to all future SAS-holes

Tuesday, December 13, 2011 (9:16am) - Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA

now that i am an official SAS graduate as of convocation last night and can currently see AMERICA outside my window, i feel like it's necessary to share a few words of wisdom to all future SAS-holes. this is what i learned in the past 111 days that could potentially help you out. maybe it will... maybe it won't. take it or leave it. but here's just a few things i think you should know:

1. never go anywhere alone and don't blackout too hard. don't get taken to the drunk tank... it sucks! (from what i hear haha)

2. do everything they tell you not to do... eat crazy food, get lost... this is your voyage, not theirs.

3. have the time of your life. cheesy? yes. but when's the next time you're going to sail around the world, besides never. that's what i thought.

4. make new friends. if you don't know anyone, then this should be pretty easy. if you come with a posse, breakout and meet someone new!

5. DO NOT organize independent trips. let someone else do it. too much work, believe me! someone will want to do what you want to do, but let them plan it. and avoid SAS trips at all cost. they're wayyy overpriced and kinda strict. but i do recommend doing homestays (which you have to do through SAS).

6. whatever it is, it'll all work out. i promise. don't stress. if you don't wake up in shackles, game on!

7. tabasco tabasco tabasco. i don't care if you don't like it at home, you WILL like it on the ship. whenever you get sick of the food (and you will, i promise), adding tabasco to anything make whatever it is edible.

8. get to know the crew, especially in the dining halls. they have interesting life stories! and they figure out what you like and will bring it to your table for you. and tip your cabin steward early and get on their good side. then they won't get you in trouble when you hoard 50 boxes of cereal in your cabin.

9. speaking of cereal, when they have your fave cereal at breakfast, steal a couple boxes! technically, this isn't legal... but everyone does it. and it's key for those days that you're like "you're serving what for lunch? i'm gonna go eat cereal."

10. girls... bring a ring for your wedding ringer. cus guess what? being a woman in a muslim country will get your ass killed... unless you're "married." or ugly. "i'll give you 5000 camels for your sister." not if you're already married, you won't!!!!

11. don't do anything until you see a local do it first. such as, using a little old lady as a shield to cross the road in vietnam. or if you don't know how to eat whatever they just put on your plate on your homestay in ghana, wait til a local does it... and do as they do.

12. want to people watch? those two red chairs by the computer lab are where its at. and those two chairs rock anyways... so claim them early on.


i can't believe this is over. i don't ever want to leave this magic bubble called the MV Explorer that i've been living in for 4 months. i'm insanely jealous of all you future voyagers. you're in for the ride of your life. go conquer the world... and leave it a little better than you found it.

and a huge thank you to the entire Fall 2011 voyage. thank you for changing my life and most importantly, for being awesome. i love you all.

the british are coming, the british are coming!

Monday, December 12, 2011 (12:38pm) - Gulf of Mexico

and by the british, i mean the US coast guard. and no, not for some fancy escort into america or anything like that. cus someone is dying on the ship!!!! well, i don't actually know if they're dying, but we're going 25 knots and have diverted away from our original course. and they kicked everybody off all the outside decks cus the coast guard is on their way to pick the person up. so much for tanning all day and doing all my last minute packing. the coast guard helicopter is supposed to be here in 20 minutes so i'm gonna go try to see them if i can. never a dull moment on this ship.

other than that, just doing all our last minute stuff. picked up my SAS certificate just now, and doing my last minute packing. today is linda's birthday so jake put together a surprise ice cream social for her tonight so we're going to that! other than that, just hanging out with all these people for the last time. it's kind of like high school graduation... it's not that i'm gonna be missing most of these people... just kinda sad that this group of people isn't going to be together ever again. wah wah wah.

BUT i get to see my dog friend, my family, my friends, eat real food, drink the water, wear real clothes, not wear a money belt... you know, the little things. okay, i gotta go find the coast guard yo.

loves.

7th inning stretch

December 9-10, 2011 - Roatan, Honduras

so this blob should've been about cuba! still upset about that... but i've learned to deal with it. so instead we went to roatan. another one of those places nobody's heard of. so let me fill you in... it's this tropical island out off the coast of honduras. since honduras is too dangerous for us to actually go to, we went to paradise. and SAS restricted us to the island. fine... take me to heaven, and don't let me leave... twist my arm a little harder, please! so we got there on friday. first stop when we get off the ship is to the duty free shop to buy all kinds of alcohol. patron for me, duhhh. cus even SAS told us that this was vacation time... no cultural sightseeing for us! there was 10 of us and we had booked two beachfront villas at this resort in west bay. a van from the resort was there to pick us up. win. it took us about 30 minutes to get there from the ship because the roads were in such bad condition. i thought the potholes on la jolla village drive were bad... nope, not even close.

so we finally get there and check in. there was a little bit of an issue, but it all worked out. once we got all our shit in our respective rooms, it was straight to the beach. it was SO nice. we all got beach chairs and laid out reading our books, listening to our ipods... just enjoying not having to be responsible for anything since finals and everything were over. after a little, all of us went to the bar because the resort had given us all a coupon for a complimentary drink. so nice of them. i got a miami vice (half pina colada, half strawberry daiquiri)... SO delicious! and exactly what i wanted to be drinking as i lay on the beach. but then like an hour after we got to the beach, it started POURING!!!! and it did not stop pouring the entire time we were there. but that was okay. me, maddy, and audrey walked up the street to this little sub shop for lunch. i had a chicken fajita sub that was DELICIOUS. then we walked back to one of the villas. maddy & i laid on the porch in the hammocks, listening to the waves and rain, reading our books and napping. sooo relaxing. so even though it wasn't ideal since the sun wasn't out, we still got to relax and everything. we all kept running to the bar to buy drinks and we all ended up getting dinner there too. eventually we all went to this other hotel down the beach cus a bunch of SAS kids were there too, but it was kind of a bust so we just came back to our hotel. everybody was pretty tired from drinking and running around all day, so we went to bed fairly early.

the next morning we all woke up and had complimentary breakfast at the bar. it was pretty good. it still hadn't stopped raining, so we all went back to one of the villas and just hung out all day. we were all lazy and just reading our books and sleeping around the house. we got lunch and drinks at the bar again, then we had late check out at 1. we took the van back to the ship and walked around the port area for a little bit. but it was raining, and so i got back on the ship. i went to turn in our passports, then showered, and maddy & i crashed and took like a 5 hour nap. woopsies. then i got up and i had to go to my last family dinner. then i came back to my room, watched some friends, and finished my book.

i can't believe roatan was our last port and i'll be back in america in like 48 hours. it's insane. brewer & i are just starting to pack right now. my worst nightmare. i hate packing, and we have so much shit all over the place that i don't even know where to start. i just had work for the last time. so many "lasts" going on this week. pretty sad. but i'm totally ready to get home already. and i know that once i get home, all i'll want is to be back on the ship. but until then, GET ME HOME! haha. tonight we have the SAS musical to go to. and as if i don't already love musicals enough to go, brooke is the female lead!!!! i'm so excited. it should be really fun. okay well i should go start to pack. this is going to suck.

see you all so so soon!! love love love.

pop, lock, and drop it

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 (11:13pm) - Caribbean Sea

hi friends! lots to say today. so yesterday i had my three hardest finals. i woke up at like 7 and got breakfast and did some last minute studying for my ethics & the making of US foreign policy class. then i had lunch, followed by my international organizations final, then global music final. was pretty much brain dead at the end of that day. so i spent the rest of the night watching friends before i had to go to work. then last night alyssa put on an explorer's seminar about all the research she's been doing this semester at the health clinic. it was really interesting... and fun going to support her. then we all met up after and planned to meet up on deck 7 at 11. why? because us geniuses decided what could be better than sleeping on deck 7 before the panama canal?? i mean it's been super hot lately, so why not? so it was me, maddy, bri, courtney, brooke, alyssa, brandy, and brenna. we all grabbed the lounge chairs and set up camp by the pool. not only was the going to be fun to wake up to the sunset and panama canal, but this was strategic too cus we'd be reserving our seats to lay out all day. winners. we didn't fall asleep until like 3:30 cus that's what slumber parties are all about. but holy shit was it windy. we all literally had to make cocoons with our blankets to make sure they wouldn't go flying overboard. so that was kinda a struggle and made sleeping a little difficult.

we were woken up at like 5:30 this morning by people taking our pictures. not great. but then we were all up and watched the sunset. it was SO pretty... but super early. it took us a while to actually get to the canal. it's kind of like a parking lot of giant ships outside, just waiting their turn to get in. so we got breakfast and sat in our chairs until we got to the first locks. it was SO crazy. i can't even explain how cool it was going through the locks in the canal. i was really impressed by the technology and stuff. and it was cool because we saw all the expansion stuff their working on. we all took turns after we went through the first locks to go downstairs and put our bathing suits on. my game plan was to just lay out by the pool all day since i only have one more final and it should be pretty easy. oh wait... like 20 minutes after i come up from changing they kick us all off the deck because we were having a bbq for lunch and they needed to set up all the tables. wah. so courtney, alyssa, maddy & i went down and found lounge chairs on deck 5 to lay on. then like 30 minutes later, it starts POURING. sooo annoying. i tried to hold out, but it wouldn't stop. so i called it quits and went inside. brewer & i each took showers, then it was nap time since we didn't sleep at all the night before. we set an alarm to wake up for lunch. i was glad i got up because we were going through the next set of locks. then i came back and woke maddy up to watch us leave the last set of locks. it was so so so cool. i'm so glad we got to see it and go through it. and my dad saw us go through the locks on the webcams! so much fun. then i went and grabbed my book and laid in bed and read for a little bit. but the voice made afternoon announcements and said that maddy's group project was having a last minute explorer's seminar so i got out of bed and went to that. it's really cool cus they're trying to plan a blood drive for for ghana on future voyages. but after that i went back to the room and crashed! maddy came and woke me up at 6 to go to dinner. i told her i'd meet her there in a second, and had every intention of getting up. i turned on all my lights and everything. but i definitely passed out again. woops. but i woke up by myself before dinner ended, so that was good. then i was walking back down to my room to go read or sleep, but as i was walking past the piano lounge, i stumbled upon christmas caroling! how could i say no to that? anybody who wanted to sing could, and dr. phil played the piano. i sat with alyssa, courtney, brandy, and bri... and the caroling just made us want to be in sweats next to the fireplace with our dogs. (only 6 daysss!!) after caroling was over, i went to work for an hour. pretty boring cus everything is pretty much done. but afterwards, pure magic happened.

so in hawaii, i bought a gingerbread house kit. cus really, why not? and i couldn't do it because i was so busy studying up til now. but i'm pretty mentally done at this point, so i was like "10pm, garden lounge, see you there." and it was game on. you should see how ridiculously awesome this gingerbread house is. it's sitting in my room right now, but we're going to try to put it in one of the display cases on the deck 6 walkway. so hopefully the housekeeper guy approves it tomorrow! me, alden, maddy, bri, and brooke all made it. it was SO fun! that needs to start being a tradition or something. and we walked it through the ship trying to find someone to help us put it in the display case, and everybody was so jealous. sorry i'm awesome! don't hate me cus i'm beautiful.

