Maurian Ambition/Madu's Magical Love Tour/Elephant Dung be Damned

I am SO behind on this bloooooooog.

Mauritius was amazing. I’m just going to start there and then… keep going until I’m caught up. Ok, this just in: I just finished writing it and it's 6 1/2 word pages single spaced. I'm SO sorry. Feel free to skim it or not read it or whatever.

The good news about Mauritius in terms of how much I have to write about Mauritius, India, and Thailand, is that it we only spent one day there. That’s also the bad news about Mauritius because I wish I could have seen more of it. I spent the day snorkeling and had SUCH a fantastic time. My friend Ali and I woke up in the morning and hopped on a mini bus that took us to this pier somewhere. To get there, we drove through fields of sugar cane and had just the most beautiful landscapes outside the van window of volcanic island. It was JUST how you would imagine it I think if I told you to picture THE island. THE greenest most lush tropical island ever. Also you can google earth it.

At the pier we got on this catamaran. It was pretty big for a catamaran and held like 15 or 20 students plus a small crew. It was a vacation day, basically. We relaxed on the prow (I think it’s the prow…) and sunbathed. We dove off the catamaran and did all these cool jumps. The water was SO clear and gorgeous and warm but refreshing. Snorkeling I saw all sorts of corals and different colored fishes and an EEL. I found it under a rock while using my new snorkeling skills from Catalina and diving down do the bottom to look around.

Honestly, the day was suuuuuuper low key. They cooked us food on the catamaran (it was SO good) and served us beer and soda. Also, just so you know, I just got back on the ship after Thailand where I ALSO went snorkeling so, writing this, Mauritius has been sort of eclipsed by the sea life I saw in Thailand. At the time it was one of the best days of my life but since then I’ve had more best days of my life. Which is why I need to stay on top of my blog better in the future.

India was next. How to begin to describe my experience in India? First of all, I just should say, Chennai was the dirtiest place I have ever been. Except, maybe, for Tijuana. No Chennai was dirtier. Every time I came back to the ship I was not only sweat soaked but the soles of my shoes were BLACK and I had dirt Oliver Twist style stuck to the sweat on my face. I looked like an extra in the “Bring out your dead” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We traveled around in tuktuks which were CRAZY and all pimped out with the BRIGHTEST colors. And there were cows everywhere and goats and roosters. And sometimes it smelled fouler than anything. Like burnt poop. Ali maintained that it smelled like baby flesh which I find TOTALLY disgusting and also have no idea how to interpret. But other times it smelled like incense and the most mouth-watering spices. And there were SO many people. So that’s my best attempt at giving you a picture of what India was like.

The first day, I did a Faculty Directed Practicum (FDP) that consisted of a trip to visit the US Consulate in Chennai. It was really interesting. We talked to several people who worked there about issues from what it means to work for the state department to dealing with the bombings in Mumbai to the current conflict in Sri Lanka between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan Government. Also I learned that a consulate is different from (smaller than) an embassy. Maybe you already knew that. Security at the Consul was interesting. We went through this little room in the wall that surrounded kind of the compound thing. This woman in a sari pulled out this little screen to pat me down and I went through a metal detector. The screen detail was a reminder that this, though it was sort of like a little piece of the US, was in India. We talked to men called “special agents” too. I learned a lot.

After that I went out to dinner with a large group of friends. The restaurant had a little birdcage with parrots in it and a little fountain outside but was otherwise not the nicest. Our waiter introduced us to an Indian practice that would continue to confuse me for the rest of my time there: Indian people display interest and understanding in a conversation by bobbling their heads from side to side in a motion that, in America, would be kind of saucy and indifferent. It’s awkward. There were tons of times where I thought waiters or tuktuk drivers were telling me “no” but what they were saying was “I hear you, yo.” Rather than plates we were served on banana leaves and there was no silverware on the table because in India people eat with their hands. There were twelve of us Americans and we pretty much all wanted cokes. They didn’t have that many Cokes. So people who ordered too late started asking for Sprite instead. They didn’t have that many Sprites either. I had a Fanta. Which was fine. But it was pretty funny that they had so little Coke. And Sprite. Heh.

Next a few of us decided to head to a Bollywood movie that was playing in a theatre in a nearby mall. The movie started at 10 and ended up being three hours with a little intermission! And it was TERRIFYING. And awesome. It was called Naan Kadavul and it was a Tamil movie that was completely in the Tamil language with no subtitles. I have never ever been to a movie that was so LOUD and on such a humongous screen. Plus the images were terrifying. We have no idea what exactly it was about but my friend Alex thinks maybe the main character was a spirit who came back as an activist for Dahlit and disabled people. Dahlit (I think I’m spelling it wrong) is the name Gandhi gave members of the untouchable class, untouchable being (obviously) derogatory and dahlit being a means of starting anew and celebrating these people as children of god. This dahlit thing brings me to my next point about the movie: it was about this group of severely disabled people and there were severely disabled people in the film. It was really cool to consider that these people, who would probably otherwise have been in the streets of India, were afforded an opportunity to be in a really popular Tamil film but it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in real life or in a movie. I won’t describe it all but it was pretty unreal. Ali and I managed to find a bootleg version so if you want to watch it when I get home, let me know! It was so intense that I decided to leave for a little bit (I didn’t know there was going to be an intermission) so I got up to check out the food options at the concessions stand. After talking to the guys there about how great Barack Obama is (plus totally embarrassing myself by messing up the payment process) I walked away with a huge thing of popcorn and a hot chocolate having spent the equivalent of only 3 US dollars. Unfortunately, because the movie ended at 1:00 AM, I had the sketchiest experience of the entire trip so far right afterwards. Don’t worry, it all turns out ok. There were seven of us who had stayed for the movie and when we walked out we were met by like fifty million tuktuk drivers who began to negotiate with us. They told us that, because it was so late, they could only take two of us in a tuktuk at a time (BS: I’ve been in one of those with three other people before) and that it would be more expensive (also BS). But we were tired so we said ok whatever. Ali and I got in one, Jacob and Ben in another, and Alex, Heather, and Peter in another. The third tuktuk with Alex Heather and Peter quickly got separated from us and it was obvious to us that they were behind us. Our tuktuk drivers pulled Ali and my tuktuk and Jacob and Ben’s up to a stop on the side of this busy street on one side of these bridged train tracks. During the day, we had crossed the train tracks on the bridge to get to the port, but they told us that “the gate” (what gate???) was closed since it was so late and that we would have to walk through this dark tunnel under the tracks to get to the dock. For 5 USD more EACH they would escort us. I was SO mad. I don’t think I’ve been madder than that. I told them that we weren’t going anywhere without the third tuktuk but they said it was ahead and that our friends had probably already gone. That wasn’t true. But there was literally nothing we could do. There were no other cabs, no other tuktuks and we had no idea whether they were telling us the truth about the bridge. We paid them the money to walk with us. Thank god Ali and I didn’t get separated from Ben and Jacob. And it was ok. But I learned how vulnerable you can become really quickly if you’re not prepared with information and if you stay out late in foreign countries. It turned out that they lied to us. There was no gate. They should have driven us. We agreed not to stay out that late again and that if anything like that ever happened again, we would just walk towards people and, rather than try to get to the ship through sketchy stuff like that, stay overnight in a hotel somewhere safe and not walk through scary tunnels. Also we will never be cought without at least one boy at night anywhere ever. Nobody worry. That will never happen again. And we dealt with it pretty well. Also I felt pretty secure that nothing bad would happen. I wasn’t afraid that the cab drivers would do anything since they weren’t even interested in walking with us unless we paid them, and there were cars going by around us, so we weren’t totally isolated. I was mostly just scared when I realized how helpless I had allowed myself to be. Never again. Don’t worry.

