good morning vietnam!

sippin' on a coconut in ho chi minh.

      My first day in Vietnam, my roommate and I decided to do everything that we possibly could fit into one day because both of us were leaving for Semester at Sea planned trips on the second day. We got off the boat first thing in the morning on a mission to find a tailor to make custom clothes for us. Vietnam tailors are famous for being able to replicate any of the high fashion outfits you might see on the runways for a fraction of the cost. After an overpriced cab ride and asking at least five different people for recommendations and then directions, we finally found a small shop in an unmarked alley. My roommate knew exactly what she wanted and had bought the fabric to make it with in Ghana. I, on the other hand, was totally unprepared. I thought I could just walk in point at the front of a People magazine or something they would have and say, “Make that!” It didn’t quite work like that.

            It was a tiny shop with barely enough room for the table with two sewing machines on it. There was a huge stack of probably 25 Vietnamese fashion magazines and the women that worked there knew maybe three English words, “dress,” “shirt,” and “skirt.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything I wanted enough to get made for me in the fashion magazines. My roommate had her measurements taken, handed the women a picture of what she wanted, and the fabric to make it with and hoped for the best. She was told to come back in 5 days. We left and started walking towards some Buddhist temples we had noticed on our way there but got sidetracked by these shops that sold knock-offs of designer brand clothing like Prada, Marc Jacobs and Miu Miu.

            The clothes were gorgeous and extremely well made. Yet, nothing in the entire shop exceeded 100 bucks. I kept doing the conversion from Vietnamese dong to dollars making sure I was getting it right. I tried on about half the store but quickly found the catch: that everything was made for munchkins.

            I found a beautiful pink strapless dress covered in petal-like ruffles. It looked fairly small but I needed to at least try to see what it would look like on. I squeezed it over my chest only to find that it would not budge over my hips. I was disappointed and started to tug my way out of it but realized after about three minutes of struggling that it wasn’t going anywhere. I was tired from the fight and decided to take a breather. I sat down in the dressing room with my arms over my head and the dress about a quarter of the way off. Not 10 seconds after I sat down, one of the women that worked in the store bursts into the dressing room with 4 more dresses for me to try on in her hands. Without a word, she put the dresses on the hook hanging by the door and started pulling and stretching the dress off of me. Maybe 20 seconds later, after little progress had been made, 2 more Vietnamese women entered the dressing room and start playing with the fabric, trying everything they could to get the dress off of me. Finally, the dress stretched its way over my head only after I stumbled my way, half naked, into the middle of the store, which had large windows at the entrance. Luckily, no one on the street noticed but the 3 women that worked in the store were dying with laughter. Oh goodness.

incense at the temple.

            After this debacle, we were on our way to visit the Buddhist temples. They were gorgeous with intricate carvings in the walls and incense burning from sticks and spiraling from the ceiling. We had worked up an appetite though and asked our cab driver to take us to “a good authentic Vietnamese restaurant that served pho” immediately after we finished there.

            Sidenote: The driver we had found spoke very good English and anything we spoke that he couldn’t understand, he immediately understood when we wrote it down. So, we asked him how he came to know English so well. His answer: American music. What was American music that taught you how to speak English? We didn’t understand. Just wait, he said. He clicked the play button on the CD player in the car. A few skips of the beat and…”We were both young when I first saw you…” Taylor Swift! Uh-mazing! I died as our Vietnamese driver belted T-Swift for us.

            Anyways…the place he took us for lunch was packed with locals. When you sat down at the table, the waiter immediately brought plates upon plates heaped with different little sides like bananas, fried breadsticks, and dumplings. Each thing cost no more than 2,000 dong, which would be the equivalent of about 8 cents in America. We tried everything, each had two bowls of Pho and larges beers and the total bill, for both of us together, came out to 7 dollars. It was by far the best meal I had during my time there.

            After lunch, we each got a 90-minute massage for 15 dollars. My first massage ever! The next one I get will have to meet some pretty high standards AND be no more than double the price of the first one.

'nam

            Reflecting on my experience in Vietnam over the past 5 days, a particular phrase, which I saw on a t-shirt, is the one thing that comes to mind: “Vietnam: A Country, Not a War.” Not that I personally see Vietnam in this way, and not assuming that the average American sees Vietnam in this way. But, I think there is some value to it. 

            I will be completely honest in saying that I did and, still, do not know that much about Vietnam. Yet, for as little as I know about Vietnam, I know less about the Vietnam War. So, it is kind of bizarre to visit this country whose history and, consequentially, present have had so much to do with your nation’s action/inaction in a time not too long ago and know nothing about how or why or to what capacity your country acted.