and now maddy & i are laying in bed blobbing, listening to christmas music. today was a wonderful day. we move our clocks back an hour tonight, because some dumbass made us move the clocks ahead last night even though honduras is on central time just like costa rica. so today we lived on eastern time for funsies. i think they're doing it just to screw with us at this point. alright well i'm gonna go to bed or something cus i need to study tomorrow before my last final! only 6 days until home! i can't believe it. i cannot even begin to tell you how excited i am. today at dinner, this lifelong learner nola asked me if i could visualize home... and i was like "that's kind of all i do these days." haha so exciteddddd! okay well good night. love you all!!

pura vida

December 4-5, 2011 - Puntarenas, Costa Rica

can i just tell you how over this blob i am? sorry but this takes so much time. good thing in only have a week left!!! weee. but as for costa rica...

so we arrived in costa rica on sunday. it was basically the first time we've been on land for three weeks since we only got 10 hours in hawaii since november 15. not great. so we were all more than excited to finally see some land. the first day i had a ziplining tour booked. so we met in the union and left the ship around 10. there were 18 of us, and our guide met us at the dock. it was about a 45 minute van ride up to the mountain. we hung out there for a while, then we all got on horses. yeah, horses! i'm a little scared of big dogs... let alone a big giant horse. plus, i'm pretty sure that was the first time i'd ever been on a horse. but, i didn't die so that's good. so it was like an hour long ride up into cloud forest. it was really really pretty, but hurt my ass a lot. thought not as much as the camel ride in morocco. we finally got to the first platform, cus the whole point of the trip was to go ziplining. there were 25 ziplines over 11 waterfalls, plus 2 repels across waterfalls. it was SO fun! i've never gone ziplining before either, and it was so fun. except now i'm SO sore. pretty sure i have a 6-pack or something, not sure why... but i'm not complaining. then after the last zipline, we got driven back to the hotel where we had a delicious lunch. i was expecting burritos from costa rica... but turns out, it wasn't mexico. but we still got rice, beans, and chicken... which was delicious. then they took us back that evening.

i didn't end up going out that night because i had so much freaking studying to do. plus if you weren't on the ship by 6:45, you couldn't get on until 2 in the morning because we had to leave the dock. so i stayed in and studied a little. but mostly just went to bed. then the next morning, maddy, brooke, courtney, her roommate, and i went into town. we were supposed to dock in puntarenas, but at the last minute had to switch to puerto caldera or something. there was nothing there, so we went to puntarenas instead. we walked through some markets when we first go there and bought all our last minute gifts for people. then we laid on the beach for a while and went swimming. officially have gone swimming in every ocean we've been in. the water was SO warm! then i laid out and studied some more. why SAS scheduled finals for the day after costa rica, i have no idea. then it kinda started to rain so we left the beach and went to lunch, which again was delicious. then we walked around the markets some more and then ended up catching the tram back to the ship.

costa rica was beautiful. i wish we had more time in latin america though, because i think i'd love it. plus, i could use my super sweet spanglish skills! costa rica was beautiful... and according to some paper we had to read for our global studies class, costa rica ranks as the happiest place on earth (sorry disneyland)! no wonder americans are starting to retire in costa rica these days. plus it was pretty cheap, which is always a fun time.

okay well that's all for costa rica. pura vida (good life?) is their motto. so much fun. love.

school's out for summer!!!!

Friday, December 2, 2011 (2:35pm) - Pacific Ocean

so yesterday was our last day of classes! which is strange because we still have like two weeks until we're home. and last night was the alumni ball! which was kinda like prom... but on the ship. it was bollywood themed... since everybody lost their shit over bollywood when we were learning about it before india. so some girls wore the sari's they bought in india (which is so stupid because sari's are well over $100... and when the hell is it going to be socially acceptable for these girls to wear sari's again... besides never??). but otherwise all the guys were dressed in suits and all the sane girls wore dresses from home or that they bought in port. i wore the dress that i wore to my confirmation... cus i'm a good little catholic girl, duh. haha. so i got out of class at 5 & our dinner seating was at 5:30... so i hurried up and got ready, met some of my friends out at the pool deck to take prom pictures before dinner. then had a formal dinner. continuing the india theme... we had these prawns with indian spices, this soup, caesar salad (what's more indian than that, really?), then i ordered the chicken tandori thing. it was actually really good. where these cooking skills have been this entire voyage, i have no idea. so then they kicked us out and the second dinner seating came in. meanwhile, we were just sitting around waiting for them to be done. then at like 10, we had the premier of the lipdub!!! it was so so so awesome! i can't wait for you all to see it. but it was a little bittersweet because it kind of hit us all that this is almost over. like, i won't be able to hang out with jake and linda all night writing papers next semester cus they go to berkeley. it's gonna be so weird not seeing all these people all the time. but then after the lipdub, we had this giant dessert buffet which was really good! then there was the dance, but i was really tired from not sleeping for the past couple days so i just came back to my room, watched a little tv, and went to bed.

today we have a study day, which i really just wanted to spend laying in bed watching friends... but my cabin steward julius kept coming in so i finally left the third time he came in so he could clean my room. i just had lunch with jake, linda, alexa, and will. now i'm back in my room cus i'm backing up my entire computer on my hard drive and my computer was about to die. i have work later tonight. which is going to be awesome because my boss ordered cookies for all of us. i already stopped by and stole a couple. so delicious. my friends & i were going to go to dinner on deck 7 tonight to celebrate our 100th day of the voyage (which is today by the way... so crazy!!!) but then i just looked at the menu, and we're having breakfast for dinner! just like we do at school before finals. so we're going to wait to eat on deck 7 when there's a meal we can't eat. because i literally cannot eat this food anymore. i'm subsisting on the oatmeal, chips & salsa, and hot chocolate that i bought while we were in hawaii. not great.

so only 11 days left of the voyage. tomorrow we have our global studies final, then the rest of the day is a study day. the next two days we're in costa rica. then the day after that is our A day finals, then we go through the panama canal the next day, and the day after that is our B day finals. then we're in honduras for two days, then two days at sea... then we land in florida!!!! i can't believe it's so close... but i still kind of have a lot to do. i don't even want to think about packing. but it's so weird that we're almost done. i coulda sworn morocco was like yesterday... and yet at the same time it feels like it was so long ago. so strange.

well i'm gonna go watch some more episodes of friends until my computer is charged... then i'm gonna pretend to study or something. okay well, love you and miss you all. happy december! i don't know how that happened. oh and we move our clocks ahead again tonight. that'll put us in central time. 2 hours ahead of san diego. can't wait to not have to change my clock every night! alright well, love love love.

weird meats, funny music, side of rice

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 (4:03pm) - Pacific Ocean

okay sorry for not blobbing lately. but it's cruch time on the ship right now. i've written 2 term papers in the last two days, need to write 2 more today, and i just wrote 3 reading reports since yesterday. you may call that poor planning, i call it school. wah. this is just the first time i've been motivated to do anything. so that's what i'm doing. need to write an international organizations term paper tonight, as well as a global music term paper. so much fun. not.

lots has been going on around the ship these days. i think they want us to be doing anything but studying... which would be nice, if i didn't have so much to do. i think i might've written about the talent show we had maybe a week ago (i have no sense of time right now, so bare with me). but sometime between when we left hawaii and now, we had the GAY talent show. i know that doesn't sound politically correct, but i forgot what they actually called it... and that's pretty much what it was. i'm pretty sure i'm on the gay cruise, seeing as everybody is gay. which is fine. but when the first question i get from my mother and half the people i talked to on thanksgiving was "so, do you have a boyfriend?" well... nooo. first off cus the percentage of female to male is like 70:30... and then chances are the guys are gay anyways. such a dilemma. anyways. the gay talent show was SO much better, obviously. it was hosted by this gay guy named adam on the ship. except he's started dressing in drag... and his drag name is eve. so it was hosted by "adam & eve." clever, right? but seriously, adam is the most beautiful woman i've ever seen in my life. it's so funny. there were a bunch of amazing performers, some really great poetry and monologues. the best was this guy singing britney spears while playing the piano. i was dying. (sidenote, the other night at open-mic night at the piano bar, he sang adele "someone like you" and all the girls were crying. he has the voice of an angel... and he's a beautiful gay man. can it get any better? NO!) so i watched the gay talent show with courtney, brenna, bri, maddy, and alyssa and we all painted our nails. so fitting.

oh and today we filmed a shipwide lip-dub to the song "wavin flag" by k'naan. it's gonna be so sick! so look for that soon. it'll be my youtube debut. so excited. right now maddy and i are getting ready to do a bridge tour. which means we get to see where the captain drives the ship and everything. it's gonna be really cool. we had global studies discussions this morning for the last time. then for the rest of the day i'm just gonna do homework, then go to dinner on deck 7 with the AXO girls to celebrate the fact that we're finally in the same time zone as san diego! tonight in the union they're also doing a thing to celebrate world AIDS day... so hopefully i have time to go to that. and i also have work tonight. so much to do in such little time. we're still a ways away from getting to costa rica. hopefully i'll be able to finish my work soon because it's SO hot outside... i need to be out at the pool tanning. but priorities people! anddd as of today i'm only 2 weeks from being home! so crazy how fast the time has gone.

okay well i need to go help steer this ship or something. haha what a disaster. oh and the title of this blob comes from how i met your mother... when they're trying to figure out what to eat and ted suggests chinese... and barney says no. then ted suggests indian and barney says its the same thing. then ted is all confused and so barney goes "weird meats, funny music, side of rice... same thing." i think brew & i were going to die when we were watching that the other night. i think this is bad that i've just travelled around the world... cus as non-politically correct as i was before i left... now i feel justified in being super non-politically correct. woops. okay well i gotta go, byeee.

AMERICA... F*CK YEAH!!!!

