Hi there!

My New Years' resolution was to write down the things that I want to remember in my life. Not the miniscule things like, "Accidentally drank orange juice before brushing teeth," but the small and big moments that make up what I want to remember about my life. (Don't worry. It's not going to turn into a diary and if it does, I promise to punch myself). So here we are, the end of January and I figure it's about time to sidle over to my laptop and crank something out. It's a good thing too, because as I was reading over my Semester at Sea emails (posted below) from what is now two years ago I realized three things. The first being that I had forgotten about a lot of the amazing adventures I went on with my friends on the MV Explorer. That scares me...a lot. The second is that I haven't written anything that has meant much of anything to me in almost two years. I haven't really written much of anything over 140 characters, to be honest. And the third is that I really like to write. I like coming up with quirky thoughts and putting pen to paper (well, finger to keyboard actually but that doesn't sound as romantic). I feel as though I can be the real me in writing. I feel more charming in text. In real life situations, I don't always say what I mean to say, or I think of the most perfectly witty phrase seconds after the window has closed. Therefore, with Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory caramel apple in hand, I'd like to formally introduce myself to the world of blogs. Hi, I'm Amanda, I just graduated from college and I'm now a writer.

Kobe, Japan

We only had four days in Japan, a cause of much whining from us
throughout the voyage, until we got there and saw that we were no
longer in the land of cheaply priced goods. It was probably a good
thing that we only had four days there, at least money-wise. However,
later in my life I would love to travel all around Japan, because we
easily filled up four days just by staying in the few towns around
Kobe.
The second I got off the ship, I felt a connection to the land around
me. It was probably because I wanted to feel it; I wanted a place to
feel rooted to. It was a strange feeling because it was completely
foreign to me, yet I felt a feeling of familiarity.
The first day in this foreign, yet familiar country, two of my
friends, Libby and Caleb, and I had planned to go around Kobe. We had
an extensive customs process, and were letting people off the ship
alphabetically, by last name, starting with Z. Strangely, almost all
of my friends are in the K-L range, so I was one of the last ones off.
I got off the ship after having my picture and finger prints taken to find not just Caleb and Libby standing there, but four of
my other friends as well letting me know that we were going to Kyoto
instead, which was great because I had been wanting to go to Kyoto but
didn't think there would be time. That is one of the things I have
loved most about this trip, the sheer unpredictability of each day. At
the beginning of the trip, I got stressed out when I did not have
every detail of the day planned out, but as the trip went on, I
learned to love waking up and not knowing where I would be later that
day.
We traveled to the train station and bought tickets for the 50-minute
train ride to Kyoto. The trains in Japan are not easy to maneuver, at
least not at first. Very little is in English, very few people speak
English, and the stations are huge! Once we were safely on the train
and convinced that we were in fact heading towards Kyoto, we began to
relax and even play with some children on the train, making faces at
them and trying to communicate as best we could.
When we arrived in Kyoto, we ate a quick sushi lunch and headed to a
shrine, by public bus. The shrine was not what we were expecting. When
the bus stopped, we stepped off to see a large orange building with
two guardian dragons on either side of the gate. When we passed
through, there were dozens of stands set up selling dried fruit and
other goods. There were even a few booths with carnival-type games.
The path wound around to a large open park where teenagers with trendy
hairstyles sat on tarps eating and talking in a language completely
foreign to us. In the center of the park was a pond with a small
bridge over it and just beyond the bridge were paths lined with cherry
blossom trees in full bloom. The pink trees gave the area a very soft,
delicate look, like a Japan out of the movies. Underneath one of these
trees were two younger women in kimonos sharing a soda and
conversation, a picture perfect moment. (Which I took a picture of,
sneakily). After spending some time exploring this large park with
small shrines scattered around the perimeter, we headed out onto the
street. Partially by luck, and partially because my friend Amy had
some idea where we were going, we stumbled onto this little
cobblestone path that lead through an area with shops that were all
closing for the night, and small houses who were just turning their
lights on. It was getting dark, and in any other setting this little
lane would have made me nervous, but it seemed so sleepy and welcoming
that I felt right at home amongst the women who would pass by in
kimonos.
We found our way back to the train station and ascended the Kyoto
tower, a space-needle-like building, to get a view of the town we had
been exploring. Kyoto is a town that mixes modern with traditional. We
could see lit up temples not far from business buildings. We watched
as the train wound in and out of the station just across, but far
below us. We looked out to the places we had just been, remembering
how big they had looked to us at the time, but how small they seemed
now. Then we got brave and decided to descend and enter a pachinko
center, just to see what all the fuss was about. Now, here's how I
know pachinko; a small vertical box with pins in it and small openings
and when you flick the little lever on the side a steel ball is
catapulted through the pins and hopefully into one of the little
openings. This is the way I grew up playing it in my grandparents'
computer room, but this is far from what I saw in Kyoto and throughout
the rest of Japan. The sliding doors in Japan are not automatic, you
have to push a button on the outside, and then they will glide open
for you. As soon as we pressed that button, our ears were ringing with
loud carnival-like music and the smell and taste of smoke engulfed us.
People were sitting in front of vertical boxes, but they were
completely digital. I have no idea how this game worked, and I
couldn't hold my breath in there long enough to figure it out. We
quickly left with our ears still ringing and the taste of smoke
lingering in our mouths. The funny thing was that most of the people
in there appeared to be in their sixties. We couldn't handle the sound
and the smell, but they sure could. If you ever have the opportunity
to walk into a pachinko center, do it, just for a few seconds.
The next day, after getting back to Kobe the night before, we boarded
the bullet train and headed for Hiroshima. The bullet train looks
exactly like something out of the future. It is painted spotlessly
white and has a front that looks like that of a futuristic airplane.
Inside the cabins are roomy, and a few even have vending machines
(there are vending machines everywhere in Japan). It honestly doesn't
feel like you are going all that fast when riding one, but the second
another train zips past you in seconds, it's not hard to tell that the
country-side is flying by. I'm not sure the exact speed, but I know
that it would take 5 hours to drive from Kobe to Hiroshima and we got
there in just under an hour and a half.
The first day we visited Myajima Island, an island famous for a small
orange shrine that was built in the water to appear as if it were
floating. The shrine is shaped like a gate, called a Torii (yes, Twins
and Angels fans…spelled just like that!) and in order to worship,
people pack into small boats and sail underneath it. The surrounding
areas are filled with shops and more shrine and temples. Once again,
all of these are engulfed with the pink cherry blossoms, light enough
that they almost look like snow.
After we had spent some time here, we went to a Japanese garden,
about one kilometer away from ground zero of the atomic bomb
explosion. The garden had been severely damaged during the explosion
and it was said that nothing would grow in Hiroshima for one-hundred
years, however sixty-three years later and the garden is flourishing.
It was a traditional Japanese garden, with a pond in the middle,
unique bridges and more cherry blossoms. One Japanese couple dressed
formally and traditionally, the man in a nice shirt and pants, the
woman in a kimono, holding a white umbrella to protect herself from
the sun, quietly strolled the parameter of the gardens, a symbol of
the tranquility of the area.
**This doesn't really fit anywhere, but I figured it would be
something that some people would be interested in. I've been talking
about a lot of women in kimonos, but that is actually a rarity in
Japan today. They are typically only worn for special occasions. Most
of the women in Japan made all of us in our jeans and tops look
frumpy. The teenage and twenty-something girls, dress up, often in
skirts with high, funky knee socks and cute, but not revealing tops.
Everywhere that we went, we felt underdressed, because most of us
didn't bring that type of clothing on this trip, and some of us just
haven't had a laundry day in a really long time and keep having to
give bags of clothes to their best friend on the ship so that they get
washed with her stuff (Like me). The style suits the petite Japanese
girls very well and is trendy and put-together without…exposing too
much. I realized I had not yet spoken much about fashion in these
countries and this seemed like the perfect country to make a little
side not about it.**
That night, after eating more sushi, we did something that everyone
must do in Japan, karaoke. Karaoke in Japan is not like karaoke in the
US where people get up on stage in front of people that they don't
know. In Japan, customers rent out their own room, pick the songs and
sing with their friends for hours. We even got unlimited soda and ice
cream factored into the price of our four-hour karaoke session. This
was one of the most fun nights of my trip. I was with some of my
closest friends, singing and eating ice cream. What more could anyone
want? We even got a visit from some Japanese people who were doing
their own karaoke and wanted to join in with us. They did not know the
words to many of the songs that we were singing, so they brought
tambourines and just played along to the music, while laughing at how
off key some of the people in our room were (I won't name names).
