fries from room service because the language barrier wouldn’t allow us to order anything else and as everyone started to fall asleep I headed back to the boat because I kind of like sleeping in my own bed.

The second day in Vietnam I woke up to meet everyone to go shopping but of course they were too hung over and didn’t show up.  The one thing that frustrates me on this trip is that people drink so much that they fail at their obligations the next day. I’m all for drinking if people want to, and I like to a little as well, but when we have such a small amount of time in port it’s not worth it to me to miss a day for being hungover.  Eventually I found my friend Paige during lunch and we decided to go shopping together.

We went to the big market and this was the first time I got ripped off although it was my fault. Actually, just kidding, the first time was the first ay. The money in Vietnam is hard to understand. 100,000 dong is $5.  To get pretty much anywhere on a motorbike it’s a dollar.  Oh yeah, the motorbikes! So there are some cars in Ho Chi Minh but not very many. Everyone  get’s everywhere by motorbike.  The streets are filled with them, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. There is some system they all use to drive but I could not figure it out for the life of me, it’s like traffic laws don’t apply in so many of these countries.  On my first motorbike ride I was terrified, clinging to the guy for dear life, but by the end of the week I was a total pro.  There is a helmet law which means everyone on a bike has to wear a helmet which I loved, and it’s strictly enforced. Anyway, the first night I took a motorbike and only had 100,000 dong and the guy refused to give me change. Oh well.  Then, this next day I accidentally handed the guy a 500,000 ($25) instead of a 50,000 ($2.50) and he BOOKED it.  I have never seen anyone move that fast. Either way, when you’re traveling every time something goes wrong it’s a learning experience. Things need to go wrong before you learn how to do them right the next time.

Shopping was VERY overwhelming. Ben Thurn Market is packed with more stuff than I have ever seen in my entire life. Seriously, my entire life.  And bargaining is HARD, most people won’t budge more than a dollar and I ended up walking away from a lot of stuff. I did end up ordering a dress and buying some cute clothes and gifts.  We then headed to Saigon Market for northfaces and movies. They didn’t have any northface vests, and I was honestly just really overwhelmed, so I didn’t end up getting any but I DID get some sweet movies. I got maybe 8 DVDs for 50 cents each, not sure if they all work or not yet, I bought every season of the Simpsons for Jake for $35 and every season of Monk for my dad for $12.  And for myself, I bought the most epic thing ever…a Discovery Channel Box Set for $35 which has LITERALLY 319 programs. Yeah, it has every program in the Nature Biology Series, World Culture Series, History Human Series, Travel Exploration Series, Life Series, Military Series, Architecture Series, Secret History Series and Universe Series. To say I’m pumped is an understatement. I mean, my secret motive was the Nature Biology series and more specifically Wolves At Our Door because in the US that DVD costs $25 on it’s own but now I have 319 PROGRAMS.  Megahau5, I know you have Thursday nights reserved, but I want to implement a Discovery Channel Monday where we’ll learn shit. I’m trying to watch “Unwrapped: The Mysterious World Of Mummies.” 

After shopping I came back to the boat to relax and couldn’t find anyone anywhere. Eventually at 10:30 I decided to go to bed and on my way to my room ran into Dan, my friend Jeff’s roommate who looks like a sexier Tiger Woods (by the way, did everyone hear that Tiger Woods is now dating Alyse Lahti from my high school???? She was on the varsity basketball team!) and was like “Where are you going? Can I come?!” and he goes “Yeah, meet me upstairs in three minutes” so I RAN to my room and put on the first thing I saw which luckily was a black dress.

We went out and met with some of his friends and Jeff who is a good friend of mine  and tried to find something to do. First we were outside a wall and it opened and we walked into a giant elevator??? Like a room, but it was an elevator.  It took us up to a karaoke bar/casino but the karaoke was all filled up so we left. Then we decided to walk to Lush and try to find other sassers but heard some music and decided to follow it.  We went up two flights of stairs and ended up in a small hookah bar blasting terrible house techno music.  A girl we were with had been talking about hookah all night so we decided to stay for awhile.  We sat there kind of looking around and realized there were only men…and they were only playing Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and “happy birthday” but techno style (that was strange)…yep, we had accidentally stumbled into a gay hookah bar.  Everyone thought it was funny and it was kind of a blessing because there were no prostitutes trying to lure in any guys (they are everywhere in Vietnam at night sadly).  At around 1:30 I got pretty tired and headed back to the boat to get some sleep.  What can I say, I don’t think I got the party animal gene.

India Day 3-4

After we left the Taj at sunset it was time to head back to Delhi, so it was train station visit number two. We knew a little bit more of what to expect after our first visit but nothing could have prepared me for what I faced. 

On the bus we were all given our boxed dinners.  We were told this train station was much smaller than the last but that there would probably be homeless/hungry people.  Most of us put half of our dinners in our bag to eat later and carried the other half out to give away.  We got off the bus and immediately there were around 20 children around us and three adults. The children ranged in age from probably 4-12 and were all extremely skinny and obviously hungry and some had cleft lips.  One of the men’s legs were deformed and behind his head and one had feet that were literally the size of watermelons, he was in a wheelchair and his feet were propped in, it was the kind of thing people see on youtube and gather around in awe but here I stood about a foot away staring into the eyes of the man whom these feet belonged too.

We all tried to hand out our food as evenly as possibly making sure everyone got something and it was relatively easy because as soon as a child got some food they would run about 15 feet away from everyone else and would eat it as fast as they could.  I don’t know what everyone else did but I knew I couldn’t have food in my bag and not share it so I ended up giving away my entire dinner, giving my juice and a snack to the man with the big feet because most people were focused on the children.

We went into the train station and it seemed that we were left alone and could relax. A tiny boy came up to me and started motioning he was hungry. I looked around and there was no one else so I brought him over one of the stalls and bought him a snack.  The food was cheap and he was so hungry, how could I justify having  backpack full of electronics and not buy him a bag of chips?  As soon as he ran away though, two more boys appeared. I bought double the snacks, one for each of them, but then one took all of it and ran away and the other boy started to cry, so I bought him a snack too.

More and more starving children kept appearing and then disappearing one by one and I tried to make all of them happy but I couldn’t, I would give one a bag of chips and another would cry and on and on, it is so heartbreaking to see the kids we see in pictures face to face and how can you say no?