            Don’t get me wrong; my experience was full of powerful moments that had nothing to do with the war (i.e. eating my body weight in Pho, huge bowls of Vietnamese soup, every time I ate). But, after visiting the war museum (which they call the American War) in Ho Chi Minh City on my last day in Vietnam, it is difficult not to look back on my time there through the lens of the war.

jordan, summer, and i, at the infinity pool in singapore.

me, and my singapore sling.

sing a pore

            What’s up, Singapore?! We only had 12 hours in this fascination of a town. For those of you that don’t know, Singapore is a pretty cool place. Singapore is both a country and a city. It has a higher average income than the average per capita income in the United States. Actually much higher. I don't know the number, but you can tell. Everything there is about money. High-end retail stores are at every turn, swanky restaurants dot the streets, all taxi cabs are Mercedes and casual dress means business casual. It is one of the best planned cities in the world. I have taken a couple of classes on urban planning at Michigan and Singapore is constantly held up the ideal example of a well-planned city. Its public transportation system is more sustainably efficient and effective than any other system in the world. Many people live in large apartment style complexes designed to be small microcosms of the actual society. The percentage of residents in these complexes mirror the percentages of people in various income-levels, races, etc. in the larger Singaporean society. Going there, feeling like I was going to the holy grail of planning, led me to have very high expectations.

            In the end, I mostly got this eerie feeling of being in a bizarre utopia. Possibly, because it was too planned.  I felt (and the people I was with, who hadn't studied its mapped out streets and intricate metro system, noticed as well) that things just seemed to be working a little too smoothly. Everyone had money and was shopping or eating, living in opulence in some way. Everything was perfectly clean. I could have eaten off the floor of the metro station. Everyone was going somewhere with a purpose. No one was chatting or catching up on the side of the street. And no one was dancing because it is illegal to do that in public. It is also illegal to spit, practice homosexual acts, and own a car for more than 10 years.

            While I was there we crammed as much as you possibly could into 12 hours. I was exhausted by the time I returned to the boat. We went to the main shopping district and looked at the fancy designer stores. We went to see the Merlion fountain. They are obsessed with this half fish, half lion figure and this large statue of the mythical animal projects water from its mouth in the center of town. We went to China Town, which was weird because we are going to be there in a few weeks. We walked through a beautiful Buddhist temple. We had lunch at a place called a Hawker Centre. Just imagine a really clean supersized food court that serves awesome Pad Thai. We went to the Raffles Hotel, which is this beautiful old British style hotel. It was where the Singapore Sling was invented so we obviously got one. We ended our day sneaking up to the top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. This hotel is composed of 3 towers, each 57 stories tall. The towers are connected by a large structure on top of that 57^th floor, which resembles a boat. Extending across the entire length of that structure is a pool, which gives the illusion of spilling over the edge of the building. You are not allowed to the top unless you are a guest but we made some friends with the people on the elevator ride up and, once we realized that “we left our cards in our rooms," they were nice enough to offer to let us go to the pool with them.

            We spent our last couple of hours in Singapore watching the sun set from the pool. What a life.

Bailey and I at the merlion.

ridin' the rickshaw on our last day in delhi.

yogis and silk.

trying on a sari at the market!

        The last day of our organized trip, we were scheduled for a bus tour of the city with a few pit stops at temples and shrines along the way. A group of four of us decided we did not want to feel confined to the bus for one more hour so we checked out of the group, agreeing to meet back up with them at lunch. We hopped on the Delhi Subway and let it take us where it did. We spoke with a girl who recommended we get off at a “square in the center of Delhi with great food and shopping.” We were frustrated (but, at this point, not surprised) to find that she had led us straight to an area of town clogged with American stores and restaurants like Pizza Hut and KFC. Again, this seemed another instance of someone averting our gaze from the “real India.”

awesome umbrellas at the market.

            Once at the square, we spoke with a trowtrow (or rickshaw) driver who told us about a market that sold good food and more traditional Indian wares.  This time the recommendation was a little more along the lines of what we were looking for but the majority of people shopping there were obviously tourists. It was a fun place though and we had a great morning bargaining and eating our way through the market. We then met back up with the group around lunch to catch our flight back to Kochi.

            Our last day in India, I woke up at 6 AM to go to a yoga class in the old part of Cochin. It was 5 dollars for the 2-hour class, which included a wonderful, fresh, vegetarian breakfast. And, he got me to stand myself up on my head and hold it for 15 seconds! Don't laugh all you yoga nerds out there! It was a big deal for me! Afterwards, we explored Cochin a little more. We played cricket with some school kids and grabbed an amazing last lunch of curry chicken and flat bread with homemade ginger lime soda. I was literally able to leave India with a good taste in my mouth!

yoga-ing.

yeah, that's the taj.

shoot. that's the taj.

taj.0

The first morning in Agra we were woken up bright and early to see the sun rise at the Taj Mahal. It is here that blogging gets really hard. I wish I could communicate through words and pictures exactly what it was like to be there. But, somehow, I don’t feel that all the description I could possibly give would ever amount to the sum of its parts. I guess the experience I could most closely relate it to would be your first trip to Disney World, when you are about 4 years old. At 4, the world is still new enough that the littlest thing excites you. At the same time, Disney is this magical place full of things that would stir excitement in someone of any age, unless you were born without a heart. So, to go there at 4, is like finding out that magic is real. Its like learning that the tooth fairy exists because you saw her, you talked to her. She’s real.

