it was a beautiful day...

it WAS a beautiful day - sun shining, water beautiful deep blue (the water is amazing. it just keeps changing and yet it's always there and always kind of the same).

and last night was the Ambassador's Ball, so we got to see everybody get ridiculously dressed up and poke at a giant chocolate Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China and Sphinx (the dessert spread was out of this world (and trust me, now i know what's in this world) by the way). thanks to Lauren and Abby and Auntie A and my mom and my friend Marissa who did my hair, i got many shocked compliments about how nice i looked. (only one from a real live boy though...my friend Ben...Ben is one of those people who you just never quite know what he's thinking but he looks at you very intensely). anyway, i sat with Sookie and Tiara and Jennifer at dinner - four whole courses including some spinach and cheese ravioli that i had been saving up for for quite some time. to our great disappointed, there's no secret lettuce storage for special occasions, so the salad still tasted like regular ship salad, which you can accomplish for yourself if you leave your lettuce decomposing in the crisper for a week. mmm. (this was harder for people to deal with in the developing countries where we weren't supposed to eat salads in port either.) so dinner, then some live music (oh Jade, the male Norah Jones, and my friend Ashley, who's one of those really sweet and cute kinds of people) and then we got bored and hung out in Eva's room/mess for awhile and were royally entertained by Eva's roommate Britt (the we is once again me and Eva and Ryan - poor Eva and Ryan, got stuck sitting with a real awkward couple at dinner; they were friends with my friend who went crazy and got kicked off the ship), and then we had dessert, and then i pretended that dances were fun for me, and then remembered that they weren't, so i tried to go to bed, but Ariel and her weird boyfriend were having a fight/she was crying and he was looking guilty, so, instead of going to bed, which would have been nice, because i'd only gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before, i put regular clothes on and fell asleep on the floor in Tymitz Square. Eventually, Eva gave me her key and i went and took a nap with all of her laundry. it smelled nice and clean. but she's in 4003, which is at the front of the ship and pretty rocky - wee! but hard to sleep. eventually i got to go home.

the reason that i was up for so long was because we were all trying to finish our STUPID service learning portfolios, and i did some really substantial bonding with Lisa, Sam, Hanna and my hole punch in the freezingest freezing classroom on the ship. we laughed a lot though, partly because we find each other really amusing, and partly because it was 2 am (it must be noted that we also turned our clocks back an hour, so that night was a full hour longer of keeping ourselves awake). and we also had our last Global Studies test, which i was trying to study for until i fell asleep in my book, having not done a good deal of the readings. our lowest test grade gets dropped and as of yet i had an A-, but i decided to take it for shits and giggles. i ended up getting the same as my already-lowest grade. hmm. great. ironically, a great deal better than i thought i'd do - but stil completely useless to me. too bad.

another reason that the past fews days have been exciting is that the other day, my looney geography professor comes up to me and goes "YOU..." (waggles finger in my face) "should go to graduate school." apparently he got really excited about this paper that i wrote (which i thought was terrible) and was telling all the faculty about it. last night Kathy (oh Kathy. have o told you about Kathy? she's my token librarian friend for this semester) said that he and my econ. prof. were "raving" about me, which i'm quite sure was just because they were drunk. unfortunately, this means that i will feel real awful if i fail my finals.

so probably you're bored of this by now and wondering what happens when we're in port, and not when i'm sitting here watching Eva and Andy and Mike dissect Nietzsche (SHEESH. Eva gets really passionate about philosophy. it's actually kind of funny AND deep.). too bad. next week in Florida i'll do in-country posts, k? right now i'm going to sit back, take a break from studying, and enjoy this 3 musketeers bar that i've been thinking about for days. and tomorrow maybe Eva will go on another pizza date with me. we made a beautiful combination - extra cheese, olives and onions. mmmmmmmm,,,,,,,,,,,,

moving right along...

last night there was some CRAZY weather. i went to bed early and woke up because there were loud noises and my room was lighting up, but i was still half asleep and for someone reason apparently thought i was still in Egypt, because i remember thinking that it was a giant sandstorm. it was actually rain. shocking. i went outside and saw some AMAZING lighting and then went back to bed. it seems that that marked the front between the warm-weather part of the voyage and the cold-weather part of the voyage, because it went from an average of about 85 to something around 55 today (for the first time, it was warmer in the kill-the-bacteria recycled inside air than it was outside). it was SPLENDIFOROUS - i'm so excited for the cold. it's completely invigorating to run outside wearing shorts in the wind and gloom - i've been waiting for this! and i'm glad that i'm definitely not the only one totally stoked about the cold. also the Aegean sea is so rough one of my professors gave up in the middle of class and just set us all free.

my roommate and i are currently watching "Rick Steve's Europe" about his trip OUT of Europe to Egypt. so basically we're watching on TV all the stuff we just saw. aren't we just the most productive human beings ever?!

also today is our day of silence (in recognition of those who are prejudiced against and oppressed). i wasn't going to do it, but at the last minute, i decided to. it's been rather amusing, especially since it was Kristen's birthday and a good half of us there weren't speaking - instead we were writing on napkins. but this one was more meaningful for me than other days of silence in which i've participated in the past - partly because it was designed to bring attention to a large group of people, and partly because we did a special "breaking the silence" program at the end and really got to talk about the issues, which i think was really important.

yeah. now we're going through the Dardenelles. just another typical day at sea...

desert sunrise(s)/longest entry ever

salam!

(you might want to read this in increments, if you want to read it at all. it's the longest thing that ever happened to blogs. but i promised you pyramids, and pyramids you will get.)

so much for finishing india...we must move on for now, because Egypt is SO cool! (and roommate, there are so many rocks here. you don't even know.)

actually the first cool thing that happened in Egypt was that the night before we got into Alexandria the Nice Boy talked to me all on his own - just came up and chatted over a late cheeseburger after the final lip-sync competition of the sea olympics (we didn't win, by the way, but don't worry, parents, we're not at the very end. that's nice boy's sea).

anyway.

Egypt began with a rather hectic attempt to get 154 people, their three normal leaders and their one completely manic leader (the bio prof.) off the ship in some semblance of order. turned out fine. then we drove the few hours to Africa's biggest city - Cairo! - on the Desert Rd., the main highway between there and Alex. our tour guide was this lady named Hala who dubbed us the "Pharoahs" and always said we were her "Habibis" and the "VVIPs" (it's cause tourists get police escorts in Egypt). from the very beginning i was actually really shocked how much Egypt DIDN'T remind me of Morocco; i guess from my geography class and given the similarities i expected them to have more in common, but the Egyptian city has far more apartments and some wider streets - although the bazaars are similar! anyway, the VVIPs got their first taste of Egyptian traffic...and of desert! there's a lot of green right out of Alex, by the delta, and then all these salt flats and some oil refineries, and then it's desert till Cairo. it's absolutely PHENOMENAL to drive into Cairo that way. you're stuck in traffic, around apartments and such, and then, all of a sudden, there are pyramids in front of you! when you think of that classic photo of the pyramids, you don't realize that, if the photographer had turned around, it would be a picture of a crowded city street. pretty neat.

well, don't get too excited - we drove straight past the pyramids and along an agricultural canal of the Nile (you turn a corner in the city and you're in farmland - crazy!) and then to Sakkara. Sakkara is where the oldest pyramid - the pyramid of Zoser, designed by Imhotep, the step pyramid - is. again, you're hanging out in a big field of sugercane or a veritable palm forest, and then, suddenly, you're in...DESERT. open, empty, desolate DESERT. we visited a rather well-preserved tomb and then the step pyramid itself (basically, first they built a step pyramid. then they tried to build a perfect pyramid, but the angle was too sharp, so it changes at the top - that's the Bent Pyramid, and it's at Sakkara too. then FINALLY they made a perfect pyramid.) there was some madness after that because people tried to switch buses (we had done it by alpha. order getting off the ship, and people wanted to be with their friends) and one of the tour guides FLIPPED OUT. they say it's an Arab thing - Arabs have heated debates about what to have for dinner, but it was a little scary. (needless to say, we didn't switch buses till halfway through day 2). After Sakkara we drove back across Cairo (trust me, it counts as its own event) to lunch (now, Egyptians eat late, but 5:45 pm is late even for them - we were pretty much deathly starving). our next stop was the famous sound and light show at the pyramids (yes, the one where they make the Sphinx talk). it was pretty neat, a little confusing though, and almost a little creepy. to think the pyramids are SO old, and they're talking to us - wheesht. after that we went to Khan el Khalili, a famous bazaar. cafes, people smoking shisha, etc. one of my friends got 50 g of saffron for like $6; i think she could pay for the rest of her college education on that if she sells it in the US. and then it was on to dinner and bed (on the 20th floor of the Ramses Hilton! cool view over downtown and the Nile. and pretty fancy). Egypt, i soon discovered, is NOT friendly to vegetarians - probably the worst country so far. there was chicken in the PASTA, for crying out loud! so mostly i just ate desserts (including a whole block of fudge in Luxor). i feel a little sick now.

day 2 began at a very reasonable 4:15 am. we headed back across town to a special lookout point within the pyramid complex to watch sunrise over Giza - WOW. smoggy, and a little cold, but WOW. our tour guides arranged camel rides so we wouldn't get ripped off (or taken behind the pyramids and robbed), but some people chose not to heed this advice - much to the chagrin of the tour guides and the great entertainment of Dylan, the kid who didn't get off his camel all morning. we were having visions of him trying to get it through customs. we were patient, and Eva and i rode together on a camel named Moses, Eva in the front and me in the back. (it was, um, rather tight up there. if i were a guy and had STDs, Eva would have them by now too, if you get my drift.) pretty fun, a little bumpy. a crew bus showed up too, and i turned around at one point to see Melissa, one of the pursers, galloping off into the sunrise. tee-hee.

after that we went to the pyramids for real, first the Great, then the second, and then the temple of the Sphinx. it's hard to describe the pyramids - don't worry, plenty of pictures of people-size in comparison with block-size - you have to get right up to it them realize how big they is. i went in the second pyramid (it's waaaay cheaper), which entailed overcoming clausterphobia and hunching over to go down a long passage, across the bottom, and up another to the burial chamber, where the Pharoah's now-empty sarcophagus lies. the guy who found it also wrote his name giant on the wall. the thing about being inside is that it's not so much seeing it as FEELING it. you really can feel the weight of all of the history, of the guy who had this 445 ft. monolith built for his journey to the afterlife, and there's his coffin, lying open right there - it's incredible. the sphinx was cool to get close to as well, and we had a lot of fun using perspective in our pictures - people kissing it or hugging it or petting it or something. and then a big group of excited schoolkids tried to run over me and Ryan and Eva, and they all wanted us to take their picture and say hi. i think they had had a lot of sugar recently.