The hardest part is that in the long run, I don’t want to help the system. Me being there and giving them food perpetuates the cycle, if they know that they can get food there, however little, they will be there trying to get food and not in school or doing other things that will help them sustain a life in the long run, I can give them 200 calories today but I can’t do it forever, and even worse is that if you give these kids money they don’t even get to keep it, they have to give it to their “pimps” who will sometimes even deprive them of food or rough them up so they look more beat up and foreigners will give them money.  I knew I shouldn’t give them anything but I’m just not the kind of person who can see someone starving and know that I have never been and never will be without food and not do what I can to help them.

We were there for about 40 minutes and it was extremely overwhelming.  I tried to help as much as I could but eventually it just got to be too much and I broke down and just cried into another girl on my trips shoulder, I don’t even know her name, I just couldn’t do it anymore, I couldn’t help, and she suggested I buy a magazine to take my mind off of it but how I even consider buying cosmo when people can’t even eat all around me?

It was extremely rough and I will never forget the faces of those children in the train station. Luckily there were some good moments too. When we were at the Taj we took a group picture and one kid in my group gave his picture to one of the boys who LOVED it. He carried it around pointing out all of the people in the group and getting excited.  There was one girl there who I gave a bindi too and let her pick out the one she wanted and she picked out the smallest, most suble one and let me put it on her forehead.  When we left to get on the train I felt a tap on my shoulder and almost didn’t want to turn around and have to tell someone else I couldn’t give them more food but it was the girl with a huge smile on her face waving good-bye.  Looking back, I think giving her that did more good than anything I gave anyone else that day.

We all got onto the bus mentally and physically exhausted and passed out pretty much instantaneously. This was one of the nicest trains in India and it was pretty nice. All of the seats reclined and they brought us bottled water and ice cream.  When we got to Delhi a few hours later someone shook me out of my sleep and we all piled off the train and into a bus to take us to a hotel.

We stayed at the Delhi Ramada which was the polar opposite of the train station.  It was a GORGEOUS hotel.  I think it’s where all of the Americans and Europeans stay.  Everyone else ran off to the bars but I just wanted to curl up in bed and relax.  I had internet, some room service (I know, the irony, but I hadn’t eaten since lunch) and finally got a good nights sleep.

The next day was pretty uneventful. We went to the Bah’ai temple which I think I already wrote about, did some more shopping and went to a marble factory, I think, and then went to the airport to fly back to Chennai.  We got back to Chennai pretty late and I went to sleep.

A picture is worth 1000 words

I am currently in a Vietnam War Museum in Ho Chi Minh. It is absolutely one of the most difficult things I've ever experienced. This isn't a village in Ghana or a favella in Brazil or a train station in India, its a museum inside with bathrooms and bright lights and a gift shop yet I still find tears running down my cheeks. There are many sides to every story and millions of sides to every war but how do you explain a soldier holding the decapitated head of a man and posing for a picture? How do you explain children shot and in a pile on the ground, naked babies dumped into a ditch? When will the world realize that these are PEOPLE we're dealing with? Its not a statistic, its not a video game, its not a profit, its not a story. Its a life and these are people.
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India Day 3

At around 5am Jackie and I got our wake-up call to go to the Taj.  We got up and dressed as quickly as we could, met everyone in the lobby and got into our bus. Once we got off the bus we had to walk about a kilometer down this rode to get to the actual entrance and there were monkeys and dogs everywhere. Seriously, monkeys in trees, monkeys on the ground, dogs chasing the monkeys on the ground into the trees, it was insanity.  This was the first time a lot of us had gotten to see monkeys up close we were taking pictures like they were going extinct.

As the sun was rising in the sky we finally entered the gateway to the Taj. We had to go through a lot of security because there are many rules. No food, drink, tobacco, no writing, no video cameras, etc.  The Taj was something that I was oddly not very excited about before but the second we got in there I was blown away by how huge it was, how peaceful the area was, how calming the atmosphere was, how beautiful everything was.  Because we got there so early there weren’t many people and we had around an hour to walk around and take pictures.  Just an hour would never have been enough so we left knowing we would be back at sunset to see it again.

After the Taj we went to the Agra fort. Normally I follow our tour guide like a puppy to hear everything he says but he talks very quietly and at the Agra Fort I was hot and tired so Nate and I decided to wander on our own and meditate and take pictures.  The Agra Fort was the first place I was asked to take a picture with someone, the first of many places.  I was going to get into this later but I’ll get into it now.

There is something about the way I look (looked) that Indian people LOVE.  One of my friends suggested it’s because I look like an Indian Model… they all look Indian but with very light skin.  I had the long dark curly hair, relatively Indian clothing and light eyes.  All day everywhere I went people asked to either take a picture of me or with me. Sadly when this happened I rarely had my camera (the Agra Fort was one of the two instances where I did) so I barely have any of the pictures, but there are many pictures of me floating around the global cyberspace with people from all walks of life.

During our second Taj visit I had forgotten my camera in the bus so I wandered alone. I tried to write in my journal and got yelled at, this is how I know about the “no writing” rule.  A Sikh man came up to me and introduced himself and asked me a few questions.  Despite the language barrier we managed to have a decent conversation and he wanted me to meet everyone he had traveled to the Taj with. This turned out to be around 40 older people. He took me around and introduced me to ever single person. This is my neighbor, this is my brother, this is my boss, this is my wife, this is my sister… Yep, I shook the hands of every single person, all of the men in turbans and all of the women in colorful sarees and big jewelry, giggling and excited to meet me.  One older women motioned that she liked my necklace I had just bought for around $4 so I tried to take it off and give it to her but she said no, they all thought it was hilarious.  That’s not the kind of thing that’s normal in America but in India that’s how things are and it felt like what I should do, to give someone a gift that would mean more to them than it did to me or the money I had spent on it.  Now I still have the necklace because she wouldn’t take it but it is definitely more meaningful to me.

Another instance was I was sitting on the Taj under one of these arches and this couple came up and put a baby in front of me. They went to take a picture and I got out of the way because I thought they just wanted a picture of their baby… Nope.  They looked kind of offended, and I motioned and asked if they wanted me in the picture and they got excited, so I got to take a picture holding and cuddling with this cute Indian baby.  Two other guys thought I looked like Shakira (I didn’t ask questions) and followed me around for the next half hour taking more and more pictures doing silly poses.  One of my favorite pictures of the day is one I actually have and is up on facebook, a mans grandmother wanted to meet me so I got to pose on theses steps with two beautiful Hindu women with our hands on one anothers shoulders.  She instantly went into grandmother mode, adjusting my shirt and my pants I guess so I looked “appropriate.”  When I got back to the ship on the last day one of the security guards at immigration even stopped me for a picture.