Thursday, November 24, 2011 (8:46pm) - Hilo, Hawaii

happy thanksgiving people! this was the first thanksgiving i've ever spent away from home... and though it wasn't as bad as i thought, it still wasn't the same. we went through customs yesterday when we were docked in honolulu. it was really strange because they spoke ENGLISH and were really friendly. what a weird concept. since we did that, we got to get off the ship as soon as we docked in hilo this morning. me and maddy met up with courtney, audrey, and brenna in tymitz and all left the ship together. we also found jake and linda as we were leaving the port, so they joined us too. the 7 of us walked to ken's house of pancakes and had thanksgiving breakfast! since we had thankgiving dinner last night on the ship, we decided we were going to make breakfast our big meal of the day. i think it's gonna turn into a tradition at school cus it was really fun. i had a portugese sausage scramble, hash browns, pancakes, kona coffee, and a big glass of pog. delicious!

after breakfast, jake and linda went to the beach and the five of us walked to the local starbucks. i got to skype home and see/talk to my parents for the first time since august. i also got to skype literally every member of my family on both sides since they were all at my house for thanksgiving. started crying in public when i had to say bye to them. embarrassing, but i couldn't help it. i also got to skype melissa which was fun too. it was AWESOME seeing and talking to everybody, and just what i needed to get me through the last three weeks of this voyage.

after a few hours in starbucks, we walked across the street to safeway. it's the first time we've seen a grocery store in three months. what a novel concept. and as we were walking through the parking lot i asked everybody "hey... have you guys seen a parking lot in three months?" the consensus was that no, we hadn't. so that's just a preview of how weird we are going to be when we get home. i literally walked down every aisle in the grocery store, just because i could. i knew i wouldn't be allowed to bring frozen food on the ship, but obvs i walked down the aisles because dumb americans are the only people that have like 5 aisles of frozen food. i ended up buying a 6-pack of coke, a box of saltine crackers, a bag of tortilla chips, a thing of salsa, a gingerbread house kit, and a bag of animal cookies. like how high am i right now, right? i'm so weird. oh and we also got tabloids! yayyy celebrity gossip.

after the grocery store, we headed back to this drive in restaurant to get our last bit of real food. i got a tuna melt and curly fries. i really wanted a mahi-mahi sandwich, but they didn't have it. sad day. then we headed back to the ship. did absolutely NOTHING hawaiian today... just celebrated the fact that i'm in america. and i feel like i've been to hawaii enough that i didn't really need to go snorkeling and stuff today. plus, hilo sucks so it's whatever. i just lost cell phone service again... so that kinda sucks. talked to my mom for an hour and to melissa for an hour. now it's 19 days til home. if i've made it this long, 19 days should be nothing.

and in the spirit of thanksgiving... here's a little bit of what i'm thankful for. first and foremost, i'm thankful for my parents. without them, this voyage would have been impossible. they are my support system and though i don't say it enough, i would be nothing without them. i'm thankful for my sister and the rest of my family. today just showed how lucky i am to have all of them in my life. i'm thankful for my friends on the ship who made last night and today the best thanksgiving i could have away from my family, and for making the past three months unforgettable. i'm thankful for my friends at home who have kept me sane and grounded throughout this trip. i can't wait to get home to you guys. i'm thankful to be an american and have all the privileges and opportunities i do. this semester has taught me to never take anything for granted and to truly appreciate everything that i have. there's a lot more that i'm thankful for, but i don't want to bore you to death. plus, we're starting to rock and i never feel good when we leave a port. so i'm gonna go pretend to write a paper right now.

i love you all so much and i miss you! 19 days! happy thanksgiving!!

what're you thankful for?

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 (8:18pm) - Honolulu, Hawaii

so today was thanksgiving on the ship... but i think it might've been christmas. maybe because i woke up and america was outside my door. i knew we were bunkering in honolulu, but didn't know we were actually docking there. so obvs the first thing i did was turn on my phone! cell phone service for the first time in three months was crazy! talked to my family for the first time since i walked through security in san diego in august. also got to txt all my friends! such a fun game. except for the fact that we weren't allowed to get off the ship. just had to stare at america all day while sitting in class. torture! also not fair cus we left honolulu at like 3 so i didn't get to use my cell phone as much as i wanted. lost cell service in the middle of a conversation with my mom. not cool.

also might be christmas cus i found the notebook! molly had it... so she's officially my favorite person in the world right now. then tonight we had thanksgiving dinner! now all us usd kids had very high expectations for this dinner... and i was talking about it all day cus i love thanksgiving. this is my first thanksgiving away from home and it's borderline depressing me to death. so at work i was talking about how dinner tonight better be good. my boss is also my ship dad and so he told me to go find the menu. thank goodness we had the new chef for this dinner because he did SUCH a good job. baked mac & cheese, mashed potatoes & gravy, turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, rolls, and fresh baked pumpkin pie! it was SO good. i mean, not how my parents make it... but they still did justice to it. especially since i'm currently in a food coma right now. ate with all my friends at first, then went and had family dinner. so even though i couldn't be at home with all my fam & friends, i still was with my fam & friends.

so we're sailing to hilo right now. they're having a cultural/logistical preport right now. the people who run this ship are so f*cking ridiculous. do they not realize that this is AMERICA!!?! literally, they're trying to teach us phrases of hawaiian and shit. oh surprise, this is AMERICA. they speak english idiots. i can't even deal. these people suck. and i'm kinda shocked by the amount of people that haven't been to hawaii before. sucks to suck that their first encounter with hawaii is hilo! and it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow. wah wah wah.

alright well we're having a girl's night down in courtney's room to paint our nails and hang out and not do all the homework we should be doing. whatever. we're in AMERICA! there's no homework in america. duhhh.

hokay bye peopleee. call me/text me tomorrow! cus i won't have cell phone service for another 3 weeks after this. sad day bro.

she doesn't even go here!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011 (1:12pm) - Pacific Ocean

so i'm fairly certain that mean girls is my generation's 16 candles. that could be why i stayed up til 3 in the morning watching it. not my fault, i don't think. audrey put all her movies on my hard drive... so now i'm set for life really. except i really need to study and write papers, but how am i supposed to do that when now not only do i have all the seasons of friends, but a ton of good movies!? so difficult.

anyways, we moved our clocks ahead again last night so we're 2 hours behind san diego time. i think that's a total of eight 23 hour days between japan and hawaii. sucks! i meant to wake up early this morning, but it just didn't happen. at least it's been way less rocky lately. you win some, you lose some.

oh and last night was the talent show! we had the crew talent show last month, so last night was the passenger talent show. the dependent children did a really funny play at the beginning. i was surprised how talented some people on the ship are. this cute little old lifelong learner did a tap dance, my friend cassie played the banjo and sang landslide... but the best part was definitely jake played the ukulele and singing. who knew he could sing?? not me! it was really good and a lot of fun. definitely a good reprieve from all the stress going on on the ship. my teachers are beginning to understand that everybody is burning out.

right now i'm in the 5th deck dining hall watching all the dependent children doing their homework. so maybe i should take their lead and pretend to do some homework of my own. i have two more classes today. blahhh.

alright well, only 2 more days til america! things are lookin' up. byeee. 

white girl problems

Sunday, November 20, 2011 (11:22pm) - Pacific Ocean

white girl problems... or sas-hole problems. either one. for those of you that have no idea what i'm talking about... google it or something. but here's my problems that aren't really problems at all... for starters, my new cabin steward julius totally blows. he only makes my bed every four days, instead of every other day like jesse did. and he sucks at making beds too. when i wake up, it looks like a tornado happened in my bed. but when jesse was here, i would be in like a cocoon. wahhh. and in the dining hall, perry and dante aren't here to take my plates away for me as soon as i'm done with them. and dante isn't here to make me coffee every morning when i'm too tired to do it myself. nobody in the dining hall knows my coffee order anymore! i know, these are pressing global issues.

in other news, we've officially made it to the other side of the map. let me explain. i bought this map of the world and have been putting a dot on it everyday to mark where we are in the world. well today, we officially made it to the other side of the map. the little things, people. i didn't realize it until just now, so i'll go up to deck 7 and celebrate tomorrow or something. also, we set our clocks ahead again tonight. so that means i'll be three hours behind san diego as of tomorrow.

that's all i got for now. i'm gonna go to bed or watch a movie or something. so sweet dreams.

groundhog's day

Saturday, November 19, 2011 (11:37pm) - Pacific Ocean

so you know how people always want to have the chance to do a day over?? well i did! even though i didn't really need to redo yesterday. like i told you all in my last blob, we crossed the international date line today (we need to rumor ranger that cus according to my calculations, i don't think we actually did). but anyways, that means it was november 19th yesterday... and november 19th today too. still not sure really how that works, but all i know is we got the day off of classes, so i'm not about to complain. we were supposed to have global studies discussions this morning, but mine was cancelled cus my teacher was sick. i had to write my global studies paper today though. and then it was taco day for lunch. had dinner with the AXOs on deck 7. then tonight was the silent and live auction for the shipboard drive. they auctioned off some pretty funny stuff, like steering the ship, breakfast in bed served by the dean, and biscuits and tea with a harry potter reading from the dean who's from england. all the money goes to the scholarship fund that helps future students be able to afford semester at sea. maybe not the most pressing issue in the world, but still an important cause seeing as 40% of SAS students receive some kind of scholarship. i really wanted to buy this painting from south africa during the silent auction, but it got too expensive. damn being a cheap son of a bitch. but probably for the best. people were getting pretty crazy... someone paid like $300 for a book signed by archbishop desmond tutu. and someone else paid like $250 to be able to honk the ship's horn. not great. but it was really fun watching everybody spend crazy amounts of money. all in all, today was a great day. just watched a few episodes of friends, showered, and now after i post this i'm gonna go to bed.

omg but before that i can't forget to tell you about last night. in my last blob i said we were in a storm. well the worst of it was last night. literally everything fell in our room last night. i was levitating off my bed cus we were rocking so much. i guess on deck 2 they bolted their port holes shut... normal. all i keep picturing is on titanic when they hit the iceberg and the boiler room starts to flood and the people have to run and get under the doors before they close. except on the ship, it would be deck 2 and like half my friends live down there. so stressful. i was pretty convinced we were gonna sink last night. i was about to sleep in my "warm clothes" because that's what the always tell us to wear during muster drills. and then i was getting all pissed off that i would lose all my souvenirs that i've bought in all these countries. yeah, souvenirs were my main concern... not the fact that i could drown and die. and then i thought, well shit i'd lose all my pictures too. but hold the phone... then i remembered i have everything on my external hard drive! good work buying that for me dad! and i figure my hard drive is small enough to hide so the crew wouldn't be mad at me about not bringing anything with me on the lifeboats. not sorry. but in any event, we obviously did not sink since i'm writing this blob. and it's been way calmer today, thank goodness.

alright well i think i'm gonna go to bed now. oh and i figured out the time change thing. because of the international date line i am now 4 hours behind san diego in time. yep! so now, no excuse for not emailing me promptly. only my friends in europe can use that excuse. so there! goodnighttt!

the perfect storm

Saturday, November 19, 2011 (8:25pm) - Pacific Ocean

currently in a pretty big storm. they warned us that crossing the pacific was going to be the rockiest part of the voyage... and they were right. it's like they've done this before or something. but seriously, the ship is really rocking. all of our stuff is falling off the walls and our desks in our room. they had to put straps on the books in the library (i don't really know how that's supposed to stop them from falling off the shelves... but A for effort). and i'm fairly certain we've turned into a submarine. only because my cabin on deck 3 is supposed to always be above the water line. however, we've spent the majority of today under it. waves have been hitting the 7th deck... sooo this is getting a little out of control. there was literally like half a person at global studies (not that this is any different... but today at least we can blame it on the weather). like, shit is getting to biblical proportions. or so says the voice.

speaking of the voice, she dropped a bomb on us today during lunch time announcements. so you know how the bitches in the US treasury won't sign our visa to go to cuba and so SAS decided to send us to guatemala instead. well turns out whoever works for SAS just now found out that guatemala is like one of the most dangerous places to go to in that part of the world, so we're not going there anymore. i don't know what took them so long to figure that out, but i'll give them the benefit of the doubt. so the voice told us that we're going to honduras instead! not really sure what i'm gonna do there... but it's whatever. i'm kinda bummed though cus i was just getting excited to go to guatemala cus i was gonna go to tikal to see the mayan ruins. but now i have to sit on a tropical island and get drunk and play at the beach all day. dammit semester at sea... why do you have to suck so much!?

