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!
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
The Hardest Goodbye
It's been five days now since I left Barcelona and I'm still having a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that 1. I left barca 2. I'm done with Europe 3. I'm stuck on a ship for 14 days (only 10 now) luckily today is a study day so we have no class. It's also beautiful out so I'll be poolside all day... Studying... Obviously.
Leaving Barca was definitely one of the hardest by far, I strongly considered ditching the ship and staying there forever. It was the first place I really could've seen myself studying abroad. I never had any interest in staying in one place to study abroad, too much of a free spirit ya know? But everything about that place was amazing. We got to see a ton of our friends from Bentley which was awesome, especially since we won't see anyone again until December 8th. We stayed with Isabella and Katie and I must say they may have been the greatest hosts so far (sorry everyone, much love to all you guys). Their apartment was right on the beach which was super convenient plus we had awesome weather the whole time. But the way the city is set up and with the metro they could get anywhere pretty quickly. Barcelona is just the perfect mix of history, beach, fun, great weather, and great people. I'm seriously probably never going to get over leaving.
The first day we woke up early to get off the ship and Isabella met us and we walked back to their apartment, it was only a little over a twenty minute walk. After settling in and catching up a bit we walked with them along the beach on the way to their school and they went to class and we explored the boardwalk and stuff. We decided to get the touristy stuff done our first day so we could relax the rest of our time. First we went to Sagrada Familia which is a church in barca, it's a lot different than most churches I've been to abroad because it's a lot more modern, it's actually still under construction and will be for a long time. It was one of the most incredible churches I've ever seen. I couldn't capture how beautiful it was with any camera. The detail inside, the stained glass, everything was just incredible. It's not something I can really explain, it's one of those things you need to see in person. We just sat there staring around the place for like an hour. After that we went to Parc Guell. It's quite a hike to get up to it, there are actually escalators along the street for people to get up. It gave some really amazing views of the entire city though which was cool, it was a little hazy which wasn't ideal but it was still a great view. We obviously went to the bench there to get pics and stuff, that was really cool too. The mosaics at Parc Guell are all so cool. On our way back from Parc Guell to the metro station we stopped in a bunch of the souvenir shops to look for our souvenirs and jerseys for the soccer game. Fun fact about Barcelona: they sell FC Barca jerseys in legitimately every store. This is great for people buying them, I got to haggle the price of mine down, I also got a beach towel which I'll be needing as we go into these more tropical climates (life is hard). After that we went back to the apartment and Katie and Isabella got back from class. For dinner we just got some pizzas from an Italian place on their street. It was no Italy pizza but it was still pretty good. That night we went to a bar called George Payne which is essentially the skell of Barcelona according to our friends, as usual if you don't know what I'm talking about don't worry about it (RIP Skell). It was really cool though I finally got to see a ton of the Bentley people in Barca. There was even a beer pong tournament however I unfortunately didn't get to take part, this may be better for everyone though, I would've hated to embarrass everyone. After that we went to the clubs along the beach, they're all underground so there's just a small entrance above ground. We ending up splitting up and Isabella and I went to one called Opium which also happened to be the choice location of semester at sea for the night. We eventually went back to the apartment which was a super short walk from where we were.
The next morning we woke up and went right to the beach for a while. In the afternoon we met up with the girls again between their classes and they brought us to this amazing sandwich place right near them. It was called Bode B maybe (sp?) idk but all the bread there was freshly baked and you pick a meat that they cool for you then you just load it with vegetables and stuff. I got chicken with a ton of toppings and their sauces which I don't think anybody actually has any idea what they are but everyone knows they're really good. After lunch we walked with Isabella and Katie to their scho and on the way they showed us this really nice park with a really cool fountain and we saw the arc de triomph (arc number 63? They're everywhere) then we saw their campus and headed back to the apartment. We chilled there for a while and showered and stuff before we headed back to the ship to get dinner and to meet for the soccer game. We met on the top deck of the ship with the other people in our group who were going to the game and they distributed our tickets. Then they herded all 300+ of us out to buses and headed for the stadium. When we got to the stadium it was just masses of people, not surprising since it holds over 100,000 fans but definitely overwhelming nonetheless. Walking into the stadium out to where the seats are was wild, I'd never seen such a huge stadium with so many people. Soccer for these people is right up there with religion. I was in awe. We were up in the nosebleeds but right on the mid line so I was so happy with the seats because I could see the whole game perfectly. Some other SAS kids got tickets right on the field which is sick because they could see Messi and Neymar up close but not the whole game as it played out. It was also really funny at the stadium because they have the opposing team fans in the top corner of the stadium behind plexi glass surrounded by tons of security. Overall it was more quiet than I expected, I think cause everyone was so intent on the game. Whenever they scored though the place absolutely erupted. They ended up winning which was awesome. Afterwards the buses dropped us on La Rambla which is the main street in Barca. They said it was supposed to be crazy but it really wasn't so Syd and I just went back to the apartment. We definitely didn't miss anything besides typical drunk SAS kids.