Anyway, after the Agra Fort we went to see some temples which I LOVED. We saw a Hindu temple, a Sikh temple and a Baha’i temple.  I loved the Hindu temple. One of the most interesting things was that there were swastikas everywhere so obviously everyone in our group was like woah, whats going on… our tour guide explained to us that the swastika is an ancient symbol of perfection and used to have a positive connotation before the Nazis used it in a negative way.

The Hindu temple in general was beautiful.  In all of the temples in India you take your shoes off outside and walk around barefoot. There were beautiful alters and shrines everywhere to the different gods and everything was brightly colored. One of the priests put sandalwood on my forehead which was very cool and we got to wander a bit on our own but I spent most of the time attached at the hip to our tour guide so I could hear everything he said because I think Hinduism is fascinating.

After the Hindu temple we went to the Sikh temple which was very cool.  As you can see in my pictures on facebook they make massive amounts of food there because the poor and hungry can come at any time and they will always be fed, even at 2am.  The vibe in this temple was very different. It was dark and there was one alter in the middle and everyone sat around it praying. There was a man singing and two playing the drums.

We actually went to the Baha’I temple on the third day but I’ll mention it now for the sake of organization. I had never heard of Baha’i before but it’s a very interesting religion. There was actually a Baha’i girl in our group, and for those of you who are wondering she was very pretty, about 5’ 5, white, blonde, and from the Midwest I think.   Baha’i’s believe in all monotheistic religions coming together and praying in unity to one god. Their temple was huge and beautiful, I think there are seven in the world which all represent different things and this one looked like a lotus flower, but there was nothing distinctly religious inside of it.  They believe that religion keeps evolving and all of the different leaders of the religions are prophets and manifestations that come to earth at different times to help the people in whatever way makes sense, so the leaders of each religion are different reincarnations of the same god.  In the gift shop/museum part they had giant posters hanging up with quotes and information about every major religion. I don’t remember the exact statistic but I think the Baha’I temple in India is one of the most visited places of worship in the world with over 10,000 visitors of every faith every day.

After our temple visits we went back to the Taj which was just as beautiful at sunset and this is when I took pictures with sooo many different people. 

I actually have to go to class now so I’ll write about the rest of my time in India later. I have a lot going on tonight but I do want to do the rest of India and Singapore by Vietnam so I don’t get too caught up and forget about it.  xoxo

India Day 2

The morning is kind of blurry, we took a bus to the Chennai airport which was pretty dirty and not very nice.  KingFisher airlines however, the main airline in India, is SO DOPE.  Everyone is treated like a king!  You have these comfy seats and everyone has a little screen in front of them and they bring you drinks (no alcohol) and food constantly.  Now that I think about it, I was surprisingly wide awake on the airplane. I watched the news and some of a Bollywood movie which was extremely silly and over the top. 

We got to New Dheli and the airport was NICE. I was pleasantly surprised.  We met our tour guide (I actually never learned his name, he was referred to as “the tour guide” for three days… maybe it was hard to pronounce???) and spent the next couple hours taking a driving tour around Dheli.  We stopped at this place, I think it was in a hotel for lunch, and they had a buffet set up for us and it looked like a Bat Mitzvah… all of the tables were white with pink, purple, blue or green accents.  The food for lunch was good, and after lunch we went to see the place where Ghandi was cremated which was very beautiful and peaceful.  We only got to stay for around 30 minutes which didn’t feel like enough time but there is a lot to see in India!

The rest of the afternoon was kind of just driving around, stopping here and there, and eventually we made our way to the train station.

The Dheli train station was the first really hard thing I experienced in India. There were people everywhere, literally everywhere, thousands of people traveling. Some of them were well dressed and others appeared to be families in rags with everything they owned, just waiting. Everyone stared at us, a group of 40 white people with backpacks and cell phones making their way through a sea of Indian faces. 

Our train was delayed so we found an open area and sat down to eat our boxed dinners.  Everyone sat there eating and all of a sudden a small man approached us.  There was something wrong with his legs, they were small and bent up and he dragged himself towards us with his arms.  His voice was really scratchy and the only English he knew was “madam” and he said it over and over with his hands out.  I handed him some rupies out of my purse, probably about the equivalent of a doller or less, and he kissed them, touched his hands to his forehead and bowed, thanking the gods for sending someone to give him money I suppose.

He continued to make his way down the line and another girl in my group, Sara, approached him and handed him her extra food.  He immediately tore off the rapper of some bread and started devouring it and we could see how hungry he was. Slowly, everyone in the group passed their extra food towards the man and he put all of it in his shirt, apples and bananas and chicken and anything else that ended up, his shirt was overflowing by the end.  After we had no more he made his way to a corner and ate like he hadn’t seen food in days, and perhaps he hadn’t.

Hunger in India is one of the hardest things I and others experienced.  It’s so hard to see people who are legitimately starving and not want to help, how can you stand there with laptops and cell phones and look at someone starving and not give them food? But the problem is that giving these people food and money perpetuates the cycle and may prevent them from getting out of poverty and moving forward. If they know they can get fed by begging at the train station they may just continue to do that. It’s very tricky to determine when to give and how much. I personally am an absolute sucker, I can’t see someone and not want to help, but as you’ll learn about when I discuss my second trip to the train station, it’s my downfall.  Another problem in India is the caste system. Basically, people are born into a caste and it’s hard for them to get out of it. If you’re born a Brahman you’re at the top of the line and you will live a very good life, but if you’re born into a lower caste you aren’t even allowed into the cities.  Because most people are Hindu they believe that if someone is of a lower caste it’s due to their sins in their past life.  Because they weren’t good people they have a bad life in this cycle and therefore the people at the top think very highly of themselves and aren’t motivated to help the lower castes.

Eventually we discovered our train was going to be too late and it made more sense to drive to Agra, so our bus came and picked us up and we began our six hour bus ride. We were all exhausted from the traveling and slept for most of it.

