I figured I should write one last little reflection type blog now that the voyage is officially over and I'm sitting at home with full access to internet, cellphone, and food other than potatoes. Tomorrow is actually the one year anniversary of the day I decided to do Semester at Sea and told my mom (almost made her crash the car whoops sorry mom). It's unbelievable that now I'm sitting here back from the most incredible journey of my life. I'm gonna give a few lessons I learned, maybe some future study abroad student will read them and learn something, or former abroad people will read them and relate, or somebody will read it and think I'm really stupid, I don't know. But here are some of the main things I learned the semester I peaked.
1. FLEXIBILITY- That was the motto of the Fall 2014 Semester at Sea voyage and it was definitely fitting. Whether it's something small like trying to figure out which attractions to visit in Paris or our entire voyage being changed and losing the chance to go to Senegal and Ghana, you gotta be flexible. Sometimes you are travelling with a group and people want to do different things, it's okay to split up and it's probably worth it. I've learned that unexpected things happen but you just gotta go with it, if you dwell too much on certain trivial things you're not going to enjoy the chances you do have. I was super bummed about not going to Senegal and Ghana but we went to Italy and Barcelona, yeah it wasn't what we expected but I can name a hell of a lot of people who have never been to either of those countries. Enjoy the ride folks.
2. Technology is actually not as important as you think- To be honest I thought there was a pretty high chance I was going to die without internet. I may or may not have had a slight panic attack when I shut my phone off on the plane to London since I knew it wasn't coming back on until Florida. Social media is my life, I mean, let's be real my actual job was social media back at Bentley. It ended up being one of the greatest parts about being abroad. Sitting at dinner with people and getting to know them and looking people in the eye, it's a novel concept, I know. I'm glad I got to spend all that time away from the internet. Not knowing celebrity gossip for a few months was definitely worth all I got out of it. It is a little inconvenient to send the "I'm leaving wifi hopefully I'll see you there" text but it was so freeing. You also learn how to read a paper map which is a great skill.
3. Budgets are always a good idea- I actually came home with money still in my bank account, not much, but some. Chances are you will go over your budget and that's okay, I gave myself a kind of low budget just because I expected it. There are some things you don't really factor in when you're preparing to go abroad. Hostels, as cheap as they are, add up. Taxis are expensive. You do have to eat, and you will want to eat well. Splurge sometimes, don't miss out on experiences because you didn't factor it into your budget but be smart about what you are splurging on.
4. Journal- It's really hard to keep up with a journal when you're traveling so much. I'm guilty of falling behind on mine and I'm really upset with myself. I did better than a lot of people I know but I wish I had written more about the random nights on the ship when we were just hanging around or when something stupid or funny happens. It's those little things that are my favorite memories but I forgot to write them down.
5. Talk to locals- Locals are cool, they know shit. Plus they'll tell you all the sick places to visit and are usually really friendly.
6. Do stupid shit- Sorry adults you can skip this one. Don't get arrested or hospitalized, that's really stupid. But enjoy yourself and do stuff you wouldn't normally do that maybe isn't the best idea but it seemed like it at the time...
7. Make friends- If it wasn't for the incredible people I met along this crazy ride this experience wouldn't have been even close to as amazing as it was. Especially on the ship, but abroad in general, you have the chance to meet new people and create new friendships. Whether they're from your school and you weren't friends before or they live all the way across the country, you can meet some really great people. You get to know more about these people in under four months than you know about a lot of your friends from home. I can't thank my friends enough for the memories we've shared. WARNING: Leaving your new friends might be one of the top saddest days of your life. But on the bright side you have new places around the country to visit.
There's loads of little lessons that I could go on about for ages like make travel plans in the country before (shit sells out), wear a money belt, you don't need as many clothes as you think, take an absurd amount of pictures, back up your computer periodically, ship breakfast burritos are incredible..okay I'm done.
A final thank you to my loyal fans for reading this blog, I haven't read any of the posts but I can only imagine that there are quite a few spelling/grammatical errors, run on sentences, and absurdly long paragraphs. Thanks for sticking with me and helping me feel like somebody actually cared.
Peace out.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Cuba Libre
Okay, sorry for the delay I know people have been waiting on this one but I'm just in denial about being home. It's now been two weeks since getting off the ship I can't believe it, I still wish I could go back everyday. Not that I didn't miss home (don't attack me fam) but can you honestly blame me? Living on a ship with 600+ college students visiting a new country every couple days, I think I'll miss it forever.
If I had written this blog a week ago it would've been totally different. Cuba was by far one of my favorite countries I visited, I think a large part of that was based on the fact that I really had no idea what to expect. Any thoughts I did have about Cuba were definitely all wrong. It was the most friendly place we've been. All of the people, regardless of how well they spoke English (seeing as I couldn't speak any Spanish) did their best to make all of us feel comfortable and were willing to answer any questions, show us around, or just have a conversation. When I was leaving I was saying goodbye to some of the friends I had made, and both Cubans and Americans expressed how much we hoped that one day, we could see each other again. For many, communicating through email or other forms is impossible because very few people in Cuba have access to internet, therefore this was a permanent goodbye as far as we knew. Within a few days after returning home to the US, the news broke of the changed relations between our country and theirs. This was really exciting for all of us from SAS because it was one of the countries nearly all of us want to go back to the most.
I've been asked many times by people, "How were you even allowed to go to Cuba?" Semester at Sea has a special agreement where we are allowed to visit Cuba as an educational visit. We were awoken the morning of the 29th with our Dean beginning to call out seas to go pick up their passports. We then had to go to the union where leaders from the University of Havana came to welcome us to the country, I ended up in the piano lounge because there wasn't enough room in the union.
After the talks, the entire shipboard community filed out onto buses to go to the college for more events. When we got there many students from the school were on the stairs leading onto this part of the campus to greet us. We then walked up the stairs as "Imagine" by John Lennon played over speakers (they love Lennon) and we then listened to opening remarks on a stage set up in their quad. After they finished talked we dispersed into three groups, we were allowed to choose from 3 different lectures to attend about culture, politics, or the economy. I chose to attend the culture one having studied the politics and economy in the days on the ship leading to our arrival. After the lecture we went back out to the quad where music was playing and everyone was singing. Both SAS and University of Havana students were dancing together, it was pretty cool. Once everyone's lectures got out we got to watch some performances by students, there was some singing and some dancing. I got a chance to talk to some nice University students about what life is like in Cuba and tell them about our voyage, one of them even offered to let me check my Facebook on his computer since he was a computer science student and unlike most, has internet access. Unfortunately, we had to get back on the buses and return to the ship.
To get back on the ship we had to wait in a super long line since everytime we got onto the ship we had to put our bags through a scanner, get our passports checked, then go through ship security and this was the entire shipboard community. They had soup and sandwiches for people to eat for lunch except with the mad rush of people there was not enough food so I continued to starve. At four in the afternoon we went back to the union for our last lecture about Cuba. This time it was from an American ambassador in Cuba. Honestly, he was kind of a douche and was pretty rude.
Once the lecture finally ended we hung around a bit then ate dinner. That night, there was a big gathering in the square in Old Havana, about a five minute walk from our ship. We went out and there was already a lot of SAS kids and locals out in the square. There was music playing and people were performing, it was a really fun atmosphere. I got the chance to talk to a bunch of locals, they were all really friendly and happy to talk to us. Also, luckily for a lot of us, most of them spoke English really well. As the night went on and the crowd in the square thinned out we made our way back to the ship for bed.
The next morning we slept in later than we'd expected to although we had stayed out pretty late and had been woken up really early the day before so it was much needed. Once we got off the ship, we went back towards the square we had been at the night before. Ayah and I went off to go shop in some of the little stores around the area. We wouldn't be allowed to purchase anything to bring back to the US that wasn't "artwork or educational materials" that kind of sucked because they had some really cool things that I wish I could have bought. We also couldn't take out any money from banks or ATM's so I couldn't buy as much or do as much as I would've liked. I was able to get a few cool things though. Cuba had some of the best artwork I've seen throughout the countries we visited.
After some time walking around the square we went to the San Jose flea market which was full of little stalls with people selling all kinds of stuff. There was art everywhere, jewelry, leather products, clothes. A lot of the stuff was the same or really similar from stall to stall but I did find some really interesting things there. It was getting later in the afternoon at this point so we went to this brewery next door to the flea market to eat and get drinks. Cuba had these beer tower things that were awesome, I'm tempted to invest in one back here. After a little while we headed back to the ship to get dinner. It would've been nice to be able to get dinner off the ship but with the whole money thing we had to be smart with our money and try to drag it out for two more days.
That night, we went back to the square again. It was more or less the same thing as the night before. I got a chance to talk to more locals which was cool. My friends and I hopped around a few of the different bars in the area. At the end of the night I was talking to a group of college students about baseball and the MLB, I got the chance to tell them all about how much the Yankees suck, classic. Just like the night before, once everyone started clearing out we headed back to the ship to go to bed.
I woke up the next morning bright and early because we were going to the University of Havana vs. Semester at Sea basketball game. About a week before we arrived in Cuba we found out there would be this game so students could apply and tryout to be on the men's or women's team. As much as I would've loved to relive the old basketball glory days, I decided to pass on playing. The girl's played first, it wasn't pretty on either end and we ended up losing by a few points. The guy's game was quite a bit better but we still ended up losing. It was impressive that it was so close though since our teams had never played together before and their only basketball practices had been on a rocking ship.
When the game ended we went back to the ship and hung around for a while. I went into Old Havana again with my friends Ashley and Ayah to walk around. We went to the Museum of Chocolate which wasn't actually a museum but actually just a cafe. The chocolate itself was gross but their drinks were delicious. We then walked around the streets for a little while. There is a ton of history around this area and a lot of the buildings and streets are pretty broken down but there is construction so they're obviously trying to fix it. After walking around for a while we gave into our exhaustion and went back to the ship for dinner. That night, Semester at Sea was holding a farewell reception in the evening but we're stupid and didn't sign up for it. Instead we found some other kids who weren't going (there weren't many) and figured out what they were doing.
We left the ship that night, our last night out abroad which was really depressing. We went to a bar called Dos Hermanos where Ernest Hemingway used to go to. We were there for a while then we went back to the brewery we had gone to the day before. There were a bunch of SAS kids there and people were dancing and socializing. After that we all got cabs and went to this club that people had been saying was the best club in Havana. We never even went in, apparently a couple kids went in before us and instantly walked out because it was more of a strip club, no thank you. So we decided to go back to the square that we'd spent every other day at. Instead of a regular cab we took a bike cab which are kind of ghetto but also really cool. When we got to the square there weren't many people there just the SAS kids who also forgot to sign up for the farewell ceremony. We stayed there for a while, I eventually headed back to the ship after spending a little time in the square.