The next morning we woke up and went back to the beach. For a while, the weather was just too beautiful not to. In the afternoon we met up with Isabella and she brought us to this really cool food market. They had tons of fresh fruit and vegetables and sold stuff like chocolate, meals for lunch, smoothies, it was great and so cheap. We walked around la Rambla for a while after that. Then we went over to the gothic district which has a lot of really cool architecture and some really nice churches. She also brought us to the greatest gelato place I've been to thus far called mana gelats. I got peanut butter and Ferrero Roche (sp?) then they fill a mini cone with melted chocolate and put it on top. Heaven. It was getting late at this point so we headed back to the apartment. Isabella and I went over to the beach to watch the sunset, very romantic stuff. It was so nice though it was like it surrounded us. It definitely competed with our ship sunsets. For dinner Katie cooked pasta and chicken with some really good sauce, not sure what it was but it was awesome. Plus can't beat a home cooked meal. Then we got ready to go out for our last night in Barcelona/last night out for two weeks. First we went to this sick bar called Dow Jones. It's modeled after the stock market, a Bentley student's dream. All the drink prices are on screens with tickers and it shows the prices and as people buy certain ones the prices change. Then at some point the stock market crashes and everyone rushes to get their drinks. It was so cool I would go there all the time. After that we went to this club called Sutton. They had free wine and champagne until like one so it was pretty cool. It was a pretty late night, just like most of them have been. I'm not quite sure what time we got back but for some reason I had a headache when I woke up.
The next morning we met Isabella at his great fry place right near them called las fritas. We sat by the water for a while being depressed because it was getting to be time to leave. Then we went to the apartment to pack and say goodbye. On our way back to the ship we stopped in a few souvenir shops to delay the inevitable.
By late afternoon we were in line to get back on the MV and I had to say possibly the hardest goodbye yet to Barcelona. It definitely won my heart. As I got back on the ship I kissed the ground, my last European stop and last time on solid, non-rocking ground for a while.
Leaving Barca was definitely one of the hardest by far, I strongly considered ditching the ship and staying there forever. It was the first place I really could've seen myself studying abroad. I never had any interest in staying in one place to study abroad, too much of a free spirit ya know? But everything about that place was amazing. We got to see a ton of our friends from Bentley which was awesome, especially since we won't see anyone again until December 8th. We stayed with Isabella and Katie and I must say they may have been the greatest hosts so far (sorry everyone, much love to all you guys). Their apartment was right on the beach which was super convenient plus we had awesome weather the whole time. But the way the city is set up and with the metro they could get anywhere pretty quickly. Barcelona is just the perfect mix of history, beach, fun, great weather, and great people. I'm seriously probably never going to get over leaving.
The first day we woke up early to get off the ship and Isabella met us and we walked back to their apartment, it was only a little over a twenty minute walk. After settling in and catching up a bit we walked with them along the beach on the way to their school and they went to class and we explored the boardwalk and stuff. We decided to get the touristy stuff done our first day so we could relax the rest of our time. First we went to Sagrada Familia which is a church in barca, it's a lot different than most churches I've been to abroad because it's a lot more modern, it's actually still under construction and will be for a long time. It was one of the most incredible churches I've ever seen. I couldn't capture how beautiful it was with any camera. The detail inside, the stained glass, everything was just incredible. It's not something I can really explain, it's one of those things you need to see in person. We just sat there staring around the place for like an hour. After that we went to Parc Guell. It's quite a hike to get up to it, there are actually escalators along the street for people to get up. It gave some really amazing views of the entire city though which was cool, it was a little hazy which wasn't ideal but it was still a great view. We obviously went to the bench there to get pics and stuff, that was really cool too. The mosaics at Parc Guell are all so cool. On our way back from Parc Guell to the metro station we stopped in a bunch of the souvenir shops to look for our souvenirs and jerseys for the soccer game. Fun fact about Barcelona: they sell FC Barca jerseys in legitimately every store. This is great for people buying them, I got to haggle the price of mine down, I also got a beach towel which I'll be needing as we go into these more tropical climates (life is hard). After that we went back to the apartment and Katie and Isabella got back from class. For dinner we just got some pizzas from an Italian place on their street. It was no Italy pizza but it was still pretty good. That night we went to a bar called George Payne which is essentially the skell of Barcelona according to our friends, as usual if you don't know what I'm talking about don't worry about it (RIP Skell). It was really cool though I finally got to see a ton of the Bentley people in Barca. There was even a beer pong tournament however I unfortunately didn't get to take part, this may be better for everyone though, I would've hated to embarrass everyone. After that we went to the clubs along the beach, they're all underground so there's just a small entrance above ground. We ending up splitting up and Isabella and I went to one called Opium which also happened to be the choice location of semester at sea for the night. We eventually went back to the apartment which was a super short walk from where we were.