The next day, Ali and Colin and I met Madu. Madu was our tuktuk driver for the rest of our time in India. He was this eccentric Indian man who didn’t speak very good English but was fiercely dedicated to us and took us to many delicious restaurants and good shops. He got pissed whenever we bought something at a price higher than an Indian would have (the thing is, after you get like a bracelet down to $1, you might as well just pay that to these people who need your money more, right? Even if you could get it for $.75?). Madu claimed to be a stunt man for Indian movies including Naan Kadavul. I totally don’t know whether to believe that. He let us pay “as much as we felt was right” which was probably really smart of him because we probably overpaid him. But not by much. He called us his family. Colin was his brother, Ali was his daughter, and I was his sister. He told us our fortunes based on our birthday. He joined us for all our meals and several coffee stops. I actually talked to his daughter on the phone at one point…. It was weird. But it was cool.

We spent the second day shopping, eating, and visiting the beach. The third and fourth days were when we really had an adventure. Colin and Ali and I decided we wanted to recreate/live the Darjeeling Limited, this Wes Anderson movie starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman we had all seen recently. Our plan was to take a sleeper train overnight to Bangalore, a 7 hour ride away, spend the day in Bangalore (visiting a temple and this park…) and then take a train back that night. Our reasoning was that sleeping on the train would be cool because then we wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel PLUS transportation. We were extremely optimistic about the train. In fact, it turns out that just believing that we’d be able to sleep on it at all was optimistic. Some really naïve pre-train moments: 1. We didn’t bring ANY bedding with us whatsoever 2. We didn’t bring any warm clothes at all 3. On the way to the train station, we had a conversation about whether we should accept “sweet lime” (this Indian lime juice, a prominent part of the movie) when (WHEN, not if!) it was offered or whether we should decline because it might contain Indian water that would make us sick 4. At the train station, walking through/among literally hundreds of sleeping and barefoot people, we wondered aloud whether we should buy more snacks for the train. “No,” I said, “There’ll be food on the train.” “Yeah, it’s pretty much going to be just like Harry Potter” (that part was Colin and he was PARTIALLY kidding). The train was like a prison cell. Our room was dinghy blue and grey with barred windows and peeling paint. The “beds” were tiny benches and there were three on each wall. We almost decided not to take the train. But we wanted the adventure so we boarded it and departed for Bangalore at 11:00 PM. We didn’t sleep. At first we kept ourselves amused by playing “ten fingers,” “would you rather” and “contact.” As the sounds of Indian people snoring (and farting!! More than once!) mounted however, we decided to do a rotating massage line. This was a bad idea because it reminded us how tired we were but we couldn’t sleep. Daylight saw Ali and I huddled for warmth (it was freezing) under a scarf I had bought the previous day and Colin SORT of sleeping across from us. Seven hours. We got into Bangalore at 7:00 AM and spent the next three hours trying to get tickets back to Chennai. Eventually we were able to (we actually had to go to a different train station in Bangalore to get a train) but we were too exhausted and delirious to explore Bangalore so we walked down the street to a hotel restaurant and ordered an early lunch at 10:00 plus rum and cokes. We stayed there, laughing, eating, and drinking in a daze for FIVE HOURS and then caught a 4:00 train back to Chennai where we pooped out on the ship.

We slept in on the last day and then did some final shopping with friends at this HUGE Indian mall. And then departed for Thailand. Just so you know, my description of India focuses on parts that may make it seem like I didn’t really experience the real India. This is really just because I brushed over the days spent shopping in markets and stuff in favor of the crazier stories about the train. I really had a terrific time. To me, the train was one of the most Indian experiences ever, even if we did kind of waste the day in Bangalore. I think that the train stations and the chaotic process of finding tickets also really brought us closer to Indian people. It’s really hard to prioritize these stories. But trust that there was much more to India and that it was incredible. I’ll show you pictures. Oh and we went to a temple which was GORGEOUS and SO colorful but not at all funny which is why I talked about the train ride instead of the temple.

Thailand. Frick. You must be really exhausted reading this and let me tell you I am pooped just writing it. Whew. Reload. Ok. I’ll tell you about Thailand now.

THAILAND: Thailand was my favorite port yet. But I’ve said that after just about every port. We docked in Laem Chabong (I may have misspelled that..) which is a two hour drive away from Bangkok. The first day, I had another FDP. This one took me to an Elephant Village in Pattaya, a nearby town. It was pretty incredible. I rode two different elephants. One of them, I mounted when it bent its front leg for me to step on. I held onto its ear to pull myself onto its neck. It was amazing. They were the sweetest creatures of all time. And their sweetness was even COOLER since they were so dang big. I hugged several and fed others bananas. There is nothing as bizarre as holding out a banana for an elephant’s eye to see, and then watching as its trunk snakes towards you and grabs it. So weird, so cool. Actually, as I learned later in Thailand, some things ARE more bizarre than that…

Thailand is, according to Ali (who got this from the Travel Channel) the “sex capital of the world” which I assume has something to do with the fact that prostitution and “sex shows” are legal there. So, while I’m on the subject of the bizarre, I feel I should take a moment to address the weirdness that is Thai prostitution and sex shows. I’ll just group all the relevant stories from my five days into a little paragraph here: I did not attend a sex show but apparently almost everyone else did. I’m not just saying that I didn’t, I DIDN’T. And I’m VERY glad because it just sounds appalling. For one thing, these shows are called (by the creepy guys in the street who try to get you to go to them) “ping pong show, sex show”s. I'm not going to elaborate here but feel free to ask me. SO. We got offered to go to “ping pong show, sex show”s many times. Also, there are Thai massage parlors everywhere and, in Thai massage parlors it is no big deal if they include manual sex in male massages. A “happy ending” as Larry David calls it in Curb Your Enthusiasm. My friends turned the masseuses down for this part of the massage. Many Semester at Sea people didn’t, apparently. I opted out of a massage all together. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND that’s all the Thai sex stuff I have energy for.

SO. After the Elephant thing, some friends of mine, Hussein, Steve, Keith, Disha, and Lia, decided to stay in Pattaya for dinner and general exploration. We did a lot of shopping and had a really delicious Thai meal: Pad See Yu (I don’t know how to spell it…) and fried shrimp and Mai Thais. Also we sampled the Thai beers, in particular Singha and Tiger. I really enjoyed getting to know these guys. I LOVED that night with them. I hope we can hang out more. We ate cooked grasshoppers together from a street cart. We also frequently paired off girl-boy girl-boy girl-boy because the BOYS kept getting cat-called! This is the first port EVER where the guys have been cat-called and not the girls. I understand why the prostitutes were so interested. Their clientele was ENTIRELY made up of old fat creepy white men from Europe and the States. It was funny and sad, actually. We saw TONS of couples with old men holding the hands (or other parts) of hot young Thai women. So imagine how much they must have liked seeing these young college guys walking down the street! When the night ended, we all rode in the back of a pick up truck taxi back to the ship toasting each other.