We got to our hotel around midnight. It was HUGE and gorgeous.  I think this is the hotel that most people going to the Taj stay in. There was a problem with the rooms and they didn’t have enough for us with double beds so they needed volunteers to sleep in king beds together. I was paired up with a  \girl named Jackie who is a good friend of my roommate so we said we could sleep in a bed together.  Great decision. We were upgraded to a suite where we had a dining room, a living room, a massage chair, a bathtub and TWO pet fish. Sadly we were only in this room for about 6 hours but it was nice to be in luxury although a cruel contradiction to what we had seen of India earlier in the day.

After bustling around our room for awhile we went to sleep, trying to get as much rest as we could before our sunrise trip to the Taj Mahal.

To be continued…

India Day 1

I have a terrible habit of pushing aside blogs because in so many of these ports everything is so overwhelming and intense that it seems like too much of a commitment to try and do it justice on paper. Ideally I would love to write about every day in port right after it happened but there is so little time and what time there is I spend immersing myself in culture or, when I absolutely need to, sleeping.  It’s going to be difficult to talk about India because so much happened and I went through so many different cycles and emotions but I guess I’ll just try and start at the beginning.

We docked in Chennai on March 6.  We had to do a face-to-face, so every person on the boat had to meet with an immigration official to get through customs, but we were off of the boat relatively quickly.  At around 10:30am six of my friends and I piled into two rickshaws to go shopping. Rickshaws are like a cross between a car and a golf cart. They drive on the roads with the cars but are open. Speaking of roads, driving in India is CRAZY. I don’t know how ANYONE does it. It appeared that there was no order at all. There were technically lanes but people ignored them. There were cars, busses, rickshaws, motorcycles and bikes all driving all over the place, both sides, in and out of one another honking constantly.  There is a car accident every six minutes in India and although I didn’t see any, but I’m shocked there isn’t one every second. The roads were wild.

During pre-port Marty told us that rickshaws won’t always take you where you want to go, you might go to their brothers store or their friends restaurant or any number of places and we thought she was kidding. Nope. It doesn’t matter where you tell them you want to go, they will take you to souvenier store after souvenier store all selling the same crap. At first you’re excited because you want to shop, but then you just want to go to a market or a temple or to get lunch and they keep taking you to these random places.  It got to the point where we would just walk in and out. It’s because the rickshaw drivers get paid off by these places to take tourists there, then once inside you have people coming at you from all directions trying to sell you things.  If we buy things the rickshaw driver gets paid off even more.

We did do some good shopping in the morning but eventually our groups got split up and I was just with Paige and Andrew. We went to this AMAZING local place for lunch. We ate all of these different kinds of chicken and rice and sauces and nan with our hands off of a banana leaf and drank fresh pineapple juice.  We walked out of there stuffed and it was under $25 for the three of us including three juices and three bottled waters.

The afternoon was more shopping and going wherever our rickshaw driver wanted to go and we got back to the boat around 6.  It was our friend D’s 22nd birthday so we decided to go to a Hookah bar.  Mia and I wore our sarees but getting them on ended up being quite the process.  I ended up just wrapping it around myself in random places and tucking it in and I could barely walk.  I made a deal with myself that this entire trip I would not ride the boat elevator because there are only 6 floors, but I couldn’t get up the stares and had to take it… sad.  At least I made it over halfway through the trip. 

Once we got outside we stopped at the atm to get cash and there were some beggars there, women and children.  They couldn’t speak English but my friend Mackenzie gave them 30 rupies (about 75 cents) and we started signaling at my saree and they quickly got the picture.  Soon I had 4 Indian woman all around me folding and tucking my saree in until I was wearing it correctly.  And then I could walk perfectly! I was way off, and I had been wondering how Indian women did anything. They’re actually really comfortable. I got some money, gave another 100 rupies to the women and got into our cab.

We went to a hookah bar to get an “authentic” India experience but it seemed more like we were in Japan.  We had to go up four flights of stairs to get to the top. On the first flight was what appeared to be an internet café and guys watching sports, on the next floor was an arcade of some sort, on the next floor there was a doorway to a roof where there was a pool with a giant ball in it that I guess you can go inside of??? I didn’t really get the details on that.  And at the top there was the hookah bar.  We start flipping through the menu and quickly realize… no alcohol. Only “mocktails” and fruit juice.  We assumed at a hookah bar there would be drinks, but nope.  People in India don’t drink.  Finding a glass of wine or a beer is a serious production.  We decided to stay anyway because a few of the people in our group liked hookah and there was food.

The night went pretty well but the vibes were weird. Everyone was kind of edgy and no one could drink to deal with it and confront whoever they were upset with so there was definitely a strange undertone.  I however was happy with everyone, mostly because I had spent the previous week studying and by myself, so I had a good time. We ordered lots of yummi food, although it was all American! Yeah, they didn’t have ANY Indian food. Except maybe rice, strange.  We got French fries and chicken fingers and icecream/brownie sundaes and anything else you can think of in that category. Hey, there were 15 of us and we were celebrating!

At around 11 the place closed and we were all EXHAUSTED so we headed back to the boat.  By the time I got all packed for my Taj trip the next morning it was around 1am and I had to meet my group to leave at 3:30am, so I barely got two hours of sleep, not fun.  I was terrified I wouldn’t wake up in time but luckily I did.  I met the group in the Union and we got ready to head to the airport. Hassan was in another group and got there earlier than me and grabbed me a pastry before they all ran out which was key, because on these organized trips they don’t feed us too often.

I’m going to go to dinner now, but I’ll try to get Day 2 up tonight as well.  I will blog if it’s the last thing I do!  Also, we’re not going to Japan. Not sure where we’re going instead, still waiting for word on that. Maybe the Phillipines, South Korea or Taiwan.  What’s your vote?

reality check

If Dominica is a lake, India is the ocean.
If Brazil is a party, India is a family reunion.
If Ghana is a recital, India is the opera.
If Cape Town is a vacation, India is home.
If Mauritius is a spark, India is a fire.
If America is heaven, India is reality.
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I'm India Zone

Before every country we have something called Pre-Port where we learn key information for our time in each country.  Pre-port is lead by students or staff on the boat that are from a given country and by the interport students. Inter port students are students that come onto the boat before each country (our India pre-port students got on board in Mauritius) and stay until we arrive in their home country and teach us about culture.  In each pre-port we go over culture, rules, activities, safety, logistics, etc. 