next we were supposed to visit the Alabaster Mosque and citadel of Saladin, but i think our tour guides felt so bad about our late lunch the day before that they let us have an early lunch that day. lunch WAS pretty exciting - we took a cruise along the Nile on a nice sort of dinner-boat thing (dang it! forget to bring my scapalomine patch). there was ice cream. it was very popular. there was also live music and a scantily-clad belly dancer and a very colorful dervish who whirled for so long we got nauseous. (the belly dancer tried to get old Ralph Crozier the art history professor to dance with her. didn't go over well.) then we went to the mosque and citadel; the mosque is beautiful and felt like it came right out of Andalucia (well, the other way around, i guess). in the courtyard there's a clock that the French gave them that never worked (stupid French clocks). and we were there during the call to prayer, so we heard the muezzin and watched the prayer too.

our last big stop was what Hala called her "Habibi" (well, when she wasn't calling us her Habibis): the Archeaological Museum. (you have to study very hard to become a tour guide in Egypt!) it's like, extreme history overload - just casket after casket after jewelry after all SORTS of crazy burial stuff. it was equally overwhelming because i think at least 2/3 of the shipboard community was there, so you kept running into random people you knew but weren't on your trip. i couldn't really concentrate, but it was SO amazing to see the death mask of King Tut, and the tiny mummy cases and the GIANT mummy cases and just so much stuff that is so OLD, you don't even understand, cause a lot of it is missing pieces, but it still looks pretty good. Eva and Ryan and i wandered indecisively for a very long time.

then we went back to the hotel. before dinner we ("we" pretty much for the rest of the trip refers to Eva and Ryan and i; we stuck together...this is not the amazing Ryan who so kindly volunteered to sit next to me on the plane in Vietnam when i was freaking out, but he is still a good Ryan) ventured across the steet to a very interesting shopping mall. it's funny to see the kinds of clothes they sell in Egyptian shopping malls, because you never see them on actual people, especially women. but i think people wear all kinds of stuff (like belly-dancing costumes, perhaps) at home - just not in public.

i ended up dinnering initially with this guy named Greg whom i had never talked to before (Eva and Ryan had some drinks in the fancy bar/hookah bar lobby; eventually they too came to dinner) and all of a sudden we were having this crazy deep philosophical conversation. seeing as i was dead on my feet, i went back up to my room (which i was sharing with Andrea, who was freaking out about her own thing - sheesh. she's nice, but her behavior frightens me sometimes), but apparently the conversation went deep into the night over some shisha. seeing as our wakeup call was at 2:15 am, this may or may not have been a wise idea. but we all made it to the bus and then to the airport and then through absurd security (someone in Egypt is making an absolute KILLING in the metal detector business - they have metal detectors at RESTAURANTS, so you can imagine how at airports you have to go through at least two - the sense of security is rather negated by the fact that they had given us random boarding passes and i was easily capable of passing as one Feehan, Conor Mr. hmm. on the way back i was Fraudenthal, Ariel - my roommate!) and onto the bus out to our A330 with a bunch of japanese tourists. and then the lights went out as we were loading, and everybody got really scared. but it was ok.

what was even cooler than ok was the flight!!! as described by Ms. Siemon way back in high school, flying over Egypt is so neat. it's just sand and sand and sand and nile and green and sand and sand, and the sand makes all kinds of shapes. it's really wacky when you're descending to land and you have no idea how far off the ground you are because the dunes could be big or little or giant or tiny...

the Luxor airpot is pretty much desert with a runway. hehe. there's no parking lot for cars - just tour buses. we drove right from the airport in our bus with no leg room (Eva-sized) to the hotel for some breakfast and then on to our first exciting stop, the Valley of the Kings, also in the middle of the desert (are we sensing some sort of theme?). it's not what i expected at all - basically there's a small canyon, and off to the side here and there are the reinforced holes that are entrances to the tombs. it's actually kind of like those tunnels you could ski through at Vail. and there are so many tourists on little open buses driving around that it might just be Disneyland and we don't even know it (Michelle described the tomb of Ramses IV as being "oh, past the ferris wheel by the cotton candy"). we saw King Tut's smaller but lavish tomb (with his mummy still in it!) and the tombs of 3 of the Ramses - there are big long tunnels all covered in amazing hieroglyphics, many of which still have bright colors, leading back to the burial chambers. it really is fascinating (sorry kinda running out of adjectives here) (i saw so many hieroglyphics that on the flight back the shapes in the sand started to look they were trying to say something). also at the valley of the kings Eva taught me how to tell the difference between French and non-French Canadians. (French Canadians are basically French-er - duh :-P ).

next we went to the temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Hat-sheep-suit, as Hala said) - more on that in pictures. and then the giant Colossi of Memnon - again, pictures. and then lunch. and then we were all pretty exhausted, so we crashed in our hotel. i discovered Friends subtitled in Arabic on Dubai One. woo-hoo!

after that a bunch of us took Hala up on an offer to get a carriage ride through Luxor. it was so cool, because we went though all the back streets and bazaars, right through hanging laundry and such and with all kinds of people waving and shouting excitedly at us, especially kids. i was sad that our driver Abdullah wasn't very talkative, but Eva and i ended having a really interesting discussion of travel philosophy and our personal feelings about what it means to do something like this - something we've both thought a lot about and about which we both have some substantial moral qualms. Eva's really straightforward about things, so she's good to talk to, but i don't always know how to answer her questions! anyway, we drove through sugarcane and down dirt roads and eventually stopped by an old wooden water wheel that they've kept functioning to use as a demonstration, and then we bonded with a cobra. the carriage trip ended up being a great activity; i'm really glad i did it. Michelle said that her driver let her drive! and that he was very talkative too.

when we got back Michelle and Eric (both wonderful RDs) and i went on a small bargaining adventure at a store across the street from our hotel (the Nile Palace! sounds fancy, huh?) called Aladdin's Cave. the guys there were remarkably apathetic about us purchasing things. hmm. then we had dinner. the tomato soup was delicious. after dinner we visited Luxor Temple, which is all lit up and really beautiful by night. the temples are so interesting because the whole city pretty much lived within them. they're GIANT and full of all these nooks and crannies and huge statues and pillars covered in hieroglyphs that are still SO incredibly sharp. also dangerous lights. Ryan got his shoelace caught in one of them and almost got electrocuted in front of a bunch of tourists as he was trying to get it out. don't worry about the bad description; there are lots of pictures of that one too.

and then finally, blessed blessed bed. to prepare to sleep in the next morning...till 4!! (well, it's better than 2, right?). at 4:30 sharp we met in the lobby to board boats to cruise down the Nile and over to the West Bank, where we got in vans that drove very very fast. back out by the Colossi and the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, all the desert patches around us were filled with...hot air balloons being inflated! i don't know if you've ever seen this process, but there's a big balloon lying on its side, and occasionally it just, well, lights up! and then gets dark, and then lights up...really cool in the predawn chill. and so we got in balloons, and they release a little balloon and say a prayer to Allah for luck, and then we went up, up and away! not really. really, we sort of hovered over the sugarcane for awhile, and then flew over by the temple and the valley, and then went higher, and then back down...etc. it was pretty neat to see all the little neighborhoods below us with sugarcane fields on one side and desert on the other, and you could see all the ruins...and then the sun came up over the Nile (third sunrise in a row, mind you) and then we really did go up higher, and then we assumed landing position (pretty much in the lap of the person behind you) and had a relatively smooth "Egyptian landing" (bumpy is American, and when the whole basket tips over it's British, they say. you don't just land, though - you hit the ground, and a bunch of guys run at you and try to hold you down as you go up again - eventually the weight keeps you on the ground). and then we had a dance in the middle of the desert and celebrated our landing, and then we got back in the fast vans and back on the boat and went back to the hotel (well, the Nile police tried to stop us, but i don't know what that was about). it was so amazing - i want to go ballooning again someday!!!! just such a cool experience, and so peaceful (except the loud hot fire part). (by the way, the ballooning wasn't actually part of the SAS program - probably not something they condone. but our tour guides got us a good price and a reputable company (and some commission, i'm sure)).

our last stop in Luxor was the Karnak Temple, which is 3.5 k from Luxor temple and was originally connected by the Avenue of the Sphinxes - two rows of facing sphinxes that went all the way between the two. this temple was also giant and amazing and had a big scarab beetle statue and a sacred lake and also a picture of the god of fertility with his manly parts set in an excitable fashion on one of the walls. there are also sphinxes of Amun-Ra there, meaning they have the body of a lion and the head of a ram - i thought it was a good look for them, really.

back at the airport and through more security, they snatched back the boarding passes they'd given us - turns out we were on an A321(-200 - old plane) and it was basically a private flight for the 154 of us! because we had no checked baggage, they had to "redistribute the weight on the plane". hehehehehe (our four tour guides did check their bags - when we landed, they put out the conveyor, and there were all of four bags and one cargo handler riding it down to the cart). i guess it didn't really help that the pilot said, as we were landing (for heaven's sakes and with the fasten seat belt sign on), "if you now look out the left side of the plane, you can see the pyramids". Eva and i choose to stay in our seats, feeling personally responsible for keeping the plane from flopping over. i also had to pee really bad. and there were pyramids on our side anyway. it IS Egypt, after all, what can you expect?!

landing in Cairo, over the city in the middle of nowhere, was pretty amazing. and then we went straight to the bus back to Alex. on the way back, Hala sang for us. one of the guys made Michelle promise that we'd be the first bus back (so that we wouldn't have to wait in line getting back on the ship), so Hala talked to the driver and he drove super-fast and we were the first ones to pull into the port - but then we got stopped because there was a problem with the license or something. as we watched two of the other buses drive by, everyone totally flipped out and started shouting and ranting. i, who do not care whether or not i have to stand in line, couldn't decide if i was amused or embarrassed by this mutiny. both, i guess. we ended up still being near the beginning, so it was fine. nobody died. and it was sad to say goodbye to Hala, our Mama Pharoah. we got pretty attached to her :-( (nothing like, "Phaaaaroahs....oh phaaaaaarooooahs" to wake you up from your bus-induced nap). i wandered around the ship for awhile, and then, at last, to bed (can you tell how precious bed is becoming?).