The second day I went snorkeling! It was SO beautiful! The water was SO warm and clear and beautiful. I saw soooooooooooo many different sorts of fishes and corals. Also there were these little tiny jellyfish that were too wimpy to sting us but that FREAKED me out every time I would accidentally touch one, swimming. They were almost completely transparent so this happened a lot. We also jumped off the top deck of the boat we took off. It was probably 20 feet. I LOVED it. It was another really great lazy day. Afterwards I took a taxi with several SAS people to Bangkok, including my friend Tim. In Bangkok, I met up with my friends Colin, Alex, Molly, and Becky.

Bangkok was reeeeeeeeeeeally cool. There were prostitutes but not as many as in Pattaya and it was WAY bigger and brighter too. Bangkok is to Pattaya as New York is to Portland except pretend in this simile that New York is cooler than Portland (obviously it’s not). The COOLEST thing about the streets of Bangkok was the fact that elephants were in them. BABY elephants. Five years old (the one I hugged) to be precise. I won’t walk you through Bangkok in order because there was a lot of clubbing and a lot of eating and a lot of shopping. I had a BLAST with this group of people. I’ve been hanging out on the ship more and more too. Thailand was a really good place for me and friendships. WOOHOO. We ate a lot of excellent food, we celebrated St. Patrick’s day at an Irish pub, we smoked hookah a LITTLE, and we danced at this club called “Spice Club” that was ultra sketchy (as in we were the only white people there who weren’t paying Thai women to dance with them).

Highlights: The first night in Bangkok we went to a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms. It was pretty weird. It was all about sex education though, which was cool, because STDs are a pretty big problem in Thailand (duh). There was this spinning wheel that had pie-slice things that said: “BAMN, you got Chlamydia” or “Way to go, you used protection and DIDN’T get HIV” or something. I guess they represented your chances of getting STDs…? All the décor was made with colorful condoms. There were dummies dressed in condom-outfits that Tim Gunn would have been proud of, as well as lanterns with condom flowers on them. It was weird. The food was pretty good though.

Anther day, we hired a boat to take us along Bangkok’s canals. I am SO glad we did this. It was the first time I really saw the poverty that some Thai people live in. We passed shacks on stilts in the river with birds hanging in cages on porches, countless dogs, and tons of people sitting still, doing nothing, presumably either out of work, or in between scarce job opportunities. Every house we passed had laundry hanging outside and I doubt most of them had electricity at all, much less a dryer. We saw children playing in the FILTHIEST river water. We saw a crazy huge lizard crawling up someone’s steps… The plants around the river were incredibly lush and green and it was mostly a really peaceful opportunity to observe and reflect. Most of the houses had these little temple-like models on poles outside of them. These are called spirit houses and are built to commemorate dead loved ones and to ask spirits to watch over the people living there. Eventually the boat stopped at this weird traditional Thai house that had been converted into a museum. We saw an orchid farm there as well as a demonstration of traditional Thai boxing. The boat ride ended with a death defying crossing of this huge river. Filthy water splashed towards us and sometimes hit us and our tiny boat rocked a LOT. But we survived. And then, that night, we celebrated Molly’s birthday with a really good dinner and a visit to the nicest club/bar I’ve ever been to, called “Q Bar” (we thought it was “Q Ball” and kept calling it “Screw Ball” for fun).

On the last day, we visited the Grand Palace, home to the Emerald Buddha (which is actually made of Jade, don’t be confused). The Grand Palace was the most overwhelming, complex, detailed thing I’ve ever tried to take in. There was gold EVERYWHERE. It was stunning. I literally don’t know how to describe it. HUGE. The coolest part was the Emerald Buddha which is housed in this HUMONGOUS temple. The Buddha sits on top of this GIANT mass of gold STUFF that’s all sooo incredibly ornate. It’s funny. There’s so much stuff built up around it that it comes across as pretty small. It’s like, not higher than my knee. That’s pretty big for something carved out of jade I guess, but it has this massive palace built around it with SO much gold… I just expected it to be bigger. WAY bigger. It has three friggin costumes for different seasons… Pretty funny. I guess some guy discovered it in the 15th century and thought it was just some random plaster Buddha. But then one day the plaster on the nose popped off and the monk who had found it realized it was straight-up jade and freaked out and gave it to the king who passed it down until eventually someone built the Grand Palace. Our visit to the Emerald Buddha’s palace was cool because there were a lot of people there praying. Outside we saw some women light incense and inside monks were bowing. The monks had their own private area for prayer. You aren’t supposed to sit next to monks on the bus because if the bus moves and you bump them it ruins their vows. So I guess that’s why they had their own section too. Also, a cool fact, you aren’t supposed to point your feet at people but ESPECIALLY not at the Buddha. It’s really offensive. So we all did a really good job either sitting cross-legged or else on our heels.

I'm in the process of putting more pictures on the facebook.com. Check those out.

That’s all I got. Martha OUT!

Neptune, Namibs, and Safrica

Holy Moly… I have quite a lot to catch up on. Sorry to be behind and then to getcha with a HUGE update… I’ll break this down into smaller parts so you don’t feel like you have to read it all at once.. It’ll go: 1. Neptune Day 2. Namibia 3. South Africa

1. Neptune Day
I have posted some pictures on facebook, as many of you may have noticed and there are a few that involve me in a wading pool getting green goo dumped on my head (Nickolodeon style). These pictures are but a peek into what was a really intense, ritual-filled day of festivities called Neptune Day. Apparently the traditions we practiced on Neptune Day hail back to much older times and ships have, for hundreds of years, marked their crossing of the Equator by shaving their heads, kissing a fish, and getting fish guts dumped on them. Actually, it’s only “guppies” or first time Equator crossers who have the privilege. Those who have gone through the ceremony before are shellbacks (aka I am now a shellback, like when Squirtle becomes that bigger badder turtle). I actually think the word guppies is wrong.. I think it’s something else but you get the idea. It was really cool though because classes were canceled and the entire faculty and staff got painted green and blue and all dressed up and paraded through the halls at seven in the morning banging on things and making noise and then everyone went through the ceremony and then just hung out by the pool all day. There are a LOT of shaved heads. Some of them are kind of badass and others freak me out. Like there are a few female professors who did it and now they wear scarves and they look a lot like chemo patients. Actually EVERYONE looks a lot like chemo patients. So… There’s that fact. Last thing about Neptune Day is they had this really really really great BBQ. We all get pretty desperate for good food after awhile at sea (the food isn’t too bad but there is a lot of pasta and potato involved) and hamburgers were SO good. And ice cream. MMMM.