            The morning was beautiful. There were not too, too many people there, so we were able to take in the grandeur of the entire structure without a million people crowding us. We left for lunch about 2 hours later. After lunch, we departed for a famous Buddhist temple an hour away. Unfortunately, we never made it there.

entrance the Taj Mahal.

            About a half an hour into the drive, our bus got caught in a traffic jam. Apparently, there had been an accident with two pedestrian fatalities and we couldn’t pass on the road that would take us to the temple. Amongst all the hubbub and confusion over the accident and while attempting to turn the bus around, evidently, our driver grazed the side of a car in front of us. The car’s driver was understandably an angry elf after this. He parked his car right in front of the bus, got out, ran on to our parked bus, took our keys out of the ignition and started running down the street. The crazy thing was that all of that all of this managed to happen without most of the people on the bus noticing. There was a windowpane separating the driver from the rest of the bus so most people were not bothered from their snoozes in the very least.

            I, on the other hand, was way too excited about this! Standing at the front of the bus, I watched the whole bizarre situation pan out in front of my eyes. I even tried to get off and settle the dispute myself but our tour guide, who had made it clear he was not too liberal about us even breathing in the "wrong air," would have nothing of it.

            This was India! A place where people’s cars get hit. And they get mad. And they steal keys and run for dear life down the street until you can’t see them anymore. India is not those souvenir shops where you can buy a marble elephant for 1500 rupees if you are American and 500 if you are smart, from their tiled, air-conditioned shop with a creative name of something like “Taj Mahal Textile Mall.” Don’t get me wrong, India is those shops. But, it was moments like this that made me feel like maybe there was a lot more to India that, at least, I did not see at first or even second or third glance.

being a photgrapher.

My vision of me, in Julia Roberts' body, hopping off a rickshaw to meet the boat on the last day, with a tummy full of tandoori chicken, henna covering my arms, a bindi on my forehead and a new ohm charm necklace that I had gotten from that yogi who lived in that asham high up in the hills of Kochi, seemed to be getting fading. Maybe I was wrong to think this way.  Maybe I put too much expectation on India. But, I do know that the reality could not have been further from my vision. My sight was averted towards the clean hotels, the Taj Mahal, the full spread buffets, the futuristic buildings American and European companies had built in downtown Delhi. I refuse to believe that is India.

Eventually we got our keys back and were on our way. We had lost a lot of time in this debacle so we quickly drove to and walked through Fort Agra, which was a large fort built by the son of the emperor who had built the Taj Mahal. We made our way back to the Taj Mahal for sunset. At that point it was much more crowded but still awesome. A group of three of us just sat on a platform facing the front of the Taj Mahal, soaking in the scene for our entire time there.

That night, we boarded a train back to Delhi where we stayed for the night.

this is real life.

a flower necklace we were given when we arrived in Delhi.

The third morning of our stay in India, I prepared to embark on our journey to the Taj. The entire idea of the trip seemed sort of surreal. Leaving for a trip to the Taj Mahal is not something you think ever actually happens. Like, you know you will make a trip to Disney World at some point in your life, and, if your from Flo-rida, maybe Disneyland, maybe Mount Rushmore, Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, etc., etc. But, the Taj Mahal? It's kind of special.

I say this not discounting the length of the journey to get there. Its not like it’s a short hop, skip and a jump from Kochi (which is already in India) and bam you’re there. Kochi (which is another name for Cochin, for all you India newbs out there) is near the southern tip of India. The Taj Mahal is in Agra, about 125 miles south of Delhi in the far north of the country. Our flight to Delhi was 4 hours long. From Delhi, you must take a 4-hour train ride to Agra.

the train to Agra.

Because of the travelling, that first day was kind of miserable. After catching our 6 AM flight to Delhi, Semester at Sea organized a bus tour of the city. I am not sure how much I agreed with their decision to bus around a group of 20 college students…and about 6 lifelong learners and professors, on a tour bus that we never got off of  for 3 hours directly after a 4-hour flight. From our bus tour, we went straight to a buffet lunch of Indian food set aside for us in the private dining room of a hotel.
Both of these parts of our itinerary pay testament to what I was saying earlier, about wanting to run behind the store fronts and see the "real India." But, at least before, the way in which that stuff was being hidden from us was organic and unplanned. Now, it was as if we were paying to be shielded from the nitty, gritty parts by staying on a tour bus the entire time we were in Delhi and eating in a room completely isolated from other Indian diners. The real, nitty, gritty that I, personally, was dying to see.
From lunch we went to the Ba’hai temple. This is known world wide to be magnificent and,       admittedly so, it is. Fun fact: there are 6 Ba’hai temples in the world and a Ba’hai shrine and gardens in Haifa, Israel. I have been lucky enough now to visit 2 temples and the shrine. Semester at Sea Part 2: Ba’hai Temples of the World? I need to finish my list! Ba’hai is a pretty cool faith, though. For those of you who don’t know that much about it, I highly recommend checking it out on Wikipedia. Actually, here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27hai. Enjoy.