in other news, we'll be crossing the international date line tonight. well, i don't know when we'll actually technically be crossing it, but we're celebrating it tonight. and by celebrating, i mean we're moving our clocks ahead again. big woop, i know. no but really, i don't understand how it works, but we have today twice. as in, today is saturday, november 19th... and so is tomorrow. i don't understand it... but once i figure it out, i'll fill you in. the only thing i do know is that we'll be BEHIND you guys in time now. still trying to figure out the specifics, but again... you'll know as soon as i know.

anywaysss i gotta go write a paper for global studies. blah. so keep it real friends. see you in the same hemisphere soon. or whatever.

hibernation

Friday, November 18, 2011 (10:00pm) - Pacific Ocean

have you ever felt like you just want to be a bear and eat everything in sight then sleep for like 3 months? cus that's where i'm at right now. except i don't want to eat anything on the ship... just dying for all the food in san diego. and i would kill someone to be able to sleep for 3 months. or even 3 days. i'm not picky. so i'm gonna start that right now, and go to bed.

but before i do, just thought you should know we move our clocks ahead again tonight. so that's like 19 hours ahead of home now? outrageous.

okay goodnight. i'm gonna go have some little bear cub dreams now. whatever that means.

i spy with my little eye

Thursday, November 17, 2011 (9:01pm) - Pacific Ocean

guess what's outside my window right now... give up?... THE PACIFIC OCEAN!!!! omg i double dog dare you to try to find a happier girl in the world right now. hint: not possible, so don't waste your time. even though i'm so happy, it's kinda bittersweet. i coulda sworn we were just in morocco, trying not to get sold into the sex trade and gearing up for ghana. now all of a sudden we're done and only have 5 days left in port?! totally outrageous. can't wait to get home... but don't want this to be over yet. i think the saddest person on the ship is my friend jocelyne who's one of the dependent children on the ship. she's an 8th grader and keeps emailing me that she doesn't want it to be over cus she doesn't want to leave her new friends. so depressing.

anyways, got wayyy too much time on the ship here coming up. i think we have like 26 days left on the voyage and only 5 of those days are in port... with only 2 more nights in port. such a buzz kill. that's WAY too much time on this ship. and i have way too much homework to do. too many papers, to the point that i don't even know where to get started. such a strugglefest.

and this is supposed to be the rockiest part of the voyage. we moved a ton yesterday and the day before... but today wasn't too bad. but i figure, if i'm in the pacific, it's fine by me. we moved our clocks forward last night... so that's now 18 hours ahead of home. getting difficult to calculate what time it is at home. oh well.

alright well i'm gonna go watch a documentary up in the union. someone go to the beach and wave... i'll wave back. so romantic, right?

love.

i'm turning japanese

November 11-15, 2011 – Kobe and Yokohama, Japan

holy hell was japan amazing! and all you haters that kept telling me that i wasn't going to get to go to japan... jokes on you. so we got to kobe on the 11th... it took forever and a day for the ship to get cleared. had to go through face-to-face at customs and stuff. but once we finally got through, me, maddy, brooke, molly, and chris took the port liner to the big train station and got on a train to kyoto. it was super clutch that i can read and speak a little japanese, cus all the maps and machines were in japanese. we didn't really have a game plan (as always) so we stopped at the tourist info center in the kyoto train station and asked them what we should do with our one day there. she told us to buy a bus pass then take it to the golden temple. before we actually went into the temple, we decided to find some lunch. we stopped at this little whole in the wall place where they didn't speak any english. perfect. and we had these japanese pancake things that we had to cook ourselves on the skillet that was in the middle of our table. it was really fun and turned out to be delicious. then we went to the temple and it was amazing! i don't really know much about it... but i'm pretty sure it was made out of all gold. it was really beautiful. we walked around the gardens of the temple for a little bit. after that we took the bus to a different area where there were a ton of temples. we got some coffee at a gas station then walked around and saw like a bajillion temples. it was really beautiful cus some of them were lit up at night. then we got some dinner at this little fast food restaurant. i had this rice and pork bowl. then we walked through some streets, stopped in a grocery store and found this magical candy, and then found a train station to come back to kobe. that day was 11/11/11 and so at 11:11pm, our group went to a convenient store and bought 11 beers and shot gunned them and made the most epic wishes ever. then we got back to the ship around midnight.

the next day, brew & i had a field trip to hiroshima. it took us about 4 hours to there by bus. we drove through the rural areas and saw these beautiful small cities. we finally got there and it was unbelievable. our first stop was the "a-bomb building." like you know the picture everybody shows when you think of or hear of hiroshima... that's the building we saw. it was out of control. but i was expecting hiroshima to be kind of like chernoble... all ruined and nobody living there. it was a huge surprise to me to find out that the city is all built up now and alive now. but there were definitely reminders. we saw a memorial to this girl that died of leukemia 10 years after the dropping of the bomb. it was pretty tough to see cus she thought she would surprise if she made 1000 paper cranes... so her memorial is this huge statue of her holding up a paper crane. then after that we went to the peace memorial museum. now i've been to some pretty crazy museums, but the holocaust museum in dc and the war museum in vietnam had nothing on this. the hardest part was the documentary we watched that showed some of the victims right after the bomb when they were burned and everything. it was disgusting and so hard to watch. but the museum was awesome... really well organized and put together. after the museum, we took the bus to the train station and we got to take the bullet train back to the kobe to meet the ship. the bullet train reaches like 200 mph and it was awesome. except we were riding it at night so we couldn't really see anything. once we got back to the ship, we grabbed our bags and me, maddy, molly, brooke, cassie, heidi, and keara went back to the train station to go to osaka to catch an overnight bus to tokyo. not the best night's sleep... but the most efficient way to travel, both saving money and time in the city.

so we got to tokyo at like 6am. nothing was open so we just walked around a little bit and waited for starbucks to open at 7. got some coffee and relaxed for a little. then we took a train to this district in tokyo. turns out there wasn't anything there (that's what happens when you leave other people to look up travel plans). so we had to buy another train ticket to go to ueno. once we got there we found this really cool place with markets and restaurants. we found a place to eat first and i got gyoza and noodles. then we found a hotel. so expensive, but so is all of japan. we took some time to relax for a little bit. then we walked around the shops for a while, got some dinner, and some drinks for the hotel. we planned on going out that night, but we bought some crazy juice alcohol stuff and we didn't end up making it out. but it was fun, we talked for and played games for a few hours in the hotel. then passed out.

the next morning i woke up and got ready, then left the hotel by myself. i went and got myself some breakfast and coffee then did a little shopping. wayyy too expensive. then i went to the train station and figured out how to get myself to yokosuka. i had to take 3 different trains and it took me 2 hours to get there, but yokosuka is where my grandma is from. i wasn't originally planning on going there, but i figured if i'm in japan, i might as well make my way down there. i didn't take anybody with me cus nobody else would have appreciated it. and it was also the first time i've been alone since august so it was really nice to have some time to myself. i just spent the entire day walking around. i got some lunch when i first got there. then i found this really cute street that had a bunch of restaurants and cute little shops. then i found this weird mall thing that i walked around for a bit. while i was there, i found this side door that had a flight of stairs going up into this hill. so obviously i was like "yep." and so i climbed up them. there wasn't anything for a while, then all of a sudden there was this really awesome temple that came out of nowhere. nobody was around, so i sat there and just thought for a while. i was just thinking about how my grandma was from there and it was so amazing that i had the opportunity to be there. then i continued up the stairs for a while, walked through this bamboo forest thing and found the most awesome cemetery i've ever seen. after a while there, i went back to the waterfront area cus yokosuka was a little harbor town. idiot me forgot that this is where my grandma met my grandpa when he was there in the navy... so i forgot that there was a HUGE US navy base there. so i saw a bunch of navy men all over the place. i sat at a bench near the harbor and again just sat and thought and people watched for a little bit. then i went to starbucks to get some coffee and warm up. while i was sitting in starbucks, these two guys that were maybe a little younger than i am asked me for help with their english homework. it was so funny. i could speak enough japanese and they could speak enough english that it worked out. after i helped them with that, i headed back to the train station and took the train to yokohama to meet the ship. i ended up running into all my friends in the yokohama train station, so we headed back to the ship together. i wasn't really in the mood to go out that night because i had such an awesome, peaceful day... so i just stayed in with everyone cus we were all tired.

the next morning maddy & i woke up and had to go to this lecture. which totally blew. it was supposed to be about japanese perceptions of the UN. but it sucked. so after that was over, we got lunch then left the ship in search for some internet and some food. we ended up sitting in a hotel lobby for a while, stealing their internet. then we found a grocery store on our way back to the ship so we could stock up on food. then we had to go through customs and stuff and got back on the ship.

so i did 5 cities in 5 days which was kinda crazy. but it was really really amazing. i knew i'd love japan, and i was right. i just wish the dollar was stronger cus japan was SO expensive! i'll have to wait until it does get stronger before i come back. and it was perfect that i could read and speak japanese. definitely helped when all the signs were in japanese and i could be like "well, there's a hotel... there's a coffee shop." and it was nice that i could kind of speak to people. at one point, this security officer in a train station in kyoto made me translate for this random white girl so she could ask him questions. pretty awesome! and it was nice knowing about the culture beforehand. especially knowing the food cus i could tell my friends what to stay away from and stuff. i ate SO much delicious food. i just figure it's a preview to japanese new years. yay! but i can't wait to go back to japan. hopefully i'll have more time there next time... and like $4 million. a girl can dream.

well we're moving the clocks ahead tonight so i should probably go to bed. love and miss you all. but as of japan i'm only a month away from home. i think today was 27 days until ft lauderdale! craziness. see you all soon. love love love.

humpty dumpty sat on a wall...