2. Namibs!
Namibia is one of those places I might never have ever gone had it not been for Semester at Sea and I’m really really glad I did go. First of all, I just want to let you know that a lot of us called Namibia “Namibs” so that’s what’s going on with bullet point 2. The very first thing I did in Namibia was to participate in an SAS sponsored trip. I rode a four-by-four vehicle into the desert and my guide, JAKO! (I put an explanation mark because that’s how he pronounced it: YA-KO! Exclamation marks actually also designate clicks in African click languages, so don’t be confused. Those are in South Africa, anyway, not Namibs as much.) told us a LOT about the desert and about Namibs in general. It became clear to me that Namibia is a pretty great place to live if you have a little money and want to do extreme sports. Literally the drive into the desert was on a highway with the ocean on the left and giant desert dunes on the right. The ocean went as far as the eye could see and so did the dunes. We visited what’s called the “Moon Landscape” which I guess has been a sight for a lot of scenes in movies (including the moon scene in Apollo13, according to JAKO). We also stopped and looked at these weeeeeirdo plants that were hundreds of years old. They didn’t look that old but the youngest ones I saw were in their thirties. Some live to be thousands of years old! Aaaaaand we climbed this massive dune called dune 7, rumored to be the 7th largest dune in the world (I totally don't buy it). That was hard work! The executive dean on the ship was on the trip with us and he’s known for being super buff and fit and so my number 1 goal was to beat him up the dune. I did. I may have had a head start though…

That night, reunited with my friends Kendyll, Ali, and Whitney (Carly was on a safari), I ate dinner at a restaurant called The Raft. It was reeeeally cool. It was this little hexagonal building on stilts on water and it looked all the way out to the ocean. In the water around the little restaurant there were flamingos and other crazy Africa birds and we feasted on pizza with spinach and feta that was called Popeye’s Punching Bag. Our friend got ostrich and let us try a bit.. that was cool too. The ladies at the table next to ours were really friendly. There were two middle-aged ladies, one young girl who turned out to be 18, and one middle aged man. They asked us where we were from and we told them and then I asked one of the women what she was drinking (it looked like some sort of sweet desert baileys kind of drink). She told me it was called Amarula and they bought us each one. It was REALLY good. She said it was the drink of Namibia. We kept talking to them for a while and got to know them, particularly the girl, Carmen, pretty well. Weirdly, at one point, the moms pointed to me and told Kendyll, who was sitting closer to them than I was, that I looked “naughty.” I have never ever ever ever ever EVER been told that I looked naughty EVER before in my life. And you know what? I’m NOT naughty. So we had a good laugh. My friends called me naughty Martha for pretty much the rest of the trip. We ended up going dancing with Carmen and her mom which was really nice. I really miss my mom so it was cool to hang out with a mom, even one I didn’t really know. Dancing was really fun until I danced with this creepy guy named Ivan who was too old to be interested in me but too young for it to be cute and funny. Meanwhile Kendyll and Ali were making friends with this guy named Jeff. He was our age too and he was from South Africa. We ended up hanging out with him and two of his friends in Swakopmund, a little German style beach town like 15 minutes from Walvis Bay, the next day.
The next day was pretty lazy. It didn’t really get started until the early afternoon and it mostly involved sampling Namibian beers, eating, and hanging out at the beach. We got talking with Jeff and his friends Brock and Wynand about politics and race and it was pretty eye opening. They were just kind of unapologetically racist. A little clue was that they weren’t very respectful when they spoke to waiters (all of whom were black at the restaurants we ate in). Jeff couldn’t believe my friends and I were attracted to non-white men, specifically, I think, black men. It really began to hit home, as we talked to him, how recent the end of South African apartheid really was and how it still impacts people’s lives. We ended the day at this bar that everyone had told us to go to (JAKO as well as numerous other Namibians) called Tiger Reef. It was a really cool place. The entire floor was just sand because it was pretty much outdoors and it opened up onto the beach! There was silly tiki décor and this little boat you could sit in (on the beech, not in the water). It was nice. A LOT of Semester at Sea people showed up which made it weird but fun. We were told in our briefing that the 1000 people on our ship would make up 10% of Namibia’s tourism for the whole year… So I guess we weren’t that surprised when we all ended up at the same bar.

3. South Africa

South Africa was really really cool. When we first arrived in Cape Town, I attended a lecture in the ship’s union given by three South African authors, Maxine Case, Dawn Garisch, and Thembelani Ngenelwa. They talked about their latest books, their writing processes, and what it means to write in and about South Africa and they read to us from their books. It was really interesting and a nice introduction to what turned out to be an awesome port.
After that, my friends and I explored Cape Town a little. The dock where we were parked was this really tourism-focused shopping area. We were right up against a mall and there were street performers all day every day. It was actually kind of nice, if you knew how to get away from it and experience the REAL South Africa. Oops actually we didn’t explore Cape Town then that much because we climbed Table Mountain! So yeah right after Authors in Cape Town, we hiked Table Mountain. It was INTENSE. I had my parents look it up for me: we hiked 3,000 feet vertical! We had just the most incredible views of the city and of the cape on the way up but when we got to the very top we were in a cloud. It was unreal. We were absolutely surrounded with impenetrable fog and I felt like I could have been anywhere in the world, but I knew I was in Africa. Cool sensation. We took a gondola down, opting out of another killer hike. And then we went to dinner on Lang Street (means long street). We ate at this place called the Royale Eatery that reminded me and Ali SO much of Portland. It was really hip and had cool vegetarian menu items. We went to several bars after that, one called Mama Africa where we had the extremely popular Springbok shots that consisted of Amarula which I mentioned was “the” African drink plus some sort of mint flavor. Then we went to this place called the Dubliner where they basically had this guy singing professional karaoke. He was the band, but he sang along to karaoke backup music. The place was overflowing with Semester at Sea people and we all loved singing along to Aerosmith, the Spice Girls, and other bands like those.. It wasn’t very South African but it was fun.
The next day I woke up early and got on a bus that took me to a nearby township. I spent the day building the roof of a house in the Habitat for Humanity program. It was really cool to spend a whole day in a township and it turned out to be really interactive with inhabitants. We went on a walk towards the end of the day with our group leader who had, himself, grown up in that township, and I could really see the difference Habitat for Humanity was making there. We walked past fields of trash with lean-to style houses around them. There were houses made out of scraps that Americans would pay to have removed from sight. But there were also tons of Habitat houses as well as houses made by a similar program from Ireland. Our leader took us to a preschool where probably 30 little 3 year olds sang us nursery rhymes in an African dialect (I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know which). They all wanted to snap thumbs, like give a thumbs up and touch their thumb to your thumb. It was super cute. One of the girls in our group bent down when we were walking down this street and picked up a little packet of tiny papers. When we all looked at it, we realized that it was meant to be a little pretend slider cell phone, with all the little buttons written in. It was so creative and so cute! We put it back where we found it and finished our walk.
After Habitat for Humanity I met back up with my gang: Kendyll, Ali, and Carly, and we met up with Amy (from Pomona!) and her friend Mike for dinner. She invited me to dinner at her house the next night. It was suuuuper nice to see her. basically we wasted the next day on the internet and in the mall and eventually my friends left for a rugby game and I took a cab to Amy’s neighborhood. I have to now take a moment to teach you some South African slang (mostly in Afrikaans I think):
Brei: BBQ
lekkar: awesome
jol: party/good time
robots: traffic lights (this one really confused us when we got directions in Namibs)
So I went to a brei. My taxi driver took me to the wrong girls school in Amy’s neighborhood so I called her and she said she’d come get me (on foot). She showed up with a boy named Joel and Zach. Zach is another Pomona student, one I don’t know very well but seeing two Pomona students (and Joel) coming towards me made me SO happy. Note that this is a theme that would continue all night that night. I had NO idea how much I missed my PEOPLE. We walked back to Amy’s house where I was surprised and delighted to learn that there were even more Pomona people at the brei than I had expected: Amy, Zach, Michael Larsen, Evan Stalker, Brian Gillis, Alan Feidorek, Kira from the soccer team. It was wonderful. And their non-Pomona friends rocked big time too. It was a lekkar jol. For sure. I really really really miss my friends. In fact, if you’re reading this blog I more than likely really miss you. We ate hamburgers, pasta salad, and played games. Did I mention it was wonderful?
I spent the night because I didn’t want to take a cab alone at night but I had to wake up early the next day to get back to the ship. I was meeting my friends at 9:00 to go to the winelands. The COOL thing was that Joel had friends on the ship that he was also meeting at 9:00 because he was also going to the winelands! So we took a minibus together. Minibuses are NOT a jol. They are sketchy. To give you an idea, my cab fare, with tip had been about 15 USD the day before. My minibus fare for almost the same distance was 50 cents. It was like this big van that everyone pretended was a bus and the guy who drove honked the whole way to get people’s attention. But one of the passengers decided eventually that the driver was honking too much and his soliciting was slowing us down. So they got in a fight. It consisted of the two of them telling each other how stupid and poor the other was. Eventually they said things like the F word and that they’d hit each other if they weren’t in a car… Joel and I were a BIT uncomfortable. Nothing happened though. If that had happened in New York they would have just said “F you” a couple of times and shaken their heads and shut up but they did NOT stop they just kept telling the other one that he was poor and stupid….
We survived and wine tasting was INCREDIBLE. The winelands in Cape Town are SUPER green and lush and the wine is LEKKAR. It is way good. We went to 4 vineyards. By noon I was tipsy but then that wore off. We sampled just tons of wines and cheeses and we had this really wonderful driver, Janni, and his assistant Kelly. They were terrific guides. They did not cheat us one bit, and they taught us all about the winelands and made negotiations for us. The first wine tasting was at Paarl. It was led by this woman Kirsten who gave us a tour of the cellars and took us step by step through wine tasting, how to etc. It was totally personalized and extremely informative: the perfect way to start the day. Janni and Kelly eventually dropped us off at Stellenbosch, one of the most famous vineyards. They had this deal where you could pet cheetahs there so I got to hang out with Enigma, this cuddly cheetah. That was awesome. And then we had dinner at this super luxurious restaurant there called Spier (I think that’s how it’s spelled). This place was unbelievable. There were tree houses everywhere where you could sit and little private couch areas with curtains you could have around the bar. We did this huge like 5 or 6 course buffet, all of African foods. It was to die for. And there was live music and they painted our faces. Get ready to fly to South Africa in several years because I’m getting married there someday.
Janni and Kelly came back and picked us up. We spent our last day on one of those red double decker tourism buses which took us all around Cape Town. We had a relaxing day visiting the botanical gardens and a few beaches and then we got back on the ship and here I am!
Sorry to overwhelm you with news! Upcoming: Mauritius tomorrow (I’m snorkeling with my marine bio professor) and the day after that are the Sea Olympics onboard the ship.