The next morning we woke up and went right to the beach for a while. In the afternoon we met up with the girls again between their classes and they brought us to this amazing sandwich place right near them. It was called Bode B maybe (sp?) idk but all the bread there was freshly baked and you pick a meat that they cool for you then you just load it with vegetables and stuff. I got chicken with a ton of toppings and their sauces which I don't think anybody actually has any idea what they are but everyone knows they're really good. After lunch we walked with Isabella and Katie to their scho and on the way they showed us this really nice park with a really cool fountain and we saw the arc de triomph (arc number 63? They're everywhere) then we saw their campus and headed back to the apartment. We chilled there for a while and showered and stuff before we headed back to the ship to get dinner and to meet for the soccer game. We met on the top deck of the ship with the other people in our group who were going to the game and they distributed our tickets. Then they herded all 300+ of us out to buses and headed for the stadium. When we got to the stadium it was just masses of people, not surprising since it holds over 100,000 fans but definitely overwhelming nonetheless. Walking into the stadium out to where the seats are was wild, I'd never seen such a huge stadium with so many people. Soccer for these people is right up there with religion. I was in awe. We were up in the nosebleeds but right on the mid line so I was so happy with the seats because I could see the whole game perfectly. Some other SAS kids got tickets right on the field which is sick because they could see Messi and Neymar up close but not the whole game as it played out. It was also really funny at the stadium because they have the opposing team fans in the top corner of the stadium behind plexi glass surrounded by tons of security. Overall it was more quiet than I expected, I think cause everyone was so intent on the game. Whenever they scored though the place absolutely erupted. They ended up winning which was awesome. Afterwards the buses dropped us on La Rambla which is the main street in Barca. They said it was supposed to be crazy but it really wasn't so Syd and I just went back to the apartment. We definitely didn't miss anything besides typical drunk SAS kids.
The next morning we woke up and went back to the beach. For a while, the weather was just too beautiful not to. In the afternoon we met up with Isabella and she brought us to this really cool food market. They had tons of fresh fruit and vegetables and sold stuff like chocolate, meals for lunch, smoothies, it was great and so cheap. We walked around la Rambla for a while after that. Then we went over to the gothic district which has a lot of really cool architecture and some really nice churches. She also brought us to the greatest gelato place I've been to thus far called mana gelats. I got peanut butter and Ferrero Roche (sp?) then they fill a mini cone with melted chocolate and put it on top. Heaven. It was getting late at this point so we headed back to the apartment. Isabella and I went over to the beach to watch the sunset, very romantic stuff. It was so nice though it was like it surrounded us. It definitely competed with our ship sunsets. For dinner Katie cooked pasta and chicken with some really good sauce, not sure what it was but it was awesome. Plus can't beat a home cooked meal. Then we got ready to go out for our last night in Barcelona/last night out for two weeks. First we went to this sick bar called Dow Jones. It's modeled after the stock market, a Bentley student's dream. All the drink prices are on screens with tickers and it shows the prices and as people buy certain ones the prices change. Then at some point the stock market crashes and everyone rushes to get their drinks. It was so cool I would go there all the time. After that we went to this club called Sutton. They had free wine and champagne until like one so it was pretty cool. It was a pretty late night, just like most of them have been. I'm not quite sure what time we got back but for some reason I had a headache when I woke up.
The next morning we met Isabella at his great fry place right near them called las fritas. We sat by the water for a while being depressed because it was getting to be time to leave. Then we went to the apartment to pack and say goodbye. On our way back to the ship we stopped in a few souvenir shops to delay the inevitable.
By late afternoon we were in line to get back on the MV and I had to say possibly the hardest goodbye yet to Barcelona. It definitely won my heart. As I got back on the ship I kissed the ground, my last European stop and last time on solid, non-rocking ground for a while.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Bye land
So I'm about to leave Barcelona and be on the ship for 14 straight days.
Please send me emails, I'll be it off from the world for two weeks. SERIOUSLY PLEASE EMAIL ME.
You can choose from any of my email addresses:
Victoria.hancock.fa14@semesteratsea.org
Hancock_vict@bentley.edu
Torihancock24@gmail.com
Torihancock@yahoo.com
The choice is yours, just please do it. After 4 days I'll probably already be losing it
Please send me emails, I'll be it off from the world for two weeks. SERIOUSLY PLEASE EMAIL ME.
You can choose from any of my email addresses:
Victoria.hancock.fa14@semesteratsea.org
Hancock_vict@bentley.edu
Torihancock24@gmail.com
Torihancock@yahoo.com
The choice is yours, just please do it. After 4 days I'll probably already be losing it
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Pasta
Today's a tough day for us ship kids, we have one day of classes before getting off the ship for four days in Barcelona. As I write this, I'm sitting on the top deck of the ship it's probably about 80 degrees without a cloud in the sky. Yesterday we got back from four amazing days in Italy, this one was the hardest to leave so far. I need about a month in Italy to see everything I want to see
Day one I didn't get to go travel by myself because I had a field lab for my international business class. Our field lab was supposed to be in Ghana making chocolate. Instead we went to a solar plant.. Not quite as exciting. We got a tour of the plant for about two hours. There was a cat there so I didn't completely hate it, I really miss my pets. After the tour we went to a farm/b&b in a really small town for lunch. The place was awesome, we had bruschetta, cheese, and eggplant for starters then they brought out this awesome homemade pasta. The best part was that they just kept bringing out more. After we ate we walked around a bit outside enjoying the views. They had dogs there too so I was playing with them. Italy really started off on my good side with all the pets. When we finished lunch we drove back to the port in Civitavecchia where the port agents talked to us about running a port. After that we went to the ship and Sydney and I headed to the train station to get a train to Rome
It was really easy to catch a train and we made it to Rome by about seven then took a cab to the apartment we were staying at in the trastavere district. We met our other friends there who had spent the day in Rome. We went to dinner when we got there, there are a good number of Bentley girls studying in Rome and living right near our apartment so one of them showed us this takeaway pizza place that was so good. I got spinach and mushroom pizza and zucchini and prosciutto pizza. That night they brought us to a club. It was really fun, there ended up being a bunch of SAS students there, it's always really interesting to go places and end up with a bunch of people you know in a foreign country, it makes it seem a lot less foreign.