Madison, Theresa and I at the Ba'hai Temple.

I was frustrated, though, because we were shuffled through this amazing place. Being there was was really powerful, too. On the tour, they give you a brief history of the building and the religion and then allow you to enter the sanctuary. It is dead silent and no one is allowed to wear shoes. Inside, there are people from all over the world, of all different faiths, sitting in silence, meditating and praying and thinking. How cool is that? So, we sat in the sanctuary for not 2-minutes before our trip leader motioned that it was time to go. We were shuffled back on to our air-conditioned bus and brought to the train station to catch our train. I wasn't even allowed to see that part of India. 

Four hours later we arrived in Agra, weary but still excited to be in India. We met another bus and were brought to certainly the nicest Radisson I have ever stayed in. The bed was literally the best bed I have ever slept in and, in the morning, we had a full spread buffet of American and Indian foods. I tried kiwi yogurt, which must be illegal in the United States because it is so good they should have it, yet, I have never seen it.  BUT, I was staying at what I would consider a 5-star resort in India. I had been shuffled through a temple and taken pictures of slums from the window of a bus the entire day and was now staying in an amazingly comfortable bed with perfectly white linens. This was India?

I went to bed in mattress heaven but with this weird craving to have dirt under my finger nails, eat with my hands, and be hugged by someone who hadn't bathed in at least a couple of days. I wanted to be uncomfortable and know there was no way I was making it through the entire night of sleep. Does that make any sense?

a street in Delhi we saw on our bus tour that I would have died to walk down.

the baby taj.

jew city.

The second day, my friend Madison and I embarked on a second attempt at Indian adventure. We hopped in a rickshaw and asked the driver to take us to what the locals refer to as “Jew Town.” Here you will find a bunch of Jewish curio shops surrounding a Jewish synagogue built in the 1500s.

Our driver understood where we wanted to go and that we wanted to go straight there. Yet again, this driver attempted to take us to some government-approved tourist mills. We were smarter today, we had adapted. We held our ground and refused to get out of the rickshaw each time he began to slow down. Once we reached “Jew Town,” we thanked our driver and let him be on his way.

We stuck around this area for the day, exploring the synagogue, eating good Indian food and browsing the stores and art galleries they have near by. The synagogue was not more than a small open-air room that could fit maybe 100 people. Apparently there are only nine Jews left in Cochin, and this synagogue is the only one for thousands of miles. The tour was extremely uninformative so I would love to be able to tell you more about the Jewish history in Cochin, but I frankly have no clue. Yet, it was interesting walking around and just processing the implications of this synagogues existence. 

We returned back to the boat for the night, made sure we were packed up for the next morning and laid down for what was more of a brief snooze than anything, as we had to be up at 4 AM to depart for New Delhi.

Madison and I at the synagogue in Cochin.

pet monkeys and chai.

rickshaw ridin'!

The first morning in India, a group of about 11 of us decided we wanted to find the backwaters of Cochin. Apparently, if you asked a rickshaw to take you to Alleppy, they would take you to a riverboat that you could rent for a few hours and cruise down a beautiful river with quaint villages along the way. The problems started immediately. Rickshaws, which are basically motorcycles with a small car on the top, only hold, at most, four people. So, our group had to split up. I ended up in a rickshaw with two other people and our driver said he would charge us 50 rupees, which is about 1 dollar, to take us to the backwaters.

We were off. However, we were confused, when we stopped at maybe three Hindu temples and our driver implored to get out and take pictures at each, rather than taking us straight to the backwaters. After the third temple, we explained to our driver, who spoke fairly good English, once again, that we wanted to go the backwaters. He nodded in agreement, obviously understanding what we were asking him, and even agreed to stop at an ATM along the way so we could get some money. At this point, it seemed clear that we would not see the rest of our group again for the rest of the day. We cut our losses and got back in the rickshaw.
Yet, the next place he brought us to was a high-end shopping store. It had three levels, tile floors, a guard, and prices that were comparable to, if not, higher than prices in the United States. They sold everything from saris to scarves to small Buddhas carved out of wood to large metal statues of horses (which was high on my list of things to buy during my time in India, obviously). We reminded him of our conversation not 5 minutes before and he remembered but promised that if we just took a look at this one shop quickly, he would take us directly to an ATM.