The next morning we woke up for our last day in Cuba, and last day in any country at all. After eating lunch we set off to explore the city again. Our budgeting didn't work as well as we'd hoped so between me and my friends Ashley and Taylor we had six pesos aka six dollars. We had wanted to do more touristy stuff but with no money that was out of the question. Instead, we went to walk around the city once more. This time, we went to the Capital which looks just like the United States capital. There were also tons of old fashioned cars around and we went into a few shops.
After walking for a while we sat on a curb in the square that we'd spent most of our time in. There was a local guy who came over to us and started talking to us for a while. He told us how he had always dreamed of going to the US but has never been able to go. While we were sitting there a local guy came over to us and tried to sell us some of his bracelets, unfortunately we had no money so we told him we couldn't buy them. He ended up sitting next to me and we talked for a while. He told me how he is moving to the United States soon and his brothers already live there. I thought that was really interesting that he was able to move to America but our other friend couldn't just visit. After talking for a while we had to leave, the guy offered me a bracelet again but again I had to decline because I didn't have the money for it. He ended up tying it on my wrist and giving it to me as a gift which was so sweet. I still wear in everyday.
When we left the square we walked back to San Jose, the flea market which we walked around for a while. Then we saw a bunch of our friends in the brewery next door so went in to join them. It was a pretty depressing, a bunch of us sitting at a long table there was even slow music playing, it was literally like a movie. It was our last few hours in a country together after three and a half months exploring the world. When we left there we went up to this little outside area on the second floor of the cruise terminal to enjoy our freedom before we were required to be back on the ship.
It's so weird that this whole thing is really over. I feel bad for my family and friends back at home because I can't help but be slightly depressed that it's over and I think it's all I might talk about for the next 50 years of my life. I guess it's a good thing that I miss it so bad, imagine travelling the world for three and a half months and spending half of it ready to go home? No thank you.
If I had written this blog a week ago it would've been totally different. Cuba was by far one of my favorite countries I visited, I think a large part of that was based on the fact that I really had no idea what to expect. Any thoughts I did have about Cuba were definitely all wrong. It was the most friendly place we've been. All of the people, regardless of how well they spoke English (seeing as I couldn't speak any Spanish) did their best to make all of us feel comfortable and were willing to answer any questions, show us around, or just have a conversation. When I was leaving I was saying goodbye to some of the friends I had made, and both Cubans and Americans expressed how much we hoped that one day, we could see each other again. For many, communicating through email or other forms is impossible because very few people in Cuba have access to internet, therefore this was a permanent goodbye as far as we knew. Within a few days after returning home to the US, the news broke of the changed relations between our country and theirs. This was really exciting for all of us from SAS because it was one of the countries nearly all of us want to go back to the most.
I've been asked many times by people, "How were you even allowed to go to Cuba?" Semester at Sea has a special agreement where we are allowed to visit Cuba as an educational visit. We were awoken the morning of the 29th with our Dean beginning to call out seas to go pick up their passports. We then had to go to the union where leaders from the University of Havana came to welcome us to the country, I ended up in the piano lounge because there wasn't enough room in the union.
After the talks, the entire shipboard community filed out onto buses to go to the college for more events. When we got there many students from the school were on the stairs leading onto this part of the campus to greet us. We then walked up the stairs as "Imagine" by John Lennon played over speakers (they love Lennon) and we then listened to opening remarks on a stage set up in their quad. After they finished talked we dispersed into three groups, we were allowed to choose from 3 different lectures to attend about culture, politics, or the economy. I chose to attend the culture one having studied the politics and economy in the days on the ship leading to our arrival. After the lecture we went back out to the quad where music was playing and everyone was singing. Both SAS and University of Havana students were dancing together, it was pretty cool. Once everyone's lectures got out we got to watch some performances by students, there was some singing and some dancing. I got a chance to talk to some nice University students about what life is like in Cuba and tell them about our voyage, one of them even offered to let me check my Facebook on his computer since he was a computer science student and unlike most, has internet access. Unfortunately, we had to get back on the buses and return to the ship.
To get back on the ship we had to wait in a super long line since everytime we got onto the ship we had to put our bags through a scanner, get our passports checked, then go through ship security and this was the entire shipboard community. They had soup and sandwiches for people to eat for lunch except with the mad rush of people there was not enough food so I continued to starve. At four in the afternoon we went back to the union for our last lecture about Cuba. This time it was from an American ambassador in Cuba. Honestly, he was kind of a douche and was pretty rude.
Once the lecture finally ended we hung around a bit then ate dinner. That night, there was a big gathering in the square in Old Havana, about a five minute walk from our ship. We went out and there was already a lot of SAS kids and locals out in the square. There was music playing and people were performing, it was a really fun atmosphere. I got the chance to talk to a bunch of locals, they were all really friendly and happy to talk to us. Also, luckily for a lot of us, most of them spoke English really well. As the night went on and the crowd in the square thinned out we made our way back to the ship for bed.
The next morning we slept in later than we'd expected to although we had stayed out pretty late and had been woken up really early the day before so it was much needed. Once we got off the ship, we went back towards the square we had been at the night before. Ayah and I went off to go shop in some of the little stores around the area. We wouldn't be allowed to purchase anything to bring back to the US that wasn't "artwork or educational materials" that kind of sucked because they had some really cool things that I wish I could have bought. We also couldn't take out any money from banks or ATM's so I couldn't buy as much or do as much as I would've liked. I was able to get a few cool things though. Cuba had some of the best artwork I've seen throughout the countries we visited.
After some time walking around the square we went to the San Jose flea market which was full of little stalls with people selling all kinds of stuff. There was art everywhere, jewelry, leather products, clothes. A lot of the stuff was the same or really similar from stall to stall but I did find some really interesting things there. It was getting later in the afternoon at this point so we went to this brewery next door to the flea market to eat and get drinks. Cuba had these beer tower things that were awesome, I'm tempted to invest in one back here. After a little while we headed back to the ship to get dinner. It would've been nice to be able to get dinner off the ship but with the whole money thing we had to be smart with our money and try to drag it out for two more days.
That night, we went back to the square again. It was more or less the same thing as the night before. I got a chance to talk to more locals which was cool. My friends and I hopped around a few of the different bars in the area. At the end of the night I was talking to a group of college students about baseball and the MLB, I got the chance to tell them all about how much the Yankees suck, classic. Just like the night before, once everyone started clearing out we headed back to the ship to go to bed.
I woke up the next morning bright and early because we were going to the University of Havana vs. Semester at Sea basketball game. About a week before we arrived in Cuba we found out there would be this game so students could apply and tryout to be on the men's or women's team. As much as I would've loved to relive the old basketball glory days, I decided to pass on playing. The girl's played first, it wasn't pretty on either end and we ended up losing by a few points. The guy's game was quite a bit better but we still ended up losing. It was impressive that it was so close though since our teams had never played together before and their only basketball practices had been on a rocking ship.
When the game ended we went back to the ship and hung around for a while. I went into Old Havana again with my friends Ashley and Ayah to walk around. We went to the Museum of Chocolate which wasn't actually a museum but actually just a cafe. The chocolate itself was gross but their drinks were delicious. We then walked around the streets for a little while. There is a ton of history around this area and a lot of the buildings and streets are pretty broken down but there is construction so they're obviously trying to fix it. After walking around for a while we gave into our exhaustion and went back to the ship for dinner. That night, Semester at Sea was holding a farewell reception in the evening but we're stupid and didn't sign up for it. Instead we found some other kids who weren't going (there weren't many) and figured out what they were doing.
We left the ship that night, our last night out abroad which was really depressing. We went to a bar called Dos Hermanos where Ernest Hemingway used to go to. We were there for a while then we went back to the brewery we had gone to the day before. There were a bunch of SAS kids there and people were dancing and socializing. After that we all got cabs and went to this club that people had been saying was the best club in Havana. We never even went in, apparently a couple kids went in before us and instantly walked out because it was more of a strip club, no thank you. So we decided to go back to the square that we'd spent every other day at. Instead of a regular cab we took a bike cab which are kind of ghetto but also really cool. When we got to the square there weren't many people there just the SAS kids who also forgot to sign up for the farewell ceremony. We stayed there for a while, I eventually headed back to the ship after spending a little time in the square.
The next morning we woke up for our last day in Cuba, and last day in any country at all. After eating lunch we set off to explore the city again. Our budgeting didn't work as well as we'd hoped so between me and my friends Ashley and Taylor we had six pesos aka six dollars. We had wanted to do more touristy stuff but with no money that was out of the question. Instead, we went to walk around the city once more. This time, we went to the Capital which looks just like the United States capital. There were also tons of old fashioned cars around and we went into a few shops.
After walking for a while we sat on a curb in the square that we'd spent most of our time in. There was a local guy who came over to us and started talking to us for a while. He told us how he had always dreamed of going to the US but has never been able to go. While we were sitting there a local guy came over to us and tried to sell us some of his bracelets, unfortunately we had no money so we told him we couldn't buy them. He ended up sitting next to me and we talked for a while. He told me how he is moving to the United States soon and his brothers already live there. I thought that was really interesting that he was able to move to America but our other friend couldn't just visit. After talking for a while we had to leave, the guy offered me a bracelet again but again I had to decline because I didn't have the money for it. He ended up tying it on my wrist and giving it to me as a gift which was so sweet. I still wear in everyday.
When we left the square we walked back to San Jose, the flea market which we walked around for a while. Then we saw a bunch of our friends in the brewery next door so went in to join them. It was a pretty depressing, a bunch of us sitting at a long table there was even slow music playing, it was literally like a movie. It was our last few hours in a country together after three and a half months exploring the world. When we left there we went up to this little outside area on the second floor of the cruise terminal to enjoy our freedom before we were required to be back on the ship.
It's so weird that this whole thing is really over. I feel bad for my family and friends back at home because I can't help but be slightly depressed that it's over and I think it's all I might talk about for the next 50 years of my life. I guess it's a good thing that I miss it so bad, imagine travelling the world for three and a half months and spending half of it ready to go home? No thank you.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Spring Breeeeeeeak...I mean Barbados.
I really don't have much to say about Barbados. It was a beautiful island, even with the torrential downpours we endured on the entire first day. For some reason, I think Semester at Sea didn't expect us to take this port as a pre-Spring Break and just party the entire time. Hey, we are legal.
This one's gonna be a quick one, but realistically the people reading my blogs don't care too much about what we did in Barbados so I'll just give a quick summary.
Day one we got off the ship and after like 2 hours trying to get through customs we were able to go to our villa we had rented. There was some miscommunication between the ship and customs in the country so they didn't think we had permission to stay off the ship which was annoying to say the least. But, in the end, they let us go. We got a cab and he drove us to our place while apologizing the entire way that it was raining out. When we got there we asked him to come back in a little while because some of our friends had rented out a bar to celebrate their 21st birthdays. He didn't even make us pay for the first ride right then, instead we'd just pay him when he took us to the bar. Barbadian's are really trustworthy.