The next morning we woke up and set out to do some sightseeing around Rome. It's such a massive city, in total I definitely walked well over 30 miles in my time there. Out apartment was like a 15 minute walk from the Vatican but we were saving that until the next day. We saw the
Castel Sant'Angelo, the Trevi Fountain which actually does not currently exist because it's fully under construction so it's empty, we did get to walk over the fountain so I was kind of inside of the fountain, we went to the Pantheon, piazza Navona, some shops. We also got lunch at a little Italian restaurant, I got lasagna. It was so good, all their pasta was homemade. A little while after lunch we met up with Kendal and Brooke who took the train from Florence at the Spanish steps. When we met up with them we got gelato then went to the Colosseum but we didn't go inside. By this time it was getting late so we headed back to meet up with our friends for dinner. We were supposed to go to a really great pizza place but we went to a different restaurant instead. It wasn't too bad but it was definitely pretty overpriced. After dinner we got our stuff and went to a different apartment where Sydney and I were staying with Brooke and Kendal. It was a more low-key night than before we ended up just going to a couple bars and walking the streets.
In the morning Kendal left to meet up with her parents who had just flown in to visit so Sydney, Brooke, and I met our friend at the first apartment where we were staying that night. We went to visit the Vatican in the morning, because of how packed it was we didn't go to St. Peter's but we did do the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. There's so much to see there, I hadn't expected to stay as long as we did. The only shitty part was that it was so packed but overall I really loved it. After that we went to our apartment to change into shorts because it was HOT out and obviously we weren't going to wear that to the Vatican. Then we went to a little restaurant near us for lunch where I had ravioli. Then we walked around some more, we went to this island kind of thing on the Tiber where I got this really pretty watercolor painting from a guy painting them on the street. That night we met up with Kendal and her parents for dinner. It's always really nice to see parents, unfortunately that'll be the last time until I get home and have to see my own again. The dinner was really good we got different appetizers and I got ravioli again (it was different than the first one). It was a great dinner overall huge shout out to the Pratt fam, you guys are the best! When we got back to the apartment our other friends were also back from dinner, the rest of the Bentley girls came over before we went out. About half of them went to a club and half of us went to a wine bar. I didn't want to do the hour long walk so I went to the bar. It was a nice place, we went to a few different bars in the area before heading back home.
The next morning was a tough one for me, we had to be up pretty early to check out of the apartment so I didn't quite get as much sleep as I might've wanted to to sober up a bit more. We also had to carry all of our stuff around for the day which was a struggle. We had some time to kill before catching our train so we went to the colosseum again to take some pics. Then we went back to Trastavere to find a place to eat lunch. I got an awesome pizza with sausage and mushroom, it was pretty depressing to know it was my last Italian meal. After lunch we went to the train station and headed back to Civitavecchia. We got there at around 4 so we just went right back to the ship since all of us were absolutely exhausted from the four days.
Everyone always asks which place is our favorite and there's no way I can ever answer that question, everywhere we go is so different and every place has such distinctive features that make me love it. When we were at dinner Mrs. Pratt asked which place would we go back to which is such a better question. I 100% will be going back to Italy to visit all the different places I didn't have time to go this time around. It was such a beautiful place with the most amazing food I've ever eaten and so much history. I'm definitely a little depressed to be gone.
Day one I didn't get to go travel by myself because I had a field lab for my international business class. Our field lab was supposed to be in Ghana making chocolate. Instead we went to a solar plant.. Not quite as exciting. We got a tour of the plant for about two hours. There was a cat there so I didn't completely hate it, I really miss my pets. After the tour we went to a farm/b&b in a really small town for lunch. The place was awesome, we had bruschetta, cheese, and eggplant for starters then they brought out this awesome homemade pasta. The best part was that they just kept bringing out more. After we ate we walked around a bit outside enjoying the views. They had dogs there too so I was playing with them. Italy really started off on my good side with all the pets. When we finished lunch we drove back to the port in Civitavecchia where the port agents talked to us about running a port. After that we went to the ship and Sydney and I headed to the train station to get a train to Rome
It was really easy to catch a train and we made it to Rome by about seven then took a cab to the apartment we were staying at in the trastavere district. We met our other friends there who had spent the day in Rome. We went to dinner when we got there, there are a good number of Bentley girls studying in Rome and living right near our apartment so one of them showed us this takeaway pizza place that was so good. I got spinach and mushroom pizza and zucchini and prosciutto pizza. That night they brought us to a club. It was really fun, there ended up being a bunch of SAS students there, it's always really interesting to go places and end up with a bunch of people you know in a foreign country, it makes it seem a lot less foreign.