Whew!
Love to you all!
Martha

PICTURES

Ok. I have SO much to write about:

Neptune Day (the festive day the ship crossed the equator)
Namibia
South Africa (still in Capetown, right now actually)

So all of that is coming but in the mean time, here are four pictures (I hope this works) of me in a township yesterday. I did Habitat for Humanity.

LOVE YOU!

Never mind. It didn't work. But go to my facebook! I'll load all my pictures from yesterday there!

Bonjour, Moroc!

Hi everyone!!!!!

Guess where I am???? I'll give you a hint... West Africa... they speak French there.... What's that? Elliott, is your hand up??? You're RIGHT! Senegal! Betcha didn't know THAT!!

Actually I'm not in Senegal anymore... But I WAS!! Just the other day! Betcha didn't know THAT! We left Senegal after stopping briefly at the port in Dakar for refueling. It was awesome. We didn't leave the ship, but there were little tiny fishermen in little tiny canoes all around us as we came in to port. I got super sunburned (I'm fine) after lying out on the deck, with the vague imagery of industrial West Africa on the other side of the railing. It occurred to me, in my sun-drunk stupor (I was definitely sun drunk.. or maybe I had cabin fever), that NOBODY at home (or in Chicago or New York or Lafayette or Edinburgh or at school) had ANY idea (ANY idea) that I was in Senegal. But I was. Nanny nanny poo poo! Now I'm in the Southern hemisphere somewhere. Happy summer, everyone!

But how did I get here? Last you heard, I was in Spain! Well a lot has happened since then and THAT is what I'm here to tell you about.

Actually not that much happened. More stuff has happened to my friends lately than has happened to me. I like it that way, I think... As long as it's such stupid stuff. More on that after I tell you about what I did in Morocco.

We arrived in Casablanca and me and my friends (Kendyll, Ali, Carly, two girls named Ashley, Amanda, Jacob, and Ben) woke up early to get on a train to Marrakesh, along with just about everyone else from the M V Explorer. Walking from the ship out of the port was immediately crazy. We were bombarded by men, mainly taxi drivers, who were crazily, passionately.... inviting?? Suggesting? COMMANDING us to take their transportation services. Hell no. They were over charging by SO much, knowing we had JUST arrived in Morocco on a cruise ship. So we walked past to words and expressions designed to communicate to us how unreasonable WE were being by passing these "innocently helpful" people by... I still have to remind myself, when I'm thinking back on it, that I was in the right. They were so adeptly persuasive that they made us second-guess what we knew. And what we knew was not to trust them. But anyway, we DIDN'T trust them and were rewarded by cheap rides in "Petit Taxi"s to the train station. Have you ever played Crazy Taxi? The video game? Well there seem to be NO traffic laws in Morocco- in Africa, for that matter. It is JUST like crazy taxi. I had to close my eyes multiple times.

The train ride was pleasant. Kendyll and I sat in a compartment with the ship's Art History professor and his wife. They were REALLY cool. They kind of reminded me of your parents, Lexsea... but not as cool. PS say hi to your parents for me! We talked about traveling... Ok I'm going to skip to the next thing.

THEN we arrived in Marrakesh and went straight to the Place Djemma el Fna. We had arranged to meet up with our friend Colin there the next day and I remembered it from the last time I was in Marrakesh so that's where we decided to search for a hotel. I don't know about you but I'm having trouble with the spelling of Marrakesh and Morocco back to back. I know how to spell them but Marrakesh has two "r"s and Morocco only has one but it has two "c"s... So if I get it wrong in this post please know that I DO know how to spell both.

We found what was actually a fairly cool hotel. We each paid 80 Dirham which is pretty close to $8.00 for the night. Pretty much everyone in our group hated it because the blankets on the beds were like ancient woolen ones from... who knows where. But I slept great. We had clean sheets, two person rooms with their own bathrooms, and a pretty little view out into a very private and ornate little courtyard. Oh, and did I mention that when we walked out of the lobby, we were IN Marrakesh's main square????? It was cool. We decided to only spend one night there though because people were uncomfortable. I didn't mind leaving to tell the truth.

We spent our time in Marrakesh mainly eating and shopping. The square is surrounded by maze-like crazy markets or "Souks". You could absolutely get lost in them VERY easily (we did, twice). What blows my mind is that the shopkeepers in the touristy parts are all selling the exact same stuff. The exact same T-shirts, the exact same rip-off designer stuff, the exact same shoes and bags and hookahs.. I don't know how they survive. I managed to not spend too much money, in the end I bought a pair of shoes for 12 or so dollars (I ended up throwing them out because I made the mistake of wearing them for like half an hour in Casablanca and after that they ABSOLUTELY smelled exactly like poop).

We really enjoyed the food. We had a lot of couscous and Tagine and mint tea. Tagine is the main Moroccan dish that you find everywhere you go. It's usually some sort of meat (chicken for me) and some vegetables (sometimes with french fries, my favorite) served in a clay dish that comes with this weird conical top on it to keep it warm. The best waiters kind of flourish the conical top as they serve it and steam comes up off of it smelling delicious. As for the mint tea, it is THE best. Absolutely the sweetest, minty-est tea I've ever had. It's as simple as that.

