Post-Voyage Thoughts

So I admit, this wasn't the most successful blog in the world. It got really busy traveling through so many countries and keeping up with the academic side of SAS.

Looking back, there really isn't a way I could easily put into words what I learned through SAS. The history of different countries that I wouldn't have know otherwise, the culture and customs of these countries, etc.

Two weeks after the voyage has ended, I am still reflecting and trying to piece everything together. There's a lot going on at home so I do it every so often. But I know that this voyage changed me in a way that I am a more globally aware person of the world.

I would recommend SAS to anyone. In my opinion, the academic portion of it was an absolute joke. It was unnecessarily stressful. But that's just me.

As I prepare my Malaysian white coffee and all the other stuff I brought from my trip, I know that I wouldn't have visited many of these countries if it wasn't for SAS.

There's still stuff all over my room, I need to do laundry, and figure out what I'm going to do with all those random pamphlets and little mementos I brought from the different countries. Throw them out? They're literally just sitting in my suitcase. I know I should scrapbook or something and then throw out what I don't use, but who knows when I'll ever get to that.

I miss the ship and my SAS friends.

I'm enjoying being home for the holidays and spending time with Danny and my friends but I'm about ready to go back to Cal and my life there. My last semester as a Cal student!! Bittersweet.

Unless I get more thoughts that I wish to post on the internet, this is possibly my last post. Thanks for reading friends :)

Living a day twice & Japan Part II

So we have crossed the International Date Line and have lost close to 24 hours so we had the great benefit of gaining an extra day! Since we’re sailing East, we lost 19 hours (from Pacific Time Zone), so to adjust to the time in our next port, Hawaii, we repeated Saturday, November 22nd. We had class the first day and a free day the next.

There was a charity auction and raffle on our free day today and I won 100 Internet minutes—yay! Those are actually a treasure on the ship seeing how 2 hours of Internet are $50. Ouch on the pocket. There was a silent auction and a live auction but I just didn’t have that kind of money to bid on some of the items. I bought 10 raffle tickets and distributed them among some items up for grabs. I think I put 2 in the Internet minute raffle. For that item alone, there were 600 tickets! Yes—SIX HUNDRED tickets. I was one of the lucky 4. The live auction was fun to watch—some items went for like 400 dollars! I think a 3 night at a bed and breakfast in Malibu went for 400 dollars. A map signed by the captain went for like $300, etc, etc. Some of these items are donated by ballin (that’s slang for “rich” for my mom who is probably confused right now) faculty who own houses around the world—Nova Scotia, Finland, Norway, Israel. Many of them donated a stay for a weekend in their homes/condos, without transportation. Anyway that was that.

Most students (including myself) have been overwhelmed by a plethora of FDP papers. FDP= field directed practica. Basically day trips that we have to go on for class. And then we have to write about our experience all while trying to tie it to our class material. Fun. Here I am on fifth deck with a number of other students writing papers and stuff (stuff meaning procrastinating).

We’ll be in Hawaii for Thanksgiving—whooooo! Can’t wait to use my cell phone to call and text away.

Japan Part II in a nutshell: DisneySea in Tokyo was fun minus I didn’t understand what was going on because it was in Japanese. But any Disney park is always fun and stimulates happy feelings. I spent the second day in Yokohama—which was absolutely beautiful. The people were so friendly and it was just a nice little city with trees with leaves that change colors.

Good night from the Explorer!

Japan Part 1!

I had an Osaka University Student Exchange and Homestay in Japan—what a great experience! The students and my host family were so genuinely kind.

Osaka University students met us at the port of Kobe and took us to lunch and then Osaka castle. They were so much fun to hang out with and were really interested in us. Then we went to Osaka University to have our welcome reception—where we had dinner, tried on kimonos, and met our host family! It was so much fun and we all took tons of pictures. Japanese food at lunch and dinner was very delicious and I think I have perfected my chopstick skills—woo! For dinner, we had sushi and all these other finger foods. I also tried this green tea that these Japanese were making from some sort of powder. And I had to drink it in a particular way—I had to bow to say thanks, then turn it around 2 ½ times and then drink it in 3 sips and then spin it around again. Very peculiar. Some of the Japanese ladies also made this delicious kind of cheesecake—it was different than cheesecake from the US, very good.