The next morning we woke up and set out to do some sightseeing around Rome. It's such a massive city, in total I definitely walked well over 30 miles in my time there. Out apartment was like a 15 minute walk from the Vatican but we were saving that until the next day. We saw the
Castel Sant'Angelo, the Trevi Fountain which actually does not currently exist because it's fully under construction so it's empty, we did get to walk over the fountain so I was kind of inside of the fountain, we went to the Pantheon, piazza Navona, some shops. We also got lunch at a little Italian restaurant, I got lasagna. It was so good, all their pasta was homemade. A little while after lunch we met up with Kendal and Brooke who took the train from Florence at the Spanish steps. When we met up with them we got gelato then went to the Colosseum but we didn't go inside. By this time it was getting late so we headed back to meet up with our friends for dinner. We were supposed to go to a really great pizza place but we went to a different restaurant instead. It wasn't too bad but it was definitely pretty overpriced. After dinner we got our stuff and went to a different apartment where Sydney and I were staying with Brooke and Kendal. It was a more low-key night than before we ended up just going to a couple bars and walking the streets.
In the morning Kendal left to meet up with her parents who had just flown in to visit so Sydney, Brooke, and I met our friend at the first apartment where we were staying that night. We went to visit the Vatican in the morning, because of how packed it was we didn't go to St. Peter's but we did do the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. There's so much to see there, I hadn't expected to stay as long as we did. The only shitty part was that it was so packed but overall I really loved it. After that we went to our apartment to change into shorts because it was HOT out and obviously we weren't going to wear that to the Vatican. Then we went to a little restaurant near us for lunch where I had ravioli. Then we walked around some more, we went to this island kind of thing on the Tiber where I got this really pretty watercolor painting from a guy painting them on the street. That night we met up with Kendal and her parents for dinner. It's always really nice to see parents, unfortunately that'll be the last time until I get home and have to see my own again. The dinner was really good we got different appetizers and I got ravioli again (it was different than the first one). It was a great dinner overall huge shout out to the Pratt fam, you guys are the best! When we got back to the apartment our other friends were also back from dinner, the rest of the Bentley girls came over before we went out. About half of them went to a club and half of us went to a wine bar. I didn't want to do the hour long walk so I went to the bar. It was a nice place, we went to a few different bars in the area before heading back home.
The next morning was a tough one for me, we had to be up pretty early to check out of the apartment so I didn't quite get as much sleep as I might've wanted to to sober up a bit more. We also had to carry all of our stuff around for the day which was a struggle. We had some time to kill before catching our train so we went to the colosseum again to take some pics. Then we went back to Trastavere to find a place to eat lunch. I got an awesome pizza with sausage and mushroom, it was pretty depressing to know it was my last Italian meal. After lunch we went to the train station and headed back to Civitavecchia. We got there at around 4 so we just went right back to the ship since all of us were absolutely exhausted from the four days.
Everyone always asks which place is our favorite and there's no way I can ever answer that question, everywhere we go is so different and every place has such distinctive features that make me love it. When we were at dinner Mrs. Pratt asked which place would we go back to which is such a better question. I 100% will be going back to Italy to visit all the different places I didn't have time to go this time around. It was such a beautiful place with the most amazing food I've ever eaten and so much history. I'm definitely a little depressed to be gone.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Ridin' Dirty
So I'm currently sitting on the train traveling from our port in Civitavecchia to Rome where I'll be until Saturday I think (not totally sure what today is) so I figured what better to do than blog about my time in Morocco
Morocco was our first port out of Europe so it was instantly quite the culture shock. The security level on the ship was higher so each student, staff, and crew member had to go to the union to get their passport face to face with customs workers from Morocco. Definitely different than the usual. After getting our passports we met on the 7th deck because I had signed up for a 4 day camel trek through SAS. There were a total of ninety of us on the ship and two professors as "chaperones".
They happened to also be my ship "parents" not sure if I've mentioned these before. At the beginning of the voyage you can sign up for a family and they pair you with a "parent" who is a professor or some other adult on the ship and you have about 5 or 6 "siblings" and you occasionally meet for dinners or game nights. My "dad" is a professor and his wife is also one on the ship so they combined our families.
Anyways we got onto our buses to set out for our Moroccan adventures. The first day we drove about 3 hours from Casablanca to Marrakech then stopped for lunch. It was definitely a very touristy place there were drummers and belly dancers and we all sat at huge round tables. There were a bunch of other Bentley girls on the trip who we sat with, we also say with some new girls I'd never met. The food was pretty good a "salad" which consists of small plates of different foods like cucumbers, eggplants, rice, etc. then we had chicken tajim (sp?) it's pretty much chicken on the bone with spices with a little sauce and vegetables all in this dish with a cone cover. All of the meals in morocco are shared around the table rather than individual plates for everyone. Dessert was fruits, I generally avoided the fruit we were given after hearing warnings about the Moroccan water and people getting sick from it.