He did as he promised and took us to an ATM right away, right after we walked through the store. We had enough money to go to the backwaters now and told him, for a final time, to take us straight there. He understood and, so, logically, took us to his house where we meet his two children and one of his nephews. I wasn't disappointed in this. His children were so excited to meet us and by the end of our visit were nearly in shock just from the excitement. Afterwards, some the kids who lived on his block let us play cricket with them! I'm not going to be a professional cricket player any time soon.

me, at the rickshaw driver's house!

We were in much higher spirits after this but still determined to get to the backwaters. Our driver assured us, once we left his house, that we were going straight to the backwaters. Apparently, though, “straight there” meant we were stopping at about ten more shops like the first one we had stopped at. After about the 5th shop, we were getting extremely frustrated and disappointed. It was apparent that our driver was receiving some sort of stipend for bringing us to each of these places, even if we did not buy anything, because all of the other rickshaw drivers seemed to be doing the same thing with the foreign tourists they picked up. After all was said and done, it was nearly two o’clock and we had wasted most of our day. It was only after we threatened to pay him is 50 rupees and find our own way to the backwaters that he agreed to take us there.

We met a man at the banks of the river who said he would take us out in his canoe for two hours. After the fact, I think we all realized that this probably was not even the backwaters we had been looking for and more of a small inlet that we just rowed back and forth on for the entire two hours. Regardless, the man who took us around told me all about his family, how arranged marriages work, how he feels about what he sees as western culture seeping into Indian society and what his life has been like living in his quiet village just outside of Cochin for his entire life. Afterwards, he invited us into his home and gave us some chai and biscuits. As much as I enjoyed talking to him, I was still somewhat skeptical of the situation since our driver had taken us there and it was pretty evidently not the most legitimate river boat business.

Our driver headed back towards Cochin and finally did exactly as we requested in taking us to an authentic local restaurant. For once, we were the only foreign people somewhere and the food ended up being amazing. We all were starving since we had not eaten all day. We each ordered two meals and our waiter kept misunderstanding us and bringing us cups of chai. Yet, when we got the bill, it ended up being less than three dollars for our meals all together.

one of the temples we were brought to.

After dinner, we were determined to find a baby monkey. We had heard that, in India, people buy and keep as pets monkeys that are small enough to fit in your pocket. Semester at Sea specifically told us that we were not allowed to bring these back on the boat. So, for all you SAS administrators out there, I swear my intention was not at all to buy one. Come on? Who would really want a baby monkey to play with and take care of and dress in baby monkey clothes when you are bored on the ship for those long stretches at sea? We simply wanted to see if these infamous monkeys actually exist.

We were skeptical but thought it was worth trying to see if our cab driver knew where to find these little guys. He assured us he knew exactly where to find them. Yet again, we were brought to a number of these government-owned shops, all like the first ten or so we had been to and all of which did not sell or even have baby monkeys. We finally went to “one last shop” in our quest to find baby monkeys. The shop was closing for the day but the owner kept it open for a couple more minutes to show us his “baby monkeys.” We were led through a maize of the same paraphernalia we had seen all day to a back room…filled with tiny wooden statues of monkeys. We had finally reached the supposed grail of baby monkeys and realized we had been completely misunderstood.

At the end of the day, we were brought back to the boat.  And our driver let us know that it would be twenty dollars for the entire day. Amongst the three of us this price was a pittance in comparison to what it would have been to do the same thing in the United States. However, the fact that he had not been up front about the price from the beginning and considering we had offered to pay him numerous times throughout the day and he refused, insisting on taking us to just one more place, was unsettling. We paid him but made it obvious that we had felt misled.

It ended up being a good day but we learned a number of lessons. I think all of us had seen, behind the storefronts and lines of rickshaws, an India we had wanted to see but were shielded from for one reason or another. I wanted to run behind those storefronts and have the real, true, gritty India. Unfortunately, the rest of my trip would also be marked by my suppression of this urge, as well.

eat pray love?

India. Wow. Where do I begin? I guess I should start by both reminding and explaining to you just how excited I was and blessed I felt to be getting off the boat in India. For one, the fact that this Spring 2012 voyage was going to India was a huge drawing point when I was considering the program in the first place. Then, when I received my passport from the travel company without my Indian visa, I was extremely disappointed. And, finally, when I got my visa in Ghana, I was all the more stoked about getting there. There was just so much emotion leading up to the moment when I arrived in India that stepping off the boat was a very powerful thing. Not to mention, my mind was wrought with expectation about India and what my experience there would be like.
I have never read the book or seen the movie Eat, Pray, Love. But, I have an image in my head of what India is supposed to be. I mostly imagine myself in Julia Roberts' body (thank you, Hollywood) running around India, doing all sorts of things I would never do otherwise, meeting all sorts of amazing people and ultimately discovering myself...and the meaning of life. At some point, I would go to an ashram and a yogi would tell me I have a beautiful aura and we would meditate and smoke crazy drugs (or maybe not, maybe just burn incense or something, it depends on the type of yogi that he is) for like three days and then I would know everything I need to know about the world and myself. I would go to the Taj Mahal with...ok, I have thought this out a little too much. But, you get my point, and you may even have the same image in your head.