my last day in Alex ended up being a very fulfilling one. in the morning i did a Secondary School Visit that i had kind of signed up for on a whim. we drove by tour bus through the city (which does not happen often and is QUITE a challange - once we backed up down a whole alleyway) to Riada Language School - a private school, but a relatively cheap one (language school means that they teach all classes in another language - english there, obviously - except religion, Arabic and social studies). it's actually in an old Ford factory, but they've done a good job converting it to a school and it's very bright and welcoming, if not a bit echoey. we ended up walking around in groups with a few students - our two were Yasmine and Nada, both seniors. a few of us spent the whole time just chatting with them, and it was so awesome. especially nice to talk to intelligent people approximately our own age - i loved talking to both of them about everything from sports and music and TV to college and the city of Alexandria and the big test they have to take (they study the Egyptian curriculum, not the American or British, also offered by the school). the best part was that we were with one of the kindergarten teachers who had Nada and Yasmine in her class when they were little! we started down on the kindergarten floor (oh dear, they were so cute) and worked our way all the way up to the rowdy middle schoolers. and then they gave us tons of food and little presents. it was a blast for us AND for them.

we visted another school too - this one a more expensive American school which has many Egyptian students but lots of internationals too, and even most of the Egyptians plan to study in the US (i told them all to come to Boston). the school was much fancier but also very alive and welcoming, and the kids were really mature. unfortunately we didn't get to spend as long there. there was one kid who i was curious about - he said that he grew up in Alexandria, but he had light skin and red hair. interesting - emigrant parents, perhaps?

after the schools i spent a long time waiting by the port and buying my Egypt pin (a weird bargaining adventure). Eva and Ryan were very late coming back from the grocery store, but they made it eventually, and then - well, then we walked to the great Bibloteque Alexandrina - CRAZY. Ryan knew where he was going the whole time, but i do recall him saying that he thought it was a 15-20 minute walk.

it wasn't.

it was an hour-long game, is what it was. (parents, don't read...) we almost got hit like a million times (even trying to get across with a big group of Egyptians didn't always work), and this sketchy guy tried to get us into a store to change money (traveling rather tragically teaches you that you have to be very careful about whom you can trust). the sidewalks were packed. but we made it. finally. and then we stood in one line. and then another line. and found the secret staff entrance where they give you the passes for your laptop for the free (FREE...it was like Christmas came early) internet.

the library itself is really cool - it's built to look like a giant solar disk facing the sun. google-image it or something, or wait till i get home. my favorite part is the stone walls around the outside - they've carved part of the alphabet of (i think) every known written language (or at least most of them) into it, and it looks like really diverse ancient writing. neat, huh?

anyway, we pretty much spent the whole afternoon wiling away on the internet, watching other internet-hungry SASers come and go. Carly (who is blond and got a lot of attention in Egypt for it) had attracted a (somewhat unwanted) Egyptian friend, who insisted that we go to a restaurant called Gad, so he managed to somehow get us across 6 lanes of highway-like traffic to hail a cab, which we proceeded to fit into only when Steph sat on Eva's lap. and then he drove us around in circles because the streets in Alex are that crazy, and then dropped us off in front of this sketchy hole-in-the-wall lunch counter kind of falafel restaurant. Carly, Steph and Ryan chickened out and headed down the block to KFC, but Eva and i decided to brave it - after all, there was english on one side of the menu, posted on a beam in the middle of the restaurant. we ordered a whole bunch of stuff, having very little idea what it was (although we THOUGHT that we both ordered falafel). the guy said that he spoke English, but he didn't understand, and poor short Eva had difficulty pointing - a nice woman helped us. then another guy tried to motion to us what to do, although we managed to completely fail to give our order to the man behind the counter. he was laughing at/with us as he worked, throwing random stuff into pita. whatever, we walked out with food and we'd spent about $2 on the whole meal. when we joined our friends at KFC, here's the food we'd ended up with:

-Eva had a pita with refried beans it
-we split a sandwich, which was a hamburger bun with fried cheese and some vegetables and one (just one :-( ) pita that had falafel and lettuce
-and i had (this is the best one) a pita with some random spice, hard boiled egg crushed into it, and soggy potato chips

YUM! it actually was pretty good, and definitely the most authentic meal i had in Egypt after all those fancy hotel meals. needless to say, we did both indulge in Pepto Bismol.

and then we piled back into a cab and said goodbye to dry land in Alexandria. though we did spend a great deal of time intently watching the gangway from the 5th deck, cause it was after on-ship time and we were still missing 55 people.

i think they all made it home.

so Egypt was great. of all the countries we've been to, i felt at least more appropriate being a tourist here, but i am so super glad that i did that school visit and glad that we got to wander around on our own; it made it all worthwhile! however, this trip has made me more aware of being a woman than anything else in my life, and has really (and rather unfortunately) reinforced my frustration with the many male-dominated cultures out there - from my patriarchal indian host dad (he'll make an appearance eventually) to the guy who walked up to us and said "marriage?" on the streets of Alex (to this one particularly annoying human being on the ship who just happened to have delated the whole Public Folder...). ARGH. it's just been hard to have positive experiences with men in many of these countries. but i've had wonderful experiences with women! anyway that was kind of random, but that's how i felt about Egypt. for the most part, beautiful, friendly, welcoming..

which leads me to today. a funny thing that happened today is this: the walls here are kind of not soundproof, and we can hear the guys next to us. a little while ago they started playing "wagon wheel" (popular at EC) on the guitar and i got really excited and plugged in my ipod and turned it up real loud and played it back to them, and they knocked and cheered :-) and also, the satellites that give us internet and very expensive phone service are very upset with us right now (they don't work when we're going due north (?)), which means that the phones and internet are crappy (which is why this perhaps won't go up for a little while) and my roommate is trying to talk to her mom about travel plans. it's like listening to a game show "ok, was that an s? again? the sultan inn? the sultan hotel? can i buy a vowel?!" ah, the joys of the open sea. really mostly today i just did nothing except walk around like a tired zombie and twirl around on the barstools in the library (how many libraries do you think were built to be the bar of a casino?! probably not many. but the ship is only leased, so ISE can't make any permanent changes to it...we manage though).

well, sorry this was so long; i HOPE it wasn't too boring (even though i know it really was...thanks for just reading my blog in the first place :-P) just wait till you see how many pictures i took.

the netherlands of the earth/ravaged by God

i have two options:

a) important academic work
b) keeping you people updated on life

the things i sacrifice for you...hehe, just kidding :-P

actually soon i'm going to chose secret option c, which is to watch the faculty play doubles ping-pong for the Sea Olympics. everyone on the ship is part of a sea (Mediterranean, Caribbean, Aegean, Bering, Red, Yellow, etc.). We all compete against each other doing really weird and/or not weird things (like sock wrestling, which, it turns out, is brutal. so don't get into sock wrestling without assessing the risks) for one day in the sea olympics. i'm in the Baltic Sea. The faculty, staff and Lifelong Learners are in the Dead Sea (yes, that is supposed to be funny). the winners of the sea olympics are the first sea off the ship in miami (it takes all morning to clear the ship in port when we're NOT trying to get all the crap we own through customs...it's a big deal to be first), so the Dead Sea mostly competes just for the fun of us being able to watch them compete, because they get off first anyway. sorry parents, i love you and i can't wait to see you, but i don't really want to be first...as most of you know, i have the real bad separation anxiety. also, i'm a slow-ass packer.

my favorite event, and the only one i actually sat through all of, was the sychronized swimming competetion. mostly i promised the Dead sea team i'd cheer them on (Lara is a perfectionist (me too, i get it) and was really nervous...plus she put on some team spirit eye makeup that by that point made her look like she'd just been punched out). the whole event was pretty funny, from Jim the assistant dean flopping around in the wading pool to my team, who i think reenacted birth. There was one team that did a ridiculous aerobics dance. in the middle of it we suddenly went under this giant bridge, and eveyone got real distracted for a second and was like "hey where the hell'd that come from?"! it was cool.

why, you may ask, was there a giant bridge? because we're, oh, in the middle of the suez canal! probably the most interseting lecture that we had this section in global studies was on the canal, so we learned all about it, about how it's 150 miles long, 660 feet wide and 72 feet deep, and we are a member of the once-daily northbound convoy (there are two southbound convoys, and they both let us pass - it's a one-lane canal) (we must look pretty darn silly, a bunch of container ships and tankers with this silly blue cruise ship full of American college kids in the middle of it...i don't know how wise the sea olympics in the canal was - the army guys watching us from the sides are going to call and tell Alexandria not to let us in; we're just a ship full of crazy people). it takes 3 pilots (one of whom apparently eats a lot...Jim said he walked onto the bridge this morning and it was just this pilot and a giant plate of french fries) and 14 hours to go from Suez to Port Said, traveling at no-wake speed of 8 knots. it's pretty amazing. what's so cool about the suez is that it's green and agricultural, with cities and such, on the Egypt mainland side, and complete sandy desert with a few oases and outposts on the Sinai side - all the way from the very beginning, with only 660 feet of water between the two landscapes. pretty neat. everything else to be said about the canal with have to come in pictures, because it's just too hard to describe. it seems funny to see this much of a country before we even get off the ship.

i was originally worried that the long passage from Chennai was going to seem endless (getting to japan caused us all a bit of anxiety), but it didn't, really. partly because i've been completely overwhelmed with schoolwork, but partly because it's not so bad, being on the ship a lot. i've learned to spend more time alone, but also gotten to know old friends better - and even made new friends - on this stretch. like i finally got to spend time with Lara, and Eva and her friends, most of whom i didn't know, and i even brough Great Big Sea into the life of Kathy Soule, the librarian. and i met Julia who works in the bookstore (and introduced HER to GBS too! and she played me spanish pop) (Julia was working on making a super-awesome Capt. Jeremy costume for Jake, who's 7. and then we made him a paper boat). well...and then there are the friends from the beginning who i never see anymore...but these things happen.