Usually we have one pre-port the night before a country but India is the first country where we have two scheduled pre-ports. Tonight was the first night. It was lead by Raja, the spiritual LLC and the interport students. The focus was primarily on culture, so what to wear, how to act and basic language.  I am officially the most excited about India that I have been for any country by a long shot.  It seems that India is the first place we really will be thrown into something totally new and different and we have to fend for ourselves.

For one, there are many cultural rules we have to pay attention to.  We must avoid using our left hand in interactions with other people because it is considered extremely rude and offensive. We actually had to do this in Ghana as well and it came very naturally to me, for about a week after I was apologizing to everyone on the boat for using my left hand instinctually but it didn’t come as easily to other people.  We must always wear very modest clothing and even on a beach the most you can do is put your feet in the water because your body needs to be covered in public at all times.  You can’t cross your legs in front of elders because it is just as rude as using your left hand in conversation.  Also, you must be very wary of telling people you like something (when in their homes) because then they will give it to you, and if you say you like the food they will keep serving you more (because of their hospitality).

Chennai is the fourth largest city in India and is supposed to be very congested and busy. Usually we arrive in ports on Sunday and everything is closed because of the Christian presence but Sunday in Chennai is supposed to be the most bustling day of the week so our initial disembarkation is going to be a bit overwhelming.

Just in case I don’t get a change to update my blog while I’m in India or directly after, here is my itinery

Sunday:  My only free day. The plan is to go shopping for traditional clothing to wear in public the rest of the week, buy Hindu art, get henna and visit some temples

Monday-Wednesday – SAS Taj Majal Trip. Here is my itinerary:

Monday:  Transfer to the airport for your 2 ½-hour flight to New Delhi.  Upon arrival, enjoy a city orientation of Old Delhi.  Drive along Rajpath, the ceremonial avenue, past the Rashtrapati Bhavan (Presidential Palace) the Raj Ghat (Gandhi Memorial), Red Fort and Jama Masjid.  Enjoy lunch at a local restaurant.  In the afternoon, depart on a three-hour train ride for Agra.  Once in Agra, proceed to the hotel for dinner and overnight.  (Breakfast on flight, L, D; area hotel in Agra) 

Tuesday:  After an early morning wake-up call, leave the hotel to view the Taj Mahal at dawn, then return to the hotel for breakfast.  Visit the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri with its well preserved sandstone palaces.  Return to the hotel for check-out and lunch.  The afternoon will include visits to Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal.  After viewing the Taj Mahal at sunset, transfer to the railway station and board the express train (two hours) for New Delhi.  A packed dinner will be provided on the train.  Upon arrival, transfer to your hotel.  (B, L, packed D; area hotel in Delhi) 

Wednesday:  After breakfast at the hotel, enjoy a city tour and visit various temples like the Lotus Temple (Bahá’i), Gurudwara (Sikh), Laxmi Narayan Temple, and Mandir Marg (Hindu).  Enjoy lunch at a local restaurant followed by an optional shopping tour with your guide before transferring to the airport for your return flight to Chennai.  (B, L, D on flight)

Thursday: I technically don’t have plans for Thursday but there are two SAS service trips. One is to an orphanage and the other is to a shelter for women of all ages. I am going to try to get on one of them. I tried to sign up for one before arriving but they were both full. But Brittany, the ship photographer, told me that many times almost half of the students supposed to attend service trips won’t show up and if you go to the meeting place before they start you can often get on.  Hopefully that will work out, but if it doesn’t I may try to see a Bollywood movie, visit more temples or ride an elephant.

Friday: In the morning I have my FDP for my religion class called Ghandi’s Legacy of Nonviolence. In the afternoon there is another service project where you visit Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity Orphanage that I will try to attend if I don’t get onto either of the service projects on Thursday or if I’m feeling ambitious.


Overall it’s going to be a hectic week! One thing I KNOW about traveling however is that nothing ever turns out the way you think it will or want it to so I bet that when I come back here next week and write y’all about what went on it will look nothing like this itinerary, but I am excited to see what India has to teach me.

Speaking of itineraries, the next month is going to be a whirlwind. Tomorrow is the halfway point in the trip (woah) but looking at my schedule for the next month I feel like it’s almost over.  We will be in India for 6 days, 4 days on the boat, Singapore for a day, 2 days on the boat, Vietnam for 5 days, 2 days on the boat, China for 6 days, 2 days on the boat, Japan for 5 days. The 4 days to Singapore is now the longest stretch we have until the beginning of April where we sail from Japan to Hawaii.  I have been stressing about all of the work I’ve had this last week which will go until tomorrow but after that I really only have readings until finals.  Yes, I still have half the trip left but on paper it already seems like it’s on fast-forward.

Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough. I have a lot of studying to do so I’m going to go now.  I love and miss you all very much and hope the cold weather ends soon! I’ll be thinking of you from the equator =P

OH! One more thing I totally forgot.  India is not all beautiful temples and beaches and saris.   1/3 of the people in the world living below the poverty line live in India with 456 million not having the basic necessities of life (food, water, shelter).  Think about that number. Imagine your high school class, or maybe your class and the one above yours. Or better yet, imagine a UW Science Lecture. For each person there on any given day there are ONE MILLION people in India starving.  The 8 poorest states in India have more people in poverty than the 26 poorest countries in Africa.  For this reason I am participating with a number of students in a fast for the next 24 hours to raise awareness of the people starving in India and to remember the basic necessities they live without every day. 

And not that I want to be a downer but while I’m on the topic of service and education I may as well tell you about Brittany. Brittany is one of the coolest, most amazing people on this boat.  She is the ship photographer and also sailed in 2008.  A girl in my journalism class actually wrote a feature story about her and when it’s gone through the editing process I’ll post it so y’all can hear a little more about her.  But anyway, one of the biggest issues we discuss here on the ship is water. We’re on a boat, after all, and in many of the places we visit lack of clean drinking water is one of the biggest issues. It effects us because it’s hot and we’re tired and we don’t have currency because we can’t find an atm and we need to buy bottled water so we don’t get sick, and it effects every person in that country because if their water isn’t drinkable they can get very sick and possibly die.

884 million people currently don’t have access to safe water. This equals to about 1/8.    1.4 million children die every year from diarrhea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This equals out to about 4,000 child deaths a day or 1 child death every 20 seconds. In the time it has taken you to read this paragraph, a child has died because of unclean drinking water.