Then, I met my host mom, Mrs. Ito, who was so cute. She drove Karen (another SASer) and I to her home where we met her husband. She said her house was small but was a traditional Japanese home. We were met by her husband at the door who gave us some slippers after we removed our shoes. They showed us our room, which was also supposedly a traditional Japanese room. It was covered by bamboo mats or something like that and then she put some futon-style mattresses and some blankets for us to sleep.

We then went into their living room where we started talking about ourselves and I told Mrs. Ito that I was born in Mexico and I showed her some photos of my family. She was very excited when I told her I was born in Zacatecas because she had been there before! We talked and talked and she gave us some Japanese goodies, like sweet red beans with mochi and some tea. Then, her husband took our his calligraphy materials and wrote our names in Japanese! Apparently, my name does not translate well into Japanese so it took a little while to figure out. I told them my name meant dew and it was so cute because Mrs. Ito had this little translator device where she would look stuff up she didn’t know and she looked up my name and was amazed. She told me what dew was in Japanese and I wanted to write it down but I didn’t so I forgot what it was. Then, Mr. Ito asked us for our favorite word and I said happiness. I wrote down happiness in Japanese characters and Mr. Ito was surprised—he was like, “How did you know?!” haha actually, the students at Osaka had taught me how to write it at the reception. Karen made it a little complicated by saying soliloquy and they were perplexed by the word, but they somehow made it work.

Then, they let us use the calligraphy pen and they just laughed at us because we weren’t as good as them. But it was fun. Then, the topic of names came up somehow and I wrote down my grandma’s name and Mrs. Ito just looked at me surprised at how long it was. The whole scenario was just very fun and interactive.

Mr. Ito woke us up at 7:45am the next morning and we got ready and had a Japanese breakfast. We had miso soup (yum!) and rice balls and rice wrapped in sea weed and pickled plum and this cabbage style vegetable that was interesting oh and these little egg omelet rolls that Mr. Ito made. And they also had “Western” breakfast foods like toast and fruit and a hard boiled egg.

At breakfast, Mr. Ito gave us a copy of a photo we had taken the night before—how sweet! They dropped us off at Osaka University where we met up with the rest of the students and families. Everyone had a great time with their host families!

For the rest of the day, we went with the university students to Kyoto to a golden temple and out to lunch in Kyoto. We spent some time shopping and then we had to get back to the ship. Overall, it was a really fun experience!! The students were so nice to take time out of their schedules to show us around and they were fun to be around. I even learned how to count in Japanese, which makes much more sense than English counting. I wish I had more time with my host family because they were so nice and welcoming and I felt I was learning a lot about Japanese culture by being with them. I have already sent them a thank-you email and Mrs. Ito replied with such a sweet email.

I can’t wait for Yokohama and Tokyo, Japan!

Hong Kong!

Just got back from China! I had such a great time and got to see A LOT of sites. Hong Kong was absolutely beautiful—it had a great skyline and some spectacular views. The ship got cleared relatively late, so we searched for somewhere to have lunch and then took a tour of the city. We had lunch at Pizza Hut, which is not like your ordinary Pizza Hut in the States. We later found out that people in China LOVE pizza. So his Pizza Hut had full on table service and it was a really fancy place. It was a very formal setting for pizza.

After lunch, we took a ferry boat tour of the harbor in Hong Kong, where we got to see all the awesome buildings around the harbor and a really cool bridge that had looked similar to the Golden Gate, but was yellowish and had a train run on it. After the tour, in the evening, we took one of those double decker buses to The Peak, where we walked around to see aerial views of the skyline. We snapped some photos and had dinner at Bubba Gumps—second Western meal of the day, but oh well. We did some souvenir shopping and then took a ferry back to the ship. I really liked Hong Kong because it had a big city feeling with a spectacular skyline. When we got off the ship, we walked into this fancy shopping mall with a Starbucks and expensive shops that I didn’t shop in. The mall had wireless so after we got back, my friend Violetta and I went inside the mall to use their Wi-Fi, which was nice. Then, I went back to the ship and packed for Beijing!