November 3-8, 2011 - Hong Kong and Shanghai, China

...but i slept on the great one. OMG was china amazing! now i know i've said this after a couple of ports now... but this time i really mean it when i say china was my favorite country! i knew it was going to be cool... but i was not expecting it to be that awesome. so we arrived in hong kong on the 3rd. our little group decided to meet in tymitz square whenever we got our passports and the ship was cleared... so we met around 10:30 and got off the ship together. there were 7 people on my trip... alyssa, brenna, audrey, ali, laura, reid, and myself. reid was the only guy for 6 days... but he was a trooper. so we got off the ship, walked to a free shuttle at a hotel nearby that took us to the train station that would take us to the airport. we spent like a whole 20 minutes in hong kong which totally sucks... so i definitely need to go back there cus it looked amazing from what i could tell. we got to the airport without a hitch. and the hong kong airport was seriously the nicest airport i've ever been to in my life. at airports in america, you maybe buy yourself a magazine, some mcdonalds, and perhaps splurge on a pack of gum or something. not in hong kong! the shops there were chanel, hermes, tiffany's, d&b, louis, etc. like WTF!? let me just casually buy a louis while i'm waiting for my plane. that doesn't happen! we did get starbucks though because they had holiday cups! are those out at home yet?? first time i've had starbucks since i left. delicious!

so we get on our plane to fly to beijing. what movie do they play? harry potter 7 part 2. in english! pretty sure we were the only white people on the plane, so we were in heaven. (spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the movie yet) except when they stopped the movie right before harry walks into the forbidden forest to die!!!! i thought we were going to mutiny and hijack the plane. so we landed in beijing and met our guide who took us to our hotel in the city. he also got us tickets to the kung fu show that night which was awesome!! those guys were doing some crazy stuff and it was really cool. after the show we took a cab to the bar district. we had dinner at one of the restaurants and ordered pizza. first meal in china was pizza. yup. then we walked around trying to find a bar. all the bars that were around there were really cute, but they all had live acoustic emo music. it was SO weird! like no club music or dj's anywhere. so this guy on the street told us there was a disco bar, so we were like "yes please!" turns out it was more emo music, they just had a disco ball at the bar. but while we were there we met two australian guys (what else is new??) so they joined our group so reid had some testosterone to hang out with. we walked around with them for a while and we somehow added a german guy to our group too. this happens in every country, but it's always fun. me and one of the australian guys (aaron) spotted a reggae bar so we tried that. no emo music there... and cheap shots! so we were there for a while. ali made friends with the guys who worked there who told her about a club. so after a few rounds of drinks we headed over to "mix" club. it was really cool! there were like 7 different rooms and somehow we always end up on stage at every country we go to. so that was a blast. we were celebrities that night. and i'm pretty sure there were like 4 black guys in all of china, but somehow they all found me. i had to pretend reid was my boyfriend to get them to leave me alone. reid was making fun of me, but whatevs. reid, audrey, and i headed back to our hotel around 3am.

the next morning we got up, ate breakfast, and left the hotel around 8:30. our first stop was to the silk market. not sure why it's called that cus there was no silk anywhere... but i bought a ton of shit. including panda hats. which did not come off our heads the entire journey. i might hate myself in 20 years when all my china pictures are of me being a douchebag in a panda hat... but it was definitely worth it at the time. after the market, we drove about 2 hours out of the city to the great wall. everybody told us that we would have that one moment on sas that we would never forget. hiking on the great wall was definitely that moment for me. i can't even put into words how amazing it was. we had to hike for about 45 minutes up stairs to get up to the wall. then we hiked about 3 miles on the wall. parts of it were falling apart. it was GORGEOUS. there was nobody around except for our group. the leaves on the trees were changing colors cus it's fall. and it wasn't as cold as i expected. i was sweating in fact. it was just beautiful. we hiked for about 15 watch towers, then we reached the dark tower where we were going to sleep for the night. so we climbed down the wall into a mongolian farmer village where we had dinner. it was our first chinese meal of our trip and it was delicious. chinese meals are served family style which was awesome. except we were SO full and they kept bringing out more dishes. after dinner we all got ready to hike back up the wall to sleep. we all put on like every article of clothing we had packed cus it was pretty cold and we were sleeping outside. so we got ready, all the girls peed in the bushes and we considered it ali's initiation into AXO. bonding. then we hiked back up the wall and back to the dark tower where we got our sleeping bags and got all settled in. obvs we were way too excited to go to bed anytime soon. so we stayed up with our guide and played some games. tony made us drink rice wine. it's 46% alcohol. and it is neither made with rice, nor is it wine. it was DISGUSTING! but it was cultural. when in china. we also took about 3 million pictures of us doing different things in our panda hats. but we just blamed it on us being "dumb americans." it's our favorite excuse for this entire voyage. it's going to be weird when we get back and can't blame our behavior on being american. eventually we did go to sleep. in the middle of the night i woke up and was like sweating. or maybe i was claustrophobic since we were in those cocoon sleeping bags. either way, i took off my panda hat, north face jacket, sweatshirt, and gloves. we found out the next morning that it was 3 degrees below freezing... and i was sweating. so mom, that's proof that i really do run hot. sleeping on the great wall was a once in lifetime experience. it rained a little during the night but that wasn't going to make us go in the little room. it was kind of a bummer cus it was cloudy all night so we couldn't see the stars. but it was still beautiful. especially waking up with the sun and being able to see the wall as far as you could see. ah. so amazing. one of the local farmers brought hot water up to us so we made instant coffee and oatmeal for breakfast on the wall. then we packed up and hiked back down to our van. sorry if you have to hear this story a billion times when i get home, cus i'm pretty sure this is going to be my go to.

so we left the wall and headed to the olympic grounds. it was so weird cus our guide tony told us that before the olympics, none of the buildings or anything were there. it was a little village that the government displaced in order to build everything for the olympics. a little messed up if you ask me. we saw where the athletes stayed and everything. then we got to walk around for about an hour. we mostly just saw the bird's nest and the swimming cube. which were SO cool. it looked really different in person than it did on tv. it was kinda eerie cus it was a little bit of a ghost town. i thought there would still be people selling olympic t-shirts and stuff, but there wasn't anyone there. but it was really cool to see. after that we got back in our van and headed back to the city for a hutong tour. hutong is a word for narrow streets in chinese. so we basically took rickshaws around these alleys. it was pretty cool seeing how average chinese people live. we got to see a local person's house. then we went to the drum tower and watched the reenactment of what it was used for. after that we got back in our vans and went back to the hotel where we dropped our stuff, got ready, then went to the acrobatics show. i thought the kung fu show was crazy. i was wrong. they did some crazy things at the acrobatics one... like fit 10 people on a single bicycle. pretty sure the whole show was made of all the rejects from the chinese olympic gymnastics team. it was pretty awesome. after the show, we walked forever to find the hard rock beijing. because what's more authentic than that?? but beijing was SO spread out. it was the first city we've been to that we couldn't walk everywhere. we got there like an hour later and there was a huge wait. reid and i stayed and shared a club sandwich at the bar, had a drink, then met up with everybody back at the hotel. the hard rock was really cool. i wanted to get a tshirt but they were $30! outrageous. back at the hotel we all got on computers, ipads, iphones... any and all wifi enabled devices for a while. then we went to the convenience store next door and got some beers. ali, reid, and alyssa ended up going out that night but the rest of us decided to stay in. it was a long day, so i just  showered and went to sleep.

the next morning, audrey, reid, and i woke up early and climbed this hill that was next to our hotel. it was seriously the weirdest thing though. it was this man-made hill with these buildings at the top. but it was surrounded by a park and there were seriously hundreds of senior citizens dancing, doing tai chi, chanting. literally the strangest like 20 minutes of my life. audrey & i tried to figure out why they were chanting, but we couldn't figure it out. so we climbed to the top and there was the most amazing views of the entire forbidden city as well as some of the beijing skyline. we took some pictures, then headed back to the hotel to eat breakfast before we had to check out. this was sightseeing day for us. we left the hotel around 9:30 and headed to tiananmen square. it was really cool... and super strange because our guide had absolutely no knowledge of what we think of when we hear "tiananmen square." but that's communism for you. this was the first time there were a bunch of tourists anywhere. but it was weird cus it was like ALL chinese tourists... we were pretty much the only white people we saw there. so we walked around a little, then our guide was like "wanna see mao?" as in mao zedong. the founder of the people's republic of china. so we were like "uh, yeah?" so we went and stood in line, entered mao's mausoleum and legit saw mao's body. like, i saw mao. i can officially cross "see a dead body" off my bucket list. and i know mao's been dead for like 40 years. but they froze him like austin powers. pretty sure they did the same thing with lenin. shit's crazy. so after that little adventure, we walked to the forbidden city. it was cool, but not mind-blowing. it kind of all looked the same. once we finally made it to the end (that place was huge), we went and had a delicious chinese lunch. after lunch, we headed to the summer palace. it was really pretty there. we took a dragon boat ride across the lake. reid thought it was romantic. we walked around for a little bit, and we actually ran into the german guy we met on the first day. after we walked across the bridge and saw the island, we headed back and it was time to head to the train station. tony, our guide, bought us all kfc (sidenote: i've seen kfc in every single country we've been to! wayyy more global than mcdonalds or starbucks, which is really surprising to me). so after we ate, we headed to the train station to catch our overnight train to xi'an. it was sad leaving tony, our guide. he was pretty awesome. but we got on the train without a hitch. only bad thing was that reid was 6 cars away from the rest of us. but he still hung out and partied with us all night. cus we can't waste a night of partying just because we're on a sleeper train. "beer man" loved us that night cus i'm pretty sure we were the only ones buying. he kept trying to hang out in our cabin with us, but he didn't speak any english which was kind of a buzz kill. so we had a ton of beers and hung out for a while. we eventually went to bed. the trains were SO much nicer than they were in india. i could literally live on one of these trains, it was so nice. (in hindsight, it probably wasn't even that nice. but in comparison to india, it was the ritz).

our train arrived in xi'an around 7 the next morning. our guide melissa was waiting for us right on the platform. we rallied the troops then made our way to our van. first stop, terracotta warriors. i can't remember when or why i learned about the terracotta warriors. maybe ap world history sophomore year of high school? but i do know i've been obsessed with them (or the idea of them) for quite some time. holy shit. the pictures online and in books do NOT do them justice in any way, shape, or form. we're afraid of the chinese taking over the world now. i think it's totally justified... just look at what they managed to pull off like 2000 years ago. impressive shit. we saw 3 pits of warriors there, as well as these bronze statues which were cool. after the warriors, we went to the city wall. it was freezing at this point, and it was nothing in comparison to the great wall. so that was kind of a buzz kill. but we did go to the fung shui museum which was pretty cool. learned how to properly "pet a dragon" (no sexual innuendos you nasty people) for good luck. i figured i could use whatever luck they wanted to throw at me. after the wall we went to the muslim quarter. there are 6000 muslims who live in xi'an which i thought was pretty interesting. we walked through there for a while. it was pretty much just alleyways where people were selling souvenirs and knockoffs. but i spent the best single dollar of my life there. as we were walking through the markets, alyssa and i spotted a bin of dvds. not very exciting as we'd already seen pirated dvds in vietnam. but what did we find? harry potter 7 part 2. the guy wanted $30 for it... i bargained him down to $1. that's called skill. but then once i bought it i was like "wait, this for sure does not work if he's going to sell it to me for a dollar." but we got it for the train ride cus we had another overnight train that night. after walking through the markets for a while, we stopped at starbucks to get some coffee and food for the train. then it was time to head to the train station to catch another overnight train to shanghai. two overnight trains in a row. winners. this time was better though because we were all in the same car. 4 people in one cabin and 3 in the other. we didn't party as hard this time because the beer man on that train was a slacker and only came by like every hour. but fruit lady was on her game so we bought like a billion bananas. biggest buzz kill of the train ride was that everybody's computers were dead. and the outlets in both our cabins didn't work. aka we couldn't watch harry potter. reid had 20% power left on his so we attempted to watch it. SURPRISE the dvd actually worked. literally the best dollar i've ever spent. so we got to watch the ending and reid's computer died just as the credits started to roll. it was meant to be. and it was SO fitting watching harry potter while on a sleeper overnight train. it was so fun. we stayed up for a bit doing literally nothing. then we crashed.