Well, my experience was far from what I imagined it would be, in ways that were both good and bad. I am still processing how everything that I saw and the way in which I saw them impacted me. So begins the tale of “Sara Takes on India (in a bus that has “Tourist” written on it in big block letters).”

we've only got 4 hours to save the world.

Right now, I am sitting on the observation deck on the 7^th floor at the front of the ship. For all you future SASers out there, take advantage of this place. It is easy to forget that it exists but don’t! I wish I could record a video and then post it so you all could get some idea of what it is like out here right now. I am the only person up here so it is dead silent other than the rumble of the engine and the waves breaking against the boat. The waters are, for the most part, calm right now (knock on wood!) and its pretty dark but the moon is full and huge! It’s shining on the water and illuminating what looks like this perfect little road from the front tip of the ship to the point where the moon is exactly above the ocean and the stars are so freakin’ visible out here it is insane! The light from the moon is highlighting the outline of this patch of clouds just ahead of us. I wish there were enough words to explain this to you right now. Anyways…

Today, we went to Mauritius. I say that statement not discounting the fact that two days ago, I did not think I would ever say it. Right after we left South Africa, things got a little rough. Actually, a lot rough. We were chasing a cyclone, which is a hurricane but in the southern hemisphere (these things seem to follow me). So, for the past six days, we have been rockin’ ‘n rollin’ our way through the Indian Ocean (not to mention that I have been popping Dramamine like it is my job and putting on seasickness patches like they are going out of style). Well, two days ago, our captain announced that since we had to slow down so much from the rough waters that we would not be able to go to Mauritius. This news sounded like someone dragging chalk over a chalkboard for maybe two minutes (and that is a long time. think about it.) to someone like me, who had been battling the forces of nature for the past six days. Eleven days on a boat in cyclone-y waters is not cool. Anyways, somehow, by some miracle, Semester at Sea pulled through and figured out a way for us to have four hours on land.

the crew. at the summit of our hike in mauritius.

In my opinion, the fact that we were only there for four hours was a gigantic blessing is disguise. It made today one of the most exciting, remarkable days of this journey yet. A group of five of us had decided last night that we wanted to go for a hike. We had heard there was a hike called Le Pouce, but no one on the boat had any idea how long it was or how far away it was from the ship. We took our chances, met at 7 AM this morning to be some of the first people off of the ship, found a taxi, asked the driver how long it would take us to get there and hike it and, when we agreed that it sounded feasible, were off.

Past SAS voyages have been known to rent catamarans for the day. They bar-b-que and drink all day off the coast of Mauritius, which, I have heard, has topography very similar to Hawaii. Those who had decided to do that this voyage, realized it wouldn’t be reasonable to do in just four hours and decided to hang out on the beach instead. As relaxing as that sounded, I was so happy we had decided to do the hike. Afterwards, we had just enough time to buy a couple of things in town and grab a bite to eat.

Four hours is such a short amount of time. In a different context, I would hear that I had four hours to do anything and choose to let it pass by. But, the cool thing about today was that we had four hours, we took things as they came, but still spent every second to the fullest. Maybe this is completely obvious to some people, but I hope it’s not too obvious because I think it is a pretty cool thing that can be easy to forget in our technologically centered lives. If you think about it, our lives are made up of a bunch of “four hours." That being said, I challenge you to push the limits of what you can do in any given “four hours.”

africa del sur.

           
         Our safari was incredible. The lodge we stayed at only housed 18 guests at a time and really did everything to make you feel like a part of their family while you were there. Everyone staying there had meals together, which included coffee, biscuits and fruits before the morning drive, and full spread for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We would leave for our morning drive at 6 in the morning, return around 9 or 10 and then go out again for our afternoon drive just after lunch at 4, returning at 8 or 9. We would go out in these large roofless Land Rovers that seat up to eight people. 
           Every day we saw new animals. We saw leopards, wild dogs, elephants, wildebeests, water buffalo, lions, giraffes, and more that I forget! And, they were literally right outside of the lodge. We would come back from our drive to see elephants wandering around the grounds of the lodge. In fact, we had to be escorted from one building to the next, at night, in case there was an animal around camp.

Everything about the lodge made me feel like I was in paradise. The rooms were not actually rooms but huts with outdoor showers, a large bathtub that they filled every night before we came back from the afternoon drive, and a fully stocked snack bar and mini-bar. The entire atmosphere was so relaxed it made it so hard to leave after three nights.

safari-ing.