Traveling through Asia

I haven't updated my blog for a while. I've been pretty busy traveling through Asia. Traveling has gotten pretty exhausting by this point since we only have 2 or 3 days between ports. I'm looking forward to the end of the stretch (after Japan) so that we can have some relaxation time on the ship. Maybe I'll have some time to update my blog then. They covered the election on the ship today--how exciting! Obama '08!

 

We get to Hong Kong tomorrow morning. I leave to Beijing in two days where I'll get to visit the Great Wall! Then I come back and join the ship in Shanghai. Hopefully my energy levels go up so that I can enjoy the trip more. I hope all is well with family and friends back home :)

South Africa, continued.

I never finished writing about my time in South Africa. I’ll make a long story short so that I can move on to India. I went on a three day safari to Kruger National Park with some other SASers. It was 13 of us total--so it was a nice small group. It was a lot of travel time to and from the safari sites. We flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg, which didn’t take very long but the drive to Kruger took a really long time. Our tour company never specified how long the drive from Johannesburg on our itinerary so when we got in the van we asked our driver. He says 5 hours. Some of us thought he didn’t hear us correctly, and we were like, “No, not how long our safari is. How long to our lodge?”And he repeated 5 hours. Hahaha it was really funny—we laughed and made ourselves comfortable. The drive was a little closer to 7 hours because of all the stops for lunch and gas and such. So we finally arrived to Tresimana Lodge, where we departed for our sunset safari. It was so cool! We saw giraffes and a rhino from a few feet away! We were in an Indiana Jones-like vehicle. Very cool. Then, we drove a few minutes away to our Treehouse Lodge. It was actually a really, really awesome outdoor lodge. We had drove into the lodge and there was water buffalo and impala just hanging out by the gate!

The next day we woke up early for our full-day safari at Kruger National Park. I’m really glad I came to this park because we saw a lot of really cool animals. We only saw four of the Big Five. The Big Five are the elephant, the water buffalo, the leopard, the lion, and the rhino. They’re called the Big Five because they are the hardest to hunt, or something like that. We almost saw the leopard. Our guide saw it but it was hard to see so couldn’t make it out. It was crazy because our guides could spot these animals from really far away. We saw elephants, zebras, more giraffes, cool birds, etc. The lions were the most stunning to see.

The next day some of us got up for a bush walk in the lodge. We walked around and the guide explained some of the plant uses and told us about the animal droppings and all of that. We had breakfast and departed for the airport. We stopped for lunch at the same place (really good food) and stopped at a canyon place for some sightseeing and to buy some souvenirs. We finally made it back to the airport and back to Cape Town.

The next and final day I went on an SAS trip called Operation Hunger. We went to a daycare in a poorer area of Cape Town and tested the kids for malnutrition. We weighed them, took their height, and their arm circumference. Luckily, most of the kids did not meet the criteria for malnutrition, very few were at risk, and about two met the criteria for malnutrition. Then, we visited a feeding center in a township. Here, there were low-income families and homes that were shacks made out aluminum. It was really eye opening to see the other side of Cape Town and I’m glad I got the opportunity to go on this trip. We arrived close to the time we were supposed to be on the ship so I quickly ran to get some postcards and stamps and made it back on time. I went out on deck to watch the ship depart—it was so sad! Cape Town—definitely my FAVORITE stop so far!

Benignant

Benignant. That's the word I missed on the Spelling Bee. So sad. Well, at least I got past the first round by successfully spelling "patriot." Haha. Oh well. It wasn't as bad as the girl next to me who had to spell "cnemial" (the "c" is silent) and also missed. Ok the judges didn't know half the words they had in front of them and could barely pronounce benignant. They had ridiculous words from the 2003 Spelling something something. Um I thought this was supposed to be a fun event. They should have made us spell words related to Semester at Sea. Like: "nautical" or "Aegean" or "Swakopmund", things like that. And the judges took a good 5 minutes to select a word from a random list of words. Out of 10, only 4 people made it past the 2nd round. We're mid-way through the Olympic Games and I think our sea has won 1 event. Haha but it's all fun. I have Jeopardy in an hour. I hope that goes a little better.