our train was a little late arriving to shanghai. but we met our guide/van and they took us right to the ship. i don't know why, but we had to surrender our passports when we got on the ship and we couldn't leave again until customs/immigration checked them. we had already gone through customs when we got to the beijing airport, but oh well. so we showered, got ready, then once our passports were ready ali, brenna, alyssa, audrey, reid, and i got off the ship together to go explore shanghai. we walked around the bund for a while, which is just another work for the waterfront. the most amazing views of the shanghai skyline EVER! americans fear that china is going to take over the world. um, after seeing shanghai i can officially report that they most definitely will. for sure in my lifetime. some of the gnarliest highrises ever! and the architecture was out of control. we walked along the bund for a while and saw the french quarter which looked a lot like montreal. it was really pretty. then we took the sightseeing tunnel under the river to "new shanghai." it was the craziest tunnel ride ever. it was like a little pod that we were in going through a lightshow. i've never done acid, but i'm pretty positive that's what it's like. insane. we got to the other side and walked to the pearl tower. reid wanted to go up, but it was $20 and nobody wanted to spend that much money. so we walked to this restaurant called seagull that this lifelong learner maddie recommended we go to. it was really good, but it was really strange. it was in like a banquet hall, but it was a restaurant. kind of weird. but it was a good last chinese meal. after that we took the tunnel back to the old side and walked to old town. more markets and souvenirs. but we stumbled upon this really awesome temple. it was daoist, and could be the coolest temple i've been to on this voyage. after the temple we found a mall. we went to h&m to shop. i purposely left my credit card on the ship when i left in the morning so i wouldn't spend anymore money but i'm SO pissed cus i found the jacket that i've been looking for for like 9 months. urghhh!!! after that, we took taxi's to a different mall. reid made friends with some guy at a donut shop that told us about this mall. turns out the mall was all high end designer brands. as much as i love louis vuitton, i'm not really on that level at this point. and we got split up since we had to take two taxis. so it ended up being me, audrey, and alyssa. we found the coolest apple store ever so we went and played. it was like underground and we played with the ipads and stuff for a while. then we went to the nike store, where there were NO nike shorts. total let down. then we went to starbucks one last time before we had to go back to the ship. made it back to the ship on time for the new onship time. apparently they changed on-ship time to 5pm tonight... without telling anybody. good thing we decided to come back at 4:45. sas is so annoying sometimes.

other things about china... it was pretty cold the whole time. i loved it though. it finally felt like fall. and it was a nice change of pace from these countries where it was like 100% humidity all the time. so i wore jeans, a tshirt, and rainbows the first day. pretty sure i have a cold now, but it was definitely worth it. china was an amazing country. definitely need to come back to hong kong and shanghai. i'm pleasantly surprised how much i love asia so far. maybe i never really thought of asia cus it was so fashionable to care about africa in high school. but asia is definitely where it's at. plus, i feel like i should like asia if china is going to own the world here pretty soon. oh and people were seriously paparazzi-ing us all week. and they weren't even sneaky about it. they would literally just stand there and take a picture of our group without asking. like i understood that in ghana when we were literally the first white people some locals had ever seen. but china!? tourists come here all the time. i mean, it's happened in every country so far. i just don't know why it was so out of control in china. whatevs.

anyways, brewer & i just reunited and had dinner. we sat outside even though it was raining because the skyline was so cool lit up at night. we just got our laundry together too and put it outside. we haven't had laundry since after india, so it'll be nice to get some clean clothes. now we're about to watch mamma mia! maddy's parents came to china for the parents' trip and so obvs we made them bring us mamma mia. it's going to be pure magic!

alright well... japan in 2 days! so crazy. miss you guys! hope you all are loving life just as much as i am right now. love love love.

blobbity blob blob blob

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 (11:56pm) - South China Sea

okay i don't really have anything new to tell you guys. just thought you should know that i'll be in china starting tomorrow until the 8th. got big plans and i'm really excited. so look forward to some more wonderful adventures.

in other news, how did it get to be november already!? so crazy. i only have china, japan, hawaii, costa rica, and guatamala left. like, what?? but i'm pretty ready to come home to all you guys. i miss you all too much.

oh and we moved our clocks ahead again last night so we're back to being 15 hours ahead of pacific time. i don't think i mentioned that we got to move our clocks BACK before we got to vietnam, so we gained an hour of sleep that night which was amazing. but now we're back to 15 hours. just waiting until we cross the international date line so we'll be behind you guys in time. that'll be crazy.

and lastly, the seas have been super rough ever since we left vietnam. it hasn't been this rough in a really long time, so everybody's getting seasick again. you'd think we'd be used to this by now, but i guess not. i'm not feeling so hot right now, but i have to suck it up and pack. which totally blows cus i absolutely hate packing in the first place! but i get to use my new backpack, so that'll be exciting. and it's supposed to be really cold in beijing so i'm kind of excited for that! it's been deathly hot in every single country so far, so it'll be a good change of pace, i think. but i know i'll just be complaining the whole time about how cold it is. diva this, diva that.

okay well i gotta go pack now! china, here i come!

love love love.

halloweiner

Monday, October 31, 2011 (11:55pm) - South China Sea

hi peoples. the only reason why i'm even posting again today is to say happy halloween. we had today off school and just had global studies discussions. i woke up at 8 to have breakfast and watch us leaving the saigon river... then just went back to bed until i had discussion. after discussion, we had lunch with jake. thennn it was time to watch friends. went through an entire disk and still aren't done with the first season. i got 10 seasons of friends for $20 in vietnam. don't worry, i tested it on a computer in the lab to make sure it wouldn't crash my computer. just in case. but it's legit and that's all brewer and i have been doing today. to the point that i forgot i had work until my friend abby called when i was 15 minutes late being like "where the hell are you?" woops. and since today is halloween, there was a halloween dance tonight in the union. halloween isn't really my jam though, plus i had to work. it was funny people watching though. what's more awkward than a sober halloween dance on a ship? NOTHING. some people were pretty creative with their costumes though. i printed a sign in the library that said "my costume: work study student" and put it on one of our signs. people thought that was funny. now i'm back in my room, showered, and going to bed! have two days of classes, then it's time for china! so crazy!! this trip is seriously insane. like who sails around the world in 111 days?? fjkal;dfja;dsjf. okayyy, goodnight loves. hope you have a fun halloween. all i want right now is a costco sized bag of fun-sized candy bars. the little things. xoxo.

i'll show you mine if you show me your's first

October 28-30, 2011 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Part 2)

okayyy so i left off my last one with brewer & i sitting at dinner on the ship and skyler inviting us on a spontaneous trip to the mekong delta. obviously we said "YES!" so we hurried up and gave perry our plates, went to our rooms to grab our computers, then ran to the sushi restaurant next to the ship to find some free wifi. all our 15 minutes of research was totally useless... we couldn't find bus times or where to go or anything... so we just decided to pack our bags and see where the night was going to take us. once we packed a backpack with essentials (mainly toothpaste, a change of underwear, and malaria meds... i mean really, what else do you need in life!?), the three of us headed to the bus station. even though everybody we talked to told us there was only one bus station in hcmc (ho chi minh city), we knew that wasn't right. but we can't really argue with the locals who are trying to get us there. we tried to communicate to a taxi driver to take us to the bus station... but taxi drivers did not speak a lick of english here. actually, nobody really spoke english here. vietnam was the first country where communication was a huge issue. so what did we do? got on the back of a bunch of motorcycle taxis. that's what vietnam is known for. there are roughly 10 million people in hcmc... and 5 million motorcycles. you can imagine what traffic looks like. try crossing the street with that. pretty much the rules were "do not stop, do not turn around, do not pass go, do not collect $200." and i think the only criteria to turn your personal motorcycle into a taxi is to have an extra helmet with you. really regulated, you know. so we told three guys to take us to the bus station for a dollar, threw on our helmets, and away we went. it was really fun and i'm pretty sure the first time i've ever been on a motorcycle in my life. that is, until the three of us split up. i thought for sure i was getting sold into the sex trade (cus vietnam is seriously the hub for that), and so i was just praying that maddy & i got sold together (not that i wanted her to get sold... but i mean if i'm gonna get sold, i might as well take her down with me). the peak of the ride was when we ran out of gas. and had to push the bike 2 blocks to a gas station, where my driver had no money for more gas, put me on the back of a different motorcycle to hopefully take me to the bus station. i had no idea what was going on since again, nobody speaks any english. so i FINALLY reach the bus station and maddy & skyler are there waiting for me. they both thought i had died, which i thought was a definite possibility... but it all worked out. it always does. so we get to the station around 10:45, the last bus to can tho leaves at 11:30. we rock. so we buy our tickets, skyler buys a coconut water, and we each buy a baguette from a guy on the corner and we are ready for an adventure (though technically it probably already began with the motorcycle ride).

so 11:30 finally rolls around. turns out we are not taking a bus. instead it's a mix between a minivan and a passenger van. because why not? the three of us are in one row, then the rest of the van is filled with vietnamese people. i love being the only white people anywhere. 3 hour van ride down to can tho. could not sleep at all, mainly because people outside of america do not understand the concept of putting their phone on vibrate or silent... or even turning the volume down! people's phones where ringing at all hours... then they had the audacity to answer them and have a full conversation. this happened on the overnight train in india too. like come on, it's common courtesy to not be on your phone in a minivan full of strangers at 2 in the morning. but maybe that's just an america thing. we roll up to can tho at 2:30am. the "bus station" is really just a gas station. there is nobody around cus it's so late. except for some more motorcycle taxis. since we really have no other option, we again get on the back of them. we tell them to take us to the river, but instead we end up down an alley. again, definitely getting sold into the sex trade or shot in the face. but managed to not die again. instead this guy turned out to be a travel guide or something because told us it'd be $50 for the three of us to take a 7 hour boat tour of the mekong delta. which was exactly what we had come to can tho to do. it was definitely overpriced, but we didn't really have any other option. so we agreed to do the tour. but it was 2:30 and the tour didn't start until 5:30. there weren't any hotels or anything, so we walked down the street towards the river and stumbled upon the food market. which was in full swing. fresh produce, seafood straight from the river, and meat butchers. it was so cool seeing the market and all these locals pulling up on their motorcycles to do their shopping for the day. once we walked through the market for a while, we stumbled upon this "cafe" that was open. it was really just like a garage... but the family that was there served us coffee and tea. have you ever had vietnamese coffee? because i'm pretty sure i will never be able to drink regular coffee again. i have no idea how they make it, but it was SUPER thick and so strong. delicious. and just what we needed to keep us awake. cus keep in mind, we haven't slept yet. then all of a sudden this woman starts bringing puppies out from the back. brewer & i were like little teenage girls... sitting and petting the cutest little puppies that probably all had rabies and fleas, but in the moment we didn't care. seriously the most random time, but they were so nice. then we noticed the road was beginning to flood. my dad had emailed me earlier that day asking if we had been experiencing flooding like bangkok, and i assured him we hadn't and i wouldn't unless i went to the delta. and what do i do? go to the delta like 3 hours later. woops. so we were like "well shit, what are we gonna do?" so brew and i ask the woman to go to the bathroom so we can change into nike shorts. wait, the bathroom is literally like in their house in the back. there was a woman back there breastfeeding this brand new baby. so random. once it gets to be time to leave, we pay for our coffee, then start our hike through the flooded streets back to where we needed to meet for our tour. i've never actually seen and experienced flooding before, and it was really intense. i mean we hear about major flooding all the time on the news, but it's so different to actually experience and walk through it. we finally got back to where we met the travel dude, and he handed us off to this woman who was going to be our guide for the day.