After lunch it was back on the buses for another few hours. At this point we were driving through the Atlas Mountains which was both horrifying and incredible. For hours we were driving (slightly recklessly) along the edge of a massive mountain the sights were incredible, the mountains went on for miles and there were all these tiny Berber villages scattered inside of them. We made a pitstop after some time at a little place on the side of the mountain. There, we went into a small shop that made Moroccan oil which was really cool, one of my friends even got to help make it.
We eventually got to our hotel in Ouzarate (sp?) at like 8 for a total of ten hours on the bus the first day. They brought us out to a dinner restaurant that was again very showy. This time we got soup, more chicken tajim, and this dish that was like a giant pastry like fried dough covered in cinnamon but that was filled with shredded seasoned chicken. It wasn't necessarily bad, just definitely not what I'm used to at all. The whole time performers were playing drums and women were dancing. They even pulled some other students out to join in, some of the guys were putting their robes on the guy students. After dinner was over we went back to our hotel and passed out, luckily for Sydney and I our room was not infested with bugs like most people's. I guess that's morocco for you.
Next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel. This consisted of mostly bread things and jelly and honey, not bad but I could go for some eggs that are actually made from eggs as opposed to the shit they serve on the ship. Next was time to get back on the bus for another 3 hours when we got to our next food stop. If this sounds like I basically rode hours on a bus to go eat meals around morocco I agree, it got old pretty quickly. This lunch was underneath tents outside around a pool. We had another salad thing, more chicken tajim (I think that's all they eat), and more fruit for dessert. The place also had a shop so we could pick up stuff to wear for our camel trek. I got a turban and a pair of harem pants which are the most comfortable things of all time. Some kids went all out and bought robes and shit but I wasn't into that.
Our next bus ride was to the place we got on our camels, it was pretty short, only about 2 or 3 hours. We got to the place and there were a bunch of Moroccan guys who would lead us on our camels, usually groups of 3 or 4. We got up on them and took off at a leisurely pace to our nomad camp in the Sahara Desert where we would be sleeping. It was about an hour and a half. I know that riding a camel sounds super cool and don't get me wrong, it totally is, but it is also so damn painful, I'm actually still a little sore. We got to our nomad camp which was surrounded by big sand hills. It had a huge circle of fairly nice tents with rugs under them and a huge one with tables to eat inside . There was also a bathroom with a couple actual toilets and a sink which I was surprised about. The guys got to sleep inside the nice tents where the beds had bedding and bed frames. The girls were all put in small white tents set up in a circle on the outskirts of the camp, our "mattresses" were more like rocks with a thin sheet. I didn't mind it too much since it made me feel more like I was roughing it in a nomad camp. We arrived there just before sunset so we all hiked up a huge sand dune to watch it. It was cloudy so we didn't get a great view but being up there was amazing. You could see out for miles and the sand was the softest thing I've ever felt. There were actually more plants there than I'd expected, I thought I'd be seeing desolate land but there were a decent amount of little plants scattered around. Luckily no snakes or scorpions that I saw (some kids saw baby scorpions). After the sun set we went down to have dinner it was more soup, chicken tajim, and fruit. That night we sat around a big fire they made as the nomads played drums and sang. As time went on some SAS kids were playing with the drums and teaching the nomads some American songs, they really liked it it was a pretty fun night overall. I went back up the dune and sat talking to some kids for a while, unfortunately we couldn't see the stars very well because of the clouds but it was still really cool.
The next morning we woke up at like 6 to watch the sunrise. There was another large dune on the opposite side of the camp that all of us sat on to watch it. Like before, it was still pretty cloudy but what we could see was really pretty. We then had breakfast which was mostly just bread like before, the flies were so bad though so I didn't really eat too much. After eating it was back on the camels to ride to the bus. It was a pretty quiet ride, mostly because people were so sore from riding and exhausted from the trip so far. We spent most of the day driving back through the Atlas Mountains again. There was a point where we were stopped for a half hour because school students were striking in the middle of the road. We found out it was because they have to walk an outrageous distance to school with no access to a bus. They ended up calling the authorities and police and the mayor (or whatever they call it) of the city came and paid each student 600 dirham which is equal to about 50 or so bucks at home... I need to start protesting. After that we ended up going to lunch. We actually didn't have chicken tajim this time we got skewers of chicken and beef which were pretty good. They also brought out French fries which was amazing especially after all the traditional Moroccan food we'd been having. We got back on the bus after eating and got to Marrakech pretty late where we'd be staying the night. Before we got to our hotel we went to dinner. It was another traditional place, more salad more chicken tajim. There wasn't much that was super exciting about it, it was really pretty and they only had a man playing guitar, no performers in our faces which was a good change. After dinner we went to our hotel, it was much nicer than our other one which was good. Some kids went out but I was too tired to function plus I didn't feel great from the food, we just stayed in and watched some Arab Idol which, fun fact, is sponsored by KFC and Oreos.