The next day we headed past the Hiroshima Carp stadium (the baseball
team which would be playing out of town while we were there…but I'm
not bitter or anything), and to the atomic bomb memorial park and
museum. The A-Bomb dome, as it is called, is just feet away from where
the bomb exploded above the city on August 6, 1945, yet the structure
is still standing and serves as a memorial for the attack. The area
has been made to beautifully reflect the spirit of Hiroshima. The town
suffered an attack, of which the affects due to radiation, are still
being felt more than 60 years later, yet they quickly decided rather
than retaliating or harboring feelings of hatred, that they would
dedicate their city to peace. It is difficult to explain, but this
spirit can be strongly felt within these gardens. There is color and
sleek statues, all of which give off the feeling of peace and hope. It
is all clearly designed to look soft, rather than harsh and to look to
the future, rather than dwell on the past. The whole place promotes
such an amazing attitude that I know would be hard to find if
something that horrific happened. It takes a lot of strength.
The museum was so dense with information about the atomic bomb
attack. It took a good two hours to get through. They had exhibits
about why the bomb was dropped (it was a political decision that much
of the military was against), why it was dropped in Hiroshima (there
were no known allied POW camps there), what an atomic bomb is, the
effects of the bomb on the people of Hiroshima, and even exhibits
displaying almost completely incinerated clothing and toys. It was a
hard thing to take in all at once in a museum. I can't even imagine
what it would have been like to be standing on that exact spot 63
years ago.
The last day, after taking the bullet train back the night before, we
finally were able to explore the city that the ship had been docked
in. Our mission: Kobe beef. I brilliantly spoke with a woman working
at the hospitality desk to find a reasonably priced place for lunch. I
even had the woman write down the name of the restaurant in Japanese
characters so that our plan would be foolproof. One thing that I have
learned about traveling in foreign countries, however, is that nothing
is foolproof. Every time we have a place in mind that we want to eat
or visit, there is always a very real chance that we won't get there,
or will get lost, or will get on a rickshaw with a driver who has no
idea where he is going, and once again, this was one of those times.
We walked around staring at our map, asking people for directions
before two women pointed to the building that we were standing in
front of and told us that this was the restaurant we were looking for.
'Perfect', I thought to myself, 'that was fairly easy.' It was easy,
except for one small detail, a small sign hanging on the window
screamed at our rumbling stomachs and watering mouths that this
restaurant was closed. We soon found out, as we scoured the
surrounding buildings advertising Kobe beef, that many restaurants in
Japan are closed on Mondays. We finally found one that was open,
however when we looked at the menu, the numbers 137 yen per person
(about 130 dollars) seemed to be mimicking us and our hungry,
college-budgeted selves. Finally, we asked another information desk
for help and they told us to look for a place called…Steak World.
Well, there was nowhere called Steak World that we could see, at least
not that said Steak World in English characters, but we managed to
find a a reasonably priced, open restaurant serving a Kobe beef
sirloin steak lunch special. It was a small dark, but nice restaurant
and each table had its own hibachi where the chef cooked the steak
right in front of us. It was one of the best meals of the entire trip.
We ate slowly so that the melt-in-your-mouth steak did not disappear
too quickly and left feeling full and happy.
We decided to work off the food by going on another adventure, our
last in Japan. We took a train to the Rokko station and then bus to
take a cable car up Mount Rokko for a view of the entire port. It was
the perfect way to say goodbye to Japan and remember the four
jam-packed, but great days in Japan.
I don't think I will write another email, because, as I mentioned, I
only have three port days left and after Costa Rica will only have
five days left on the ship to spend with my shipboard family. Thanks
for reading all of my emails! I hope you enjoyed them. I learned so
much about the world and myself on this trip. I hope you learned a
little bit too and are encouraged to go travel yourself! Honestly, the
most valuable thing that I think I learned about myself, is that I am
capable of a lot more than I gave myself credit for before I left on
this trip. It was such a great lesson to learn and I had a great time
learning it. Every moment, high and low, was totally worth it. I hope
you all get an opportunity to experience some of those moments too.

Hong Kong and China

The way that Hong Kong and China were done was different than other
ports. We docked in Hong Kong last Thursday. I was only able to spend
one day there, because the next morning I left for Beijing. I spent
four days in Beijing, while the ship was sailing to Shanghai (with
only about 100 people on it who decided not to go to Beijing). From
Beijing we flew to Shanghai where we met the ship and got to spend one
day in Shanghai. I was basically running around the country of China,
a typical week on Semester at Sea.
Let me just start by saying that I would absolutely love to go back
to Hong Kong. I only spent one day there, so I think I need a little
bit more time. During the day, I was able to visit the Chinese
University of Hong Kong and meet some local students who attend the
university. We ate a traditional dim sum lunch, and honestly, I have
no idea what I ate, so when I get back I'll show you all pictures to
see if anyone can identify the food. Whatever it was, it was all
delicious. After we struggled with the chop sticks for awhile, we were
led on a campus tour by several of the students. It was somewhat of a
dreary day, which was really nice, because my sweatshirts were
starting to feel neglected with all of the tropical countries we've
been to. The campus wasn't anything spectacular, architecturally,
however it overlooked the ocean and had many different areas that were
beautifully and distinctly Asian, such as a large tree, surrounded by
an infinity pool that overlooks the sea. My favorite part of the
college campus was that it felt like a college campus, something that
I didn't realize I missed until I stepped onto the university
property. It felt so comforting just to be somewhere that felt
familiar, even though it was completely foreign.
After we said goodbye to our new friends, I met up with some of my
American friends for dinner in the city and the famous Hong Kong light
show. We walked to the Avenue of Stars. The Avenue looks across the
bay to Hong Kong Island, where the business district and the
skyscrapers stand. Every night at 8 pm music is played and the
skyscrapers' lights dance to the music and flash lasers. The night was
foggy, so it wasn't as spectacular as we were expecting, and the music
was a little bit like something that would be played during a
Disneyland light show, but it was still a fun experience. It was
pretty amazing that the entire city could be cued to music and the
cityscape is one of the best that I've ever seen, simply because it is
so colorful and alive.
Later, my friend and I went to a night market in the city that sold
art, traditional clothes, and of course, a few touristy souvenirs.
This market, was absolutely unending. We decided that we would walk to
the end of it before we decided to buy anything because we had no idea
where to begin. Ten minutes later, we still weren't at the end of it,
so we decided to just start looking at the goods. I found this great
original painting of the city for about 5 USD. At these markets, you
are supposed to bargain with the vendors, but this painting clearly
was intricate and unique. I felt like I was ripping the artist off by
giving him his asking price. In the US a painting like that would have
been $40 at least.
Here's a good story for you. Kind of embarrassing, but I think you'll
find it funny, so it's worth it. I was looking at some traditional
Chinese dresses in the market. The sleeveless kind with the high
collar. You've seen them before. It was made out of silk and only cost
about $10 USD. The size on the rack was a medium and it looked like it
would fit me. At home, I am typically a medium, so I asked the woman
if this dress would fit me. She told me no and when I asked her what
size I needed she looked me up and down, walked around me, clearly
surveying me very closely and then proceeded to say, "Extra, extra
large." My friend and I started cracking up, because I wasn't
expecting that. Then she says, "Because of this," and hits her rear
end. That made us start laughing even harder. Now, I haven't gained
much weight, but the sizes in all of these Asian countries run very
small and I guess I do have a little something that many Chinese
people don't have; a few curves. I'm stubborn though, so I held up a
large, decided that it would fit and bought it.
Yeah, it doesn't fit.
After that fun little experience, we were both out of Hong Kong
dollars and decided that it was time to go back to the ship. By this
time, it had started to rain, so we made the two-mile walk back to the
ship while getting drenched (which was actually a lot of fun), and
said goodbye to Hong Kong.
The next morning I had to be up bright and early for the three-hour
flight to Beijing. When we flew into the airport, it was completely
deserted, which seemed a little bit strange. It was a huge building,
with a lot of wide-open spaces, which seemed to be common in Beijing.
The architecture gave it a very modern look. As soon as we boarded the
buses, we discovered why it was so empty. The airport had only been
open for ten days. It was a new addition to the city in preparation
for the Olympics.