our tour began by us getting on this little fishing canoe thing. we watched the sunrise from the middle of one of the rivers of the delta. then our guide took us to three different floating markets. the floating markets consist of a bunch of people in their little boats filled with whatever they have to sell (pineapple, lettuce, onions, etc.) and whoever is there to buy them would tie their boat to the other one and fill their boat with whatever they needed. i bought more coffee from one of the guys, and our guide bought fruit at some of the markets for us. we had the freshest pineapple and oranges i've ever had... plus some other random fruit that i didn't recognize. our guide took us all around the delta. it was a 7 hour tour. she took us to this place where they made rice noodles. it was really cool to see after eating so much pho and noodles at all these meals. except for the fact that i lost my sunglasses either getting off or back on the boat when we stopped there. i didn't know if i should punch a hole in the wall, curl up in a ball and cry, or just kill myself then. dramatic, i know. but i don't think you understand how obsessed i am with my sunglasses. like, they're on the same level of obsession as my eyebrows. i've had the same sunglasses since high school. i mean, not the same pair. but i continuously order the same ones every time i lost them. i had to do so 2 days before i left for this voyage... and ordering a new pair is not really an option when i'm on a ship. so i had to suck it up and buy a pair of knockoff ray bans on the side of the road the next day. but i'm still crying, and probably will be until i get a new pair of mine again. but our tour guide gave me a rice hat to wear the whole day, which was a blast. you win some, you lose some. she also took us down these really small creeks to this village that was on the side of the river. she let us get out and walk to meet her a couple hundred yards down the river. skyler made us stop at this random person's house. even though he didn't speak any english, he gave us chairs to sit on on his front porch, and he hacked a coconut off a tree outside and gave us fresh coconut milk. we were a little skeptical as to if we should drink the water or not cus we had just seen his wife clean the glasses in the dirty brown river we were just in, but we couldn't be rude! so we went for it. haven't gotten sick yet, so i think i'm in the clear. it was a really cool and unique experience. but it was cut short when our tour guide came looking for us. we walked a little further and arrived in a random little restaurant. i had a really good lunch. i don't know if it was good because it tasted good, or if it was good because i hadn't eaten anything yet. maybe a combination of both. but this one guy that was there was seriously blacked out. it was like 10:30 in the morning and he was pouring everybody shots of this disgusting banana flavored grain alcohol and singing karaoke by himself. such a winner. after lunch we got back on our boat and road back to where we started. the tour ended at a little after 12:30. skyler was talking about trying to go somewhere else to walk around, so we went to a little cafe to get some internet so he could try to figure out if he really wanted to do that. brew & i weren't really into it. at that point we had been awake for like 30 hours and were pretty ready to call it a success and get back. so we sat in the cafe a little bit, then decided to just go back to the ship. first we needed to find the bus stop again. but the whole language barrier thing was a huge problem. first we couldn't find motorcycle taxis (we figured out pretty quickly that they were the only people who knew where anything ever was and they spoke the most english). so we asked a taxi and struck out with him too. so we decided to just walk it. as an asian person myself, i feel like i'm entitled to my next statement... but let's all face the fact that asian people are horrible drivers. so why we thought they could give us directions to the bus station, i have no idea. we pretty much got a walking tour of can tho in the billion degree heat and humidity. we finally called it quits after about an hour of walking around. i found a cafe that had free wifi and air conditioning, so we stopped there to regroup and figure out our next move. somehow we got the people who worked there to call the bus company who sent us a free shuttle to take us to the bus stop. thank goodness! so we finally got to the bus station at like 1:45 and go on the 2:00 bus back to ho chi minh. this time it was actually a bus, so i got to sleep a little bit but i was more interested in the beautiful lightning storm outside. there were major lightning storms pretty much every night we were in vietnam, which was really cool. we got back to the ship at about 7:30, ran and got some dinner before it closed in the dining hall, then showered and crashed. another night where we closed the blinds and decided to set an alarm at noon "just in case." yeah that "just in case" alarm was what woke us up. 15 hour sleep... pure heaven after being up for 36 hours.

so we woke up the next day, got ready, went up to the dining hall to grab some lunch then we had to catch the bus for a field trip. the first part of the field trip was going to the house and meeting a former upi photographer from the war. he showed us his personal memorial to the 200 photographers and journalists that had died in the war. then we all went to little cafe nearby where he had all his pictures and the two jeeps he used during the war. his story and all his pictures were awesome. after the war he spent 9 years in hiding, then spent 7 years in one of the re-education camps the government started. he said he was forced to do hard labor and was tortured while he was there. we got to look at all his pictures too, some of which were really hard to look at. then after we talked to him for a while, we got on the bus to go to the war remnants museum (formerly known as the museum of american war crimes). it was really hard being at the museum as an american. i don't know enough about the war to know what is fact and what is blatantly false, which kind of sucked. the pictures of the effects of agent orange really got to me though. it was really hard to look at them, and then there were even people there who had physical deformities from the lasting effects of agent orange in their gene pool. it was really crazy. and the entire museum was incredibly anti-american, which was really uncomfortable. the museum, the cu chi tunnels, and the vietnamese arlington were really weird to be at as an american. i think it's kind of like when you're young and think your parents are superheroes and can do no wrong. then you grow up and find out maybe they're not so perfect after all and it crushes your whole world view. i think it's kind of like that. how you grow up thinking your country is the best and then you learn that maybe we weren't always so great. very interesting to be at all these places, and i'm so glad we went.

we got back to the ship around 5:30. we got dinner and met up with a bunch of our friends. we had all been doing different things so we exchanged stories for a while. then me, brewer, will & jeremy decided to go to the night markets together. we had so much fun! it was basically just like the regular market, but it was out in the streets instead. and it was so funny how into it will & jeremy were. they bought just as much stuff as me & maddy, if not more. after a couple hours there and spending way more money than i wanted, we headed back to the ship, got ready, then went out. we were going to go back to apocalypse now because there was going to be a wedding party there. i guess america doesn't recognize marriages from vietnam, so a bunch of kids from the ship decided to get married while in port. yeahhh, no thanks. so we were going to go to the after party, but we ended up meeting up with cassie and a bunch of people on the street and we all decided to go to oscar's instead. it was just another club, where we again ended up getting free bottle service somehow. and i really don't understand why nobody dances in these countries. nobody danced in morocco, in south africa, and now not in vietnam. what's the point of a club with no dancing? so again, we were the american assholes dancing around with everybody else starring at us. whatever. we were there til about 2:30 in the morning, then will, brewer, brian & i walked back to the ship. it wasn't that far, so it was perfect.

the next morning we woke up at 7:45, got ready and grabbed breakfast then took the 8:30 bus out to the rex. i don't think i've actually said what the rex hotel is. for you non-vietnam war history buffs... the cia used the rex basically as their headquarters during the war. and the buddhist monk who emulated himself in protest of the war... yeah that happened in front of the rex. there's now a huge statue as a memorial for him outside the hotel. crazy stuff. so we take the bus to the city, then walk a few blocks to the notre dame cathedral to go to mass. the cathedral was really beautiful, but i thought it was really funny that they had like neon l.e.d. lights as the halos around Jesus or the saints. and they had tv screens with like a powerpoint slide with the order of mass. kind of tacky, but it was really nice being able to go to mass. especially since everybody at home keeps emailing me about going to church every week. after church we talked to the priest for a second, turns out he's from orange county. such a small world. then we sat in a coffee shop for a little bit to write our postcards then went to the post office. the post office was really beautiful too. then we walked to a different coffee shop back closer to the rex and grabbed some lunch.

then we headed back to the rex. why? well we knew we wanted to get a massage while we were in vietnam. and i'm pretty sure everybody on the ship has a "spa" story for you. but i think maddy and mine's right up there. so a few days before, we were on the shuttle to go shopping and we were talking to a lifelong learner who was going to go book her spa day. she was going to book it at the rex and she said it was really cheap. so we followed her up to the spa to just look at prices and stuff to see if that's what we wanted to do. we ended up booking a couples massage. and not just any couples massage... a 4 hour couples massage... also known as the love melody. now, we don't know if we should be more embarrassed by the fact that they offered us a couples massage, or the fact that we took it. i mean, it's not the first time we've been mistaken as a lesbian couple on this trip, and i'm assuming it's not going to be the last. (for the record, we are not lesbians. good. glad we got that settled). so at 12:30 on sunday, we found our ways back to the rex to start our romantic day together. i mean, we started the day at mass to like pray the gay away or something michelle bachman-style. so i figure we were okay, right? we brought bathing suits and everything, to at least attempt some modesty. but that went right out the window when the first thing they did was basically rip our clothes off. i'll show you mine, if you show me yours first. so we started with a half hour steam bath (which was either way too hot or we had to much alcohol in our systems still cus we didn't last). then we had a half hour full body scrub. and when i say full body, i mean FULL BODY. i didn't think i needed my ass and tits salt-scrubbed. but hey, jokes on me i guess. then we had an hour long full body massage. then an hour long facial. heaven is what that's called. then a half hour foot massage. our romantic day ended with a naked candle lit rose petal filled jacuzzi, complete with fruit and chocolates. i mean, they totally thought we were lesbians. but that was seriously the most romantic day of my entire life. it's going to be awkward when my future husband has to compete with my spa day with maddy brewer in vietnam, but that's not my fault i don't think. after our massage, we went downstairs and got dinner in the lobby. did some last minute shopping, then headed back to the ship.

all around, vietnam has to be my new favorite port. which is really surprising to me. when i first looked at the itinerary for the voyage when i was applying, i saw 7 days in vietnam and was like "wtf am i going to do in vietnam for 7 days!? let's spend 7 days in south africa or japan!" but i seriously wish i had a month in vietnam at least. so much history and so much fun. can't wait to come back!

good morning vietnam!