plus we've seen all kinds of cool things, especially since we got into the red sea. (oh! well, there was a pirate drill for the crew (capt. morgan's something or other) and a whale in the gulf of aden that we saw breaching - SOOOOOOO cool. that was the night that it was really super-duper windy and we were all on 7 forward watching this beautiful sunset, and Eva and i were talking, and Eva said, "you know, this is kind of like a metaphor for the universe. here we are, this tiny thing floating around on the planet, and that, that out there? that's like, the netherlands of the earth." by which she didn't actually mean the Netherlands, of course. it was funny, but also deep. and then, feeling exceptionally deep and philosophical, as we sat out there in the wind, she told me about a poem in which the poet talks about being "ravaged by God" and how, in that moment, out there in the wind with no company but the sea and the sunset, it felt like we were being "ravaged by God". hmmm. another famous Eva quote was when we were talking about our weird global textbook and we decided that, based on the expression, "100 monkeys with a 100 typewriters could eventually produce the works of Shakespeare..and if not, it would be Port-to-port".) ANYWAY, we came through the Bab el-Mandeb at like 6 in the morning, passing between the funny pointy mountains of Yemen and the funny pointy mountains of Djibouti/Eritrea. we were a lot closer to the Yemen side, but you could see both - how fascinating. since we've been in the red sea we've passed all sorts of funny little islands, including a VOLCANO (roommate!) that just erupted, like, the day we left India! it was still smoking and spewing ash and lava - AMAZING! yesterday during class (which was already sufficiently interrupted by everyone complaining about the global studies test) we were all thoroughly distracted by watching giant mountains and offshore oil rigs go by (Cole said "look! transnational corporations!" our econ. professor HATES transnational competitions).

and yesterday evening was really lovely - we celebrated halloween! they did a BIG cookout with burgers on the seventh deck, so you could eat on 5, 6 OR 7 - the whole galley staff was out there, their hats somehow not blowing away, grilling (the veggie burgers were pretty much the leftovers of all the veggies we've had in the past two weeks mushed up with some rice - i thought it was brilliant! that's how i like my veggies!). anyway, they carved jack-o-lanterns and had sundaes and other delicious deserts and EVERYTHING. mmm. and...Eva and her friends were sitting with that guy that is nice but i'd never talked to! so i got to talk to him - yay! - even if it was with a big group of people. and he said i was cool. and i said we should chat or have dinner sometime. and he said, well, look at that, we both like food, sounds good. it was a beautiful thing.

and then i had lots of desserts with lots of people. and then Lara and i tried to feed the seagulls that had flocked to us like moths to a flame, but they largely ignored our contributions. further proof that seagulls are greedier in Maine than in Egypt.

the rest of the evening was not as lovely because we attempted to put on a halloween dance. all the lists got screwed up and i was the one telling people they had to re-sign up because their names got lost and trying to remember the alphabet really fast, which is, in fact, one of my worst skills as a human being. oops. it ended up being ok, people had fun, i think, and there were lots of great costumes! my roommate was a mermaid - i walked in on her half-naked sewing a seashell bra (she learned the truth of my saying that i really can't think on my feet.) the BEST (the ship thought so too - he won the best costume contest) was my friend Aaron, who dressed up as my absolutely ridiculous Canadian professor Bob Cecil. trust me, it was funny.

sorry i completely bored you about ship life. i know, i know. pyramids are more exciting. don't worry, we're getting there.

love, another very distant and excited Red Sox fan...muddy suez canal, you're my present, but muddy Charles...Boston, you're my home!

tests, chocolate and weasel poop

yesterday i was running around like a crazy person because i had to pick some random two-hour period in which to take a test that i wasn't ready for, and it turns out that's a very stressful decision to make. (during the test, they started calling a million people down to the clinic, and i was like, dude, that's a lot of people for random drug testing, and what if i get called in the middle of my test?!?! turns our there was a lice outbreak at the meditation retreat in india. Jeff narrowly missed have to shave his big beautiful dreads.)

the test wasn't actually SO bad...after i took it, i sort of hit zombie mode, which was sad, because i was excited to be having dinner with Lara. and then a bunch of other people sat with us, all of them very nice people, but...i was just too out of it to be able to deal with more than one person at once. Lara felt so bad about leaving me like that that she ended up buying a bunch of chocolate that we split, and we talked for awhile. sitting there eating reese's and m&ms with Lara and being seranaded intermittently by our very own Jamaican pop star Chuck Norris (Chuck Norris rocks, btdubs; he said he refused to be in the talent because he "just didn't want to make everybody else look bad") was just the thing i needed i guess, because i felt a lot better about life afterward. pretty soon Lara's going to think i'm crazy and have no other friends. and she's lonesome too since Steve the opera critic left (her husband was on the ship Vietnam-Thailand).

anyway.

after that Eva came over with her weasel coffee. weasel coffee is a Vietnamese phenomenon. someone back in the day decided that maybe it would be brilliant, instead of just using PLAIN beans to make coffee, serving the beans to a weasel, waiting for it to poop them out, and then using the pooped-out, weasel-processed beans to make coffee (duh, right? why didn't we think of that?)! sadly, it's not as good as it sounds. really, it's just really strong coffee. and then there was the show of the less talented (or: differently talented, as we prefer to say) that was pretty good, in a bad way. there was this guy who was supposed to be in it but sort of ran away, and i was little sad about it. i don't know him at all, but, from sheer observation, he seems incredibly friendly and nice, and he even goes out of his way to say to me sometimes. i wish i knew him better/he had read his poem! funny thing is, he hangs out with the most unlikely girls. hmmm.

and now today we have the day off! woooooooo!!!! (turns out i can't sleep through chocoloate croissant day though - i tried,i really did...but then i ended up getting up and eating three) and i'm (not) doing my service learning portfolio, which keeps gaining more random chapters. i'm rather sad about it. today we're actually going around the horn of Africa (hi Jessica!!!!! you're only like two and a half countries away!). we're almost in the gulf of Aden and i hope that we go through the Bab before the middle of tonight, but our whopping 12 knot average isn't going to get us there very quickly. i guess we have to stall so we can fly through the red sea, where we have to fight off more pirates.

the problem with no classes is that then the housekeeping staff stands around a lot looking lost, because they have nothing to do if the beds that they're supposed to make are occupied. i don't think Dante, our steward, has much of a concept of sleeping in. it makes him sad when we're still in bed at 8.

(ahhhh!!! a BIRD just flew by! so weird! it's a really exotic bird too!!! we can't see any land, but i guess we're pretty near the horn.)

i'm sorry.

the exciting parts of this journey, at least for you to read, probably aren't really the stories about who i ate dinner with, or how evil my two-hour econ. test was, and yet that's all i actually have time to write about :-P oops. here, i'll put up another post with day one of india.

that's exotic, right?

time warp to two weeks ago

I HATE MEN (more on that later).

but india’s awesome! It’s crazy that we’re finally here – India was always that distant land in the middle of everything…it was always “just wait till India this, just wait till India that...”…and so far, we’re all surviving just fine (knock on wood/steel, because we’re on a ship, so everything is steel…)

so we wake up on the first morning at PBT (Pilot boat time! I named it that) and run upstairs to gaze out upon the greatness, and there’s…NOTHING. some shipping traffic, a couple of tiny fishing boats, and fog, or smog, maybe. you could SMELL India, but you couldn’t actually SEE it. finally, a lighthouse came out of the clouds, and then some container ships, and then a harbor, and then Chennai. it’s an interesting harbor here – all the berths are sort of around a big lagoony thing that’s mostly full of ginornous jellyfish, and we have a spectacular view of an old warehouse. all day there are guys outside playing a very complicated game of “get the giant metal pipes into a nice, neat pyramid”. they are not very good at this game, and the repercussions are rather loud (I’ve been saying “rather” a lot more since I’ve been in India, by the way…ah, the aftereffects of colonisation..(hehe does anybody get it?!)).

anyway. despite our lovely location there was quite a crowd gathered round, some of them even playing music. then the immigration guys pulled up and piled out of the trunk of this jeep, one by one, like clowns in a volkwagen. they were nice immigration guys, though, because they let us off the ship in relatively good time. after a running around in circles kind of morning, I ended up on the Chennai city orientation, which was just fine. we visited a relatively substantial number of churches, though, considering the situation, including the one where St. Thomas is supposedly buried. what ended up being the most interesting part (besides our really exciting bus curtains – Indians really decorate their mass transit, who here has seen the Air India livery?) was a detour we had to take. we drove along the beach and through these fishing villages that are framed by government slab apartments – apparently these houses were built for the fisherpeople, but they didn’t want to live in them, so they sold them and then built thatched-roof huts, many of which were affected by the tsunami. there are all kinds of people and animals running around, and it’s really very fascinating to watch. we went to a nice silk store, which was a little overwhelming, and watched the Frankels attempt to buy nice things for their older children. on the way home i helped Sarah play "I Spy" with her dad. she asked for help with an "e" word (they'd already done Emily; don't get too excited), but apparently "ethnomusicology professor" didn’t cut it. needless to say, i wasn't very helpful. we went to a temple, too, which was happenin’ cause there’s a festival going on. the detail on the buildings is incredibly elaborate, there were all kinds of different decoratings of goddesses, etc. going on, the music was beautiful, and there was even a sacred cow! and it’s really rather liberating to walk around barefoot for awhile, Kristen and i decided.

then we came home for dinner.

i must explain dinner. when we're in port, there are few enough people eating that they make the real delicious food, which includes HOT, freshly tossed pasta dishes that are SOOO good - with olives and sauce and greens and things. so, feeling a bit down on myself because it happens sometimes, i sat down alone to eat in peace. a nice girl who i'd never met before (and, oh dear, whose name i have already forgotten) came and joined me, and then a friend of hers, and that was fine. and THEN Ellie comes over with "pick me up!" written all over her face, so i put her in my lap. she points to my pasta, so i feed her a nice penne. and then she says "more!" so i eat some penne. and then i giver her some penne. and then i eat some. and then i feed her, and then me. etc. and pretty soon my measly plate of penne is gone, and she says "more!" so i get more. and the cycle continues. then THAT plate of pasta is gone, and one of the grinning stewards hands over ANOTHER plate of pasta. eventually she takes the fork, stabs a penne, and sticks it in MY mouth. and then she eats a bite. and then me. and then her. and so on. literally, five plates of pasta (actually 4 plates and one bowl) and about an hour later, there were little sauce marks all over my pants, and she was finally done.

it was probably the most entertaining meal i've experienced on the ship.

anyway, boring story, but funny at the time.

yeah. that was day one. stay tuned to actually find out why I hate men (no, not all of them :-P).

bye bye Asia (maybe)

today we went around the southern tip of Sri Lanka, and you could see the mountains and little boats off in the distance. it occured to me that, not only was that the last time we were going to see land for awhile, but it was also the last time we were going to see Asia.