We headed straight to the Summer Palace, a palace surrounding a lake
that the Dragon Lady built, unbeknownst to the rest of China at the
time. Honestly, I could move to the summer palace. Despite the fact
that all 1.3 billion people in China were there on this particular
day, it was absolutely gorgeous. The day we were there felt like a
perfect fall day. That crisp air with that certain lighting that only
comes around in the fall in the US. The buildings were spread out over
several miles and pagodas, walkways and trees blooming cherry blossoms
surrounded the area. Out on the lake, people were paddle boating and
taking guided cruises. Intricate carvings of golden dragons lined the
roofs of the pagodas, artwork that goes underappreciated, but is
incredibly detailed and had to have been time-consuming. We were able
to walk around this area for a while before heading out to a dinner at
a Peking duck restaurant where we were able to sample different
preparations of the duck. We even got to see them being prepared, an
image that, unfortunately, I'm not sure I'll be able to get out of my
head for quite some time.
The second day we woke up early and took the hour and a half drive
outside of the city to…The Great Wall of China. In order to walk up to
the Great Wall, we had to pass through a small market selling all
types of tourist items, including fabulously tacky t-shirts announcing
to the world, "I climbed the Great Wall." I bought two. Our group had
the option of taking a chair-lift up to the actual wall before
climbing, but I had a challenge from my grandparents to climb all the
way to the top, so there was no way I was going to take a chair-lift
up there, so two of my friends and I hiked the never-ending staircase
to the Great Wall, where we were greeted by even more never-ending
staircases. Even though the day was hazy (as all days are in the 1.3
billion person China), the Wall was still a magnificent sight. In the
distance, jagged mountains could be seen through the haze, and on the
hills around us, the Wall twisted, hugging the curved areas perfectly.
We soon found out that we were celebrities in China. We were stopped
by a group of middle-schoolers from Qingdao and two-by-two they took
one picture after another with us to show their friends back home.
They were incredibly nice kids and we had fun posing for pictures of
them, occasionally holding up the peace sign, which is made in almost
every picture by the Chinese. It took us a couple hours to climb to
the top (I did it Grandma and Grandpa!), mostly because we had to stop
to take pictures every eight feet or so, but when we got there, it
seemed like we could see all of China below us.
After leaving, the Wall, we had the rest of the afternoon to do
whatever we wanted, so two of my friends and I jumped in a cab and
headed for the Beijing Zoo to see the pandas. Our cab driver spoke no
English, so my friend Cheri pointed on the map where we wanted to go,
and tried to act out a panda bear, before he figured out where we
wanted to go. The panda house was under renovation for the Olympics
(like the rest of Beijing), however it was still open. When we got
there, one of the younger pandas had climbed up into a tree and was
teetering very close to the edge, on branches we were sure could not
hold his weight. We watched this for a while before heading around the
rest of the zoo. Honestly, the zoo grounds were very nice, but the
housing for the animals was not. The cat house consisted of very large
lions and tigers in very small cages. I had to leave that room. We
were wondering if the Olympics will cause the zoo to have to improve
the conditions that the animals are living in. I hope so.
We got there with only about an hour and a half before the zoo
closed, so after we quickly saw some of the main attractions and took
some great pictures of us running around the zoo, we found another cab
driver, who also spoke no English, and somehow got him to take us to
the Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Center. The stadium is called the
Bird's Nest, because it looks like… A Bird's Nest. This is where the
opening ceremonies will be held, and right next to it is the Aquatics
Center. This is a large blue rectangle that appears as though it has
bubbles on the outside of it. It glows bright blue at night. Both of
them, even though they are not quite finished and we couldn't get too
close, are quite an impressive sight.
After we had seen the Olympic venues, we were in serious need of some
familiar food. I am a huge fan of Chinese food, but for some reason,
this was the one type of food that really upset my stomach. We decided
that we needed to make a stop at Pizza Hut. We tried to tell our cab
driver that we wanted Pizza Hut. I had even taken a picture of one
earlier so that I could show him, but he wasn't sure what I was trying
to show him. Cheri drew a picture of a pizza and tried to draw the
Pizza Hut symbol, but still, nothing. Finally, we decided to just head
back to the hotel and go from there. As we were driving home, we saw
one on the other side of the street and started telling the bewildered
driver, who did not look much older than us, that we had seen a Pizza
Hut. He finally understood, made a u-turn and dropped us off.
Now, Pizza Hut in China is fine dining. Ok, maybe not fine dining,
but it doesn't feel like a Pizza Hut in the US. It feels more like a
California Pizza Kitchen, if that helps to put the image in your mind.
We sat down and looked at the menu. A pepperoni pizza was called "The
American Special." Perfect. We each ordered what would have been in
the US a personal size pizza, but they did not quite understand that
we each wanted a pizza. "Three pizzas?" They said in shock. We told
them yes, three. When they brought them out, I swear, people were
staring at us as we ate them. They really weren't big! I don't know
what the big deal was!
The third day, we visited Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and
the Lama Temple, named for the Dalai Lama, not because it has llamas
(somebody thought that on our trip). Tiananmen Square was huge. It was
much bigger than what I have ever imagined. I can't imagine how
frightening it must have been to be in that huge open space during the
1989 massacre. Across the street is a larger-than-life portrait of
Mao, watching over the square. I was asking one of our guides about
the massacre. First I asked her where the famous picture of the tank
was taken and she told me that it was down the street from where we
were standing. Next, I asked her how many people exactly were killed
during the massacre. "None," she said, "At lease that's what the
government told us." She went on to say that she knew many people had
been killed, but because the official stance of the government was
that no one was killed, she had no idea how many casualties there
actually were. She told me that her neighbor had been there that day
and that he had never come home. His parents never found out what
happened to him that day. That was my first experience with the
censorship in China.
After we had spent some time in Tiananmen Square, we walked across
the street to the Forbidden City, the emperor's palace. The Forbidden
City is made up of building upon building, all red, consisting of
roofs curved up at the ends. In the back of the city is a large garden
with very interesting, but beautiful trees and flowers. It took us
about an hour and a half to get through here, and we didn't even see
the whole city. The place is absolutely huge. That and the 1.3 billion
people who were at the Summer Palace followed us to the Forbidden City
made it difficult to see the entire palace in the amount of time we
were allotted.
Later in the day, we went to the Lama Temple, a Buddhist temple with
many different shrines to the Buddha placed around the grounds. We
happened to be there on a special day. I might be mistaken, but the
way that I understood it was that the day we were there was the 15th
day of the month in the Chinese calendar, which was a day for prayer.
There were hundreds of people there burning incense and performing
ritualized prayers to the Buddha. Each temple had a dozen people or so
outside deep in prayer. We were offered incense to burn by a woman and
were invited to participate in the activity, which was a very touching
and uniting experience.
That night we went to an acrobatic show in the city. The things these
people were able to do and the amount of strength and flexibility they
showed off did not even seem possible. They made it look so incredibly
easy, we felt as if we should be able to jump on stage with them and
effortlessly throw our legs over our heads while standing on our arms.
The next morning, Cheri and I turned on our TV in the hotel to CNN,
one of the two English channels. The channel was black, so we flipped
around for a little bit before returning to CNN to see that the
channel was back and that there was a light interview on. We thought
that it was no big deal and got ready for the last day in Beijing.
Later that day, we were talking to some other people who had
experienced the same thing, only they had been watching the channel
when it had gone black. Apparently, CNN had gone black in the middle
of the story about the Olympic torch relay protests in London and had
come back on after the story was over. That afternoon, as we boarded
the plane to head back to Shanghai, there was a Chinese newspaper in
English offered to passengers as we walked in. The headline read,
"Warm Reception in Cold London." According to the China Daily, London
had been very happy to have the Olympic torch pass through and the
event occurred with almost no blips. There are two sentences about any
kind of interruptions. The newspaper states, "British police foiled an
attempt by a person to grab the torch and immediately took him away.
He was among the 25 who tried to disrupt the torch relay and were
detained for public order offenses, police said." These two sentences
are in the middle of the article. After this it goes on to talk about
how excited London is to have the 2012 Olympics. I thought this
article was incredible, especially because I am positive that the rest
of the world's newspaper articles were about the protests with maybe
one or two sentences about the 2012 Olympics. I know that in the US,
we don't always get the most unbiased news, but it was so strange to
me to know what was going on in the world and to see that the people
of China are not getting even close to an accurate report at times.
Just imagine if you had no idea what was really going on in the rest
of the world, not because you didn't want to know, but because you
couldn't know. It's a really strange thought for me.
I spent the last day in Shanghai, a much more modern feeling city
than Beijing. Beijing is much more spread out than Shanghai giving it
less of a "big city" feel and more of an industrial feel. Shanghai has
the skyscrapers and the bright lights condensed in a city center area.
One of my favorite parts of Shanghai was the architecture. The
skyscrapers are not just straight up and down rectangles growing out
of the ground. Each is unique with it's own curves and edges. Even
though the day was freezing cold and we had to deal with sleet-like
rain, meaning that we couldn't visit some of the outdoor areas we had
planned on going to, we still had a lot of fun just exploring the city
on our own.