The bar was super fun, it was outside right on the beach. It was still pouring when we got their and we paid our entrance fee which got us free drinks until 7 at night, a meal, and full use of all their activities on the beach which included a rope swing, water trampoline, swimming with turtles (couldn't do that cause of the rain) and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. It was such a blast, it even stopped raining a couple hours in. We left a little before it ended and went to a grocery store to pick up groceries to eat while we were staying in our villa.
The next morning we woke up and had breakfast and the girls I was staying with went to the beach across the street while I waited for my friends Ashley and Ayah to come over from the ship. It was pretty nice out. When they got over we ended up spending the entire day sitting around inside of the villa and it was great. We didn't even walk the ten feet to go lay outside by our little private pool. We literally just sat around. Not one regret. We didn't do anything at all that day, we had homemade mac & cheese for dinner then sat around the table until we went to bed.
Our last day in Barbados we checked out of our place in the afternoon and went shopping a little. I also had to go to a bank to exchange money to take to Cuba. It was our next stop and we weren't allowed to use American cards there so whatever money we came with to exchange was the only money we'd have for our four days there. That took well over an hour, island people are just so slow it's almost painful. Once I had finally gotten my money I grabbed a cab back to the ship. I spent my last hour before we had to be on the ship at the bar outside the cruise terminal enjoying my last bits of wifi with my fellow shipmates before returning to America (no wifi in Cuba).
A little later I got in line and got back on the ship on our way to our last country, Cuba.
This one's gonna be a quick one, but realistically the people reading my blogs don't care too much about what we did in Barbados so I'll just give a quick summary.
Day one we got off the ship and after like 2 hours trying to get through customs we were able to go to our villa we had rented. There was some miscommunication between the ship and customs in the country so they didn't think we had permission to stay off the ship which was annoying to say the least. But, in the end, they let us go. We got a cab and he drove us to our place while apologizing the entire way that it was raining out. When we got there we asked him to come back in a little while because some of our friends had rented out a bar to celebrate their 21st birthdays. He didn't even make us pay for the first ride right then, instead we'd just pay him when he took us to the bar. Barbadian's are really trustworthy.
The bar was super fun, it was outside right on the beach. It was still pouring when we got their and we paid our entrance fee which got us free drinks until 7 at night, a meal, and full use of all their activities on the beach which included a rope swing, water trampoline, swimming with turtles (couldn't do that cause of the rain) and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. It was such a blast, it even stopped raining a couple hours in. We left a little before it ended and went to a grocery store to pick up groceries to eat while we were staying in our villa.
The next morning we woke up and had breakfast and the girls I was staying with went to the beach across the street while I waited for my friends Ashley and Ayah to come over from the ship. It was pretty nice out. When they got over we ended up spending the entire day sitting around inside of the villa and it was great. We didn't even walk the ten feet to go lay outside by our little private pool. We literally just sat around. Not one regret. We didn't do anything at all that day, we had homemade mac & cheese for dinner then sat around the table until we went to bed.
Our last day in Barbados we checked out of our place in the afternoon and went shopping a little. I also had to go to a bank to exchange money to take to Cuba. It was our next stop and we weren't allowed to use American cards there so whatever money we came with to exchange was the only money we'd have for our four days there. That took well over an hour, island people are just so slow it's almost painful. Once I had finally gotten my money I grabbed a cab back to the ship. I spent my last hour before we had to be on the ship at the bar outside the cruise terminal enjoying my last bits of wifi with my fellow shipmates before returning to America (no wifi in Cuba).
A little later I got in line and got back on the ship on our way to our last country, Cuba.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Happy Turkey Day from the oceans off of Cuba
Happy Thanksgiving to all the folks back at home. While you guys are cooking turkey, watching football, and eating until you can't move I'm studying for an evolution quiz. On the bright side it's like 80 degrees and sunny and you guys have a blizzard so life isn't all bad.
Definitely missing everyone back in the states extra today. On the bright side I am now officially on Eastern Standard Time which means that home is rapidly approaching. I'm not sure that I'm ready to leave Semester at Sea but I know I'm ready to see everyone. How am I supposed to be expected to stay in one place for more than 4 days at a time?
Today is my first, and hopefully last, Thanksgiving away from home. I'm going to miss watching the games, the dog show (dad I hope the beagle takes the prize this year), the parade, all the great food, and of course family.
Being away from home has made me realize that I have so much to be thankful for. Especially this year, not getting to experience a real Thanksgiving I might actually have the most to be thankful for. In addition to everything I already have in my life and all the people in it, I've added so much more this semester. I have all my new friends and all these incredible experiences that I could have only dreamed of. In under four months I've left the country for the first time, visited a Russian palace, seen the Eiffel Tower, rode a camel in the Sahara Desert, eaten pasta in Italy, and slept on a hammock in the Amazon rainforest. Then in two days I'll be in Cuba. I'm so lucky and so thankful for everyone who has supported me in this adventure.
So even as I sit here procrastinating on my schoolwork being pissed off because my Turkey dinner isn't going to be as good as nana and mom's and I don't get to go to grammas for dessert with the rest of the Hancock fam, there is so much I have that other people don't so I can't complain.
Love you all at home, see you before we know it!
Definitely missing everyone back in the states extra today. On the bright side I am now officially on Eastern Standard Time which means that home is rapidly approaching. I'm not sure that I'm ready to leave Semester at Sea but I know I'm ready to see everyone. How am I supposed to be expected to stay in one place for more than 4 days at a time?
Today is my first, and hopefully last, Thanksgiving away from home. I'm going to miss watching the games, the dog show (dad I hope the beagle takes the prize this year), the parade, all the great food, and of course family.
Being away from home has made me realize that I have so much to be thankful for. Especially this year, not getting to experience a real Thanksgiving I might actually have the most to be thankful for. In addition to everything I already have in my life and all the people in it, I've added so much more this semester. I have all my new friends and all these incredible experiences that I could have only dreamed of. In under four months I've left the country for the first time, visited a Russian palace, seen the Eiffel Tower, rode a camel in the Sahara Desert, eaten pasta in Italy, and slept on a hammock in the Amazon rainforest. Then in two days I'll be in Cuba. I'm so lucky and so thankful for everyone who has supported me in this adventure.
So even as I sit here procrastinating on my schoolwork being pissed off because my Turkey dinner isn't going to be as good as nana and mom's and I don't get to go to grammas for dessert with the rest of the Hancock fam, there is so much I have that other people don't so I can't complain.
Love you all at home, see you before we know it!
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Sea Olympics
If you know anything about me, you know that competition is my life. Aka Sea Olympics was basically my dream come true, the entire ship pitted against eachother to see which sea would come out on top. Unfortunately, the administration on the ship is super into community building and "sportspersonship" and "it's not all about winning." Don't get me wrong, I totally respect that but c'mon it's Olympics for a reason, someone's gotta come out on top, not everyone in life gets a trophy. Regardless of the fact that we weren't super competitive Sea Olympics was my favorite day at sea thus far. I was also one of the four captains of my "sea." We are the Yellow Sea, each section of rooms is a "sea" on the ship and has an RD (resident director) and is given a name and color. As Yellow Sea, surprisingly our color was pink, jk yeah we were yellow.
The Olympics took place on our study day between Brazil and Barbados. My day started pretty early, I got up before 8 to have breakfast with my ship family before the day officially started. I wanted to get some work done before 1 when the games would officially begin. Unfortunately, they decided to have a drill at 9 in the morning. Everyone had to go to their cabins and cover up (for these drills you need to wear pants, long sleeves, shoes, and a hat). The people who wanted to spend their study day sleeping in we're shit outta luck, at least they got to sleep in later than last study day when the crew woke us at 7:30. We all filed outside to our areas, it was super humid out, I know I, along with others, felt pretty sick after the drill from standing outside in a massive pack of people in 80 degree humid weather. It was almost an hour from the time it started until the end.
After the drill I went to meet with my dance crew because we were performing in the lip sync as the last event. Yes, I somehow have had to perform dances twice in one year in front of crowds of people. Why is this happening to me? Who knows, but I'm sick of it. On the bright side, we heard that the other teams were really good and taking it seriously so we were just messing around with it. At 11, our whole sea which is only 68 people, went to the 7th deck (pool deck) to take our group pic.Yellow Sea down on deck two is the smallest of all seas onboard the MV Explorer. We all decked out in yellow and painted yellow war paint all over our bodies.
There was a little free time after that until opening ceremonies which started at one. A little before one we all filed into the union and sat in sections with our seas. Everyone was trying to pitcher eachother, even us on the little Yellow Sea which is tough being outnumbered by probably 30-50 people on each other sea. We didn't even fill up a full section in the place. The day started with announcements from the RD staff, each sea presented their banners, and then each sea did an organized cheer on the stage with a group of 20 at most.
I had some time before my first event so I went around to watch some of the other events going on and cheer on the other kids competing. Eventually I had my first event which was the orange pass, this was 7 of us in a line passing an orange along using pretty much just your neck. We came in fourth, not overly happy with that but gotta move on. Right after that one I had to compete in the hula hoop circle where we hold hands in a circle and pass the hula hoop around it without letting go. Fastest time wins. For this one we got third, getting better.
At this point I was already kinda tired. It was hot and running around the ship is exhausting. Luckily as sea captain I had my shift to check participants from yellow into their events. We were in tymitz square, right near the middle of the ship and people would come let me know they were going to their event. It was so peaceful there, definitely a nice little break.
By the time my shift was over it was time for synchronized swimming, everyone packed around the pool to watch the performances. I had a great spot until someone from my team grabbed me because they needed an extra body for tug of war. We ended up getting killed in our first match, we weren't upset though since our team was kind of just thrown together and we wanted to watch the performances anyways. I only missed a few people go, there were some really funny routines. It wasn't a very hardcore event. Once that ended it was time for a break for dinner. I wasn't feeling too great, the ship was rocking like crazy all day and I was feeling pretty sea sick. I couldn't eat too much and I had to go meet with my lip sync group one more time so we could run through our routine.
After meeting for our dance for a quick run through, all the captains had to meet up on the seventh deck for the final captains event. This consisted of the four captains taking part in mini versions of the days events or other mini events. It started with a four person orange pass, then one of our guys did a matching game, once he finished our next guy had to put on a crew jumpsuit and hula hoop ten times in a row, then I did a wheelbarrow race with our other girl captain which went around the outside of the pool in a semicircle. Then lastly we ended with a round of flip cup. There were some technical difficulties on our group putting on the jumpsuit so we ended up getting fifth. It was a really fun event though so it's cool.