then later it occured to me that we were going to Turkey (yes we ARE going to Turkey, despite rumors to the contrary, including but not not limited to: we're diverting to Greece/we're diverting to Italy/Cape Town/Australia (Australia?! have you LOOKED at a map recently?!) (though other rumor has it that the Resident Directors strated that one)), so (depending on who you ask), i guess we'll be back in Asia after all. well, phew.

also, apparently the little boats were hunting whales, and this time i believe it, cause...this morning during breakfast, while feeding Ellie her chocolate croissant (they were trying to potty train her yesterday, but they seem to have temporarily aborted the mission after she peed all over a chair at dinner) i saw whales spouting! it was so cool. i haven't seen more than flying fish, frigate birds or giant dragonflies (yes, Leslie Bishop, ODONATA) (oh and giant disgusting-looking jellyfish in the port of Chennai) since those dolphins way back on our bridge tour. i didn't actually SEE the whales, per se, but they're out there.

and tonight, something amazing happened (besides when Nikki said that for awhile she thought Bob Cecil and Ellen Fitzpatrick seemed to be getting MIGHTY close, only to realize that they were both with spouses on the ship and 25 years different in age...i know that's not funny to you but it is to me and will still be when i go back and read this later; sorry guys). anyway, we had another talent show. there was singing and incredible dancing and stand-up comedy that no one had to kick off the stage and the performers had actually rehearsed. the very good reason for all of this was that it was, in fact, the CREW talent show, and it was brilliant. for one, it's always fun to see people having a great time and it's definitely always fun to see the see the crew out of context (including Perry in his civvies, a very enthusiastic drunk, running around 7/11 in Hong Kong at 11 o'clock at night with his Cup Noodles). and let me tell you, they are some FANTABULOUS dancers - we had a true rendition of Thriller, In the Navy performed by the cabin stewards in full Navy getup, and two big group dances of various housekeeping, deck and galley folks that were pretty unbelievable (though put it this way - we won't be telling their wives). Solomon, earlier referred to in my blog as "the indian guy who looks like Gandhi" (and, oops, is actually from St. Vincent and the Grenadines - i should correct that) told jokes, and then, in the post-show raffle (drawn by the Captain), was the lucky first to win a free haircut. we'll see that he gets a good head shine. the whole thing concluded with a rousing rendition of "We Are the World", performed by the entire housekeeping and laundry crew waving whatever country's flags they could scrounge up.

things like this actually make me proud to be a part of this community - there are times when i, and like-minded friends of mine, are disappointed in our fellow SASers, but not tonight. tonight people went all out, crowding out the Union, making signs for their stewards and favorite dining-hall guys and contributing to the crew fund that helps to give them Christmas gifts, keep their public quarters clean, and bus them around in port if there isn't anything to do within walking distance. i don't think there's anyone on the ship who doesn't personally know and, i dare say, truly appreciate the work of at least two (of 197) crewmembers - and most of us know more. i only wish there were a way that we could personally recognize all of those folks who we don't know, who work in the galley or the engine room or swab decks and things (though they do all come out of hiding when we come into port - there's always a whole throng of people on 4 aft in all white wearing big chef hats whenever there's something exciting going on outside - coming into port, man overboard drills, etc.) - on any given day, we only see about 60 crewmembers. anyway, that's what i have to say about that. it was fantastic.

today i felt rather lonesome because i've been studying like crazy for a test, and then i have another one next B day, and then i have to work on some papers. so pretty much all i do is sit around alone and make my back sore from leaning over books and computers. there are a few people that i haven't seen in awhile that i really want to just sit down and talk to, but i don't have time, and i can never find them when i do (i still don't understand this concept - we do all live on the same ship, right? how do people just...disappear sometimes?!) but tonight lots of people ate peanut butter and honey toast with me, including a friend i had thought was mad at me for quite some time (she's just moody, it turns out) and my new friend Jamie. it warmed my heart. and my tummy.

sorry, i really am working on that post on india. turns out it's a long-term process.

weird things are entertaining

guess what?! my adopted mom on the ship (we have this extended family program), Peggy, is a Maniac! she's from Forest City, up by the New Brunswick border.

i learned this as we were leaving Chennai. i ALSO learned how they pick up the fifth-deck gangway, which is long and steep, hoist it up, flip it over and stick it on top of the ship. it's pretty cool! i waited FOREVER to watch them take it in because the Indian immigration guys were simply NEVER going to leave; they give them the delicious food on the fancy ship, so there really is no incentive to go down the long and steep gangway and through the throng of head-waggling (more on head-waggling later for those of you who have never been to india) men with AK47s and back into the warehouse that was our berth except that the ship will never give them their passports back.

Nancy and i also had a long and interesting conversation about service visits/how she thinks that i don't have to fail at life and made me realize how creative being an only child made me. and also, if i'm real tired tomorrow, it's because they kept making announcements all night to PLEASE CONSERVE WATER. WE GET IT, THANK YOU, DEAN GLATFELTER. really, my shower from today will last me LOOOONG after we make it around Sri Lanka and back to the world of ocean that isn't so dirty that our filters can't process it, he doesn't even know. preaching to the choir, my friend.

sometime in the near future will come the entry on our rickshaw-intensive adventure today. not for the weak of stomach. but yeah, there's already the beginning of an entry on what i actually did in india; i'll publish it soooon.

oh ps one more funny story! tonight we had "shabbat", which mostly meant that we ate challah. and Perry (he's Filipino (crew)) came up to me and was like "what's that?" and i said "Challah - the food of the Jews!" and he said "the juice?!" again, funny at the time.

India (not Indiana) or Bust!

About an hour ago, one of our professors (she says she probably likes me so much because i'm not one of her students), totally out of the blue, said, “well, if i’d gotten pregnant at the junior prom, i could’ve had you.” we then concluded that this wasn’t actually true - it would’ve been her Sophomore Ring Dance. ah, the life of the professor.

so we’re pretty much going about a billion miles an hour right now, by which i mean, about 25 knots, which could, as far as i know, be a billion miles an hour, but i’m pretty sure it’s more like 40. still this is very speedy. this is to ward off pirates. we’re not realllly at high risk for piracy - our people-to-booty ratio is too small; we wouldn’t be worth the pain of dealing with 650 college students and 200 crew with high-pressure hoses. so, phew.

Also, today my faith in humanity was restored. yesterday i died a little inside because my pin from China (i’ve been collecting pins from every country; i actually had two pins from China but they’re different and i really liked both of them!) fell off of my backpack. and i looked EVERYWHERE, and kept running back and forth between the Purser’s Desk and Student Life, but it never turned up. and then TODAY someone turned it in to Student Life! they didn’t steal it, they said, hey, someone might really be missing this. and that’s the story of how my pin came home.

other than Mike and Lindsay and Benjamin and Paige and Carrie, who are dancing like crazy awesome dancing fools on the back 5th deck, everybody’s pretty much just stressed out by a million tests and papers coming up. (mmm i just ate a rice cracker from Japan that tastes like a combination of delicious rice cracker and feet. not half bad! well, maybe about half bad...) we have a Global Studies test in two days, which is basically the equivalent of all 650 of us getting our periods at the same time, except with academic competition. how exciting.

let’s see...i’ve also gotten a chance to hang out with our Indian interport students, Dee and Vani, which is cool! they’re really sweet, and yesterday was Vani’s birthday so i got free ice cream cake - and a lot of free ice cream cake frosting. i also hang out with Ellie, our resident 2-year-old, because she likes to wave at me and ask me to take her for walks and steal my bracelet and put it on her tiny tiny arm.

today i tried to eat dinner and it was so windy that i kept eating my hair. i like when i eat with Jeff and we share peanut butter and honey toast. he’s the only one who eats peanut butter and honey toast with me. (i don't like when he tries to dread my hair.) yesterday i had lunch with the captain and he made fun of me about my peanut butter and honey toast. the captain is RATHER entertaining. he talks about pirates and his wife the 24-year-old Filipina ex-fashion model who just, oh, had a stroke, and his late wife, and his other wife, in much the same manner that one usually talks about weather. he’s just funny though (as is Laura, the girl who makes awkward first impressions, except the funny, wild kind of first impressions. the three of us made a great conversational team. we almost kept the captain from driving the ship). the real blandness award, thhough, goes to the crewmember who announced the man overboard drill the other day. she was like “man overboard. for exercise, for exercise” totally monotone-ly, and all of a sudden the whole ship heels and Doc Nancy comes running thorough the computer lab going “we’re turning all the way around! hold on!” and we really did a giant 180 on a dime, put down a tender boat, and saved the poor dummy (as i said to Lauren, a fake person, not a stupid one, but i wouldn’t put it past Captain Jeremy). i was impressed. some people fell over. at least the seas were calm.

i have discovered something. life is more pleasant if i get done the work i can, and then give up and go to fun evening programs, like Doc Nancy’s Grand Canyon lecture or Judy Lunn’s (she's the middle-aged lesbian on the ship with her partner, who works in the field office (testiness levels equivalent to your average registrar’s office...our registrar, Alexis, in contrast, who hasn’t had to do any actual registering since the second week of the voyage, is quite friendly and accommodating) and goes by the name of Sparkle after her sparkly shirts - they're quite a pair.) tribute to John Denver. Because really, i’ve learned more at those that i have trying to remember what Bob Cecil was talking about when class started half an hour ago, because it’s definitely not what he’s talking about now.

today the Resident Directors, who are an incredibly entertaining bunch (Paul knits! did i ever write about Paul? he’s awesome, and he went to school in Indiana. knitting once turned into a long conversation about life, and then i pulled out my computer and he was like, you knit AND you’re a mac person?! could you BE any more perfect?!?! and i was like, Paul, could YOU be any more perfect?! i’m pretty much jealous of his boyfriend, even though i’ve never met him. last night at our national coming out day open mic night, he told the great story about how he had to let go of his girlfriend when he came out, but she popped up later - as his sister-in-law! isn’t that crazy?! he said that sometimes it’s a little awkward around his nieces and nephews...) had the difficult job of counting for our coin wars charity collection. if you've ever counted coins for a long period of time, you know how much fun it is...now try that with six different currencies! they argued and got frustrated and we laughed and laughed, because it was really funny to watch.

it’s 12:30 (0030) and my roommate’s not home yet. hopefully she’s having sex with her boyfriend. she’ll be so happy.