            The morning of the fourth day, I went on the morning drive and then had to say bye to my parents who were staying one more night and then continuing on to another lodge. I was so happy I had gotten to see them and it was sad to say bye.

I was driven from the lodge to the landing strip to catch the small bus plane, which would take me to meet the larger plane I needed to catch back to Cape Town. After our first stop in the bus plane, it dawned on me that I had left my passport in the safe at the lodge! Visions of me being in Cape Town but not being able to get back on the boat and flashbacks of the Indian consulate in Ghana popped into my head. NOOOOO! As soon as I could, I told the pilot and, by some miracle, he contacted the resort, they got my passport and drove it the 25 minutes to the landings strip where we were waiting for them, all in time to catch our plane to Cape Town. Only in Africa, I guess. Or maybe, never in America...

I arrived in Cape Town, with my passport, a couple of hours later. I made my way to Cape Town University, were I got to spend the night with my friend Leah, who is studying abroad there. We walked around campus and then had dinner with some of her friends from her study abroad program. The next morning, we woke up early, took a cab to this amazingly beautiful beach called Klifton Beach. We had an breakfast at a gorgeous café and then walked on the beach until Leah had class. When Leah left, I took a cab to meet the boat. It was an amazing day. An amazing end to an amazing port.

Leah and I.

my parents and i, in cape town.

this time for africa.

our first day in cape town.

           South AFREECA! Now, let me preface this entry by saying that I had wanted to study abroad in South Africa since the beginning of my sophomore year of college. I have just felt for a long time that a piece of my heart lies there. For one reason or another, it did not work out and I ended up on Semester at Sea. Not too bad of a bad place to end up. But, my point is, I was very excited for this port. So, when I found out that my 21^st birthday was going to land right in the middle of our time there, things got real. Then, the cherry on top…my parents came to meet the boat in Cape Town.

            We got off the boat at 8 A.M., when I immediately met up with my parents. We went on a tour of the city. We visited a paper mill that employs women in the hope that they will become economically and socially independent. We saw penguins on a beach called Boulder’s Beach. We ate lunch at a wharf. And we walked to the top of the Cape Point, which is the southwestern most point in South Africa. It was a busy but beautiful day.

            We got back to the hotel with just enough time to change before dinner, where we met up with 3 of my friends from the boat and one of my dearest friends from college, Leah, who is studying abroad at the University of Cape Town this semester. We went to a restaurant called Gold, which served a 14-course meal of traditional dishes from across Africa and had performers that sang songs and got us to dance with them. So much fun. After dinner, we met up with a bunch of other students from Semester at Sea for a night out in Cape Town.

            My parents and I were up early the next morning to catch a flight to the bush for a safari! Once we reached Nelspruit airport, in the middle of Kruger National Park, we had to catch a small plane that would take us to our lodge’s landing strip. I was surprised when we got in the plane though and the pilot explained that it would work kind of like a bus and we would be dropping people off along the way with small 10-20 minute flights in between. Quite the experience. Quite the experience.

my 21st birthday party.

"i love my life"

We were woken up bright and early, at 7 a.m., the next morning for breakfast at the home stay, which was porridge and white bread with peanut butter. Carb city. From there we went to a primary school where we were divided into classrooms, two per classroom. This was an awesome experience. My class was mostly 10-year olds. We sang songs like “Waving Flag” and “Umbrella” and I showed them pictures on my iPhone. They were most amazed by the pictures of my family and it did not dawn on me until we left that I probably seemed like this white alien from outer space. But, when they saw those pictures, they realized it had a family, just like them. I was a person. It was a really amazing experience.

my friends from school.

That afternoon we went to a market where we bargained for prices and got some pretty legit Ghanaian clothes and knick-knacks.
The next day, I had a field trip for class at a radio station called Radio Ada. This place was amazing. 65% of the listeners of Radio Ada are illiterate. Thus, Radio Ada is the main mode through which they get all of their news and information about the world outside of Ada, a small area right outside of Accra. As another part of the FDP, we went to the salt fields right outside of Ada, where the local people, mostly children, dig large troughs in the salt rich earth, allow them to fill with water when it rains, then wait for the water to evaporate in order to collect the salt which they pile up across the 36 square mile expanse that the fields cover. This is a major problem in this area because children have to incentive to go to school when they could be making 25 cedi a day, about 17 American dollars, working in the salt fields.

speaking with adjoa, a reporter at radio ada, at the salt fields.