Tomorrow morning, we get to Japan, the last major stop on the voyage.
I am planning on packing as much as possible into the four days that
we are there, because after that, we get to spend a lot of time on the
ship. I'm trying to find a baseball game in either Kobe or Hiroshima
so wish me luck!

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

I'm very tempted to say that Vietnam was my favorite port up to this
point in the trip, and boy, do I have the t-shirts to back it up. More
than anything, it really made me reflect, some of which will be
included in this email, because I've been using these to collect all
my thoughts, so I won't be offended if you skip over some of those
parts.
We sailed down the Saigon River on the Thursday morning. It was
overcast, but slowly, the scene around us began to light up. We passed
small fishing boats with men who happily waived to our Goliath of a
ship as it passed through the narrow river, rocking the boats in our
wake. There were small villages on the banks and people working in the
rice paddies. The entire scene was very peaceful, until we got a
little bit closer to Ho Chi Minh City, where we began to see large
industrial ships.
My first day, I visited the Cu Chi tunnels, an underground network of
tunnels built by the Viet Cong as a means of self defense and attack
against Americans during the Vietnam War, or the "American War" as it
is known in Vietnam. It was a great experience because it showed us a
perspective of the war that we don't often get to see, but at the same
time it was a very eerie experience for me. We walked around the
grounds in Cu Chi where there were bomb craters, tunnels and examples
of traps. One of the hardest things for me to see were the traps,
because the way our guide talked about them was so different than what
we, as Americans, are used to. She would refer to the Vietnam as "we"
stating that "we set up these traps for you guys." The way she
described the traps was more blunt than we are used to hearing in
reference to death. Yes, we, a society that glorifies death, does not
tend to talk about it in the blatant language that she was using. I
think the strangest part of her speech was the fact that she was
describing Americans as a faceless enemy. In school, we have always
learned about dehumanizing the enemy as a tactic in war, but it's a
very strange feeling when hearing about the side you're used to
hearing about as "the good guys." Even as someone who believes in
equality for all people, it was a very weird feeling to hear about the
American soldiers as such an un-human entity. Another eerie experience
from Vietnam was how familiar all of the scenery looked, only I am
used to seeing this scenery with helicopters flying over it and plumes
of smoke rising from the ground. To see it now, with kites in the
place of where planes used to be made it seem like something out of a
dream in which you know you recognize the place, but it is completely
different than what you are used to seeing, if that makes any sense.
After we were taken around all of the traps and bomb-sites, we
arrived at a shooting range where we could shoot AK-47s and M-60s. I
really just wanted to try it, because growing up in Danville, CA, I've
never even seen a gun that wasn't attached to a police officer's belt,
let alone shot one. I picked an AK-47 and shared the ten bullets with
two of my friends because I really only wanted to shoot one. Honestly,
I really wish that I hadn't. It just felt wrong to me for some reason.
It was a scary feeling holding this gun in a place that had seen so
much violence, and as soon as I shot it, I knew that I never wanted to
have to be around one of them again. It was so loud and powerful, I
cannot even imagine what it must be like to have to use one, or have
one used against you, in this type of setting. It's cliché, but it was
really a shattering of innocence for me. I guess that it's kind of a
fun fact to be able to say that I've shot an AK-47, but I hope it's an
experience that I never have to repeat.
The same goes for the tunnels. For those of you who know me well, you
know that I have a bit of anxiety about tight spaces or crowded areas.
Well, the Cu Chi tunnels are barely big enough to crouch through. You
basically have to waddle through them, although this hurt my knees so
I crawled through them. The tunnels are about four feet tall and three
feet wide, maybe, and Vietnam is not exactly a country with a pleasant
climate, so we were drenched in sweat the second we entered into this
confined space. To make it worse, people in front of me kept stopping
to take pictures. I kept urging people (maybe not completely politely)
to keep moving, because I was stuck. There was no way forward when
they stopped, no way back, no way up, and no way down and I was
completely aware of this. I had to repeatedly tell myself that I was
going to be ok and that people have made it through far worse than
this. I was really proud of myself for making it through. I'm not sure
that I would do it again, but it was a fear that I just needed to
face. And we only went 50 meters! That's half a football field whereas
the people who actually used these tunnels would go miles through them
without resurfacing. There are air holes that are constructed by
sticking a piece of bamboo into the ground and allowing termites to
eat all the way through. We saw small holes sticking out of tree
stumps that were air holes and were completely unnoticeable, except
for the fact that they were pointed out to us. The Cu Chi tunnels,
while I'm not sure I'd be jumping up and down and raising my hand to
go back, was one of the most interesting trips I have been on so far.
It was really disconcerting, but a good experience to see "the other
side." I think it's really easy to look at a war and see a good side
and bad side, but to remember and see first hand that both sides are
filled with people who are trying to survive at any cost really puts
human relationships into perspective.
The second day, I left for an overnight trip to the Mekong Delta.
After a four-hour bus ride, we arrived in Can Tho, the most urban city
along the Delta. Can Tho, while it may be a modern city for this area
looks like Fargo, North Dakota compared to Ho Chi Minh City. (My two
best friends on the ship are from Fargo, I had to take a small shot at
them while they're reading over my shoulder!). The delta is filled
with small houses along the banks of the river. All of the houses are
on stilts and are partially built over the river. Some of the
inhabitants even live on houseboats. A common scene is a man or woman
lying on a hammock on their houseboat with the laundry hanging up just
outside of their small covered room. The first day, we leisurely
sailed along the river passing fishing boats, houseboats and small
rickety stilted houses. This was one of my favorite areas, because all
of the people seemed so at peace with their lives and their families.
It was so nice to see families outside sitting with their feet over
the river talking or just being with each other. If I have learned
anything from this trip, it is how much I appreciate the simple
things. Again, I know that sounds cliché, but this life on the river
looked so appealing, I think mostly because it reminded me of my
summers in Indiana on Winona Lake.
That night, I had a fairly interesting experience involving a $5
massage. Some of the girls from my trip and I decided we would get
massages in our hotel. They were only $5 and everyone has told us that
Vietnam is the place to get massages, so we decided it would be a fun
cultural experience…
That was mistake number one.
After paying for our massages, we were each led into a room with a
masseuse. Here's the awkward part. They wouldn't leave the room to let
us change, so I made sure I wrapped a towel around me and refused to
take off my shorts because I didn't want my masseuse staring at me
(I've heard from some of the other girls that they got ogled a little
bit). She didn't understand why I wasn't willing to completely undress
in front of her and kept commanding me to strip, before she finally
just gave up. The massage started out very relaxing, then all of a
sudden, the small woman climbs up on the table and starts putting all
of her weight on my back. Then she starts smacking my back, as if that
is supposed to feel good. This went on for a while with her squatting
up on the table with me, slapping my back, legs and arms. Finally, the
hour was over, and I was feeling a little bit less than relaxed. In
fact, I'm pretty sure that my back was bruised.
Here's a life lesson for you: Don't get $5 massages in Vietnam.
To ease our pain, we decided to get some ice cream on the balcony,
which overlooked the delta and the city before going to bed.
The next morning was one of my favorite days on the trip thus far. We
woke up early and walked down the street to board a small bumboat and
sailed down the river to the Cai Rang floating market. At this market,
farmers typically arrive at sunrise or earlier to give their crops to
larger boats, who act as the middlemen and sell the fruits and
vegetables to customers. Each boat has a pile of crops, such as
pineapple or watermelon and several people preparing and selling them.
They also often have long poles, which have at the top a sample of the
crop to show other boats what is being sold. Occasionally, the farmers
themselves in small canoe-like boats will sell their own crops.
Typically this consists of a man standing on the back of the boat,
paddling and a woman in a rice hat squatting at the front of the boat
selling and navigating. These boats will attach themselves to other
boats, generally just by holding onto the side and attempt to sell
their products. There are even a few boats featuring commercial soft
drinks and waters for customers. Again, it was such a peaceful and
authentic experience to be out with local people who are living their
daily lives, buying and selling fruits and vegetables aboard their
houseboats. I would have given anything to be able to board one of
those boats and climb into a hammock and just watch the business
unfold, as many of the local people were doing.