It was now time to get to the union for the last event, lip sync. We went second to last so we watched 5 seas perform some like America's Best Dance Crew shit while we're like the Bad News Bears. Ours was a disaster, but in a really pathetic and funny way. Aside from the whole performance part, which I hate because nothing says anxiety like dancing in front of the entire shipboard community, it was my favorite thing. In hindsight we may have done better if we had practiced in the union as opposed to on deck two only because the rocking from deck 2 to 6 is massively different. Oh well, I think we are the only group that didn't have anyone quit or hate eachother so go us, we also managed last place which was pretty sick.
In the end the small but mighty Yellow Sea came in 3rd place, not too damn shabby if I do say so myself. Imagine if we had trained? No competition. The SAS Seahorses, who are the professors, lifelong learners, children, etc. came out on top. It was such an awesome day, I wish I could relive it over and over.
The Olympics took place on our study day between Brazil and Barbados. My day started pretty early, I got up before 8 to have breakfast with my ship family before the day officially started. I wanted to get some work done before 1 when the games would officially begin. Unfortunately, they decided to have a drill at 9 in the morning. Everyone had to go to their cabins and cover up (for these drills you need to wear pants, long sleeves, shoes, and a hat). The people who wanted to spend their study day sleeping in we're shit outta luck, at least they got to sleep in later than last study day when the crew woke us at 7:30. We all filed outside to our areas, it was super humid out, I know I, along with others, felt pretty sick after the drill from standing outside in a massive pack of people in 80 degree humid weather. It was almost an hour from the time it started until the end.
After the drill I went to meet with my dance crew because we were performing in the lip sync as the last event. Yes, I somehow have had to perform dances twice in one year in front of crowds of people. Why is this happening to me? Who knows, but I'm sick of it. On the bright side, we heard that the other teams were really good and taking it seriously so we were just messing around with it. At 11, our whole sea which is only 68 people, went to the 7th deck (pool deck) to take our group pic.Yellow Sea down on deck two is the smallest of all seas onboard the MV Explorer. We all decked out in yellow and painted yellow war paint all over our bodies.
There was a little free time after that until opening ceremonies which started at one. A little before one we all filed into the union and sat in sections with our seas. Everyone was trying to pitcher eachother, even us on the little Yellow Sea which is tough being outnumbered by probably 30-50 people on each other sea. We didn't even fill up a full section in the place. The day started with announcements from the RD staff, each sea presented their banners, and then each sea did an organized cheer on the stage with a group of 20 at most.
I had some time before my first event so I went around to watch some of the other events going on and cheer on the other kids competing. Eventually I had my first event which was the orange pass, this was 7 of us in a line passing an orange along using pretty much just your neck. We came in fourth, not overly happy with that but gotta move on. Right after that one I had to compete in the hula hoop circle where we hold hands in a circle and pass the hula hoop around it without letting go. Fastest time wins. For this one we got third, getting better.
At this point I was already kinda tired. It was hot and running around the ship is exhausting. Luckily as sea captain I had my shift to check participants from yellow into their events. We were in tymitz square, right near the middle of the ship and people would come let me know they were going to their event. It was so peaceful there, definitely a nice little break.
By the time my shift was over it was time for synchronized swimming, everyone packed around the pool to watch the performances. I had a great spot until someone from my team grabbed me because they needed an extra body for tug of war. We ended up getting killed in our first match, we weren't upset though since our team was kind of just thrown together and we wanted to watch the performances anyways. I only missed a few people go, there were some really funny routines. It wasn't a very hardcore event. Once that ended it was time for a break for dinner. I wasn't feeling too great, the ship was rocking like crazy all day and I was feeling pretty sea sick. I couldn't eat too much and I had to go meet with my lip sync group one more time so we could run through our routine.
After meeting for our dance for a quick run through, all the captains had to meet up on the seventh deck for the final captains event. This consisted of the four captains taking part in mini versions of the days events or other mini events. It started with a four person orange pass, then one of our guys did a matching game, once he finished our next guy had to put on a crew jumpsuit and hula hoop ten times in a row, then I did a wheelbarrow race with our other girl captain which went around the outside of the pool in a semicircle. Then lastly we ended with a round of flip cup. There were some technical difficulties on our group putting on the jumpsuit so we ended up getting fifth. It was a really fun event though so it's cool.
It was now time to get to the union for the last event, lip sync. We went second to last so we watched 5 seas perform some like America's Best Dance Crew shit while we're like the Bad News Bears. Ours was a disaster, but in a really pathetic and funny way. Aside from the whole performance part, which I hate because nothing says anxiety like dancing in front of the entire shipboard community, it was my favorite thing. In hindsight we may have done better if we had practiced in the union as opposed to on deck two only because the rocking from deck 2 to 6 is massively different. Oh well, I think we are the only group that didn't have anyone quit or hate eachother so go us, we also managed last place which was pretty sick.
In the end the small but mighty Yellow Sea came in 3rd place, not too damn shabby if I do say so myself. Imagine if we had trained? No competition. The SAS Seahorses, who are the professors, lifelong learners, children, etc. came out on top. It was such an awesome day, I wish I could relive it over and over.
Friday, November 21, 2014
Pretty unimpressed with Brazil..
We just spent an entire week in Brazil. Do I even go to school anymore? It's going to be quite the adjustment to get it together for classes again, especially with the unbelievable amount of work our professors are loading us up with as the end of our time on SAS rapidly approaches. 24 days until home, I wish I could double that number, I'm ready to see you all back at home but not nearly ready to say goodbye to the MV Explorer. We only have 2 countries left to go, a week on the ship then Barbados, then 4 ship days to Cuba, then a few days later we're home. Send in gift requests before time runs out!! JK I have no money left sorry.
I spent the first two days in Brazil in Rio.
Getting off the ship after 14 straight days was a great feeling although it was actually a little strange, I think they call it sea legs, I felt like I was still rocking when I was on solid ground. We awoke day 1 at six to watch the ship pull into port, something everyone says you absolutely HAVE to do for Brazil. We were a little unlucky because it was pretty hazy but it was still a Really cool view. After eating breakfast I had to go to the union to meet for my marketing field lab. For this field lab we went to a market and mall in Rio and had a scavenger hunt list of things to take pictures of or buy, students who got a certain amount would be excused from one of our papers so my team and I were all business. The market was cool, it reminded me of a more modern version of the market we had been to in Morocco, it also had stores along the outside of it. After our time ran out here we headed to lunch. The lunch place was a Brazilian buffet with tons of meat, rice, fried things, and other stuff that I had no idea what it was but ate it anyways. It was my best meal in a while. When lunch ended we went to the mall, it was a more upscale mall located right between Copacabana and Ipanema beach. It was so nice to be in there, it felt like an American mall, it even had a lot of familiar stores. It also felt really safe which we liked because they scared us senseless about how dangerous Brazil is.
After our field lab we got back on the ship and I ate dinner with Ashley, Taylor, and Ayah, three of my friends from USD. The food on the ship in port is probably 100x better than while at sea so I've tried to eat more meals on the ship towards the end of the voyage to save money. After waking up early and stuff I took a quick nap after dinner then went out with Taylor, Ashley, and a bunch of other people. We went to this area called Lapa where all the bars and clubs in Rio are. When we got there, there were tons of people, we didn't really know where to go. We ended up choosing a random bar, you had to spend a minimum of 30 reals there, that's like $10 but sounds like a lot. It was a cool place, they had a live band playing Brazilian music and all the locals were dancing. We met a local couple, it was the girl's birthday, and they were talking to us and trying to show us how to do the dances. Surprisingly I wasn't good. The big drink in Brazil is called Capirinhas and we were able to get 4 for the 30 real. They're really good, they have sugar, lime, and we think tequila (not 100% sure though). Once we spent our money we went to this club that a lot of SAS kids went to, we didn't end up going in though because we didn't have enough money for the cover and a taxi to get home, so we just headed back to the ship.
The next day I went out to explore Rio with Ayah, Ashley, Taylor, and another USD girl named Emily. We almost paid a tour guide to bring us around to the main spots but found out that they only brought you to the places but you had to pay separate admission fees. We ended up just taking public transportation. We walked with some other girls to the metro where we found another one who told us how to get one of the public buses to the Christ the Redeemer statue. We were able to get their pretty easily, then we paid for a van to bring us up the mountain the statue is on. It brings you about halfway then you have to wait in a line to get tickets, then another line to get another shuttle up to the statue. Once you get there you have to climb a bunch of stairs to actually get to the Christ statue. Luckily it was extremely hot out so all this waiting and climbing was super fun. It was worth all the time for sure because the views at the top of the mountain and the statue itself were amazing. We were so lucky to have such a nice day, it had been scheduled to rain and thunderstorm the whole day. We took a bunch of pictures at the top and then once we were done started making the trek back down, it was mid afternoon by this point and we were all exhausted and hungry. Once we finally got down to the bottom we hopped in a cab and went to a Starbucks (can always count on Starbucks for wifi) it ended up being in another mall which was great. None of us had the energy to do anymore touristy stuff so we lounged around the mall for a while enjoying our first wifi in two weeks. After that we walked around the mall for a bit then went back to the ship. My other friends were still out when I got back and the rest of then wanted to go out to dinner which was not in my budget so I treated myself to a fancy meal at the pool deck snack bar for dinner, chicken sandwich and fries. Once the other Bentley girls got back we all started packing because we were leaving for the Amazon in the morning.
Sydney and I slept in until 4am the next morning and dragged ourselves to the garden lounge (one of our dining rooms) to meet with our Amazon riverboat crew. They served us continental breakfast which was nice. We left at about 5 to head to the airport. The whole morning is pretty hazy for me because it was so early but we got on our plane and landed in Manaus at about 11am. Manaus was one of the sites of the World Cup, the US actually played one of their games there. It was really stormy in Manaus when we got there so we had to sit in the lobby of a hotel for two hours because our riverboats couldn't get close to shore with the waters being so rough. Eventually the storm slowed enough for us to get on so they bussed is to a dock area where we had to take little boats over to our riverboat, home for the next 4 days and 3 nights.
They greeted us on the ship with necklaces made from seeds and berries from the rainforest and luckily had a snack for us cause I was starving. It was still really rainy so they put up tarps around the sides of the boat. It was a two floor boat, the bottom had a table that they set our meals our on which were buffet style, the kitchen, three bathrooms, and a sink. The upstairs was totally open with half covered by a roof, there were a bunch of plastic lawn chairs up there for us to sit on. There were a little over 30 of us who were on our boat, mostly students, and we started off the day by going around and introducing ourselves. There wasn't much we could do with the weather. After we sailed for a while we reached the meeting a the water which is the spot where the Amazon river meets the Negro river. It was so cool, the waters don't mix because of the currents and density of the waters so you can clearly see the brown waters of the Amazon and the black of the Negro and a clear line going right through them. We then continued on, the rain was finally letting up. We eventually got to this stop area that had a restaurant and shop area. They led us on a walk along a very precarious bridge, about wide enough for one person where we finally ended at this pond thing that had water Lillie's. Our guide called an alligator (or crocodile seriously who knows the difference) over we got to watch it swim over, luckily we were up above it on the bridge. After a little while we walked back to our boat and had some time to shop around in a store where we had stopped. It sold a bunch of really interesting stuff like wood sculptures, blow dart guns, and taxidermy.