The next morning we got to go to the huge market to shop before going back to Casablanca. It was so cool I probably could've spent like 4 weeks there without getting bored. There's probably thousands of stands and mini stores selling all different kinds of stuff. There's scarves, pants, jewelry, artwork, spices, bags, I could go on forever. A lot of it is actually all the same stuff. The best part about it is that you gaggle a price, it's actually considered rude to take the first price they give you because it's basically you saying you're too good for them. As you're walking by the shopkeepers are trying anything to get you into their store, they say everything is "special student price" or "special only for you." A lot of the blonde girls (since they're so rare around there) got some interesting stuff to, one of my friends was asked how many camels she would sell our blonde friend for. Another guy offered everything in his store for free if one of my friends would go have tea at his house for one hour. The best deal I was able to negotiate was two scarves that should've been 550 dirhams for 250. I wish shopping was always like that. After we spent a few hours exploring the market we headed out of Marrakech to get back to the ship. It was really great to finally be home after that exhausting trip.
Morocco was such a culture shock for all of us. It was so cool though, it made me sad that we aren't going to Senegal or Ghana anymore. I think of totally go back, especially to Marrakech. It did make me never want to see another bus or piece of chicken again in my life though.
From the time I started writing this to right now I've experienced the greatness Italy has to offer, I'll try to get that blog up tomorrow because we will be in Barcelona on Monday.
Missing you all at home, Thursday was our halfway point of the voyage which was really depressing, I'm not sure I ever want to leave.
Morocco was our first port out of Europe so it was instantly quite the culture shock. The security level on the ship was higher so each student, staff, and crew member had to go to the union to get their passport face to face with customs workers from Morocco. Definitely different than the usual. After getting our passports we met on the 7th deck because I had signed up for a 4 day camel trek through SAS. There were a total of ninety of us on the ship and two professors as "chaperones".
They happened to also be my ship "parents" not sure if I've mentioned these before. At the beginning of the voyage you can sign up for a family and they pair you with a "parent" who is a professor or some other adult on the ship and you have about 5 or 6 "siblings" and you occasionally meet for dinners or game nights. My "dad" is a professor and his wife is also one on the ship so they combined our families.
Anyways we got onto our buses to set out for our Moroccan adventures. The first day we drove about 3 hours from Casablanca to Marrakech then stopped for lunch. It was definitely a very touristy place there were drummers and belly dancers and we all sat at huge round tables. There were a bunch of other Bentley girls on the trip who we sat with, we also say with some new girls I'd never met. The food was pretty good a "salad" which consists of small plates of different foods like cucumbers, eggplants, rice, etc. then we had chicken tajim (sp?) it's pretty much chicken on the bone with spices with a little sauce and vegetables all in this dish with a cone cover. All of the meals in morocco are shared around the table rather than individual plates for everyone. Dessert was fruits, I generally avoided the fruit we were given after hearing warnings about the Moroccan water and people getting sick from it.
After lunch it was back on the buses for another few hours. At this point we were driving through the Atlas Mountains which was both horrifying and incredible. For hours we were driving (slightly recklessly) along the edge of a massive mountain the sights were incredible, the mountains went on for miles and there were all these tiny Berber villages scattered inside of them. We made a pitstop after some time at a little place on the side of the mountain. There, we went into a small shop that made Moroccan oil which was really cool, one of my friends even got to help make it.
We eventually got to our hotel in Ouzarate (sp?) at like 8 for a total of ten hours on the bus the first day. They brought us out to a dinner restaurant that was again very showy. This time we got soup, more chicken tajim, and this dish that was like a giant pastry like fried dough covered in cinnamon but that was filled with shredded seasoned chicken. It wasn't necessarily bad, just definitely not what I'm used to at all. The whole time performers were playing drums and women were dancing. They even pulled some other students out to join in, some of the guys were putting their robes on the guy students. After dinner was over we went back to our hotel and passed out, luckily for Sydney and I our room was not infested with bugs like most people's. I guess that's morocco for you.
Next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel. This consisted of mostly bread things and jelly and honey, not bad but I could go for some eggs that are actually made from eggs as opposed to the shit they serve on the ship. Next was time to get back on the bus for another 3 hours when we got to our next food stop. If this sounds like I basically rode hours on a bus to go eat meals around morocco I agree, it got old pretty quickly. This lunch was underneath tents outside around a pool. We had another salad thing, more chicken tajim (I think that's all they eat), and more fruit for dessert. The place also had a shop so we could pick up stuff to wear for our camel trek. I got a turban and a pair of harem pants which are the most comfortable things of all time. Some kids went all out and bought robes and shit but I wasn't into that.