***This little anecdote didn't really fit in anywhere, so I'm just
going to insert it here. The first day on the Mekong Delta, we stopped
at a little garden for lunch. At this garden was a humungous python
that the man took out and let us take pictures with. My friend Erin
and I wanted one more go with the python, because we both thought he
was pretty cool. The man comes over to us and says, "I'm going to go
inside, put it back when you're done." So there we were holding this
massive python not really sure what we were supposed to do. This snake
did not go back into his cage willingly, and he was heavy. It was
quite a sight to see us struggling to put the python, who probably
weighed as much as we did, back into a fairly small cage, where he
clearly did not want to be. I just thought that story was funny.***
We arrived back in Ho Chi Minh City on our third night there and
spent a little bit of time in the city before coming back to the ship
and crashing for the night.
The fourth day, two of my friends and I decided to hit Ho Chi Minh
City. We had a little bit of money that was burning holes in our
pockets. We headed to the Ben Thanh market, a large indoor market near
the Rex Hotel in the Ho Chi Minh City center. This market was
absolutely crazy, I think would be the best way to describe it. There
were probably hundreds of different hole-in-the-wall shops and kiosks
all promoting different items, from knock-off purses to silk robes to
fish. (Parts of it didn't smell so great). The best part about this
market is that almost everything can be bargained for. I loved
pretending that I wasn't that interested in an item that I really
wanted to knock off a few dollars from the price. It was a lot of fun
because to many of the women selling the items, it was clear that
bargaining was a sport. I think a lot of the time they assumed that I
was a naïve foreigner who would just buy the item at whatever price
they quoted, because whenever I gave them a lower price they looked
surprised and laughed at me a little before joining in on the
negotiating. (I hope they weren't laughing because they knew that they
were still ripping me off even with the price I gave them). A phrase
that is popularly used among the vendors is "same same." For example,
one of my friends wanted to find a purse to match a wallet she had
bought and the woman held a purse next to her wallet and told her
"same same," meaning that they matched (even though they really
didn't). There are t-shirts sold all over the city that say "same
same" on the front and "…but different" on the back. I refused to buy
one of those shirts until I heard someone say it, so I kept trying to
prompt women to say it by asking them if two products were similar. My
friends were laughing at me because they knew what I was trying to do.
Finally, I heard someone say it so I ran to the nearest t-shirt kiosk
and bought several of them.
After a long day of shopping, we headed to restaurant called Pho
2000, a Vietnamese restaurant that serves…Pho! Pho is a beef broth
soup with rice noodles and it is delicious. It would have been better
had it been cold outside, but we were so worn out from the long day of
bargaining that it still tasted good. The restaurant had pictures of
Bill Clinton in it, who had visited Pho 2000 several years ago.
Interestingly, a lot of the places that I have been to seem to be
boasting photos of Bill Clinton, maybe he did Semester at Sea, too.
The final day was an interesting one. You didn't think I would send
an email without a good taxi story did you? Well, this one is even
better than the last ones, because it involves a motorcycle.
Here's a little bit of context for the story. The night before, my
friend Katrina and I had gone to an internet café that was close to
the port because I had to put together my schedule for next fall and
the ship internet is too slow. We each took motorcycle taxis there
because it wasn't far and there were no cabs directly outside of the
port. It was a great ride, and I'm glad that it wasn't far because it
was a little bit unnerving.
That's the background information.
The next day, I was supposed to meet my friend Caleb back at the ship
at 1 because he was going to the Cu Chi tunnels that morning. There
was a shuttle that had been taking us from the port to the city center
so that we didn't have to take cabs. With all of the motorbike
traffic, it generally took about half an hour to get there. I had done
some last minute shopping that morning and was waiting for the shuttle
at about noon to take me back to the ship so that I could meet up with
Caleb. At about 12:15, they told me the shuttle wasn't leaving until
12:30, then at 12:30 they told me 12:45, then some kids asked again at
12:45 and the driver told them that they would leave in about another
20 minutes. My friend Jeanette was getting on the shuttle as they were
saying this, so I told her to turn around because we were getting a
cab. We took the cab back and got there at about quarter after one. I
was hoping that Caleb hadn't left yet, so I ran up to my room only to
find a note on my door telling me to meet Caleb at the Rex Hotel at
2:00. The Rex Hotel is where the shuttle picks us up, where I had just
been before I took the cab back. Fantastic. I threw my bags in my
room, ran back outside only to see that the shuttle wasn't there yet,
and once it got there, who knows how long it would have been before it
left to go back to the Rex Hotel. I was determined to meet up with my
friends for one last day around Ho Chi Minh City, so I walked out with
a couple of girls to where the motorcycles were. I found the man who
had driven me to the café the night before, a man that I trusted not
to rip me off or to take me into a back alley and rob me, threw on a
helmet and jumped on the back of the motorcycle to head back to the
city center. One thing about Ho Chi Minh City is that there are more
motorcycles than there is pavement for them to drive on. During rush
hour (about 5 pm) the traffic does not move. It would be faster to
walked through the sea of motorbikes. It's an incredible scene to look
out in front of you and see a blanket of shiny, colored helmets and
little else. Fortunately, we weren't driving through anything like
this, but there are few traffic laws, so that was a little bit scary
at times. After my twenty minute escape from death (just kidding mom
and dad, the motorcycles don't go more than about 10 mph because of
the traffic, but writing it that way makes the story sound way
cooler!), I finally made it back to the Rex Hotel in time to buy two
more "same same" shirts and meet up with Caleb. I have done more
things on this trip that I never thought that I would be brave enough
to do, and this was definitely one of them. It was quite the
experience.
Caleb and I decided to go to the War Remnants Museum, a museum that
we really had no idea where to find, other than drawings of a map that
Caleb had in his notebook. We ended up taking the most indirect route
possible, but we made it there. The museum was quite sobering. It was
mostly photographs of the Vietnam war with other wars interspersed. I
won't go into the details too much, because some of the pictures were
pretty gruesome, especially those that showed the effects of Agent
Orange and victims of bombings. One photo and caption made my mouth
drop, literally. It was a photograph of a family that looked
terrified, looking off into the distance. The caption was a quote from
the photographer, which, paraphrased, said, "This family was about to
be shot by a group of soldiers. Before the killings took place, I
yelled 'Hold it!' took the picture and walked away. As I walked away I
heard several screams followed by gunshots." I could not believe that
and I don't think I need to say why. It was good to see that this
museum wasn't completely attacking Americans, however. It showed a
rounded view of the war and put a human face to both sides, something
that gets lost when people talk about number of casualties or
injuries.
Throughout the trip, it was so interesting to see so many different
perspectives on the war. It was also interesting to see that there are
no lingering negative feelings toward Americans, at least in South
Vietnam, where I was. The whole experience was very emotional for me,
especially because someone that I love very much was there during the
war, an fact that made some of the experiences come alive for me much
more deeply.
I really did love Vietnam, for all of its intricacies and
contradictions. In the Mekong Delta region, the women wore rice hats
and carried baskets on poles over their shoulders. In Ho Chi Minh
City, people wore bike helmets and carried their babies on motorcycles
with them. I even saw the occasional family of four all on one
motorcycle.
I feel like a really pushed my comfort zone in this port, something
that I before Semester at Sea, I was wary of doing, and I feel like I
have grown so much since, say, Brazil, when I was scared to go out
with anything with any value for fear of being mugged.
Vietnam was a port that I was very sad to leave, and one that I hope
to go back to some day.
We get to Hong Kong tomorrow and from Hong Kong I will be flying to
Beijing to see the Great Wall. The ship is rocking more than usual
right now and I'm getting a little…green, so I better wrap this up.

Chennai, India

Namaste! Once again, I'm sitting on deck six trying to write this
email, only this time, I honestly have no idea how to write it. I
don't even know where to write it, actually. In the last five minutes,
I've moved spots four times trying to find the place where I can most
easily reflect on the last five days. India is just such an amazing
sensory overload that I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll
try the beginning.
We pulled into India just around sunrise to see what was definitely
the least spectacular view of the five ports we've been to. The sky
was completely overcast, due to clouds or pollution, or both. The port
that we pulled into was clearly not used to seeing passenger vessels.