After looking around a bit we got on smaller motor boats and our guides brought us along the Amazon river where we eventually stopped at a little house. The people had a pet dog, sloth, and anaconda. You know, your typical house pets. They let us hold then and take pictures, a lot of people wouldn't hold the snake but I figured why not, it was scary though I was not a fan at all. Afterwards it was getting really dark so we got back into the boats and zoomed along looking for crocodiles. You can easily see them in the dark because of the way their eyes glow. One of the guides caught a baby one and we passed it around so we all got to hold it. Once we finished all that we headed back to the boat. When we got there, all of our hammocks were set up so we claimed them and put our bags in them, it was pretty right up there. You had to crawl underneath them to move anywhere on 2/3 of the top deck. We had dinner on the boat not too much later, that consisted of a bunch of different foods like rice, pasta, chicken, fish, and vegetables. I was actually surprised by how much I liked the food. After dinner we hung out for a little while on the top deck but barely made it to 9, we were completely dead from the day. We loaded ourselves up with bug spray, climbed into our hammocks, and went to sleep pretty quickly. It was a pretty good sleep for the most part, we had some snorers and sleep talkers. I was woken up a few times by my hammock neighbors who had shifted in theirs and were essentially on top of me.
The next morning we were up by about six, there's not much sleeping in when you're outside with 30 people. We started off the day with breakfast which consisted of eggs, cheese, ham, bread and this awesome coffee cake type of thing. After everyone changed and drowned themselves in sunscreen and bug spray, we all got back into the same smaller motor boats and they brought us to the edge of part of the rainforest, where we were greeted by a nice Amazonian man wielding a machete. He was our guide into the forest. We had our first hike through the Amazon. It was pretty early in the day but it was already so hot and super muggy outside. Luckily, unlike yesterday the weather was nice, we didn't have anymore rain although after some time walking I would've loved a little bit of a rain shower. Our guides walked our group through the forest pointing out interesting plants, insects, and animals. We learned about this type of tree called telephone trees that you can bang on if you ever get lost and the sound travels several kilometers. They also showed us a different tree that you can hit and a sap comes out that he compared to Ensure back in the states, we got to try it, it was like grass flavored milk. Some of the bugs we saw (I hate bugs) were this really beautiful butterfly called an owl butterfly that has a large spot on each wing that each look like owl eyes and this kind of ant called a bullet ant that if they bite you, it feels like you're being poked with a hot needle for 24 hours and there's nothing you can do. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see "bird eaters," a type of spider...I think the name is self explanatory. As we were walking one of the girls in our group noticed a snake curled up on a log, it looked pretty small and we told the guide who was up at the front. Turns out, it is the third most poisonous snake in the world. He then proceeds to pick it up and got it to bite his machete (he used a machete to cut a path, this is serious nature shit we went through) It really wasn't huge, it was pretty long but curled up it was tiny because it was so skinny, aka now I'm horrified for the rest of the hike. The hike lasted about 2 hours so it was just after 11 when we got back to our canoes and they brought us back to our boat which was now docked at a little beach. The guides had checked out the water to make sure it was safe for us to swim. It was the most refreshing swim I've ever had after that hike, I was sweating on every single inch of my body. Most of us got our shampoo and used the river to wash our hair, the boat had showers but they were actually just shower heads on the roof of the bathroom that used water from the river, this was more effective.
After some swim time we got back on the boat and took off and ate lunch. Lunch was more or less the same as dinner the night before, pasta, rice, chicken, fish, etc. When we finished eating lunch the boat starting moving again as we traveled to our next destination which was a couple hours away. While we hiked and swam they had tucked our hammocks up into the ceiling of the boat so we had much more room to move and stay out of the sun because it was STRONG. We sat around and talked and played cards for a little while but after about an hour we were all sprawled out around the floor of the boat passed out. When I woke up from my nap we were approaching land again and they dropped us off at a village along the river with our guides. They walked us around the village and gave us a little tour, there wasn't a ton to see. These villages don't usually have many people or much of an economy (they do have television and Coca Cola though). We were scheduled to play soccer against locals in the village, the first game was our guys vs. the local guys in the village. While they played we played with the little kids in the village and handed out little candies and stuff to them which they couldn't have been happier about. The guys game lasted about 15 minutes then the girls got to play. There weren't enough girls (when I say girls I mean females because there were some teenagers, some young adults, and one or two moms in the group) on the Brazilian team so a couple of us traded teams, I was one of them. Our game ended up being a full hour in muggy, sweaty, Amazonian heat. It felt like summer soccer tryouts but possibly even worse. Plus I am not in the best shape of my life currently, so an hour of running was tough I really really felt it the next few days. The game was so fun though, I didn't realize how much I missed playing soccer. After the long game, in which I had two assists and some pretty sick crosses (yup still got it) they finally called the game. Our guide was playing goalie for the American side and I think he stretched it out because he didn't want to win but we on the Brazil side dominated. We all met in the middle and took some group pictures as a team. We then chose the best guy and girl player on their teams and gave them each a soccer ball which they were super excited about. They then hose the best guy and girl player out of the Americans to give a Brazilian soccer jersey to. They ended up choosing me. It was honestly one of the coolest experiences of the whole trip I was really taken aback that they had chosen me. It was so cool, they spoke no English at all and none of is could understand each other but we had kind of come together for a while in soccer. I know that sounds super lame but it was probably the best part of the entire semester for me so far. Everything kind of clicked here. I don't think I'll grasp the meaning of this whole trip fully until home but this was the start.
We said goodbye to the villagers after the game and got back on the motor boats to meet up with the riverboat which had left. As we zoomed along the river the sun started setting, it was so beautiful. The water out there is smooth and looks like glass and the sunsets are incomparable. I couldn't get a picture to even close to match the beauty. Before we even got to our destination the stars came out and even though there were clouds it was more than I had seen in my entire life. Soon, we reached a beach where our boat and the other group of SAS riverboat people was docked. As we approached they set off fireworks welcoming us to a beach barbecue. We were soon met by the other students and combined there were over 100 of us. There was a huge long table of all different food, similar to what we've been eating. Rice, pasta, mashed potatoes which was a nice change, chicken, fish, and skewers of beef. They also had some desserts, one was a mango smoothie/pudding type thing and the other was basically Nutella. Plus they had the watermelon and pineapple. It was all SO GOOD. While everyone ate they were playing Brazilian music and we sat in plastic chairs set up in a massive semicircle. After dinner we started to play games. They had musical chairs, limbo, and tug of war. It was all so much fun and such a cool experience. When the games were over we got back onto our respective boats and a lot of us got ready for bed, exhausted from the long day and early wakeup, it was only like 8 or 9. I took a quick shower in the weird bathroom with an overhead faucet to try to clean off a little from the game. At this point I threw in the towel though and just knew I was going to be filthy until I saw the MV again and there was nothing I could do about it. It was an early night for us and I slept like a baby this time.
It was another early wakeup for us and the same breakfast, minus the coffee cake which was a bummer. Since our flight home had gotten cancelled about a week earlier we had to change around our itinerary a bunch and squeeze a lot in so this day was packed. We all got dressed again all covered up and again drowned ourselves in bugspray and sunscreen, it was another scorcher. As usual, we got on our motor boats and headed off across the river. We eventually stopped and the guides handed out fishing rods made of what seemed like bamboo for piranha fishing. Fishing isn't very fun or exciting, especially when you're in pants on the equator and no fish are biting. After over an hour and a few location changes we gave up, the piranhas just weren't biting that day. They then brought us deeper down the river and to the shore where we had to walk up a pretty steep hill. Yay, another forest hike! A lot of us weren't super into the idea of a hike with how hot it was and how long we had already been cooking in the sun. Plus if you've seen one part of the Amazon jungle, you've seen it all. We went anyways to brave the wilderness. There was really nothing in the hike that stick out or was cool like the first one which sucked. It would've made it a lot more enjoyable being drenched on every inch of my body in sweat if I could've seen like a panther or a wild anaconda or a toucan or something. Alas, no luck. After about two and a half hours of hiking, much more treacherous than the last one with hills and less of a path, we made it back out and went to our motor boats which brought us back to the boat. This time we got on and started driving, as usual everyone fell asleep pretty quickly and before we knew it we were at a different beach than last time.
At this beach, we met up with more SAS kids who were doing an independent riverboat tour. It's super weird to casually run into your friends in the Amazon rainforest. We didn't get very much time there before we had to be back of the boat for lunch. After we ate we left and went a little ways down the river to a little place. All the houses and buildings on the river are just like floating buildings with a dock. This place was where we were going to get to swim with the pink dolphins. We all got out, I was in the first group to get in the water. They had two guys who lured the dolphins over with fish and we got to touch them. It wasn't like sea world or anything where you could ride them but it was still really cool. We were there for a while until everyone had a chance to swim with them. Then we had a little free time to swim in the water by ourselves. After that it was back onto the boat to head to a different village. This one wasn't really as cool as the first, the people weren't as friendly it was more of a rest stop. They did have some absolutely adorable stray puppies though. We were at this village for some time until it started raining so we retreated to our boat. The boat took off again and we stopped at another beach. It was pouring so none of us had any interest in getting off. We just sat around talking. Eventually it slowed and a few kids went to explore, I found this cute little shack where a woman was selling some cool like souvenir things. When we left the island we had a while until dinner so a lot of us napped and hung around. Dinner was again the pasta, rice, meat, fish. Even though the food was repetitive it was really good. We got to watch another gorgeous sunset, and the moon was absolutely massive. Some of us stayed up "late" that night while others weren't feeling well so they went to bed. The whole next day was going to be traveling so we tried to stay awake late to be able to sleep during the day. This lasted until ten when we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore and went to bed.
Our wakeup this time was 5 am. Just after the sunrise. I was bummed out I missed it because I heard it was incredible. We had our same breakfast and gathered all of our stuff and got ready for a long day of flying back to Salvador. We got off the boats at around seven and headed to the airport. We got there early enough that I was able to use wifi for a while and talk to people at home which was nice. Our first flight brought us to Belem. Then we barely made our connecting flight. This flight was really strange, there were about 150+ SAS people on it and it would take off, fly for a while then land and let people off but we stayed on. It was like a bus or a train, but a plane. By the time we got to Salvador it was dark, we were smelly and exhausted and starving because we couldn't eat a meal for the whole day. As shitty as we felt it was the coolest experience and I wouldn't take it back for anything. Seeing the ship was a huge relief though and I took the best shower of my life and got into my bed to finally get a real nights sleep.