PS tomorrow’s chocolate croissant day! my favorite kind of day, and it only happens every other day! and oatmeal, which is delicious with brown sugar and peanut butter and is probably the healthiest thing that i eat.

also, there’s really cool lightening outside.

Oh dear, i give up...also, good morning, Vietnam!

So i’m pretty much the most behind person that ever existed.

Except for everybody else on this ship. but i think i’m even more behind than a lot of them.

For one thing, i haven’t even finished my journal entry on China, let alone uploaded the pictures, or even thought about writing about Hong Kong or Vietnam. at least they weren’t as interesting as Japan. but not that uninteresting.

my executive decision has been to just start over, right here and now, and backtrack later. one of the advantages of this plan is that nothing is, in fact, going on right now, so i don’t really have anything to write about. except that my tummy really really really hurts sometimes, and i don’t know why. i won’t talk about it any more, because i know that you all don’t necessarily feel the same way about poop that i do. feel free to ask later. a fun thing that is happening is that (and you didn’t hear this from me) Katie, one of the shipboard counselors, who was an SAS student a few years ago, showed me this awesome activity - when we’re in port and no one’s at the computers, you can sometimes find really entertaining emails that people have just saved on the desktops and not deleted. sometimes they’re pretty juicy!! yesterday i found a particularly sweet/scandalous set from a boyfriend that were all like “i can’t get a job! i did this yesterday. i love you so much. i can’t even believe how much i miss you, or that i could miss someone so much. also, i owe my ex-girlfriend $400”). RATHER entertaining.

ALSO, i’m awkward. we should just mention that. especially around previously mentioned boys. with one of them, it was rather pleasant when we were just friends, and now i spend most of my life running away from him for no particular reason. 25,000 tons sounds like a big ship, but it really isn’t. the avoiding is actually going ok - except that in two days were going to Thai English camp together, along with all of his friends who intimidate me. (once he told me that, sadly, he just wasn’t good with kids. and then he told me he was doing the camp, and i was like - well, that doesn’t make sense. and he was like, gotta start somewhere! he’s a really good guy. and relatively stable and not destructive compared to similar past situations. that doesn’t really help though.) sometimes i pretty much hate my life.

what’s interesting is that this whole trip, both in country and on the ship, is starting to really make me realize what a loner i am - i like people, i don’t like being alone all the time, but i also don’t like being noticed or picked on or standing out; i’m scared of how people perceive me and it’s just must less stressful to try to deal with just myself. i get much shorter with people than i mean to when i’m bumping into them all the time. one of the reasons that i’m so excited about Thailand is that i’m getting out of the city.

another exciting thing that happened today was that a tugboat pulled our ass 180 degrees around on the Saigon River, which is just about as wide as the Explorer is long.

so then maybe i should just write about YESTERDAY, that wasn’t that long ago. yesterday was our last day in NAM and i took a day trip to the Mekong Delta. We went to all these touristy hut-things, which was kind of weird. but it was GREAT to get out of the city! and be on the water. and our tour guide was awesome. she sang. and she made us sing. there was also some dancing.

and on that trip i met a girl i’d never met before, named Becky, and we talked for a really super long time - just, like, girl talk, you know, but it was nice; it’s been forever since i've had a long time to talk to ANYONE, and she tried to convince me to come her to her techno dance party. it didn’t work, but she’s still fun to talk to.

before the delta trip, i went up north to Hanoi and Halong Bay. Halong Bay is SO cool and full of rock formations that would make my roommate just DIE of excitement (almost as much excitement as Camden would’ve had about the acrobat show in China). it was also rather pleasant to spend 3 hours in my own little world on the bus - you can’t do that on the ship, really. on the first night some of us went to the touristy little night market, and then my friend Eva and i walked out onto the pier where some people tried to talk to us, and we weren’t sure if we should say hi or be terrified that there were going to push us in. erring on the side of caution, we went back to a little store, marveled at Vietnamese snacks, and then went to bed.

then we got to spend the WHOLE next morning cruising around Halong Bay on a big junk - we went to a cave, and past a floating fishing village and between all of these super-cool rock islands. our group was a hoot - we had all the crazy profs and Lifelong Learners, including Patricia, who’s usually rather unknowingly falling out of her blouse, and Stuart, who i think might be Santa Clause’s older brother but is infinitely more cynical and entertaining. they ended up giving us a chance to go swimming off the side - i didn’t bring a bathing suit, but i finally ended up jumping in anyway. it took me way longer than the moms (we had parents on our trip) on the other boat. after that we drove back to Hanoi and checked into our hotel. we had some time before we met for dinner, and Eva and i were going to go out, but we were really tired and turned on the TV, and there was this totally weird movie with Vietnamese subtitles in which Mel Gibson’s character had started out in 1939 and gone through some sort of time warp in which he ended up in whatever year Elijah Wood was 10. it was crazy. it ended, and then we watched the end of a really weird Al Pacino movie. Vietnamese subtitles are funny. they’re very liberal with their punctuation, especially exclamation points.

our pre-dinner entertainment was a water puppet show - a traditional old kind of Vietnamese puppetry in which the puppets are on a water surface, and with lots of traditional music. kind of hard to describe, and a bit difficult to follow - there isn’t really a plot so much as little vignettes in which children chase frogs, or birds mate.

then we had a really delicious tofu-filled dinner - at least other vegetarian Margot and i did. after dinner Amanda, Jeff (an LLLer (lifelong learner), Eva, weird Patricia, Megan, and a couple of others went out for ice cream and what Eva has discovered to be VERY strong Vietnamese coffee. then we went for a walk around the big central lake/make-out-on-your-motorbike spot (we did no such thing) and then went home. for bed.

on the last day we visited poor Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to be cremated but instead got waxed and frozen and stuck into a giant mausoleum. the most entertaining part of that trip was the game we played to pass the time that i can’t for the life of me explain. then we saw Ho Chi Minh’s house, and the one-pillar pagoda, and a big temple, and then they dropped us off for lunch back at the lake. Amanda, Margot, Nicole and i went to a European-y cafe and got pizza, because it was the only thing that we knew was vegetarian. it was rather pleasant. we strolled a retail street for awhile, but i just hate being accosted by people, and it makes me really uncomfortable. the absolute worst was this women who came up and put her hat on my head and banana thing on my shoulders and then started pulling bananas that she tried to make me buy, along with a “picture fee”. i wonder how much they make for gimmicks like that.

then it was off to the airport. i spent the airport being entertained by the people freaking out about the rat/mouse/creature running around. as for the flight - WELL. so it was an A330 (and A330?! Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City? REALLY?!) and i was in the middle of the middle, totally freaking out, yammering totally out-of-controllably to poor Coulter, who had been stuck next to me on the LAST flight, poor kid (trust me, he’s not the kind of guy that you look at and are like “hey, he’d listen to my problems!” he’s actually an English major and very friendly, but i was a lot to put up with.) i was going to distract myself by making a birthday card for Benjamin, and i was like “heyhelpi’mreallynervousaboutthisflighti’mtryingtomakeabirthdaycardformyfriendwhatshouldido?shouldiwriteasuperherostoryhowboutasonnethowdoyouwriteasonnnetagain?huh?huh?hangoni’mgoingtotakemyhard-coreanti-anxietydrugsnow!” i’m amazed that he still says hi to me in passing. i think we have a special bond. and then...we’re back to the Delta trip! yay. i made it through Vietnam! i should probably also mention that Vietnam is full of this addictively beautiful embroidery. sometimes they took us to these random huge areas that were rest stops but really embroidery and clothes-manufacturing workshops for disabled children, and you would stand and watch them and feel awkward, and not knowing if buying it was supporting a good or bad thing (something for disabled kids to do/gain a marketable skill? or evil child labor?) and then you’d buy some peanut butter and chocolate oreos in which to drown your confusion.

Japan Part II: Operation Karumai Festival

So now we get to the actual fun part.

Standing alone in the station, all i wanted to do was to call Lizzy, but i had no change, so i bought a ridiculous JR board book for my dad at a newsstand. and then i went through, found my platform...it’s AMAZING. there are a million trains, a million platforms, a million people, and everything - even the location of each individual car - is well marked. a friendly fellow assured me that i was in the right place, and then pointed me to the wrong seat (i was in car 1, seat 1D. i guess i was the last person to whom they sold a ticket on that train!). i was sitting next to a nice, quiet guy from Tokyo going to Sendai on business.

OH MY GOD. Japan is just functional rail system HEAVEN (discount the horrible website - though to be fair, it may well be better in Japanese than it is in English). Lookie here, US - you have things to learn. you can just get on a train that will leave on time and take you less time than it does to make a quiche to get to the other side of the country. it’s unbelievable. what’s also unbelievable is how long it takes to get out of Tokyo, and then greater Tokyo, and then greater greater Tokyo, and then suburban greater greater Tokyo - but after Sendai, it gets a bit more rural. everything went perfectly smoothly - except i got of the train, and there was no one there! i waited and waited, scared that the stationmaster guy was gonna call the police, this random Western girl loitering in a train station in the Japanese boonies at 9:30 at night - but then Lizzy finally came!!! (she got a little lost! it was ok.) it was SO good to see her. we drove and wound all around back to her town of Karumai. Karumai is totally in the middle of nowhere, but what’s really interesting about it is that, once you’re “downtown”, it feels like a Japanese city - it’s really built up, things are close together, and there are all kinds of random shops - and then as soon as you get out of town, you’re in mountains, or rice patties, or both. it’s amazing. Lizzy lives in a cute little duplex, traditional two-story apartment with tatami mats and paper-pane windows and with the whole bathroom being the shower with the tub just for rinsing, and all of that separate from the toilet. it’s really interesting. we fell asleep on our futon with Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell me in the background :-)

in Karumai, they made town announcements - first there’s a little musical jingle at 6 AM, and then a “good morning! today is...etc. etc., drive safely!” (there’s a shitton more in there cause they say a lot, but i had no idea what it was) at 7:30. what a country. i spent most of friday trying to make myself sleep in, and then spent a LOOONG time abusing Lizzy’s free internet. i called my parents and read and responded to loads of emails, and really honestly didn’t do much else till Lizzy came home and took a nap, and then after that we drove to Achinohe! it was such a nice drive - SOOOO green and forested, with rice patties and other little farms tucked on hillsides. not so quaint is the driving-a-million-miles on the windy (other side!) of the roads. there are those funny little Asian trucks that look like the pugs of the truck world from the farm that you have to be careful of because only little old people drive them. also we passed a sculpture of a spirit revered for his giant magical testicles.

our first adventure involved a complicated parking lot and a lot of very heated Japanese. we went to the train station to purchase my return tickets, which ended up being significantly easier than i thought it would be, which was incredibly exciting. then we journeyed from what seemed like the major part of town where the train station was through a weird industrial area to another very main part of town, where there was a main street and a big department store and even an odd fancy hotel with a flashy glass elevator. we were going to eat in the department store thing, but it turned out there wasn’t food there (except for the third-floor movie theater’s popcorn and an italian restaurant) but there WAS a whole darn FLOOR of those famous Japanese photo booths, so of course we had to do one. you pick a theme, and then pick your backgrounds, take the pictures, decorate them, and decide a layout for them - all with a time limit and Japanese being squeaked at you. it was fabulous.

for dinner i FINALLY got my udon! it made my whole trip to Japan worth it - it came with a big raw egg cracked in the middle, and you stir it really fast and the hot noodles cook the egg. brilliant. then we went to the hundred-yen store (shinkansen chopsticks! YES!) and last but not least to the Lizzy’s natural habitat - a coffee shop :-) i had a rice-flour cake and DELICIOUS hot chocolate, and we had coffee-shop conversation. (poor Lizzy, i hadn’t talked to non-ship people for so long that i all i could do was regurgitate ship experiences.) and then we went home and ate rice crackers and Lizzy introduced me to West Wing (i finally understand it! Yay!). and then we went to bed. or, futon.