Cranes and industrial ships lined the area. We docked in an area that
was filled with rows and rows of the new $2500 car made by Tata, being
held there before they were sold. That morning, I didn't have time to
get off the ship in Chennai before leaving for my overnight trip to
the Taj Mahal and Jaipur. We loaded onto the bus, which was infested
with mosquitoes, and drove the hour or so to the airport. Even on the
drive, there was so much to see. Cows, goats, pigs, dogs and chickens
were walking freely through the streets, eating whatever garbage they
could find, and they didn't have to look very hard. Piles of garbage
filled areas around homes with small children playing barefoot in the
area. These houses that we first saw looked similar to many of the
homes I had seen in the South African townships. They were small and
had been put together with whatever the residents could find, but the
people looked more downtrodden than those in South Africa. It may have
been the presence of more elderly people, whom I did not see in the
townships, but I noticed more people who simply looked exhausted and
beaten by life sitting by the roads. When we finally arrived, the
airport itself was an experience. First of all, no liquids whatsoever
were allowed on the plane so we had to check any small bottles that we
had. At the security line, they frisked everyone who went through and
there was a separate line for men and women, but the line for women
was behind a curtain (yet there were advertisements for "gentlemen's
magazines" right across the way, I guess India really is the land of
contradictions). On the plane, I sat next to a man from Chennai who
told me all about India for the two and a half hour plane ride to
Delhi. He told me how Indians, at least from his experiences, don't
have any negative attitudes towards Americans, because American
companies have been a huge contributor to helping the Indian economy,
he let me listen to his Ipod that had the soundtrack from the huge
Bollywood hit, Om Shanti Om, and he told me that when I came back to
India, I had to spend a week in the north and a week in the south and
that anything less was not enough time. After five days in the north
and south combined, I completely agree. We landed in Delhi and ate a
huge Indian dinner at the hotel, with music and the world's best ice
cream, before going to our two-room suite with two flat screen TVs.
The hotel was nice, however we all agreed that it was hard to enjoy it
while we knew that people were sleeping on the street almost right
outside.
The next morning we woke up at 4am and drove to the train station for
a two-hour ride to Agra, and the Taj Mahal. Even at about 5 in the
morning, this train station was utter mayhem. We had to cross the
street, which is not an easy task as there are literally no lanes, and
very few traffic laws. Cars constantly are honking to let other cars
and motorbikes know that they are in the area. If any of us were tired
before this little experience, we definitely were awake once we made
it across. Inside the station were hundreds of people waiting for
trains, sleeping on the ground, begging for money, and staring at the
seventy American students who had just walked in. It was still dark
when we boarded the train, but an hour or so into the trip, the sun
began to rise and we once again saw poverty levels that I have never
seen before. The first houses we saw were similar to what I've seen in
past countries. I remembered how shocked I was to see these levels of
poverty in the past, but as the train progressed, it seemed as though
it just got worse. First, we saw township-like houses, then straw
huts, then people sleeping under tarps and finally, people who had
laid mats out on the street and were sleeping there. The people were
just starting to wake up and small children were sleepily tottering
around outside of their meager living arrangements. I kept thinking,
"No one should have to live like this." It just seems so unfair.
We pulled up to another train station, one that we were not stopping
at, and once again, there were people sitting to watch the train pull
up. Cows were walking around this station, eating off of the floor.
The next stop was Agra, where we, once again, got off and pushed our
way through the masses of people.
After we stopped for breakfast at a hotel we headed to the Taj Mahal.
We had to walk down a long street where cars were not allowed where
men and children tried to sell us small souvenirs. "Yes madam, very
good price. Maybe later?" they would say as we walked through trying
to look away from the poverty and deformity of some of these people.
It wasn't that we didn't care, because some of these people were
heartbreaking, it was just that if we showed any interest, even a
polite "No thank you," we would be followed all the way down the
street with the people consistently chattering about their product. We
finally made it to the entrance to the Taj Mahal. We walked through
one of the three red palace buildings that surround the Taj before we
caught our first sight. The long walk from the bus through the red
building increased our anticipation, but what we saw before us was so
much better than any photograph or image we had seen or could imagine.
It was like a scene from a movie where the clouds part and a light
shines down and an angelic "aaaaaahhhh" is sounded. Most photos don't
depict the intricacies of the Taj Mahal. It has precious stones inlaid
into the marble around the arches and Sanskrit writing around the
doors. There are floral carvings as well as other designs in the walls
and around the base and when the sun shines through it at sunrise and
sunset, the marble becomes translucent so that the building appears to
glow. Because it was built by a Moguls, it has both Muslim and Hindu
features. The dome shape of the building is of Islamic influence,
however the Sanskrit and floral patterns pays tribute to Hinduism. The
inlaid stones were handmade by one family and their ancestors are
still making and selling pieces of this marble today. All visitors
must take off their shoes before entering, and it felt so incredible
to walk barefoot on the marble floors. One of my favorite aspects of
my Taj Mahal visit was that it wasn't just European and American
tourists, like a few of the other forts and palaces we visited. The
majority of the visitors were Indians of all different levels of
wealth. The women's saris and the people paying tribute to this
amazing place made the experiences so much more colorful, memorable
and moving than it would have been if there had been people with
similar backgrounds and viewpoints to mine. After doing a small photo
shoot at the Taj Mahal, we visited several other landmarks, including
the red fort, which has beautiful carvings and architecture as well,
except that it is not anywhere near as well known as the Taj. We
decided that if these sites that we visited were in Europe, they would
be just as famous and visited, if not more so, as something like
Versailles.
After visiting several more sites in Agra, we took a six hour bus
ride to Jaipur, the Pink City. We ate dinner that night at 10 pm,
which actually isn't that unusual for Indians. In Chennai, many of the
restaurants did not open for dinner until 7:30 as people traditionally
eat around 8 or 9 pm.
Jaipur is a city of palaces. It is called the pink city because the
first Maharaja created his castle out of a pink sandstone and declared
that all other buildings had to be made of the same stone. To this
day, it is illegal to paint or build a building any other color but
this "pink," which actually looks more like a rusted red. The heart of
the city containing these pink buildings is only about one street
long. It begins with an arch, and the moment we passed through that
arch, we knew that we were in a place like nowhere we had ever seen.
The reddish pink buildings rose up from the pavement, which was
swarming with people on bicycles, rickshaws, motorbikes and a few
cars. The street was literally packed with people, I'm not sure how
our bus maneuvered through the crown. On the sidewalks were shops
displaying colorful saris, silks and scarves. Vendors sold food from
the road and people, both wealthy and very poor mulled around doing
their daily biddings. It was just like everything I imagined India
would be, plus what I never could have imagined.
Our third morning, we left at about 7 am for the palace. We rode
painted elephants up to the palace entrance, which was a fun
experience, but something I'm not sure that I would ever do again
because the elephants clearly are not treated very well. They used to
carry four people up the hill many times each day. Now they are only
allowed to carry two 4-5 times a day, but it seemed like they were
taking many more trips than that. Their "masters," as they were
called, carried sharp metal sticks and many of the elephants had scars
on their heads from being hit and prodded. It was sad to see such
beautiful animals being treated like that, but I hope that their
situation is better than what I perceived.
The palace was beautiful with more inlaid stones and small mirrors in
the stone to reflect light, creating a shimmering effect. When we were
in one of the museum sections of the palace, the emperor of Jaipur,
who still lives at the palace, came in and we were able to take a
group picture with him.
Peasants who had been employed to work there, were laboriously
digging up and replacing the old stones. Women carried water in large
bowls on their heads before kneeling to help the men with the
construction. It was very interesting to see women doing such hard
labor in their elegant looking saris. When I tried one on, I could
barely walk without tripping over my own feet, let alone do
landscaping. All over the countryside we witnessed this trend of women
dressed beautifully, but doing strenuous labor.
On the subject of women, we were warned that we would notice a lack
of women in India and a surplus of men, but I didn't realize how eerie
it would be to witness so many missing women. For many decades,
females have been the victims of infanticide because they are seen as
more of a burden to people, especially the poor. It is traditionally
the duty of the men to take care of the parents when they are older
and girls came with the future price of dowry when they married,
before it was officially outlawed (although it is still practiced in
many areas). When a boy is born it is a big celebration and the
husband is very appreciative of his wife, but this is not the case
with a girl. Today, this practice of female infanticide still occurs
as well as abortion of female fetuses. In fact, today ultrasounds to
find out the sex of the baby are illegal because they can lead to
female fetus abortion.
India is a beautiful, yet heartbreaking country. There is so much
contradiction. Mansions are built next door to people who have
nothing. The industry is booming, yet so many people in the rural
areas get no support from the government and no benefits from
international business. We sat in air-conditioned buses while mothers,
no older than us, held their baby in their arms and mimicked the act
of feeding him food because she could not get food for herself or her
child any other way than begging. The most heartbreaking incident
occurred as we were stopped at a stoplight, a girl, younger than me
cried outside our window as she was held her child. These were not
tears to provoke sympathy, but real, desperate tears, and there was
nothing that we could do because we were told not to give anyone
anything because if we did, the bus would be swarmed with people, and
they would be in danger of being hurt by the bus. Another mother
showed us that her daughter had an enormous tumor on the back of her
head, and there was clearly nothing that she could do about it. It
made me feel so helpless to see this girl, who would never live to see
the things that I am getting to see, and there was little that she
could do because the country doesn't have enough medical support to
help the people who have nothing.