We had two days to kill in Salvador. There isn't really much to do there as far as tourism goes. Apparently it's a pretty dangerous place but I didn't ever feel very unsafe. I'm not gonna go into a ton of detail about my time there because it wasn't super exciting but it was a lot better than I expected. Both days we stayed close to the ship, conveniently there was this really cool market right around the corner from it. At the market were tons of stands kind of like Morocco with vendors selling everything from paintings, to wood carvings, to clothes, to jewelry, even hot sauce. We also went up this massive public elevator both days into the old town. The elevator was located right outside the market. The old town had tons of shops and cool stuff. We shopped there too. One of the days we went into a cafe and ordered drinks, I got this really huge and delicious daiquiri. Seriously, side note: it's really messed up that we have to go back to the US and not be legal anymore, there should be some rule against that if you've been accustomed to being legal for like four months. Anyways, we wanted to save money so we ate our meals on the ship and avoided the nightlife because the city was pretty intimidating. I was glad to have seen it though, it's not somewhere I'd go back but it was a really cool place.
Tomorrow morning we will be in Barbados. Sorry for the extreme delay in this blog. You'll notice that I began and ended this blog almost a week apart, woops.Schoolwork has been a killer lately and I didn't want to half ass this one since it was the coolest experience. Stay tuned, I will hopefully be posting very shortly about our Sea Olympics which occurred just two days ago. So much fun. Hopefully I survive Barbados, it'll be a fun little vacation/spring break. Only two countries to go, and 16 days until home now. Where has the semester gone? I'm not ready to leave yet.
See you all soon though! I am excited for that
I spent the first two days in Brazil in Rio.
Getting off the ship after 14 straight days was a great feeling although it was actually a little strange, I think they call it sea legs, I felt like I was still rocking when I was on solid ground. We awoke day 1 at six to watch the ship pull into port, something everyone says you absolutely HAVE to do for Brazil. We were a little unlucky because it was pretty hazy but it was still a Really cool view. After eating breakfast I had to go to the union to meet for my marketing field lab. For this field lab we went to a market and mall in Rio and had a scavenger hunt list of things to take pictures of or buy, students who got a certain amount would be excused from one of our papers so my team and I were all business. The market was cool, it reminded me of a more modern version of the market we had been to in Morocco, it also had stores along the outside of it. After our time ran out here we headed to lunch. The lunch place was a Brazilian buffet with tons of meat, rice, fried things, and other stuff that I had no idea what it was but ate it anyways. It was my best meal in a while. When lunch ended we went to the mall, it was a more upscale mall located right between Copacabana and Ipanema beach. It was so nice to be in there, it felt like an American mall, it even had a lot of familiar stores. It also felt really safe which we liked because they scared us senseless about how dangerous Brazil is.
After our field lab we got back on the ship and I ate dinner with Ashley, Taylor, and Ayah, three of my friends from USD. The food on the ship in port is probably 100x better than while at sea so I've tried to eat more meals on the ship towards the end of the voyage to save money. After waking up early and stuff I took a quick nap after dinner then went out with Taylor, Ashley, and a bunch of other people. We went to this area called Lapa where all the bars and clubs in Rio are. When we got there, there were tons of people, we didn't really know where to go. We ended up choosing a random bar, you had to spend a minimum of 30 reals there, that's like $10 but sounds like a lot. It was a cool place, they had a live band playing Brazilian music and all the locals were dancing. We met a local couple, it was the girl's birthday, and they were talking to us and trying to show us how to do the dances. Surprisingly I wasn't good. The big drink in Brazil is called Capirinhas and we were able to get 4 for the 30 real. They're really good, they have sugar, lime, and we think tequila (not 100% sure though). Once we spent our money we went to this club that a lot of SAS kids went to, we didn't end up going in though because we didn't have enough money for the cover and a taxi to get home, so we just headed back to the ship.
The next day I went out to explore Rio with Ayah, Ashley, Taylor, and another USD girl named Emily. We almost paid a tour guide to bring us around to the main spots but found out that they only brought you to the places but you had to pay separate admission fees. We ended up just taking public transportation. We walked with some other girls to the metro where we found another one who told us how to get one of the public buses to the Christ the Redeemer statue. We were able to get their pretty easily, then we paid for a van to bring us up the mountain the statue is on. It brings you about halfway then you have to wait in a line to get tickets, then another line to get another shuttle up to the statue. Once you get there you have to climb a bunch of stairs to actually get to the Christ statue. Luckily it was extremely hot out so all this waiting and climbing was super fun. It was worth all the time for sure because the views at the top of the mountain and the statue itself were amazing. We were so lucky to have such a nice day, it had been scheduled to rain and thunderstorm the whole day. We took a bunch of pictures at the top and then once we were done started making the trek back down, it was mid afternoon by this point and we were all exhausted and hungry. Once we finally got down to the bottom we hopped in a cab and went to a Starbucks (can always count on Starbucks for wifi) it ended up being in another mall which was great. None of us had the energy to do anymore touristy stuff so we lounged around the mall for a while enjoying our first wifi in two weeks. After that we walked around the mall for a bit then went back to the ship. My other friends were still out when I got back and the rest of then wanted to go out to dinner which was not in my budget so I treated myself to a fancy meal at the pool deck snack bar for dinner, chicken sandwich and fries. Once the other Bentley girls got back we all started packing because we were leaving for the Amazon in the morning.
Sydney and I slept in until 4am the next morning and dragged ourselves to the garden lounge (one of our dining rooms) to meet with our Amazon riverboat crew. They served us continental breakfast which was nice. We left at about 5 to head to the airport. The whole morning is pretty hazy for me because it was so early but we got on our plane and landed in Manaus at about 11am. Manaus was one of the sites of the World Cup, the US actually played one of their games there. It was really stormy in Manaus when we got there so we had to sit in the lobby of a hotel for two hours because our riverboats couldn't get close to shore with the waters being so rough. Eventually the storm slowed enough for us to get on so they bussed is to a dock area where we had to take little boats over to our riverboat, home for the next 4 days and 3 nights.
They greeted us on the ship with necklaces made from seeds and berries from the rainforest and luckily had a snack for us cause I was starving. It was still really rainy so they put up tarps around the sides of the boat. It was a two floor boat, the bottom had a table that they set our meals our on which were buffet style, the kitchen, three bathrooms, and a sink. The upstairs was totally open with half covered by a roof, there were a bunch of plastic lawn chairs up there for us to sit on. There were a little over 30 of us who were on our boat, mostly students, and we started off the day by going around and introducing ourselves. There wasn't much we could do with the weather. After we sailed for a while we reached the meeting a the water which is the spot where the Amazon river meets the Negro river. It was so cool, the waters don't mix because of the currents and density of the waters so you can clearly see the brown waters of the Amazon and the black of the Negro and a clear line going right through them. We then continued on, the rain was finally letting up. We eventually got to this stop area that had a restaurant and shop area. They led us on a walk along a very precarious bridge, about wide enough for one person where we finally ended at this pond thing that had water Lillie's. Our guide called an alligator (or crocodile seriously who knows the difference) over we got to watch it swim over, luckily we were up above it on the bridge. After a little while we walked back to our boat and had some time to shop around in a store where we had stopped. It sold a bunch of really interesting stuff like wood sculptures, blow dart guns, and taxidermy.
After looking around a bit we got on smaller motor boats and our guides brought us along the Amazon river where we eventually stopped at a little house. The people had a pet dog, sloth, and anaconda. You know, your typical house pets. They let us hold then and take pictures, a lot of people wouldn't hold the snake but I figured why not, it was scary though I was not a fan at all. Afterwards it was getting really dark so we got back into the boats and zoomed along looking for crocodiles. You can easily see them in the dark because of the way their eyes glow. One of the guides caught a baby one and we passed it around so we all got to hold it. Once we finished all that we headed back to the boat. When we got there, all of our hammocks were set up so we claimed them and put our bags in them, it was pretty right up there. You had to crawl underneath them to move anywhere on 2/3 of the top deck. We had dinner on the boat not too much later, that consisted of a bunch of different foods like rice, pasta, chicken, fish, and vegetables. I was actually surprised by how much I liked the food. After dinner we hung out for a little while on the top deck but barely made it to 9, we were completely dead from the day. We loaded ourselves up with bug spray, climbed into our hammocks, and went to sleep pretty quickly. It was a pretty good sleep for the most part, we had some snorers and sleep talkers. I was woken up a few times by my hammock neighbors who had shifted in theirs and were essentially on top of me.
The next morning we were up by about six, there's not much sleeping in when you're outside with 30 people. We started off the day with breakfast which consisted of eggs, cheese, ham, bread and this awesome coffee cake type of thing. After everyone changed and drowned themselves in sunscreen and bug spray, we all got back into the same smaller motor boats and they brought us to the edge of part of the rainforest, where we were greeted by a nice Amazonian man wielding a machete. He was our guide into the forest. We had our first hike through the Amazon. It was pretty early in the day but it was already so hot and super muggy outside. Luckily, unlike yesterday the weather was nice, we didn't have anymore rain although after some time walking I would've loved a little bit of a rain shower. Our guides walked our group through the forest pointing out interesting plants, insects, and animals. We learned about this type of tree called telephone trees that you can bang on if you ever get lost and the sound travels several kilometers. They also showed us a different tree that you can hit and a sap comes out that he compared to Ensure back in the states, we got to try it, it was like grass flavored milk. Some of the bugs we saw (I hate bugs) were this really beautiful butterfly called an owl butterfly that has a large spot on each wing that each look like owl eyes and this kind of ant called a bullet ant that if they bite you, it feels like you're being poked with a hot needle for 24 hours and there's nothing you can do. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see "bird eaters," a type of spider...I think the name is self explanatory. As we were walking one of the girls in our group noticed a snake curled up on a log, it looked pretty small and we told the guide who was up at the front. Turns out, it is the third most poisonous snake in the world. He then proceeds to pick it up and got it to bite his machete (he used a machete to cut a path, this is serious nature shit we went through) It really wasn't huge, it was pretty long but curled up it was tiny because it was so skinny, aka now I'm horrified for the rest of the hike. The hike lasted about 2 hours so it was just after 11 when we got back to our canoes and they brought us back to our boat which was now docked at a little beach. The guides had checked out the water to make sure it was safe for us to swim. It was the most refreshing swim I've ever had after that hike, I was sweating on every single inch of my body. Most of us got our shampoo and used the river to wash our hair, the boat had showers but they were actually just shower heads on the roof of the bathroom that used water from the river, this was more effective.