Sadly I can’t remember the statistics but in the United States we waste a lot of water. A lotttt of water.  It takes over 1,000 pounds of water to produce one pound of beef. It takes around 800 pounds of water to produce 1 pound of pork and around 770 pounds of water to produce one pound of coffee.  So not only does not everyone in the world have safe drinking water, but we are running out of water and using a lot of it for our meat industry. Oh god, and to tie it back to world hunger, did you know that there is enough food in the world for no one to be hungry? No one. There is enough food for every single person to have 2700 calories of food a day.  The problem is that many people don’t have access to it or the money to pay for it. 

Anyway, the reason I mention Brittany in association with this problem is that just a few months ago, she decided to do something. I went to see her lecture last night and heard the full story firsthand. I’ll spare you the details for now because I need to study, but Brittany and a friend of hers raised $15,000 for WaterAid by riding secondhand bikes from San Diego to Florida.  I haven’t been to her website but the link is www.cyclingforwater.com if anyone wants to check it out. Her presentation was phenomenal and extremely touching. I laughed, I cried, and mostly I began to really care about water. Although the majority of her presentation focused on her adventures, on the rivers she saw, on the people she met and the amazing photographs she took, her slideshow photos changed every 20 seconds to remind us that every time a new picture came up, another child died because of a lack of clean water.

I’m not trying to sit here and preach to y’all and I’m not going to pretend that I have immediately applied all of these facts to my life. I will however tell you what I know and let you make your own decisions.  To just pay attention to your shower time, cut your meat intake in half, to think about what you can do… it will make a difference sometime to someone even if you can’t see it.

uhhh

Can someone please tell me what all of this Charlie Sheen nonsense is???

As the dawn breaks...

A long night of homework and coffee and my first sunrise on the ship. So incredibly beautiful.

Also, I'm exotic.

One more thing I forgot to write about yesterday! When we went to the market all of the merchants loooved me. One guy came up to me and just started speaking to me in all of these different languages and I kind of just laughed and shrugged before I realized I should let him know I speak English, and I was like "I'm sorry, I can't understand you!" and he goes "Oh, where are you from?" And I said "United States" and he goes "Oh, you're American, I never would have guessed!" I asked where he thought I was from and he said "Italy." People abroad always think I'm Italian! Another guy thought I was from Germany. Pretty cool. I love looking exotic and not looking American pretty much always works in my favor.

sailin'

Hey y’all. We just left Mauritius and are on are way to India. Mauritius was GORGEOUS. Because of past SAS trips where people were a little more than disrespectful to the island, however, SAS isn’t allowed to stay overnight… yeah.  A day trip was nice, though. Sadly our one day was on a Sunday, which meant that most touristy things were closed.  My friends and I ended up spending the day on the beach swimming and relaxing which was a nice needed break because school is hectic right now.  I also bought one of those islandy dance outfits that I have wanted my ENTIRE LIFE and now I own one. I ended up wearing it around the boat last night half because I was excited and half because Paige made me but it was pretty fun.

I realize I haven’t updated on boat life in awhile.  It’s mostly just school, school and more school. We’re halfway through now which means everything is kind of peaking. Projects due, presentations, midterms, etc.  Everyone is also now comfortable and accustomed to travel so we basically just wait until the next port when we can get out and explore and then we sadly slump back to the boat for onship time.

One thing I just learned about SAS is that it takes YEARS to plan each voyage. It’s noe like there are deans and teachers and staff that continuously sail around the world. Each voyage is totally unique with it’s own dean, medical staff, professors, everything. These groups of people work together for years to make their voyage great and run smoothly and function as a legitimate university. I think that is the most awesome thing and that’s a big part of why the majority of the faculty/staff are so cool, because they’re so dedicated to us and to this program because they’ve spent such a long time preparing for it.  I’m really happy with all of the administration and professors on my trip but I’m sure for every trip they’re just as awesome.

We have a few days until we get to India on I think March 6. While there I will be doing an FDP for my religion class called “Ghandi’s Legacy in Non violence” and going to Agra and New Dheli to see the Taj Majal.  Apparently the first night we are in Chennai the Cricket World Cup is going and I am trying SO hard to convince someone to go with me. How epic would that be?! I’ll keep you updated on whether or not it pans out. Also after India apparently it will start to get colder so I’m trying to soak up as much sun as I can right now. I love my tan and do not want it to fade before I get home.

I’m sorry I don’t have too much other news. I’m going to try to start updating relatively consistently again so y’all know what I’m up to. For my religion class we had to do presentations on religious leaders and I picked someone kind of unconventional, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. For those of you don’t know he is a huge advocate for peace/human rights activist and liberal Christian who was extremely influential in the end of apartheid. In my research I discovered he is retiring and his last public appearance is in Tacoma, Washington on May 13… yeah, you better believe I’m going! Rollie was sweet enough to secure tickets since I have no internet and would love nothing more than to see Tutu speak, especially his last public appearance outside of South Africa maybe ever, and I think that will be a nice away to start integrating everything I’m learning here back into my home life. Tutu started his retirment process on his 79th birthday last year and celebrated by sailing on the Fall 2010 SAS Voyage. Im pretty jealous to have missed that but think his association with this program says a lot for it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to do some reading and enjoy this heat… it’s actually pretty cloudy but I’m hoping the sun will come out soon. Love.

Rio

Rio was about a month ago now so I’m just going to give a quick overview.  If y’all remember from my Amazon entry, right before we left I decided to go swimming. Badddd decision. I felt fine for about 24 hours but the next day I got SICK. Rio was still cool, but that definitely put a damper on everything.

We got there around 9am after flying all night and went right into tourism Israel-style.  We started by getting breakfast at a little café but I couldn’t keep anything down so that was kind of a fail, but the beach was gorgeous. After that we took jeep rides up to see the Christ the Redeemer status which was EPIC. If nothing else has ever been epic, the Jesus statue is.  The ride was pretty bumpy but we got to see a lot of Rio which was cool too. The view from the top of the mountain is amazing. Rio is such a beautiful city.

After teaching everyone how to lay on the ground and get the full statue in the picture I was feeling exhausted from the heat and being sick so I went to get some juice and ice cream from the snack bar there. I ended up sitting with a few people who didn’t speak English and we had a lot of fun signing back and forth and trying to figure out what the other person was saying.