That night, after seeing and experiences so many amazing things, we
climbed back on the bus at 1:30 am to drive the six hours back to
Delhi for our flight back to Chennai.
I was only in Chennai for a day and a half, but it was definitely a
memorable day and a half. The streets of Chennai are just as crazy as
the streets of Jaipur, except this time, we were on our own, not in a
large tour bus. The most common mode of transportation for those
without their own vehicles in Chennai is the auto rickshaw, a
three-wheeled yellow vehicle with a windshield, hood, two small rows
of seats (one for the driver, one for about three passengers), and a
pull-string to start it, just like a lawnmower. The thing about these
auto rickshaws is that their drivers do not want to take you where you
want to go. They are paid commission by certain stores and they will
do whatever they can to get you to stop there. They will tell you that
the place you want to go isn't opened (when you know that it is), they
will stop in front of the place, they may even kick you out of the
rickshaw. All three of these things happened to me. I took three auto
rickshaw rides and none of them were easy. The first one occurred the
afternoon that we arrived back in Chennai. Three of my friends and I
found a driver, agreed on a price and took off. He told us that the
market we wanted to go to was not open, when it was, then he tried to
pull over on the side of the road to tell us about his three children,
in order to get more money out of us. We told him he could tell us
about his children as long as he kept driving. The whole time he
laughed maniacally, so we weren't sure where we were going to end up.
We finally got to the market and he tried to get an extra 150 rupees
out of us, which we told him we were not going to do, and we left.
Rickshaw ride number two was the most memorable and stressful and
hysterical when I look back at it. We ate dinner at the Taj Cannemara
hotel in a restaurant called Rain Tree. The assistant dean and some
other professors were there so we went over to their table to say hi
after we finished eating. One of the professor's wives was there and I
began talking to her about what she had been doing. She said they had
been going around to different sites in Chennai, all by rickshaw. I
asked her if she had traveled by rickshaw at night and she said she
hadn't and she wasn't sure if it would be as safe at night. She said
since there were six of us we could get a taxi that would fit all of
us and it wouldn't be that expensive. That sounded like a great idea
so we went to the front desk of the hotel and asked if they could call
us a cab. The man called over a loud speaker for "one taxi" and we
waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, I went back over to the desk
and asked him what the taxi situation was. One thing I forgot to
mention, in between the time I asked for the first taxi and when I
went over to ask again, a torrential downpour had started. The streets
were starting to flood, there were suddenly no cars on the road, and
no taxis could be found. The man told us that there were no taxis
coming. We could see a few rickshaws outside of the gates so we ran
out into the rain to try to grab one of them. In between the twenty
feet from the overhang to the rickshaw, I was so drenched that it
looked like I had been swimming. Three girls from our group grabbed a
rickshaw and sped up and the other three of us found a driver and
followed him to his rickshaw. On the walk over there, another driver
starting yelling at the man about how he needed one of us to come with
him because he needed money for his family. We were not about to break
up, but our driver just kept sitting there, listening to him. We kept
telling him, "Madras Harbor, just go, Madras Harbor!" Finally, he
started the rickshaw. It's still pouring rain and cars are going by us
completely splashing us and the mostly open-air rickshaw. Our
windshield was fogged up and had no windshield wipers. The horn was
literally a squeaker that the driver had to squeeze by hand to make
noise. We were driving at about half the speed of the other cars on
the road and the driver is having to wipe off the windshield by hand
just to see. He turns around to us and says "Harbor, ship" with the
little English that he knew, and we said, "yes, yes to the ship." He
seemed like he understood and kept driving. Finally, he points across
the road and says, "Harbor." He is pointing to a gas station, on the
opposite side of the chaotic traffic. Behind the gas station is a
large concrete wall, and on the other side of the wall is clearly the
harbor, but there is no way for us to get there. He makes a u-turn and
pulls in front of the gas station and says once again, "Harbor"
expecting us to be satisfied, get out and pay him. I tell him, "No we
need to go to the front gate of the harbor." He doesn't seem to
understand this, but another man sees that he is confused and that we
clearly are not Indian passengers and tries to explain to him in Tamil
where we need to go. Now, one thing I forgot to mention, this was our
first time getting back to the ship without a tour bus, so we honestly
have no idea what the front gate looks like or where it is, so I just
kept repeating, "We need to go to the front gate," hoping that he
knows where it is. He turns back into traffic after the man told him
what to do and drives back the way we are originally going. I ask him
several times if he knows where we are going now, and he assures me
that he does, although I'm not sure he understood what I was saying.
So we keep driving, and we see the ship…and then we pass the ship. We
start saying that we need to go back the other way, towards the ship.
The driver seems to understand this, but we've gotten to a fork in the
road and there's no place to make a u-turn. He pulls under an
underpass and begins to drive there, thinking that this was the way to
the ship. Under this bridge were sheep and we almost hit a cow, before
he turned around and snuck back into traffic somehow, I'm not sure
how, but somehow, we were back heading toward the ship. We see a taxi
full of Semester at Sea kids pull into an area with a gate leading to
the harbor. This wasn't the same gate that we left from, but we
figured it was good enough. We paid the driver and he drove away and
we figured we were finally going to get back to the ship.
It wasn't that easy.
We notice that the people in front of us are arguing with men at the
gate about something. We weren't sure exactly what, but some sort of
high stress situation was occurring. We find out that in order to get
back into this gate, you had to have signed out at the gate and
written down your passport number. Clearly we had not done either of
these things and apparently the kids in front of us had, but they
couldn't find their names on the list. We sat back while they talked
to the guards, because we knew there was no way we would convince them
that we had been through here. Finally, they found someone's name that
they had left with, and signed her name. Meanwhile, we went back to
the area where they were letting workers in, showed our ID card and
landing pass and insisted that we had signed in and that the other
guards had said it was ok (which they didn't but we didn't care
because we were finally inside!). We walked the ten-minute walk from
the gate, through the industrial yard, with industrial workers, to the
ship before finally walking inside and sighing a breath of relief that
we had made it. I actually felt really empowered that I had
successfully dealt with a high-stress situation in a very foreign
country and had made it back alive! The third and final rickshaw ride
was nowhere near as exciting as that one, but I promised you three
rickshaw stories, so here it is. The first four days, all of my
friends and I had been on separate trips so we had not seen each other
in awhile and had not been able to travel together in India yet. We
decided to go to another market, one that was considered more Indian
and less touristy. Libby, Caleb and Katrina had not been in a rickshaw
yet so I told them they had to try it. Even though there were four of
us, including one pretty big guy, we climbed into the back seat and I
sat on Libby's and Katrina's lap. I realized that I didn't feel
comfortable with that and was done risking my life in rickshaws, so I
asked the driver if I could sit up front. He pulled over so that I
could switch seats and I sat in the front seat. Now, the front seat is
not exactly as spacious as the back, it's really only made for one
person, and I felt like I was about to slide out the side of the
vehicle, so I'm gripping the handle bar and telling my friends to hold
onto me so that I don't fly out as the rickshaw zigzags in and out of
traffic. Then, all of a sudden he pulls over and says "T Nagar (our
destination) is closed." I had dealt with this already so I told him
that we wanted to go to T Nagar and even if he thought that it was
closed, we still would like to be taken there otherwise we would not
pay him. He told me again that T Nagar was closed and that he would
take us to some other shops. Again, I told him, "No, we are only going
to T Nagar, nowhere else." Then, in an unexpected move, he tells us to
get out of the rickshaw, that we can find another one, because he is
not going to T Nagar. We were shocked and baffled, and didn't really
know what to do, so we just got out and walked the ten minutes back to
the gate where we found a taxi who could safely fit all four of us. It
ended up working out for the best because he waited for us everywhere
we went and drove us around the city. If he hadn't, I probably would
have had more strange and crazy rickshaw stories for you, but part if
me is glad that I don't.
India was an experience, an experience that I recommend to everyone
because it will teach you a lot about yourself. I know that I can
never completely describe it in words. Just ask my mom what I sounded
like after my first day there. I could barely get a sentence out
because I didn't know what to say. It's the strangest emotion, because
I feel like it's bottled up inside me, but I want to get it out and
express everything, but I don't know how, or where to start. This
email took me all day to write because I didn't know how to describe
everything that I saw, and I'm still not sure that I did a great job
describing it. India is just something to be experienced. The color,
the poverty, the wealth, the stress, the food, the dirt (which I'm
still trying to get off me), the smell, everything is a completely
life-changing, wonderful, heart-breaking, messy life experience.

Oh, and my stomach is fine. So far!