After some swim time we got back on the boat and took off and ate lunch. Lunch was more or less the same as dinner the night before, pasta, rice, chicken, fish, etc. When we finished eating lunch the boat starting moving again as we traveled to our next destination which was a couple hours away. While we hiked and swam they had tucked our hammocks up into the ceiling of the boat so we had much more room to move and stay out of the sun because it was STRONG. We sat around and talked and played cards for a little while but after about an hour we were all sprawled out around the floor of the boat passed out. When I woke up from my nap we were approaching land again and they dropped us off at a village along the river with our guides. They walked us around the village and gave us a little tour, there wasn't a ton to see. These villages don't usually have many people or much of an economy (they do have television and Coca Cola though). We were scheduled to play soccer against locals in the village, the first game was our guys vs. the local guys in the village. While they played we played with the little kids in the village and handed out little candies and stuff to them which they couldn't have been happier about. The guys game lasted about 15 minutes then the girls got to play. There weren't enough girls (when I say girls I mean females because there were some teenagers, some young adults, and one or two moms in the group) on the Brazilian team so a couple of us traded teams, I was one of them. Our game ended up being a full hour in muggy, sweaty, Amazonian heat. It felt like summer soccer tryouts but possibly even worse. Plus I am not in the best shape of my life currently, so an hour of running was tough I really really felt it the next few days. The game was so fun though, I didn't realize how much I missed playing soccer. After the long game, in which I had two assists and some pretty sick crosses (yup still got it) they finally called the game. Our guide was playing goalie for the American side and I think he stretched it out because he didn't want to win but we on the Brazil side dominated. We all met in the middle and took some group pictures as a team. We then chose the best guy and girl player on their teams and gave them each a soccer ball which they were super excited about. They then hose the best guy and girl player out of the Americans to give a Brazilian soccer jersey to. They ended up choosing me. It was honestly one of the coolest experiences of the whole trip I was really taken aback that they had chosen me. It was so cool, they spoke no English at all and none of is could understand each other but we had kind of come together for a while in soccer. I know that sounds super lame but it was probably the best part of the entire semester for me so far. Everything kind of clicked here. I don't think I'll grasp the meaning of this whole trip fully until home but this was the start.
We said goodbye to the villagers after the game and got back on the motor boats to meet up with the riverboat which had left. As we zoomed along the river the sun started setting, it was so beautiful. The water out there is smooth and looks like glass and the sunsets are incomparable. I couldn't get a picture to even close to match the beauty. Before we even got to our destination the stars came out and even though there were clouds it was more than I had seen in my entire life. Soon, we reached a beach where our boat and the other group of SAS riverboat people was docked. As we approached they set off fireworks welcoming us to a beach barbecue. We were soon met by the other students and combined there were over 100 of us. There was a huge long table of all different food, similar to what we've been eating. Rice, pasta, mashed potatoes which was a nice change, chicken, fish, and skewers of beef. They also had some desserts, one was a mango smoothie/pudding type thing and the other was basically Nutella. Plus they had the watermelon and pineapple. It was all SO GOOD. While everyone ate they were playing Brazilian music and we sat in plastic chairs set up in a massive semicircle. After dinner we started to play games. They had musical chairs, limbo, and tug of war. It was all so much fun and such a cool experience. When the games were over we got back onto our respective boats and a lot of us got ready for bed, exhausted from the long day and early wakeup, it was only like 8 or 9. I took a quick shower in the weird bathroom with an overhead faucet to try to clean off a little from the game. At this point I threw in the towel though and just knew I was going to be filthy until I saw the MV again and there was nothing I could do about it. It was an early night for us and I slept like a baby this time.
It was another early wakeup for us and the same breakfast, minus the coffee cake which was a bummer. Since our flight home had gotten cancelled about a week earlier we had to change around our itinerary a bunch and squeeze a lot in so this day was packed. We all got dressed again all covered up and again drowned ourselves in bugspray and sunscreen, it was another scorcher. As usual, we got on our motor boats and headed off across the river. We eventually stopped and the guides handed out fishing rods made of what seemed like bamboo for piranha fishing. Fishing isn't very fun or exciting, especially when you're in pants on the equator and no fish are biting. After over an hour and a few location changes we gave up, the piranhas just weren't biting that day. They then brought us deeper down the river and to the shore where we had to walk up a pretty steep hill. Yay, another forest hike! A lot of us weren't super into the idea of a hike with how hot it was and how long we had already been cooking in the sun. Plus if you've seen one part of the Amazon jungle, you've seen it all. We went anyways to brave the wilderness. There was really nothing in the hike that stick out or was cool like the first one which sucked. It would've made it a lot more enjoyable being drenched on every inch of my body in sweat if I could've seen like a panther or a wild anaconda or a toucan or something. Alas, no luck. After about two and a half hours of hiking, much more treacherous than the last one with hills and less of a path, we made it back out and went to our motor boats which brought us back to the boat. This time we got on and started driving, as usual everyone fell asleep pretty quickly and before we knew it we were at a different beach than last time.
At this beach, we met up with more SAS kids who were doing an independent riverboat tour. It's super weird to casually run into your friends in the Amazon rainforest. We didn't get very much time there before we had to be back of the boat for lunch. After we ate we left and went a little ways down the river to a little place. All the houses and buildings on the river are just like floating buildings with a dock. This place was where we were going to get to swim with the pink dolphins. We all got out, I was in the first group to get in the water. They had two guys who lured the dolphins over with fish and we got to touch them. It wasn't like sea world or anything where you could ride them but it was still really cool. We were there for a while until everyone had a chance to swim with them. Then we had a little free time to swim in the water by ourselves. After that it was back onto the boat to head to a different village. This one wasn't really as cool as the first, the people weren't as friendly it was more of a rest stop. They did have some absolutely adorable stray puppies though. We were at this village for some time until it started raining so we retreated to our boat. The boat took off again and we stopped at another beach. It was pouring so none of us had any interest in getting off. We just sat around talking. Eventually it slowed and a few kids went to explore, I found this cute little shack where a woman was selling some cool like souvenir things. When we left the island we had a while until dinner so a lot of us napped and hung around. Dinner was again the pasta, rice, meat, fish. Even though the food was repetitive it was really good. We got to watch another gorgeous sunset, and the moon was absolutely massive. Some of us stayed up "late" that night while others weren't feeling well so they went to bed. The whole next day was going to be traveling so we tried to stay awake late to be able to sleep during the day. This lasted until ten when we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore and went to bed.
Our wakeup this time was 5 am. Just after the sunrise. I was bummed out I missed it because I heard it was incredible. We had our same breakfast and gathered all of our stuff and got ready for a long day of flying back to Salvador. We got off the boats at around seven and headed to the airport. We got there early enough that I was able to use wifi for a while and talk to people at home which was nice. Our first flight brought us to Belem. Then we barely made our connecting flight. This flight was really strange, there were about 150+ SAS people on it and it would take off, fly for a while then land and let people off but we stayed on. It was like a bus or a train, but a plane. By the time we got to Salvador it was dark, we were smelly and exhausted and starving because we couldn't eat a meal for the whole day. As shitty as we felt it was the coolest experience and I wouldn't take it back for anything. Seeing the ship was a huge relief though and I took the best shower of my life and got into my bed to finally get a real nights sleep.
We had two days to kill in Salvador. There isn't really much to do there as far as tourism goes. Apparently it's a pretty dangerous place but I didn't ever feel very unsafe. I'm not gonna go into a ton of detail about my time there because it wasn't super exciting but it was a lot better than I expected. Both days we stayed close to the ship, conveniently there was this really cool market right around the corner from it. At the market were tons of stands kind of like Morocco with vendors selling everything from paintings, to wood carvings, to clothes, to jewelry, even hot sauce. We also went up this massive public elevator both days into the old town. The elevator was located right outside the market. The old town had tons of shops and cool stuff. We shopped there too. One of the days we went into a cafe and ordered drinks, I got this really huge and delicious daiquiri. Seriously, side note: it's really messed up that we have to go back to the US and not be legal anymore, there should be some rule against that if you've been accustomed to being legal for like four months. Anyways, we wanted to save money so we ate our meals on the ship and avoided the nightlife because the city was pretty intimidating. I was glad to have seen it though, it's not somewhere I'd go back but it was a really cool place.
Tomorrow morning we will be in Barbados. Sorry for the extreme delay in this blog. You'll notice that I began and ended this blog almost a week apart, woops.Schoolwork has been a killer lately and I didn't want to half ass this one since it was the coolest experience. Stay tuned, I will hopefully be posting very shortly about our Sea Olympics which occurred just two days ago. So much fun. Hopefully I survive Barbados, it'll be a fun little vacation/spring break. Only two countries to go, and 16 days until home now. Where has the semester gone? I'm not ready to leave yet.
See you all soon though! I am excited for that
Friday, October 31, 2014
Life at Sea
So I've been thinking of writing this post for a while, and now that I'm halfway through this 14 day trip across the ocean I figured why not do it now? We also had our Halloween dance tonight and I didn't want to go to bed after it but also didn't want to do homework so might as well right? I don't think a lot of people really understand what life is like for us SASers a many call us (SASshole is also a popular one). I'll answer some common questions, clear up some misconceptions, and give a type of "day in the life". So without further ado, here is life at sea.
Some common questions
1. What's it like to live on a ship?
It's definitely interesting, honestly I find it pretty similar to being on a campus, we just can't walk as far. There are some differences obviously. We have snack bars and a pool and see our professors walking around in pajamas. It's really cool though because it's a very right knit community, you see people in countries that you don't personally know but you know are on SAS and automatically look out for eachother or say hi.
2. Do you take classes?
Yes, I'm taking 4 classes. Most students are but some are doing five. There are two class days A and B and 6 class periods a day. Before coming on the ship you make your schedule and register for classes just like any other college. I'm taking international business, international marketing, intercultural communication, and modern evolutionary theory. Most classes are small and in normal classrooms. Some classes have desks, some have tables, some have booths like a dining hall. Every student is required to take a "global lens" course which is a large lecture in the union. A lot of kids skip though. Classes can be really difficult or really easy depending on the class or professor (same as normal college). Mine are a mixture of the two.
3. What kind of people are on the ship/ how many people are on the ship?
There are about 600 students on the ship, maybe more maybe less I don't really know. There are also some lifelong learners which are adults who take classes, professors, deans, crew, and their families. So yes, there are children on the ship. There were some really little kids 2, 4, and 6 but their family was only partial voyagers and left us after morocco. There are probably ten other kids though ranging from probably 5 to 12 with a few older teenagers. As for the students there are A LOT of west coasters and southerners. Aka we are not at Bentley anymore, it's quite the culture shock for us. The kids are super friendly though, lots of really crunchy kids and there are some great artists, musicians, etc that make things really interesting. Also, the majority of people are in Greek life which is really cool. I've met a ton of Alpha Phi girls which has also been really cool. It's definitely a new experience for me and I'm going to miss these people a ton.
4. Do you get homesick?
There's always a little part of me that misses home or thinks "I wish so and so were here for this" or things remind me of people and I miss them but I don't get very homesick. The hardest thing about semester at sea is certain times, especially on these long treks when you're overwhelmed or frustrated or annoyed and you just want to make a phone call and you can't. It's hard to not be able to talk to people or to send an email and only go back and forth once per day or have people not answer at all. Emailing is like our texting, you don't have to put much into an email, it's just nice to hear from different people outside of the ship.