The center of the square goes CRAZY at night. All day there are women with henna stands, men selling orange juice (SKETCHY), men with monkeys and snakes that they'll literally throw on you if you're not careful and then demand money. But at night bagillions of other people show up. I do NOT know who these people are but they come literally in droves (I think.. I'm not positive what actually constitutes a drove)... They mostly end up standing around street performers who say things in Arabic that I couldn't really understand and kind of dance.. I didn't really watch the street performers much. What I DID watch, standing in the crowded circle around a shirtless guy with long white hair who appeared to be dancing, were the men in baggy coats who would walk around the circle. These men were clearly not watching the show. They weren't even watching the people. Their focus was on the waist area of the audience-members. They carefully took in the vulnerability of people's camera cases and purses and pockets. My friends and I had all stowed our stuff away so obsessively as to be almost paranoid so I wasn't worried about our group and fortunately nothing of ours was stolen, but it was a real wake up call.

The next day, after pretty much failing to meet up with Colin (it's ok, he was with other people) we wandered around with this crazy, 5'4'' SAS guy named Jake. Jake has a napoleon complex. Also he has medusa hair, piercings on his nose, eyebrow, lip, two biceps, and hip. Plus a tattoo or two. By this point, our group consisted of Ali, Kendyll, Carly, and myself, the Ashleys and Amanda having left on an earlier train back to the ship. Apparently Kendyll kind of knew Jake but I'm pretty much still not sure how we wound up with him. In a nutshell, he represented himself to us as an experienced traveler, fluent in French, and great at making friends with "the locals". We became gradually disenchanted of this impression, beginning at lunch when he asked our waiter for "le check". From then on it became more and more clear that, although I guess his parents spoke French, he only believed that he did. In fact what he did instead was use a bizarre French/Arabic accent, bad grammar, and too much volume as he spoke English to waiters, shopkeepers, the people at the train station etc. I've heard of people doing this but I've never seen it in action. I assumed if someone DID talk like that, then that someone was probably an old, racist, white geriatric or something, not a young hippie, self-proclaimed citizen of the world. Example: I was buying those shoes I told you about, that I ended up throwing out. I was doing really well with the shopkeeper. I think he asked me for like $20 and I told him, truthfully, that my friend Ali had gotten a pair just like them from another shopkeeper for $10. I made it clear I wasn't going to pay more than that. Suddenly, out of the blue, Jake storms into the shop, turns to me and dramatically says "NO NO! HE NO UNDERSTAND YOU" but with an accent. Then he turns to the man and says "CHEE-PAIR" (cheaper) "CHEE-PAIR". I ended up paying $12 instead of $10 because I was just embarrassed and wanted to get out of there.. Pretty much the same thing happened at another little stall. My friends and I were inside talking to the guys who worked there. They were about our age and both of them spoke English fluently (one had studied at I forget which college in New York for a year). Suddenly, Jake, who had been out in front of the stall negotiating over a T-shirt makes a HUGE fuss shouting "NO NO NO! COME, FRIENDS! WE MUST LEAVE! THIS MAN DISRESPECT ME! HIS PRICE- RIDICULOUS! COME, FRIENDS! THIS MAN VERRRRRRY RUDE". We were like, seeya Jake YOU storm out, we'll finish our conversation. So he did and we did. Apparently the man Jake had been negotiating with ended up insulting him by calling him "George Bush's son" and a "terrorist" NOT kidding. Way to fit in/befriend "the locals"! The rest of us kind of just laughed, apologetically with the guys we had been talking to.

So then we made our way back to the ship. We drank some wine on the train and made friends with the middle aged Moroccan woman in our first class compartment (first class is like $12 versus $8). Her name was Layla so we sang Eric Clapton to her several times. I think she liked it.

As for the stories I hinted I'd tell about friends doing stupid things, one was the story of Jake, and there are two more which I'll briefly describe:

1. Our friends Jacob and Ben ended up going skiing with one of the Southern boys "Beer" (it's his last name but everyone calls him that). They had a nice day of skiing, believe it or not, but afterward were caught in a late night snow storm and unable to get a taxi. Unfortunately they had also just about run out of money and didn't have enough to stay at the mountain lodge and get a cab the next morning. They ended up paying a guy in a truck $40 to take them down the mountain which took hours and involved long, freezing negotiations in the dark (none of the guys spoke French) and like 10 other Moroccan guys piling into the truck. Jacob told me he was pretty sure they were going to AT LEAST get mugged. I would have mugged them. But they made it unscathed, believe it or not.

2. Back on board the ship, leaving Morocco, we went through CRAZY rocky waters. I'm not really sure why although I'm sure it was explained at some point. Our Southern friends decided to go to the Union which is at the bow (if that means the front) of the ship, the rockiest part during turbulence. We had been advised to be in our rooms, seated, with our possessions well-stowed but they were like, "Let's see if we can run all the way across the union and survive!" Two of the three of them ended up with canes and one ended up with a broken wrist. AND everyone's parents got an email being like, "Some people were injured in the crazy turbulence- DON'T WORRY!" Fools. Kendyll and I stayed in our rooms and ALL our furniture (beds, table, chair, bedside tables) slid all the way across the room TWICE. The beds slid even though we were IN them!

I'll write an update about Neptune Day (the wild and crazy festive day when we celebrated crossing the equator) sometime in the near future.

LOVE to you all!!!

Martha

PS I'm going to be arriving in Namibia on Valentine's Day, in case you were wondering what's next on the agenda.

Hola de E(th)pana!!!

Spain:

Hola mi amigos!!!!!!!

I am currently passing through the Strait of Gibraltar en route to Casablanca! Our arrival in Casablanca is currently delayed by at least 12 hours due to I guess bad weather. We were to refuel in the Strait, right by the big ole ROCK and I guess we did but it took waaaay longer than expected. So whatever. We'll arrive in Casablanca tonight and I'll probably leave for Marrakech with some friends tomorrow. I hope I'm spelling everything right.

But ETHPANA. Let me tell you all about it!

Our boat landed in Cadiz the morning of January 28th and my friends and I enjoyed a leisurely day there. I bought some weird Spanish candies... etc. Actually Ali and I made a beeline for a cafe where we ordered "caffee con leche" (Yo no se how to spell in Spanish..). The highlight of the first day, however, was right after that when we found a little restaurante right across from this GORGEOUS cathedral. We ordered delicious seafood Paella and Sangria (which KNOCKED us out- we had to go rest on the ship for awhile) and actually it was really really good (and we accidentally spent between the two of us- on ONLY Paella and Sangria 32 Euros... this is to be a trend in Spain: spending). We took a lot of pictures of the cute little town and then, as I said, needed a rest. It was evening and Ali and Kelsea (pronounced "Kelsey" if you were wondering), another friend, were signed up for a Flamenco night which maybe I should have done too but I opted out. So I waited for them, our plan being to go out at about 11:00 and seek out dinner and perhaps una cervesa (apparently Spain is happenin' late at night and all the cool Spanish people wait to eat until late). SO I rested and watched 310 to Yuma and got really scared alone in my room. But then they came back and we went out. OOPS. Cadiz was totally closed. And we kind of still don't really understand why. All of our guest lecturers had built up the night life of Spain and explained the culture's late eating habits so we had been really excited. After about an hour of wandering around with NO one else in the streets and EVERYTHING closed, we began a desperate search for a Burger King someone had seen earlier that day. It too was closed. SO then we eventually found this weird little room full of vending machines. My dinner was sour cream and onion pringles, these weird gummy candies, and German Kinder chocolates.