SATURDAY was AMAZING. we slept in, watched some more West Wing, ate some more rice crackers, and went for a walk around Karumai to see everybody getting ready for the festival! kids everywhere getting their faces painted for taiko, all manner of people in kimonos and happi-coats, and lanterns hanging everywhere. we went to the grocery store and bought lots of Japanese chocolates. there were lots of street vendors for the festival, but it’s also kind of incredibly how many little hole-in-the-wall stores there are in Karumai considering how small it is. we went into a little “diner” for lunch (miso ramen! what an experience). it was one of those great places that you can choose to sit on the floor if you want, and there was one family with two little kids who had sprawled out around and under the table - very homey.

then it was time for Lizzy to get ready for the parade - and i was in for a great surprise! they let me be in it!!!! Lizzy and i went across to the street to her friends’ really lovely traditional home and they got Lizzy all ready in her yukata (summer kimono) and got to wear a sort of Japanese overcoat that’s the neighborhood’s festival uniform. and then we walked down the street to the GIANT elaborate float with big spirits all over it, and there were all manner of kids and families getting ready, and we stood until we all took lots of pictures and then everybody grabbed the enormous ropes (lines, as we ship-people say, and they really were like lines) and we pulled this float. there were a bunch of kids at the front playing a taiko beat on little drums, and then two high-schoolers behind them on the big drums, with other high school boys and girls playing wooden flutes. there were younger kids at the front with sticks with bells on them that they banged on the ground. and Lizzy was up at the very front with the the neighborhood flag. we pulled the giant float up a hill, past the town Shinto shrine, parked it for a while, had some tea in a can, talked to a nice lady named Sako (maybe? or was he the guy in Yokohama?!) and then went back down the hill, following other floats. i walked up front with Lizzy as we wound into down, down the two main streets, and back out the other side in a very slow, very rhythmic progression, all with these giant and complex floats. some of her students recognized Lizzy and waved, and we politely bowed to all kinds of people, especially all the old people (there were LOTS of old people. and another, mysterious Westerner who sort of glared at us.) it seemed like the whole town was in the parade with their different neighborhood floats, so i couldn’t even imagine who’d watch it, but the crowd was HUGE! and there were microphones, and one of the older guys would yell, like PULL! and then everyone would yell back, especially the little kids, and so it went, all the way up another hill, past the Buddhist shrine and to the place where they offered us more tea in a can and also, beer. and then we went back the other way - and they let me carry the flag!!! how funny. we had a good conversation about how to say stop and slow down and wait in English and Japanese. going down, we saw a lion dance happening at the temple, little boys wearing plastic horses doing horse dancing, other very dressed-up kids with small taiko and flute choirs to match fan dancing and some other kind of rhythmic dancing (they had giant metallic hats and straw shing-guard-y things). it was unbelievable. by the time we’d parked the float, they were still playing on and we’d been our feet for almost 6 hours, Lizzy in very uncomfortable shoes. we had a nice conversation with an adult student of LIzzy’s who spoke great English, and then we went home, returned the clothes/were taught to refold yukata, were given lots of food, and then ventured back out to the (almost) store-front home of “the family who feeds me”, as Lizzy calls them. we walked around with this very sweet girl, Chika (one of Lizzy’s students) and an ambiguously-gendered young friend of hers. they took us to the little field where all sorts of vendors had set up shop, like at a fairground. you could fish for tiny pet turtles, play a weird game, buy pot-theme jewelry, or do what we did, which is to buy a chocolate-covered banana. we ran into lots of people Lizzy knew, including a boy who kept giving high-fives and a nice woman who had lived in Australia for awhile. and through all of this all the little kids were still running around all dressed up, and it was neat.

we joined Chika’s awesome mother and little old stooped grandma and her mom’s best friend’s son, Kai, around their family table (on the floor in the main room). there was SO much food - edamame, rice, rice wrapped in seaweed, tofu on a stick, sweet bread homamade by Chika’s friend’s mom, miso, weird Japanese milk (and she was worried that she hadn’t prepared for a vegetarian!!) and also they bought LIzzy sushi. phew. after the meal, and a really endearing tour of their little kitchen, filled with Chika’s old school things and drawings (there was a great, very neatly written letter that Chika had written to her grandma saying, “i hope you feel better grandma, i love you, and i hope that your pee and poop are normal.”) after that we played memory, which happens to be one of Kai’s favorite games and was perfect because we would say the English word and they would say the Japanese. we all got really involved, and it was such a blast.

Then we really had to go home (considering it takes half an hour to leave a Japanese household because you have to do so much thanking, and you have to put your shoes back on). we of course watched more West Wing, and pigged out on all our chocolates and sweet rice crackers - the perfect thing after our ginourmous dinner. it was really comfortable and lovely, and just SO good to spend time with Lizzy.

the next morning heavy rains along with the usual announcements woke me up, and then what had to be like the town’s typhoon warning or something went off, immediately proceeded by ambulances shrieking around town, and i was like “ahhh! Lizzy! wake up!! we’re all going to die!” and LIzzy was like, “no, no, Fumiko warned me about this, it’s just for the festival; go back to sleep!” wailing ambulances around town for 20 minutes on a sunday sure seems weird to me, but hey, trump it up to cultural differences. then i heard a marching band. i guess that’s not so much cultural differences.

and then i had to go :-( the drive to Ninohe was wet but beautiful, and LIzzy didn’t even get lost one little bit, and i got on the train just fine. (hehe on my first train i was in car 3, seat 7A, and on the second train i was in car 7, seat 3A!) it was cool to see everything in daylight - it actually seemed less built-up than it had at night. the mountains were SOO pretty, and so funny shaped! coming out of Tokyo we were along the water for a little while, and i was like “damn ocean, i ALMOST forgot about you...” there were a bunch of dinosaur sculptures, and also pretty red torii gates in the water in same places. it’s remarkable how similar Japanese towns seem to be, even when they’re far apart, but all of the cities we went through seemed really different - Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka, and a bunch of little ones that no one’s ever heard of. the ride was FAST and really great (although no one wanted to sit next to me. hmm), and of course i didn’t want to get off in shin-Kobe! but i did. and then i got lost, and i was too scared to ask for directions, so i ended up walking, in the rain, in what seemed to be the general direction of the port. so i got to see downtown Kobe, and the beautiful Rokko Mountains behind it, but i got very wet. and there was a stupid freeway in my way. but some intelligent person had built this great network of sidewalks, and then the Explorer appeared. it was hard to get back on, i can’t lie (though logistically much easier! no alcoholic crazies or long lines. and it really was good to see everybody. i missed people on my trip, i really did. hardest was saying goodbye to Aki and Megumi, our Japanese inter-port students. they waved and waved, and we set off for China.

Japan Part I: Tokyo Rising

Seeing as i never wrote about what happened AFTER they actually cleared the ship in Japan, i thought i should do that.
But then i realized some of the stories i never told.

the really special one was about how i got two birthdays - i wrote about birthday number 1, the GIANT ice cream cake from Mike, Lindsay, Benjamin, Deeanna, Carrie, Josh (JOSH?! he’s the yearbook guy, and i still can’t believe he was in on it. he loves to make fun of me) etc. But then the NEXT day Nancy and Jim, who are pretty much my parents by now, got me a cake that was supposed to be for our special lunch, but they accidently ordered for dinner, and they gave me a fantastic birthday present - not only was it wrapped in a beautifully folded and stitched map, but it had two things - one for buoyancy and one for well-being. the buoyancy one was an SAS rubber duckie, and the well-being one was a bunch of saltines. it was awesome. and then Kristin and Nikki and Brian and company dragged me along on their bridge tour, which was SO fun. we got to try on the captain’s hat and use the binoculars and everything and we saw DOLPHINS! and got to go out on the flying bridge, but my favorite part was learning about all our flags - i think i talked about that already. anyway, our tour guide was the great Bulgarian second-in-command. i couldn’t really understand him, but he was sure exciting.

anyway, after lots of not-so-secretive secretiveness, THEY got me a cake too. so we ate that, and then i went and fetched the Frankel children (Jake, 7 (i think), Sarah, 4, and Ellie, 2) and they helped me finish off Nancy and Jim’s cake (plus there was chocolate mousse for dessert - let’s not even GO there). for awhile after that Ellie just called me Cake. really, i think that’s why she likes me. i like her because she actually is one of the most adorable things that happened to the world.
ANYWAY - i’m trying to think of other misc. things that i may not have mentioned from the long Hawaii-Japan crossing - Doc Nancy gave a GREAT talk about her hard-core work for the National Park Service. i also think that i forgot to mention the fantastically bumpy night we had two nights before port. nobody died.