Some misconceptions:
1. I'll send Tori this funny article online
WE DO NOT HAVE INTERNET, please stop sending me links, I can't open them we get two hours for the semester.
2. I'll tag Tori in 46 awful pictures on Facebook.
I can't even defend myself or untag pics, c'mon guys like I said, no internet.
3. Semester at Sea is a booze cruise
I do not drink on the ship, there is sometimes alcohol available, two tiny glasses of wine or two beers at dinner, then on nights they let us go crazy 2 hours after dinner ends we can have 3 more. Did I mention each drink is $4?
4. There must be so many hot guys on the ship
Good news dad! No worrying about boys, the ship is 70:30 girls to guys. 90% of these males are super artsy or very west coast. Not really my type, they make great friends though.
5. Being on the ship must be super boring.
While there are some points when it's like "what should we do now..?" There is actually a lot to do on the ship. We have world cafés every night which is usually someone talking about an issue or topic, there are clubs, everyone has movies and we share them with each other, there are also tons of board games. You also can't go wrong sitting by the pool all day, we haven't had much bad weather (knock on wood, rumor has it we're hitting a storm soon) Sometimes the ship even plays movies in the union. We've also had students put on plays, open mic nights, a talent show, each "sea" or your floor/section of your floor has occasional programs, and there are tons of clubs.
6. Not having technology must suck
I must say I miss instagram and texting and I always think of stuff to tweet but it's actually been amazing. At dinner you actually talk to people for hours, and get to know them, and pay attention. When I come home I'll probably be horrible with my phone because I'll still think I can't use it.
I can't think of anymore off the top of my head right now, but I'll give a little day in the life so you can get a feel for what I do on a daily basis. We don't really do days of the week, like I actually have no clue what today is. We have class every single day at sea with the exception of a couple study days, saved solely for these long stretches. We have 12 days of class and 2 study days on this 14 day stretch. Of course I do different things day to day but this is usually my standard B day.
The alarm goes off at 7:10, then we snooze it until like 7:35 and finally get up and throw on leggings and a t-shirt. We walk up to the sixth floor over to the garden lounge (the smaller dining room) to our classroom which is a room inside of it. Walking anywhere on the ship takes 5 minutes max. I usually grab a muffin to eat in my international business class which starts at 8. After class I either go to the computer lab on the other end of the ship or go back down to take a nap. You can nap at all times because we have no window so it is always entirely pitch black. Our steward cleans our room on B days so I always come back to a made bed and tidy room. Not cleaning is great. I usually do homework up until lunch which I eat on the fifth floor in the main dining room, at 12, Peggy one of our deans comes on with the afternoon announcements. After lunch i either stay there to work because it's usually quiet or go up to the seventh deck which is the pool deck. On nice days students are laying on chairs all by the pool or on towels around it. There is usually someone playing music, it's not very conducive to work but I love being out there and watching the ocean. Sometimes someone spots a whale or dolphins and everyone sprints to the side of the ship to see. At 3:50 I have my second class of the day, evolution, after almost 6 hours between my first and second classes it's tough to sit through but I haven't skipped any of my 4 classes yet! Class ends when Peggy comes back on with our nighttime announcements, then I head over to the garden lounge for dinner. Our favorite crew member, Darwin, works in the garden lounge and hooks us up all the time, he's the man. We usually sit around in the lounge for a while talking and people will come in and out. Sometimes at night we'll go to a world cafe, or go up to the top deck to watch the sunset, or watch a movie, or just stay and do homework. Snack time is at ten but I don't eat it a lot. I usually go to the gym (if I go which is rare) at about 10:30. There's nobody there at that time, you have to sign up for equipment usually and it's only for a half hour so it sucks which is why I wait. It can be tough to work out when the sea is really rocky sometimes too. Luckily the only food they feed us is pasta, potatoes, and bread. After the gym I'll usually go to fill up my water bottle in the garden lounge, the only spot where you can do it, then shower and go to bed.
Not a super exciting life but everyone has a routine. We switch it up a little everyday too. When we're in port is when we really have fun. I feel like I covered a lot in this blog. Feel free to comment/email me any other questions you have or stuff you wanna know. I'm still begging for emails on this stretch to entertain me. I hope this all makes sense, fun fact: I don't proofread my blogs. I also can't respond to your comments (see misconceptions above). Hope everyone had a great Halloween!
Some common questions
1. What's it like to live on a ship?
It's definitely interesting, honestly I find it pretty similar to being on a campus, we just can't walk as far. There are some differences obviously. We have snack bars and a pool and see our professors walking around in pajamas. It's really cool though because it's a very right knit community, you see people in countries that you don't personally know but you know are on SAS and automatically look out for eachother or say hi.
2. Do you take classes?
Yes, I'm taking 4 classes. Most students are but some are doing five. There are two class days A and B and 6 class periods a day. Before coming on the ship you make your schedule and register for classes just like any other college. I'm taking international business, international marketing, intercultural communication, and modern evolutionary theory. Most classes are small and in normal classrooms. Some classes have desks, some have tables, some have booths like a dining hall. Every student is required to take a "global lens" course which is a large lecture in the union. A lot of kids skip though. Classes can be really difficult or really easy depending on the class or professor (same as normal college). Mine are a mixture of the two.
3. What kind of people are on the ship/ how many people are on the ship?
There are about 600 students on the ship, maybe more maybe less I don't really know. There are also some lifelong learners which are adults who take classes, professors, deans, crew, and their families. So yes, there are children on the ship. There were some really little kids 2, 4, and 6 but their family was only partial voyagers and left us after morocco. There are probably ten other kids though ranging from probably 5 to 12 with a few older teenagers. As for the students there are A LOT of west coasters and southerners. Aka we are not at Bentley anymore, it's quite the culture shock for us. The kids are super friendly though, lots of really crunchy kids and there are some great artists, musicians, etc that make things really interesting. Also, the majority of people are in Greek life which is really cool. I've met a ton of Alpha Phi girls which has also been really cool. It's definitely a new experience for me and I'm going to miss these people a ton.
4. Do you get homesick?
There's always a little part of me that misses home or thinks "I wish so and so were here for this" or things remind me of people and I miss them but I don't get very homesick. The hardest thing about semester at sea is certain times, especially on these long treks when you're overwhelmed or frustrated or annoyed and you just want to make a phone call and you can't. It's hard to not be able to talk to people or to send an email and only go back and forth once per day or have people not answer at all. Emailing is like our texting, you don't have to put much into an email, it's just nice to hear from different people outside of the ship.
Some misconceptions:
1. I'll send Tori this funny article online
WE DO NOT HAVE INTERNET, please stop sending me links, I can't open them we get two hours for the semester.
2. I'll tag Tori in 46 awful pictures on Facebook.
I can't even defend myself or untag pics, c'mon guys like I said, no internet.
3. Semester at Sea is a booze cruise
I do not drink on the ship, there is sometimes alcohol available, two tiny glasses of wine or two beers at dinner, then on nights they let us go crazy 2 hours after dinner ends we can have 3 more. Did I mention each drink is $4?
4. There must be so many hot guys on the ship
Good news dad! No worrying about boys, the ship is 70:30 girls to guys. 90% of these males are super artsy or very west coast. Not really my type, they make great friends though.
5. Being on the ship must be super boring.
While there are some points when it's like "what should we do now..?" There is actually a lot to do on the ship. We have world cafés every night which is usually someone talking about an issue or topic, there are clubs, everyone has movies and we share them with each other, there are also tons of board games. You also can't go wrong sitting by the pool all day, we haven't had much bad weather (knock on wood, rumor has it we're hitting a storm soon) Sometimes the ship even plays movies in the union. We've also had students put on plays, open mic nights, a talent show, each "sea" or your floor/section of your floor has occasional programs, and there are tons of clubs.
6. Not having technology must suck
I must say I miss instagram and texting and I always think of stuff to tweet but it's actually been amazing. At dinner you actually talk to people for hours, and get to know them, and pay attention. When I come home I'll probably be horrible with my phone because I'll still think I can't use it.
I can't think of anymore off the top of my head right now, but I'll give a little day in the life so you can get a feel for what I do on a daily basis. We don't really do days of the week, like I actually have no clue what today is. We have class every single day at sea with the exception of a couple study days, saved solely for these long stretches. We have 12 days of class and 2 study days on this 14 day stretch. Of course I do different things day to day but this is usually my standard B day.
The alarm goes off at 7:10, then we snooze it until like 7:35 and finally get up and throw on leggings and a t-shirt. We walk up to the sixth floor over to the garden lounge (the smaller dining room) to our classroom which is a room inside of it. Walking anywhere on the ship takes 5 minutes max. I usually grab a muffin to eat in my international business class which starts at 8. After class I either go to the computer lab on the other end of the ship or go back down to take a nap. You can nap at all times because we have no window so it is always entirely pitch black. Our steward cleans our room on B days so I always come back to a made bed and tidy room. Not cleaning is great. I usually do homework up until lunch which I eat on the fifth floor in the main dining room, at 12, Peggy one of our deans comes on with the afternoon announcements. After lunch i either stay there to work because it's usually quiet or go up to the seventh deck which is the pool deck. On nice days students are laying on chairs all by the pool or on towels around it. There is usually someone playing music, it's not very conducive to work but I love being out there and watching the ocean. Sometimes someone spots a whale or dolphins and everyone sprints to the side of the ship to see. At 3:50 I have my second class of the day, evolution, after almost 6 hours between my first and second classes it's tough to sit through but I haven't skipped any of my 4 classes yet! Class ends when Peggy comes back on with our nighttime announcements, then I head over to the garden lounge for dinner. Our favorite crew member, Darwin, works in the garden lounge and hooks us up all the time, he's the man. We usually sit around in the lounge for a while talking and people will come in and out. Sometimes at night we'll go to a world cafe, or go up to the top deck to watch the sunset, or watch a movie, or just stay and do homework. Snack time is at ten but I don't eat it a lot. I usually go to the gym (if I go which is rare) at about 10:30. There's nobody there at that time, you have to sign up for equipment usually and it's only for a half hour so it sucks which is why I wait. It can be tough to work out when the sea is really rocky sometimes too. Luckily the only food they feed us is pasta, potatoes, and bread. After the gym I'll usually go to fill up my water bottle in the garden lounge, the only spot where you can do it, then shower and go to bed.
Not a super exciting life but everyone has a routine. We switch it up a little everyday too. When we're in port is when we really have fun. I feel like I covered a lot in this blog. Feel free to comment/email me any other questions you have or stuff you wanna know. I'm still begging for emails on this stretch to entertain me. I hope this all makes sense, fun fact: I don't proofread my blogs. I also can't respond to your comments (see misconceptions above). Hope everyone had a great Halloween!
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