The next morning, Ali, Kelsea, and I got on a bus to Granada to meet up with my roommate Kendyll, our other friend (through Kendyll), Carly, and some boys Andrew, Ben, and Jacob. The bus was expensive, in case you were wondering. But it was pleasant. I slept the whole way. In Granada, we stayed in a youth hostal that was down this REALLY sketchy ally. The door didn't have a sign on it. It literally had a number (20, I think) and a picture of a backpacker giving a thumbs-up. We had free internet access though and there was a cute little courtyard and kitchen. I slept on the top bunk of a bed that had a forty-something year old European man on the bottom bunk. Our bunk bed was one of four or five in the room. Whatever. It was an acceptable place to stay if a little sketchy. After checking in at the hostal, we went out for tapas. This was my favorite eating experience of Granada. I got a sample plate and I'm not sure even what I ate but all of it was wonderful. There were meats, there were sauces, there was Manchego... It was delicious. After that we went shopping and I purchased a really cute Srgt. Pepper style jacket for only 10 Euros. I also got some candy... Um you don't need to hear all the mundane details. We didn't end up spending much time with the boys we were traveling with but we realized our group of five girls (Ali, Kendyll, Carly, Kelsea, and me) was really good. That night we met up with some of Kelsea's friends who were studying in Granada while Carly and Kendyll went off with some of Carly's friends. We had cervesas and got free pizza with them (I'm not sure why but it was good). And then we said goodbye and Ali and Kelsea and I went off in search of the famous Granada night life. We didn't quite find it but eventually we needed to go to the bathroom so we went into a bar and met Manuel the bar tender and Irene the friendly Granada college student who helped translate and offered directions. Our main goal was to find Carly and Kendyll. We never did. But in the process of looking for them we made tons of friends, Spanish and American. For example, in addition to Manuel and Irene, we met these girls on the street who go to Puget Sound and said that they thought maybe they knew Carl Larson, my first boyfriend ever. Small world, Ethpana.

The next day we went to the Alhambra. It was gorgeous. A few in our group were fairly... "tired" after the night before (not me!) but the first thing they did was get a beer at this little hut at the Alhambra. I laughed at that a lot. But we were just having that kind of a trip. The Alhambra was gorgeous. It's hard to describe. I'll try to put up pictures at some point.

THEN we got on a bus to Seville. We got in rather late in the afternoon/early in the evening and walked around until we finally found a hostal. THIS hostal was wonderful. We had two rooms one for three of us and one for the other two. All to ourselves! They were like hotel rooms and I guess we paid for about that... Yikes. We went out to dinner at an Italian restaurante in an area recommended by a friend of Kelsea's. For once we did well with our money. We ordered two medium pizzas, one pasta dish (Gorgonzola and walnuts!) and three bottles of the house wine (don't judge me- there were five of us!) for ten euros per person! Pretty good, eh?? And, once more, we made friends with our waiter! I don't know his name.. I don't think he ever told us but then he gave us free shots of lemoncello (may or may not be an Italian restaurant tradition..) but we talked him into having one with us and then as we left he kissed Carly and Kendyll.. like KISSED them on the lips as if it was a normal goodbye... The other three of us were sort of weirded out but I guess that's just how some guys DO in Europe...

Then we went to a couple of bars.. No biggie. And then we ended up fulfilling our final Spain "MUST-do" which was to eat churros in hot chocolate. At the little churros stand there were like 15 guys in their 30s-40s who took picture after picture with us and then we talked about Obama with them (I say "talked" but none of us could understand each other except actually me and this one guy who spoke German...) and then they brought up Bush and started doing the chicken dance which none of us understood but which we gladly participated in anyway.

So all in all it was pretty great. I got the opportunity a couple of times to call my parents and Robbie and it was really great to hear their voices. We made it through the trip with no real mishaps (ironically, as soon as I got back safely on the ship I scratched my cornea but that's another story and it's fine now). We made TONS of Spanish friends. That reminds me: one more highlight. At the Alhambra we were taking pictures of each other jumping up in the air and these young Spanish guys were sitting there and they said "where are you from?" and I kind of apologetically was like "the United States" and they went "OBAMA!!! YES WE CAN!!!" And I just almost cried. I got the biggest goosebumps. It was such an amazing, wonderful moment where I realized how different traveling really is and will be for Americans now. I'm SO proud.

LOVE to you all!

Martha

Life on this Crazy Ship

Aboard the MV Explorer:

Hi!

Robbie asked me to tell him what I do every day on this boat. Also, dad asked what activities I'm doing. This is my response!

Daily Life on this crazy boat:

The first thing you have to know is that I have two different kinds of days: days with class and days with no class. Every day starts the same, though, whether it's WITH or WITHOUT. I wake up every morning at 8:00 (actually 8:15) and eat one peanut M&M. If I'm on top of it, the first thing I do is RUN upstairs to get breakfast which closes at 8:30. After hectic and sloppy enjoyment of a peanutbutter and jelly english muffin and maybe also some yogurt, I return downstairs to my cabin (on deck 3, dining halls are on decks 5 and 6). It should be noted here that walking downstairs on this ship is NOTHING like what you landlubbers are doing. The ship doesn't rock horribly but it's pretty hard to feel stable. I know this doesn't SOUND too extreme but reeeeeally try to imagine it: you can't walk down the stairs without holding the railing. Really think about that. Now add to that equation that you're super tired. You get to know people really well as you crash into them every morning.

After breakfast I have until 9:20 to get dressed. I usually check my email first and my roommate Kendyll and I either talk or don't talk depending on how sleepy we still are, but the atmosphere is always very pleasant either way. Usually we then depart for Global Studies. Everyone has Global Studies and it happens at the same time every day. In Global Studies we listen to this old hippie who I don't really dig mumble about stupid stuff. On day one he explained photosynthesis (Um... I'm pretty sure we've all learned about that.. Also, what does that have to do with ANYTHING) and today he LITERALLY spent at least ten minutes on how days and seasons work ("well the earth's axis is tilted so as our planet circles the sun..."). What. I dozed today. The other weird thing about Global Studies is all 700 of us take it at the same time and the biggest classroom (the Union) holds like 300 so a bunch of people sit in classrooms nearby and watch the lecture on TVs. This works out for sea sick people because the Union is at the very front of the ship where the rocking's the worst and the classrooms are better for their stomach, but it's hard for me to watch a TV tell me about photosynthesis. The good news is the other professors also teach that class, the hippie brings them in to guest lecture and so far every professor OTHER than the hippie has been excellent. We learned about the Caribbean (Sugar, pirates, and other stuff) which was cool.

So that happens every day. After Global Studies it's like any college where people have different schedules. Mine just happens to be ordered so that all my classes are on one day.

WITH class:

After Global Studies I go to US Foreign Policy. My friend Kelsea (spelled like Lexsea!) is in it which is cool and the professor is HILARIOUS. As in he swears really casually and is super old. That class will be the hardest for me I think because there is a lot of rather dense reading but it's really interesting and the class moves along in a lively fashion thanks to Professor Mabbutt.