Around 1pm we left and continued to drive around Rio seeing different things. A couple of pretty views, some monkeys and some waterfalls.  I ended up passing out in the jeep at one point so that was kind of it for me.  We eventually got back to the hotel and I spent the rest of the night in bed watching BBC World News as it was the only thing in English.

The next day I woke up feeling all right probably because I hadn’t eaten anything so there was nothing to upset my stomach.  We were supposed to go to a ropes course and I was anxious to participate so I took some pepto bismol and headed out with the group.

Here is the thing about ropes courses. They TERRIFY ME. For anyone who doesn’t know, a ropes course is a series of obstacles 30+ feet in the air that you do while attached to a caribener and a harness.  For someone afraid of heights it is terrifying. Google it.

They used to have these at camps I went to when I was younger and not only have I never completed one, but I have never even been on one where I didn’t cry at some point. I am happy and proud to say that I successfully completed the entire ropes course with a smile on my face! I was shaking for a while but as I got farther and farther into it my adrenaline picked up and I finished rather quickly.  It ended up with a zip line which was great as well.

After the ropes course I went with a girl from my group to Parque Loge which is basically a super epic Italian garden/castle type thing that this guy built for his Italian opera singer wife so she would feel more at home in Rio. They had turned it into a café/modern art museum and it was really interesting to see. My favorite exhibit were all of these paintings and cacti floating in the pool but there were some other cool ones too.

Sadly I couldn’t avoid eating any longer because I was getting closed to fainting so I had a grilled cheese.  I made it through the rest of the museum and about five minutes of shopping before I got sick again so I had to head back to the hotel for the rest of the day. 

The next morning we went to the airport around 5 am, flew back to Manaus and got back on the boat where I was able to recover in peace.

I liked Rio but being sick definitely put a damper on it and I would like to go back some day.

I love Cape Town.

Hey everyone. I know I have been slacking on the blog. The problem is that I want to make everything well written and I’m always so exhausted that I decide to not write instead of writing something that would tell y’all what I’ve been doing but wouldn’t be that pretty.  I’m going to try to ignore that and just get something down because I know everyone is anxious.

Cape Town was AMAZING. Seriously, AMAZING. Sadly, I only had about a day and a half there because of some technicalities which sucked and meant I didn’t really get to do the things I wanted to do and I didn’t get to do anything cultural and I am the queen of slamming people for not doing cultural things in port so I’m a little disappointed in myself as far as that goes but it’s an excuse to go back.

We were supposed to get to Cape Town on the 17th. Around 7:30 am everyone poured out onto the decks to watch us sail into port. Cape Town is the most beautiful port EVER. It is absolutely gorgeous. So imagine everyones surprise when we sail right past it.  Hmmm.  All of a sudden The Voice comes over the announcements and tells us that it’s too windy and we can’t pull up along side without damaging the boat so we will have to circle for awhile until the wind calms down.  I’ll spare you the gory details, but this continued for about 25 hours.  We sailed in circles around the coast of Cape Town hearing announcements about the wind every 2 hours for 25 hours.  On the 18th around 10am we finally docked and not a moment too soon, people were getting ready to revolt.

I had my safari so I didn’t leave the boat when we docked because once we cleared immigration it was too late.  We left for our safari around 3pm, took a two hour flight to Durban and then a three hour drive into the middle of freakin’ nowhere.  We stayed in a bed and breakfast type place, there were 8 little cabin type things in the middle of nowhere along a path lit by Christmas lights. 

The next morning we woke up  at 4:45 to leave at 5 for our SAFARI.  It was very cool. We were in a really big reserve which made it really realistic but kind of hard to find animals.  We also only had 12 hours to safari. We did see elephants, buffalo, zebras, warthogs, giraffes, baboons and a number of birds.

The coolest part of the day was when we pulled up to this river and saw maybe five or six elephants, one of them a baby, drinking water and washing themselves and playing. It was the cutest thing ever. We continued to watch them and all of a sudden more elephants started coming down the hill and doing the same thing… and more… and more… We watched for about a half hour and saw an 80 elephant deep breeding herd approach the river, drink and swim across together.  That made the safari all worth it.

We saw all of the other animals close up (except the baboons) so it was pretty cool although I would like to d o another safari someday. I picked the cheapest one because in my mind all of the safaris are the same but turns out that’s not true.  We spent two days traveling and one day safari’ing and my roommate spent just a few hours traveling and got 2.5 days of safari-ing in Kruger and she saw EVERYTHING. Lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, monkeys, turtles, etc. Her pictures are epic and I’m really happy for her but kind of jealous. Oh well.

Anyway, I got back from the Safari around 6pm on the 20th, came back to the boat, showered and found my friends. We went out to dinner in the Waterfront and it was my first time experiencing Cape Town… I freaked out. It’s GORGEOUS.  Table Mountain, the sky, sea lions swimming, a giant mall, restaurants, musicians outside, jazz bars, sports bars…it was awesome.  We had dinner and then most of my friends were tired from partying for a few days so I went out to an Irish bar with my friend Alice which was pretty cool. All of the music was straight out of 2003 but I haven’t really spent too much time with her so it was fun to hang out and gossip.

The next day I went to Boulders Beach with Hassan, Sam and Jeff. It was INCREDIBLE. It’s a beach about 45 minutes from Cape Town right past where the Indian Ocean begins and there are penguins everywhere. We spent the day looking at penguins, lying in the sand, swimming (the water was FREEZING) and just relaxing.  Hassan is 100% better. He got surgery in his foot to remove the spines and had to get a bunch of stiches (so he couldn’t swim) but he is feeling much better and is totally back to his normal self.  At one point we were laying in the sand and this really eccentric women came up and wanted to take a picture of us when Hassans shorts blew a certain way in the wind and she stood there for about 10 minutes waiting but got her shot, then she told us she is a famous South African photographer. So I’m totally expecting to be on the cover of a sweet South African magazine.

Our last night we went out with all of our friends to a place called Mitchell’s for dinner and drinks and they had fish bowls! Which is basically a giant fish bowl of a blue drink that tastes like sprite. I have wanted one my whole life and I told my friend Liz this. She goes hold on, walks up to the bar and literally before I can order she has flirted her way into a free one for me. It was epic.  Around midnight everyone else went to Long Street to party but Mia and I were tired so we went back to the boat.