October 25-27, 2011 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Part 1)

gooooodddd morning vietnam! for those of you really on your game, you'll notice by the dates above that this blob is only going to cover the first half of my week in vietnam. this is partially because we were here for a week (longest port of the voyage) and partially because i had too much fun and have wayyy too much to say for a single blob. so here's the first half...

we arrived in ho chi minh early tuesday morning... and by early i mean we were here at 7am. we bunkered in singapore a few days before that to refuel... and while we were there a couple of vietnamese customs officers got on the ship. so they were processing our passports and stuff while we were sailing to vietnam. asian people are so efficient. as a result, the ship was already cleared when we landed. but we did all have to go up to glazier to pick up our landing passes... whatever those are. so brew and i woke up to the voice (as always), got ready, ate some breakfast, then took the 8:30 shuttle from the ship. while sas is kind of a huge pain in the ass sometimes, they rocked it in vietnam. they provided a free 10-minute shuttle ride every half hour from the ship to the rex hotel... which was like the center of the city. perfecttt! so we got to the rex, basically ran around the corner to a little coffee shop and i got my ass on skype as fast as i could. skyped melissa for a couple hours maybe (i don't really know the time frame... just that i was in love the entire time) and got to sit in on chapter meeting! best part was def skyping steph sibley... i mean, i'm pretty sure i could die happy now. i also skyped my aunt for a few minutes. this was the first time i've been on real internet since august. went on facebook... it totally sucks. not only do i not understand the new version, i just have no interest in how drunk you were last weekend. sorry i'm worldly and cultured now, and don't have time for your mundane lifestyle. hahaaa jokes. but yeah, don't need to go on fbook anytime soon. so after spending the better half of the morning starring at melissa's face, brew and i caught the 12:00 shuttle back to the ship. i'm usually so annoyed with all the people from the ship that immediately run to the nearest internet cafe when we get to port cus i feel like we should be exploring these crazy places! but it was definitely necessary to get to see and talk to someone from home for a second since i've been a little homesick... and it was super reassuring to know nothing's really changed at home. thank goodness! so i definitely started vietnam off on the right foot... and i think it set the tone for the rest of the week.

so we got back to the ship and ran up to the dining hall, stuffed our faces real quick, then i had to run back off the ship to catch a bus for a field trip for my global music class. the field trip was called "traditional music in modern context" and we visited the music conservatory in ho chi minh, and met with my professor's old friend who teaches at the school where we walked around for a little bit. then we drove across town to this random cooking school where the teacher gave a lecture and there were three musicians who performed a few songs for us. it was a pretty random day, but it was really cool seeing some of the instruments we had learned about in class. then we came back to the ship. brew was already here when i got back... so we met up with audrey & bri and decided we needed to eat something and find a bar. so we got ready and took the shuttle out. audrey led us the wrong way for kind of a long time, so bri went home when we turned around cus she has a broken ankle from malaysia. so maddy, audrey & i went and found a "wrap & roll" for dinner. it's a chain restaurant but was really good. i got these really good shrimp spring rolls. it was kind of awkward when the dean came in and they sat him at the table right next to us... but it was all good. once we were done, we walked into this bar around the corner... but it was really expensive and we were kind of tired so brew got a glass of wine then we headed back to the rex and caught the shuttle back to the ship where we just went right to bed.

we had to wake up really early the second day because we bought tickets for a sas trip from rob and kelly. so we got up, ate breakfast, and met at the bus at 7:45. it was about a 3.5 hour bus ride out to the cao dai temple from the ship. i did not know anything about the cao dai faith (in retrospect, i still don't), but when i was looking at the guide books before we got here, one of the things it said not to miss was going to the temple and watching a service. so that's exactly what we did. i'm pretty sure it's kind of like the bahai faith in that there is a mix of religions together. but i'm not really sure. the temple was really amazing though. the colors and decoration were beautiful. obviously unlike anything i'm used to as a catholic. we got to walk around the temple for a little bit, then we had to go up to the balcony before the service began at noon. it was really interesting watching the ceremony. men and women sat on opposite sides of the temple, and they sat in perfect, uniform rows. like, if someone was an inch out of line, an usher person would correct them, even in the middle of them praying. it was also neat because the different "priests" were wearing different color garments based on what religion they come from. so we watched a bit of the service, then we had to get back to the bus to drive another roughly 2.5 miles to the cu chi tunnels. but we stopped at a random restaurant on the way and had a seriously delicious lunch. noodles, fried rice, soup, chicken. yum.

now i don't know why, but i don't know much about the vietnam war. i think it's really confusing, so maybe i just tuned out whenever it was brought up in history classes because i don't understand it. so i had no idea the cu chi tunnels even existed before i opened a travel guide book on vietnam. but man am i glad i got the opportunity to go out there. if you don't know what they are, google it cus it's kind of a lot to explain. but basically the viet cong constructed this elaborate tunnel system to hide from american soldiers during the war. the tunnels are now super touristy, but what can you do. the first thing we did when we got there was watch this documentary on the tunnels. in global studies the day before we arrived, they warned us about how much propaganda we would encounter surrounding the war and the history of it. and they weren't kidding. i mean, granted i'm biased and the facts the american government provides could be just as false, but it was crazy to see what the vietnamese government can get away with as "fact." i mean, it's already awkward and uncomfortable to be in vietnam as an american, especially being out in the tunnels... then we're forced to watch a movie basically about how much america sucks and all the war crimes we committed. i wish i knew more about the vietnam war to be able to better distinguish between fact and fiction. after the documentary, we walked through the forest/jungle where our guide showed us some of the booby-traps the viet cong used to use. they were seriously insane. my first reaction was how disgusting and atrocious they were... but then i had to remember that this was war... and everything in war is awful. we also saw how the viet cong would take unexploded weapons (mainly rockets) and turn them into their own weapons. then we got to the tunnels. we were just walking down the path looking at all the gigantic crators that are still there from the american bombs, then our guide stops and points to what seems like nothing. then he brushes back some leaves to reveal a rectangle about the size of a shoe box. he then picks up the rectangle to reveal a whole. turns out, it was a camouflaged entrance into the tunnels. it was insane. we had been walking over the tunnels the entire time and had no idea. so our guide got in because he was this tiny vietnamese guy, and then closed the lid on top of him and we seriously would not have known there was a tunnel there or a man under the ground if we hadn't just seen it ourselves. so stressful. he got out of the tunnel, then let whoever wanted to try it out go ahead. pretty much everyone in the group was apprehensive. i heard some people on other trips got stuck in the hole cus it was seriously SO small. but this voyage i feel like i have to try everything, so me, this guy brian, and a lifelong learner were the only ones who tried it. the three of us could only stand up in the hole... there was no way our shoulders were going to fit through. it was SO crazy! after that, we walked a little further to another entrance to a tunnel. this one was made bigger for tourists, so our guide led whoever wanted to go down in the tunnels for about 40 meters to the other side. game on. i can't accurately explain to you how crazy those 40 meters were. i was underground in a tunnel that the viet cong had used to hide from and attack american soldiers. i was basically squatting the entire time, cursing my father for being so damn tall and giving me his genes. i could barely fit. and it was SO hot down there. vietnam was hot the entire week... but never as hot as in that tunnel. it was dark, creepy. i can't even imagine the viet cong living in those tunnels for months, even years at a time. really intense and powerful stuff. and to add to the ambiance, the entire time we were walking around all we could hear was gunfire in the distance because there was a shooting range where you could pay to shoot some of the actual weapons from the war. so it was kind of like we were back in time a little bit... especially being with our guy friends who would have been there fighting given the draft and everything. and no, i did not shoot the guns. when we got there we were running out of time so our guide wouldn't let us stop. but my dad still owes me a trip to a shooting range that he promised me for my 18th birthday!

so after the tunnels, we headed back to the ship. me, brewer, and alli decided we wanted to go out, so as soon as we got back to the ship we got ready and met at the gangway where we ran into elaina and sophie who decided to join us. we took the shuttle out to the rex and walked to the beer garden where we met up with alyssa, audrey, and some other girls. but the five of us went upstairs and ordered some much needed dinner. i had some delicious shrimp fried rice. but the best part of dinner was when these two australian guys decided to join us at our table. at first it was just ben and some other guy. then the other guy left and a different guy came. but ben sat with us the entire time. i'm becoming skeptical as to if there are even people left in australia, because i have met SO many australians in every country so far. i guess they're really into travelling or something? but ben was really nice and it was funny that he just sat at our table and drank with us until we left. after dinner the five of us decided to go to apocalypse now, which is a club. everybody from the ship had gone the night before, but i was not into going clubbing with everybody from the ship that i'm stuck with 24/7. but i guess everybody was too drunk to function and everybody was hooking up with everybody. fun times. not when we went! here is the demographic of apocalypse now when i went: vietnamese prostitutes, middle aged white business men, and us 5 girls. oh my God it was so disgusting. alli & i were trying to figure out how the men choose which one they want to take home. but it was seriously so gross. like these guys were my dad's age, picking up hot little vietnamese girls my age. so warning to all women out there... when your man says he has a "business trip" to vietnam, it is a dirty dirty lie. don't let him go. cus he'll be at apocalypse now, or any of the other whore house bars in vietnam. just a heads up. so after like one drink, we were like "let's get outta hereee!" so we just came back to the ship.

maddy & i made a big decision to close our blinds and sleep until we woke up. we NEVER close our blind because it seriously turns our room into a cave and we would never get out of bed if that was the case. but we were pretty exhausted and could use a sleep in day. so that's exactly what we did. slept til about 10:30ish, then leisurely laid in bed for a while. got up to eat lunch on the ship (which was amazing! why they decide to make good food while we're in port and nobody's on the ship baffles me). then we got ready and took the 1:30 shuttle out to town. we had one plan for the third day. shopping, shopping, and more shopping. we were told to go to saigon square, so that was our first stop. not sure why people told us to go there, cus it was just a bunch of shit. so we walked to the ben thant market which was like 2 blocks away. we had a lot of fun walking around, bartering, buying fun stuff. and whoever told me that vietnam was the cheapest country and that everything here is a dollar is a big fat liar. i mean, clearly in comparison to america it's cheaper. but it definitely was not the home of the one dollar bill as i had been promised. after we shopped for a few hours, we decided to head back to the ship. but not after stopping for a banana split at one of the bajillion ice cream parlors in ho chi minh. it was delicious and just what we needed to break the heat. then we got back to the ship. our original plan was to get like a bite to eat on the ship, get ready, go out to dinner, then go out. but while we were pretending to eat the ship food, our friend skyler came up to our table and asked us what our plans were for the night. we told him we didn't really have any... so then he goes "wanna go to the bus station and go to the mekong delta right now?"

so i'm gonna stop there. cliff-hangerrrr! but really, this is a huge long story and it's a good place to end this blob. you'll notice that i'm posting on october 30th, even though we don't leave until the 31st. vietnam is a different port. if you look on a map, you'll notice that ho chi minh city is not on the coast... instead we had to travel up a river to get here. so because of the tides, we physically cannot leave tonight. usually, on ship time for ports is 6pm and we set sail around 8pm the same night. but for vietnam, on ship time was 9pm tonight and we set sail at 6am tomorrow morning. so confusing... but it was really nice having the entire last day to explore and do all our last minute things. now, i'm gonna go watch friends because i just bought seasons 1-10 for $20. winnerrrr.

i'll post vietnam part 2 tomorrow. we have the day off school and just have global studies discussions in the morning. and tomorrow's halloween. how did that happen?? strange. well goodnight! but really good morning. you people probably aren't even awake yet, let's be real. i still love you anyways. xoxo.