Then I have lunch. The weird thing on the ship is it's REALLY hard to find your friends. We all have phones in our rooms and we can call each other from there but if our friends aren't in their rooms, you better make new ones for the lunch hour. Which is actually kind of cool since everyone's in the same BOAT on that if you know what I mean. Today I was fortunate enough to run into Kelsea (of USFP) and my friend Thomas. Thomas is interesting. He's from Georgia and described himself as "probably the most conservative person on this ship." He's really up front about it but not obnoxious. Ali and I decided we can be friends with him it'll just never be like a super long intense close friendship. I lifted weights with him yesterday (you'll see when I describe WITHOUT class days) and he kept suggesting I use these light weights. I was like, Thomas back off. The girls in Oregon are buffer than those in Georgia. Figure it out. Lunch was fine. Food's not very good here but it's doable. After lunch Kelsea and I tanned/read by the pool for about half an our.

THEN I have Studies in Poetry. Again I really like this professor. He's also sort of elderly and has a good sense of humor (much more soft spoken than Mabbutt) but, unfortunately, some of the people in the class are lame. I have a friend in that class as well, Colin from C... I can't remember. Connecticut! He made good points about the poetry. But this one girl. Yikes. She prefaces her comments with "I'm sorry, when I analyze poetry I just go way to deep and then I'm always like, I bet no one else will have seen it this way, it's so weird. Sorry. I just go really far into it" like it's weird of her but secretly like she wants us to clap for her. And then she repeats what everyone else was saying but makes it wrong-er. Whatever. I still really like the class.

THEN I have Marine Biology. HILARIOUS professor. The best of all!!!!! He's really nerdy but laughs about it and knows how to make it just absolutely hilarious. He ran into a post today because he was pacing around the classroom and the boat rocked and then he hugged the post and said "I love this post" as if he had meant to do it. Hard to describe his humor but I look forward to that class SO much. It's my favorite. And we learn fun facts about fish (there's some ALLITERATION for you, poetry butthead girl!)

Then, as in, right now, I go to my room and catch up on email. I may rest a bit. Watch some 30Rock or one of the free movies that plays on the TV in my room. Eventually I'll call Ali for dinner and then hang out with friends until it's time to go to sleep. Oh and I have a date with the stairmaster at 8:30 (literally. I had to sign up last night in order to work out today).

WITHOUT class:

I do all the stuff I already said up until Global Studies. Then I take a nap. I wake up for lunch and then I hang out with friends by the pool/do readings for the next day/work out. Mostly I hang out with people. There's a lot of sitting and talking that goes on. And we play cards and watch movies. And they host events every night I forgot that part. There's a swing dancing class tonight and an Open Mic Night one of these days.

PS at the activities fair I signed up for battle of the bands (upcoming I guess) and to volunteer at the writing center as a tutor. So that stuff too.

So life is jam packed. The days are long when you look back on them because so much happens each day. I'm loving it and time is flying.

LOVE,

Martha

Belated Update (s)

The Bahamas!!!

But first, how to reach me: 1. my gmail emails get forwarded to me so emailing me there is fine but my ship email is mupreston@semesteratsea.net make sure you do .NET!!!

Nassau:
I met up with Ali, a friend of a friend, at the airport and we had arranged for all the same flights. Ali is wonderful. We had a really great time flying together, for example we enjoyed Coronas and fries at the Chili's Margarita Bar in Fort Lauderdale and had a really fun time with this weird touch-screen thing that was supposed to take our orders. When we got to the Bahamas, we explored our craaaazy resort. We stayed at the Atlantis in Nassau, which you might want to look up online because it's ridiculous. It's a Disneyland for grown-ups. There are humongous water slides, some of which are pretty much vertical and mayan-ruins decorated. There are also a few where you ride on innertubes through a hallway made up of aquarium walls. The Aquariums (there's also a restaurant/aquarium) house giant (really huge) sting-rays and medium-sized sharks. It's crazy. Ali and I didn't really test the water slides much, we just looked at them. We each put in a dollar at the casino.. that was weird because we didn't know how to use the slot machine. We had several pina coladas and hung out at the beach. It was weird and overwhelming but mostly really pleasant. I would never ever go there again though. Too decadent and tacky.

The second night in the Bahamas we met up with like, hundreds of semester at sea students at a bar/restaurant called Senor Frog's. This place was bizarre. The walls and ceiling were covered in these tacky signs that said sassy things about alcohol like "Alcoholism may be bad, but I sure love the symptoms" or something. Except one wall was open and looked out on the ocean. So that was nice. There was a DJ who would bring people up on the stage and force them to do weird things like gallop like a horse or sing kareoke. Periodically white confetti would spray out, I'm not sure from where (from whence?). At one point, the random people on the stage apparently pleased the DJ by galloping particularly well and the DJ declared that there would be "free shots" for everyone in the bar. Do you know what that meant? It meant everyone made a conga line that wove all around the bar until it got to this guy who had a bottle of fruity alcohol that he would pour into each person's mouth. Even though it was REALLY loud-too loud to really get to know anyone- Ali and I got the names of TONS of people which made it easier when it was time to check in to the boat.

SO. The next day we checked in to the boat! We got there at like 10:00 or so and had to wait in line for over an hour. They put ALL of EVERYONE'S stuff through an x-ray machine and we had to go through two metal detectors... I guess we're pretty safe. We now all have traveler's insurance cards as well as ID cards. The ship is so tremendously gorgeous you wouldn't believe it. If you look online, it's nice, but in real life it BLOWS your mind. I'm not exaggerating. Right now, looking out the window of my room, I see the rolling sparkling Atlantic. And there's a spa on the ship. And a bar. And a swimming pool. You can get incredible massages or facials or manicures or your hair cut or whatever (expensive, of course). I slept SO well last night and it was big-time because of the rocking. My room mate Kendyll described people's movement through the hallways and rooms on the ship as being like those fish that all move in the same direction at the same time without apparently signaling or whatever. The ship rocks and so do we. It's pretty funny.

Speaking of my room mate, she's great. Ali and I have spent a lot of time with her so far. She's from Reno Nevada and she goes to the University of Nevada there. She's a history major and she's an Obama supporter. THAT brings me to my next point:

We just came back to the room after watching the inauguration in the Union (a big amphitheater type room)! It was incredible. I was tearing up as soon as I saw the little sweet Obama babies. Everyone was asked not to log on to the internet during the inauguration because there was barely enough bandwidth to support it. Everyone cheered and celebrated and the whole while we were rocking in the waves. I'm really excited to be traveling in a time when being American is no longer something to be shy and embarrassed about!

Some other tidbits:

I don't have an "RA" but I basically do. She's called a "Living and Learning Coordinator" and she works I think at UC Santa Cruz..? I think.

The food is not bad but not good.

I put up a ton of pictures on my wall as well as some other decorations (like the crazy banner thing from Lexsea). Our room is all moved-in and tidy.

We're not supposed to call our "Voyage" a "Cruise" but the administrators refer to the "dorms" as the "hotel"... Our beds get made for us and our shower is better than my shower at home. AND I only share it with one person!

My bed is pretty durn comfy but not amazing or anything.

We have a TV in our room that gets several channels: an info channel as well as several that play movies all day (I'm not kidding: we watched Black Hawk Down last night).

Classes start tomorrow.

It's warm on the boat in the sun, even when we're traveling.

Ali's room mate is good too but not as good as mine and we're not really that close with her yet.

My asthma is getting much better since I've been using my inhaler.

Our window is quite large.

LOVE,

Martha