BUT THEN WE GOT TO JAPAN! and then we waited and waited and waited, as previously mentioned, and then at some point they cleared the ship and we waited and waited some more to clear customs, and then we finally poked our anxious little heads into the real world. i was on a tour of Yokohama and Tokyo, so we got on a bus. Benjamin was even a gentleman and let me have the window even though he was there first (that only lasted the afternoon though :-P ). we had a really nice guide name Yuki (i think?). our first stop was at these BEAUTIFUL gardens that were sort of in the middle of a neighborhood and some important guy’s property, and we didn’t even realize how nice it was to see GREENERY after all of that ocean!!! and to be able to walk for 500 feet without having to turn around or tackle a staircase. and we also got a free tour from an old tour guide named Sako who was very funny and little and cute. i climbed up the this pagoda and then we all had to SPRINT back to get to the bus on time! also, it turns out that Japanese tourists in Japan are almost the same as Japanese tourists not in Japan.

our next stop was Harborview Park, where we stood and looked at the neat skyline all around the bay, which is pretty cool, and marveled at how tiny the poor little Explorer looked from up there, and we also went to a cemetery for dead foreigners. all of this was on a high point in town where the streets were kind of excitingly narrow. our last stop in Yokohama was across town in the real CBD of the city, which was remarkably more Western-feeling than the rest of it was. we took a super-fast elevator to the 69th story of the tallest building in Japan and a wonderful view - from Mt. Fuji on one side to Tokyo on other back to our now even tinier-seeming ship on another. and then we went back down and through a fancy shopping mall and back to the bus, and then we went to Tokyo. the drive was actually really interesting for a couple of reasons. one is how INCREDIBLY built up it is. i mean, i thought that the Corridor was bad, but that’s nothing on this. the highway (not freeway cause it costs like a million bucks to use) is like a roofless, winding artery snaking through this crazy environment. also because we were along the river for a little ways, and there are these boat wards down on the water. and also because the sun was setting gorgeously and you could see Mt. Fuji in the background.

we checked into our rather fancy hotel and then Deeanna, Carrie, Ben and i went searching for dinner. we walked up and block and back along the block and back up and and back along it and FINALLY ended up at this weird “beer and restaurant” that was kinda smokey and gross and i was already pretty out of it and tired because i’d been up since 5 (0500) so i gobbled up some fried rice and stared into space for awhile, and then Ben started asking Carrie and Deeanna if they “had anybody at home”, but he never asked me, which for some reason struck me as kind of odd. we wandered for a little while after that. i drifted around, like i do sometimes...and then Deeanna and Carrie went back up and Benjamin and i walked the other direction. and we were real quiet for awhile - sometimes that really weird, but it wasn’t, really - and we talked a little bit too, and explored a little residential side street (it’s funny because i guess zoning is different; residential areas are right next to business areas). it was nice. then i went back to room, lay down, and feel asleep.

the next morning the girl who was supposed to be my roommate comes BURSTING in, wearing the going-out clothes she’d been wearing all night, in total hysteria because she’d just found out that one of her best friends from home and had died, and i got really nervous and gave her a hug and ran away to breakfast - rice and croissants, what a buffet. and then we all loaded up the bus but we were missing one, so there was an ordeal of trying to locate her, and then being unsuccessful, and then leaving really late. which was ok. and eventually she turned up at the ship.

our first stop was the Tokyo observatory, which was actually amazing way to see the city, to see the way it grew organically and endlessly and all over the place. Carrie and i and a few others took the wrong elevator and ended up in the wrong spot so we ran a BIG circles around the whole building and made the whole bus even later.

the next stop was Meiji Shinto Shrine, which is near this really fancy shopping street that kind of reminded me of a giant Nantucket, for some reason. the shrine itself is, of course, beautiful; we all even observed the purification rituals like good tourists.

to my best recollection, our next stop was the Imperial Palace outer garden, which is basically a park by two of the bridges over the moat. somewhere in that a bunch of people from our group got a bunch of schoolboys to take pictures with them - it seemed kind of odd. i think that Americans have a weird school uniform fetish, but that’s just my opinion.

then we went to lunch! aka, endless amounts of tiny-portioned food that quickly added up to making you very full. i, the one vegetarian, had two little salads, one little thing with and individually cooked potato, sweet potato and okra, rice, miso, some sort of eggplant thing, and assorted sauces.

after lunch we went to this major pedestrian old-fashioned kind of shopping area that reminded me REMARKABLY of an Middle Eastern souk. i walked around with a new friend from Toronto, Eva, and she even patiently helped me pick out a Japan pin. the street ended at a big temple that had beautiful paintings on the ceiling, and you could even get a fortune - if your fortune is good, you keep it, if it isn’t, you tear it into strips and tie it to a wire rack, and the monks come along and burn them.

our last stop was at Akihabara, ElectricTown. This kid Jeff and i decided to break of there to go to the train station. Jeff, it turns out, is one of those people who thinks he knows more than he does, and we proceeded to get incredibly lost in the train system. the thing that cracks me up about the Tokyo system is that the fare is also like the station number, and it’s the only recognizable thing on the map to a foreigner. and of course Jeff thought that we were going to be pushed onto the train, as tokyo is famous for that, but did not.

we did, however, get very lost in Tokyo main station. and stood in a lot of wrong lines, some of them multiple times. the real low point, though, was when Jeff asked the poor ticket lady (who didn’t speak English) for three sets of tickets. and then one of them wasn’t the right time, so he straightened that out but then the train that he wanted to get on was full, so he was like, oh never mind, so she took the tickets away, and then he was like, oh but i can i keep those just in case? and she looked SOOO confused. and then i said, me. Ninohe, Now. and she looked relieved, and sold me a ticket, an then it was pretty much over between me and Jeff, or, The Most Annoying Boy in the World.

and then i was alone in Tokyo main station. alll alone.

continued in part II!

Wet Arrival

Guess what?! We made it to Yokohama!

Guess what’s outside my window?! LAND!!!!!! as in, solid. as in, not moving. as in, halfway around the world from everything i’ve ever known. i mean, the ocean looks pretty much the same everywhere, so we didn’t notice. but the local alphabet does NOT.

i was so excited that it was hard to sleep last night - we’ve all been tired though because yesterday was our first big Global Studies test (meaning all 650 of us have to take it, some of us on dinner trays in the student union...and as i said in an email, the student union is the farthest thing forward short of the bridge on the 6th of 7 decks. think about the physics of that, and you’ll realize why two bathroom stalls just ain’t enough.) anyway, of course the night before when we were all trying to study we hit the remnants of a typhoon that’s been in the area, and the seas were the roughest they’ve been - the pool on the seventh deck was having tsunami issues, and the water was all over the deck (i guess we slowed down to miss the worst of it but then we had to speed up and go like 20 knots for a couple days, which is booking it). needless to say, we’ve all needed some good sleep. but yet i managed to wake myself up at 5 - it looked out my window like they were swabbing the upstairs decks, but in fact, it was just raining that hard. i pulled on all the waterproof-ish things i owned and headed up to the deck, but everybody coming down said that it was just too wet and cloudy. we tried 7 aft but there were about three feet of standing water! FINALLY my friend Bo and i found dry spots out on the lifeboat decks, and we watched, or at least heard, this major thunderstorm roll in, cross over us, and keep going, and just kept raining and raining and raining! in the foggy, murky distance we passed other ships, and you could see more as it got lighter, and then, at last, land! Tokyo Bay is humungous, so all we were really seeing was these distant rocky islets, and it was still hours to go, but we kept seeing more and more ships. i finally made it out to 7 forward where Cole (he’s famous as being the outspoken Ian Kennedy of this voyage, and slightly less annoying) and i were the only ones braving the wet for awhile (everyone else stared at us, warm and dry in the faculty/staff lounge). more and more people joined us and eventually we made it all the way into the bay, with city and industry and all kinds of trawlers and container ships and barges and pushers ALL around! it was SO cool! i saw the pilot hop on and then we raised our Japanese and under pilot sailing and quarantine flags (which we now all understand from our bridge tour! also we saw dolphins on our bridge tour! - did i ever mention that? but learning about the flags was my favorite). we wound in and under a GIANT new suspension bridge and then turned the whole freakin thing around and backed into the fancy fancy new terminal that has landscaping on top and all manner of people waving and shouting and music (including somewhere over the rainbow(?)) being pumped in (one guy shouted “Konnichi wa! Hello! buenos dias!”) and a big welcome to Yokohama sign, and Cole and I were all out with the crew, mostly the cooks, and they were all just as excited as we were. it was awesome.

after we pulled up some people came on board and there was a ceremony in which Capt. Jeremy got a plaque (this is Explorer’s first time Yokohama!!!!!) and a pretty piece of art and lots of people took pictures, and two girls in kimono presented us all with flowers and then a group did a Lion Dance, all drums and flutes and even the one guy who did fancy fancy moves with the drumstick in one hand while he drummed with the other. it was great. afterwards they let us, and some of our little kids, play them. it was sweet.

now we wait. to be cleared.

while we’re waiting, what else had happened lately? last night there was a talent show! that was fun. Except for an act that Jade and another kid were in that kind of made us all want to die. Jade looked like a muppet, and that’s all i have to say about that. there was some more TC and Aldrianna hula-ing (separately, and awesome as usual). And lots of other singing. two guys did show tunes one right after the other. and some other guys sang way off-key backup for Judy, who always sings right before port (her partner is the one known as Sparkles, who runs the field office. they’re both wonderfully buxom older women and make a lovely couple, really). it was great. i was sitting next to to Jeff and he always makes me laugh, or i make him laugh, and that’s fun. he and Nikki, btubs - TOTALLY hooking. up. hmm. i guess you guys wouldn’t really care about that.

also last night Doc Nancy the bio prof got out her super-duper will-blind-airline-pilots laser and pointed at some starts. also last night the whole ship smelled like fish, aka, downtown Boston. made me kinda homesick. and i’m sad that Japan means that our Japanese interport students, Aki and Megumi, are leaving :-( i like them.

also my roommate is the only other person i know besides me who consistently falls asleep with the TV on. interesting. when we got close to Japan on our little chart, the ship didn’t fit, so for awhile it looked like we were crashing into it.

UMMMM everybody just wants to get off the ship but for me it’s ok waiting. i’m just happy to see land and a gangway, which, oddly and excitingly enough, is on deck 5 instead of two, and looks almost like a jetway. this is a very fancy terminal indeed.

i really hope that i don’t offend anyone here by the fact that right now i smell like wet dog. but mostly, so does everybody else.

sometimes i get lonesome. i know i have lots of friends on the ship, but i’m not really a central part of anybody’s anything; it’s not like people ever come looking for me or anything, i’m just an added extraneous bonus sometimes, or a hinderance others. why does life feel like that sometimes?

anyway. back to blow-drying my pants.