The final day in Ghana, I had another field trip to the slave castles and dungeons. The Cape Coast and El Mina castles of modern day Ghana were the biggest slave ports in Africa during the time of the slave trade. Over 20 million slaves went through these ports, mostly headed for the United States and the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. Today, visiting the castles is a very bizarre experience. First off, they are called “castles,” when in reality they are probably closer to forts where enormous atrocities took place. Also, they are located in this picturesque location, which reminded me of the beaches in Santa Barbara, California. To walk around the castles listening to the stories of the crimes that took place there and simultaneously enjoying the scenery feels completely unnatural. The unease of this feeling did not go away at lunch served on the beach to a group of about 60 of us.
At the entrance to the largest slave holding cells in of the Cape Coast Castle were two plaques. One which read "In ever lasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetuate such injustice against humanity. We, the living, vow to uphold this." On the other side of the entrance was a plaque commemorating President Obama's visit in 2009. I wondered, why Obama? Was his visit as important, as prophetic, as the words etched in the marble plaque to its right? Was there so much hope in America, in a black president in America, that it was necessary to create a whole plaque? How? Why? So many thoughts were running through my mind.
There was so much to think about at these castles. I couldn't understand it. I left that day with an eerie feeling and more questions than answer about Ghana and the world. I returned to my safe floating hunk of America, with a buffet of endless food, without the fear of eminent danger or war, with the assurance that I would most likely have everything I could need to subsist for the rest of my life.

how to survive.

‘Ay mates! I just finished my amazing stay in South Africa and cannot wait to tell all of you all about it. But I need to finish Ghana first. Since I am falling behind here, I am going to give you the SPARKnotes version of Ghana, keeping all the best parts. So…

My fist night in Ghana. We had just finished eating our fufu and helping to clean up, when Olivia, Elizabeth’s daughter and Benne’s sister, suggested that we go to a local pub. It was a fun place with Ghanaian music and dancing and minimal foreigners (which is a good thing!). But, once we got there, Olivia told us we only had a half an hour before we had to leave. So when that flew by and we were told half of us (of which I was a part of) would be staying in a hostel and the other half at the house (since all of us could not fit at the house), I was a little disappointed. The entire group walked to the hostel and Olivia and Benne left us to take everyone else back to the house. The group of us staying at the hostel decided we wanted to go back to the pub, which was right down the street, for a little bit longer. Don’t worry, mom and dad, it was a group of seven, three of which were large guys over 6’2.’’ We left the hostel and as we made our way back to the pub, ran into some other SAS (Semester at Sea) students.

I am not telling this part of the story because I want to make anyone look bad or get anyone in trouble, I just feel that it is worth telling because I learned a lot from it and it will probably change my outlook for the rest of the voyage. The students we ran into were very drunk. One of them had thrown up multiple times around the bar and the last of the Ghanaian customers were clearing out, out of disgust. His friends were trying to help to just get him outside but were failing miserably because they were doing a better job of laughing, finding the situation hilarious, and eating the ridiculous amounts of hamburgers, french fries and pizza they had ordered from the bar. In the mean time, another member of this motley crew wandered down the street and angrily punched in a store window. He came back to the bar covered in blood, alleging he had “fallen on the ground and his hand landed on a broken bottle.” We learned different when the storeowner appeared 30 seconds behind him, screaming in Ga, a local language, about this “crazy American.”

I didn’t know how to react to this situation and just became numb. I am a reasonable person. And I respect and support people that want to have fun. I like to have fun. Yet, I have never been so embarrassed in my life. I was embarrassed for Americans. My entire life I have heard of stereotypes about Americans being loud, inconsiderate, culturally insensitive, egocentric, piggish, but I have never wanted to believe it and, frankly, have never had a reason to believe it. I have been privileged enough to be surrounded by people who are more or less attuned to how their actions may appear to and effect others. In Ghana, drinking is not a very popular thing, mostly because the average person cannot afford a drink, much less than food, a house, etc. Most likely for the same reason, it is extremely uncommon and improper to be drunk in public.
I was embarrassed for the Semester at Sea program. In the past, people have called Semester at Sea a "booze cruise." Since it became the sponsor university of the ship, University of Virginia has worked hard to erase that reputation, stressing the academic value of traveling the world and opening the eyes of its students to the many great things we can experience in each country. Whether or not you complete buy into everything Semester at Sea preaches to us, it seems nothing short of a waste of time to be spending your time in a Ghanaian hospital because you broke a storefront window out of drunkenness when you are in this amazing, beautiful place.
We are responsible for only our actions, and our actions alone, to a certain extent. Prior to this event, I felt that just being myself, respecting and experiencing the cultures of each place that we go, would be enough to show that Americans and Semester at Sea students are more than just inconsiderate, drunks. But, I can see how a reputation is formed and can also see that maybe it means that I, and those like me, should go a little bit out of our way to correct that reputation by connecting with each culture and people that we encounter in the upmost. I am not positive yet but I think that may be one of the biggest lessons that I will learn on this voyage.

I don’t know how well I stuck to the SPARKnotes version with that one. Oops. I promise to keep it concise with the next one.