The last day was tough because there were sooo may cultural and adventurous things I wanted to do but I had to make a decision: do those things, or do things I need to do? I ended up just getting stuff done that I had to… went on the internet, uploaded pictures, skype, bought some things I needed, went to the post office, just basically ran errands. I’m sad to have missed out but feel much better to have been productive.  Everyone fell head over heels in love with Cape Town and it sounds like it’s going to be the reunion spot, and even if it’s not I would love to go back there because there is so much I want to see/do that I didn’t get a chance to.

All right, since I finally have something on paper I’m going to post this and I’ll write about Ghana and Rio later today.

wwwooooaaahhhhhh

We're currently sailing into Cape Town and let me just say it is THE MOST EPIC THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. I have always thought flying into Seattle was epic, but this is BEYOND epic.  Skyline along the water, a highway of clouds passing over Table Mountain and otherwise clear blue skies, I can't even describe this to you.  Google Image it, people. It's more than epic. It's magic.

Things are looking up today. With a week full of midterms and only one pubnight everyone is desperate to get off the boat.  We're running a bit beyond schedule but we should be off within two hours. Cape Town is the first port where everyone has to go face to face with an immigration official so it will take a few minutes but I don't even care, I just need to set foot on solid land. I've been making fun of people in the last two ports about freaking out when getting off the ship but now I'm right on board, or off board I should say.  Ha. I am fall over twice (while keeping my valuables close by) the second I see a street.

In other news, my hippie friend Coleman just said a chant and put oils on my foot to help it heal.  The chant wasn't really necessary but I requested it for authenticity.  At Hassan's grandmothers request I also drew a circle on the bottom of my foot because circles are very important.  If standard medicine and my lack of will power has failed me the last five years, it's time to try it the natural way and thus far it seems to be working. I'll keep you updated.

I'm going to go get dressed and sit outside and stare at Table Mountain until they let us off the boat.  I am SO. FREAKING. EXCITED. CAPE TOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rough waters

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't been around.  I can't recall how much I've written in the past about this but my friend Hassan is incredibly sick. In Ghana he had a run in with some sea urchins and got 107 spines in his feet. All but two are out but they are embedded deeply into his foot and he is having surgery in South Africa to remove them.  He has been running a high fever, all of his lymph nodes are swollen and the doctors on the boat aren't sure what is wrong with him.  The leading possibilities are sepsus (spelling?), malaria or hopefully just his body trying to reject the spines.  Regardless I am terrified.  Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers during the next few days and I hope more than anything that my next post has good news. I love you all.

Hey blog friends. On the ship it's the equivalent of midterm week and we only have six days (three now) in between Ghana and South Africa so it's been BUSY.  As soon as I have a moment I will finish my Ghana entry and write about Rio too because I realized I never did - that one will be relatively short.  Love you!

Initial Ghana Reaction

So I’ve got to admit, up until now I’ve kind of been writing into the dark. I assumed my readership rested somewhere around 4.5 (four regular readers, one sometimes reader) so to find out there are so many more of you out there is a bit of a shock. I am going to ensure that this knowledge doesn’t affect my voice and I don’t think it will although I may pay more attention to my grammar and vocabulary… I know I’ve been slacking on the adjectives a lot and using “awesome” and “amazing” all encompassingly which is the sign of a bad writer so I will work on that as well (but don’t judge me if I use those words too often… sometime they’re the only way to describe the world!). Really though, it’s weird to find out so many people read your writing. I may just pretend I’m still writing into the dark because censorship kills the truth.

Anyway, I’m back from my Ghanaian homestay. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced in my entire life. So many of our experiences we consider “unique” because they’re so exciting and intense and life changing and we don’t realize that so many before and after us have had and will have the same moments, revelations, even conversations. That being said I believe I have experienced something that over 99.9% of the people living in industrialized nations will never experience… and that is the way the rest of the world, the ones we only know from textbooks and natural disasters and the 6:00 news, live.

I am not sure if I’ll be able to do a full article on my time in Senase right now because I’m still trying to figure it out myself. In conditions dirtier, poorer and more rustic than most of us will ever experience in passing I witnessed more community, love and happiness than I have ever and probably will ever see in a group of people. After traveling over ten hours to get to the Senase village we pulled in around 8pm. Not ten seconds after the bus stopped children of all ages swarmed around it waving, jumping and screaming. As we began to unload the bus the screams, which I thought were at their maximum, became even louder. The majority of the kids were 2-15 but I’m confident no age was missing from our welcome party. The second our bags were down it started, the questions we would hear over and over again the next three days: “What is your name?” “How old are you?” “Flash me!” (take a picture).

Before I continue I want to make it clear just how rustic these conditions are. We were the first white people many of them had ever seen, and sometimes they thought we were celebrities because the only white people they had ever seen were on the tvs in town. There was no plumbing or running water; they showered out of a bucket and had different stages of bathrooms ranging from planks over large holes, small holes in the ground and, in some public places, small closers where people would urinate into drains in the corner. The village is sustainable, meaning they can support themselves from the food they grow, but they have no money coming in so it’s hard to make changes. They do all of their cooking in pots on top of coals outside. Everyone carries everything in baskets on their heads. All of the trash goes into a big pile on one of the edges of the village. During my time there I saw women disposing of trash on top of this huge (like 100 foot long 30 foot tall) mound in sandals, children playing on top of the trash and a dead dog unceremoniously laying in the middle of the hill, though it was later gone and my friend Matt graciously informed of the most likely situation: ones dead pet became some else’s dinner. The children were only fed one meal a day (I’m not sure how often the adults eat) and they not only no tvs, ipods or video games but they also have no toys at all. The only material item I saw any child with was a young girl who had a small plastic pink ring, which she took off and placed on my pinky. Most families have between 5 and 8 kids, which makes for over 2,000 youth in a village of 4,000. The lack of toys causes the children to find other ways to entertain themselves: a lot of soccer (or should I say futbal?), a lot of drumming and a lot of dancing…the six year olds put us to shame without second thought.

I realize I just set up the scene and this is not the time to leave you hanging but I have to go meet my friend Tatiana. We are going to try and find an internet café so I can finally get pictures up for y’all! I promise I’ll finish my writings on Ghana soon because I am anxious to share everything I saw, but I would rather post this now cause it might be a day or two. xoxo