Also, I know I never sent out a mass sea Olympic email, but for those
of you who are interested…we lost. Big time. There were nine seas, one
of which was the Silver Sea (faculty, staff and life-long learners,
who are mostly retired people who are paying to be on the trip) and we
came in ninth. Apparently though it doesn't mean that we are the last
to get off the ship in Miami. The Baltic Sea, which is made up of the
cabins right next to my sea, won the Olympics, so a lot of my friends
will be waving to me from land as they disembark. Oh well, it was one
of the most enjoyable days on the ship so far

Port Louis, Mauritius

A little over a year ago, the island of Mauritius had never even
entered my consciousness. I had never heard the name, let alone seen
pictures of it or been taught anything about its history. I'm assuming
that most of you have little knowledge about the island either, so
here's a little bit about the history, scenery and culture of
Mauritius (and I'll try to make it a little more exciting than what
our "Port-to-Port" Global Studies textbook gave us.
The island of Mauritius is only 720 miles in circumference. You can
drive pretty much anywhere in under an hour. It truly is just a dot in
the middle of the Indian Ocean, and on some maps, it's not even
visible. It was uninhabited by humans until the 1500s when the
Portuguese discovered the island. They soon realized that they did not
know what to do with the thousands of Dodo birds, giant tortoises and
raven-billed parrots, and they left without leaving much of a trace
that they had ever been there. Next up were the Dutch who also swung
and missed on the island. Finally, the French arrived and they were
able to do some work with the island. Well, they weren't the ones
actually doing the work, the brought African slaves to do the work for
them. In 1814, after almost one hundred years of French rule, the
British took control of the island, abolishing slavery. The only
problem was, that Mauritius' main export crop was sugar, and growing
and harvesting sugar is no small task, so the British brought
indentured servants from India to do the work for them, working in
almost slave-like conditions.
Although Mauritius was under British rule for most of its history,
until it got independence in 1968, the French culture left a very
lasting impression. When walking into stores, customers are greeted
with a hearty "Bonjour!" and the favorite dessert is the crepe.
Mauritius, however, is anything but monocultural (that's a new term I
made up). I was able to spend an entire day visiting different types
of cultural and religious centers. The majority of the Mauritian
people are known as Indo-Mauritians, descendents of the Indian
indentured servants. Their culture is very prevalent on most of the
island, however, there is the Creole culture, the Franco-Mauritian
culture, an Islamic culture and a bit of an African culture.
Mauritius is technically part of Africa, however it is a very
different Africa than anything I witnessed in South Africa. It
honestly doesn't feel like Africa at all, other than the occasional
African mask sold in shops or markets. Mauritius is India-light, as
our Dean called it.
We pulled into Mauritius on Saturday morning just after sunrise. The
landscape is very similar to Hawaii's with jagged green mountains
surrounded by sugar cane fields and varying degrees of blue colored
water.
My first day in Mauritius, I had nothing planned except to walk
around with a friend in Port Louis, the capital city. We were
strangers to the way the system worked at that time, and were not
aware that the waterfront was a half hour walk, but only a 5 minute
water taxi ride away. At that point, we didn't know the water taxis
existed and decided that the best option would be to walk. We ventured
through a shipping yard, to a road, that eventually led to a busy
street and finally the main city. A few blocks down from the
waterfront was an outdoor market. It was very informal. People had
organized their items on blankets in the road and were sitting,
waiting for someone to look their way so that they might be able to
give them their sales pitch. This road was not closed to traffic, but
it might as well have been. The only vehicles that could pass through
the mobs of people were motorbikes, which were in abundance in
Mauritius. People were selling everything from fruits and pastries, to
underwear and toothbrushes in this little market. We passed through
the area stopping to look at one or two items before we finally found
the Waterfront area. Katrina and I had nothing planned so we decided
we would go see a movie in French. Our Dean has always emphasized that
his favorite thing to do in foreign countries is to go see movies
because audiences often act quite differently than they do in America.
So, we decided to buy our tickets for 150 Rupees and went to see
Asterix aux Jeux Olympiques. It was completely in French with no
subtitles, but we really enjoyed it. It's amazing how much you can
understand without even knowing the language. We found a small French
deli and ordered sandwiches before setting back out to the market to
buy completely legal $2 DVDs.
Our second day was one of total relaxation out on the ocean. We
boarded a small catamaran that fit 28 people and sailed out into the
water, chasing dolphins before stopping to snorkel for about an hour.
It wasn't the best snorkeling I've ever done, but the surrounding area
was beautiful, with green hills rising out of the water around us, and
some of the clearest water I've ever seen covering the reef. I did get
to see a school of squid. That was probably the highlight of the day's
snorkeling. After we had all climbed back onto the boat, we sailed to
another part of the island where the water was about eight feet deep
and the sand underneath it was white and free of rocks. We jumped off
the boat from here and swam around in the water. The ship's doctor,
"Doc Brown" was on our boat and he came up with a little activity for
us. Most catamarans have netting at the front of them where a few
people can sit. He decided that it would be fun to swim under the
boat, grab hold of the netting and put his feet up, hanging like a
basket from the bottom of the boat. Of course, more of us had to try
it. I have some pretty good pictures of our doctor hanging upside-down
off the bottom of the boat, like elementary school kid on the jungle
gym. We ate lunch that had been barbequed off the back of the boat and
listened as our crew played guitar and sang songs.
Once again, on the third day, I didn't have anything planned through
Semester at Sea, so a few of my friends and I went to Grand Bay on the
north side of the island to go parasailing. Grand Bay looks like
Hawaii or even Southern California. It does not really feel like a
foreign country, like Port Louis does, but it was beautiful. They had
high end shopping, which we drove past, but didn't stop at, and
gorgeous beaches. We found a taxi driver that day who was in some way
affiliated with the US embassy. He drove us to boat that was to take
us parasailing, but would not let us go until he had made sure that
the men who were supposed to take us were not going to take advantage
of the fact that we were foreigners. We climbed onto the small,
colorful boat, without signing any release papers and headed out for
800 rupees (about $30). My friends were kind enough to designate me to
go first and I was soon floating in the air above the island. I could
see the larger ocean connected to the little cove that we were in. It
was amazing because the colors of the water changed so rapidly from a
water turquoise to a deep cerulean blue. This was unlike any
parasailing I've ever done because it was pretty windy that day and I
was getting whipped around up in the air. It would calm down and I was
able to look out over the water, and then all of a sudden Whoosh I'd
be yanked to the other side of the boat without any warning. Then I
would be lulled into a false sense of security again, and the
parachute would drop several feet before rising up again. It was a lot
of fun, like a very scenic roller coaster. I watched the rest of our
group go through the same thing that I did before we drove back to
land, to find out taxi driver waiting to take us to a beach. We drove
to this small, secluded cove where only a few other people were
swimming. He walked us to beach to make sure that we were satisfied
and then told us he would wait until we came back and that if we
needed anything, just come to his car. He made the day much less
stressful than it could have been. We swam on the beach before lying
down to read and sleep and just enjoy being in Mauritius.
The final day was my cultural day. We spent the day learning about
the various cultures and religions on the island, all living together
fairly peacefully. Our first stop was to a Hindu temple. It was a very
interesting time to be in Mauritius because there was a Hindu
pilgrimage happening. It takes place over five days and celebrates the
god, Shiva. Hindis from all over the island walk to a sacred lake that
would take an hour to drive to from Port Louis. The traffic is slow
during the pilgrimage because the pilgrims walk down the roads in
large groups holding these large shrines to Shiva. We went to a temple
where many of the people were stopping to rest, eat, drink, celebrate
and worship before continuing on with the pilgrimage. The Hindu
religion is known for being very inclusive and very colorful. We were
welcomed into their celebration and into their temple to see a pyramid
shaped building, lined with carvings and sculptures of the gods. All
around this temple were shrines to the gods and several people were
peacefully praying in front of them. Outside of the temple, it was
very loud and quiet, however inside of the scene was very serene and
moving, almost as if sound and time only existed outside the temple
gates. One of my favorite moments was just watching a few people
worshipping in front of the shrines. I could easily see that their
consciousness and focus was elsewhere.
For many people, Mauritius was a Spring Break, however for me, it was
the first time that I truly felt like I was in a foreign country. The
previous ports have been different from the US, but still had a very
Westernized feeling. Mauritius has definitely been exposed to
globalization, but the prevailing influence is Indian, not European.
It was a nice transition from the more modern countries, to the
countries that lie ahead. Our next stop is Chennai, India. Wish me…and
my stomach…luck. I can't wait to tell you the stories from India. I'm
sure that they will be incredibly memorable.