Our next bus ride was to the place we got on our camels, it was pretty short, only about 2 or 3 hours. We got to the place and there were a bunch of Moroccan guys who would lead us on our camels, usually groups of 3 or 4. We got up on them and took off at a leisurely pace to our nomad camp in the Sahara Desert where we would be sleeping. It was about an hour and a half. I know that riding a camel sounds super cool and don't get me wrong, it totally is, but it is also so damn painful, I'm actually still a little sore. We got to our nomad camp which was surrounded by big sand hills. It had a huge circle of fairly nice tents with rugs under them and a huge one with tables to eat inside . There was also a bathroom with a couple actual toilets and a sink which I was surprised about. The guys got to sleep inside the nice tents where the beds had bedding and bed frames. The girls were all put in small white tents set up in a circle on the outskirts of the camp, our "mattresses" were more like rocks with a thin sheet. I didn't mind it too much since it made me feel more like I was roughing it in a nomad camp. We arrived there just before sunset so we all hiked up a huge sand dune to watch it. It was cloudy so we didn't get a great view but being up there was amazing. You could see out for miles and the sand was the softest thing I've ever felt. There were actually more plants there than I'd expected, I thought I'd be seeing desolate land but there were a decent amount of little plants scattered around. Luckily no snakes or scorpions that I saw (some kids saw baby scorpions). After the sun set we went down to have dinner it was more soup, chicken tajim, and fruit. That night we sat around a big fire they made as the nomads played drums and sang. As time went on some SAS kids were playing with the drums and teaching the nomads some American songs, they really liked it it was a pretty fun night overall. I went back up the dune and sat talking to some kids for a while, unfortunately we couldn't see the stars very well because of the clouds but it was still really cool.
The next morning we woke up at like 6 to watch the sunrise. There was another large dune on the opposite side of the camp that all of us sat on to watch it. Like before, it was still pretty cloudy but what we could see was really pretty. We then had breakfast which was mostly just bread like before, the flies were so bad though so I didn't really eat too much. After eating it was back on the camels to ride to the bus. It was a pretty quiet ride, mostly because people were so sore from riding and exhausted from the trip so far. We spent most of the day driving back through the Atlas Mountains again. There was a point where we were stopped for a half hour because school students were striking in the middle of the road. We found out it was because they have to walk an outrageous distance to school with no access to a bus. They ended up calling the authorities and police and the mayor (or whatever they call it) of the city came and paid each student 600 dirham which is equal to about 50 or so bucks at home... I need to start protesting. After that we ended up going to lunch. We actually didn't have chicken tajim this time we got skewers of chicken and beef which were pretty good. They also brought out French fries which was amazing especially after all the traditional Moroccan food we'd been having. We got back on the bus after eating and got to Marrakech pretty late where we'd be staying the night. Before we got to our hotel we went to dinner. It was another traditional place, more salad more chicken tajim. There wasn't much that was super exciting about it, it was really pretty and they only had a man playing guitar, no performers in our faces which was a good change. After dinner we went to our hotel, it was much nicer than our other one which was good. Some kids went out but I was too tired to function plus I didn't feel great from the food, we just stayed in and watched some Arab Idol which, fun fact, is sponsored by KFC and Oreos.
The next morning we got to go to the huge market to shop before going back to Casablanca. It was so cool I probably could've spent like 4 weeks there without getting bored. There's probably thousands of stands and mini stores selling all different kinds of stuff. There's scarves, pants, jewelry, artwork, spices, bags, I could go on forever. A lot of it is actually all the same stuff. The best part about it is that you gaggle a price, it's actually considered rude to take the first price they give you because it's basically you saying you're too good for them. As you're walking by the shopkeepers are trying anything to get you into their store, they say everything is "special student price" or "special only for you." A lot of the blonde girls (since they're so rare around there) got some interesting stuff to, one of my friends was asked how many camels she would sell our blonde friend for. Another guy offered everything in his store for free if one of my friends would go have tea at his house for one hour. The best deal I was able to negotiate was two scarves that should've been 550 dirhams for 250. I wish shopping was always like that. After we spent a few hours exploring the market we headed out of Marrakech to get back to the ship. It was really great to finally be home after that exhausting trip.
Morocco was such a culture shock for all of us. It was so cool though, it made me sad that we aren't going to Senegal or Ghana anymore. I think of totally go back, especially to Marrakech. It did make me never want to see another bus or piece of chicken again in my life though.
From the time I started writing this to right now I've experienced the greatness Italy has to offer, I'll try to get that blog up tomorrow because we will be in Barcelona on Monday.
Missing you all at home, Thursday was our halfway point of the voyage which was really depressing, I'm not sure I ever want to leave.
Monday, October 13, 2014
No Habla
Okay sorry for the delay everyone, my laptop is officially broken so schoolwork takes much longer now that I have to carve my notes into stone without access to modern technology. It's also midterm week here so I've been studying. I'm about finished so here is Madrid for you.
At 11 in the morning on day 2 of the port Sydney and I had a flight to Madrid. We had booked it over the summer to visit our friends from back home who were studying there. We stayed at our friend Devin's apartment who was one of our roommates last year, Emma, another one of our roommates came from Seville to stay for the weekend too. By chance, Devin lives a couple streets over from Casey which was awesome. There were also a few of our other friends from home that we got to hang out with while we were there.
When we landed at the airport we were greeted by Devin and took the metro back to her apartment. We then went out to the shopping area around her apartment, it was nice to be in a place where I wasn't worried about visiting 40 different landmarks and trying to figure out public transportation and needing to figure out where I was living. While I have a great grasp of Spanish through my 6 years studying Latin it was still difficult to understand many of the locals. For the day we just walked around catching up on life and stuff, it was nice to get to see them again.
That night we met up with three more of our friends from school, Bayley, Chrissy, and Kelley at this little restaurant near them. We got pitchers of margaritas and chips and guac. It wasn't dinner though because they eat outrageously late in Spain. For actual dinner we went to Bayley and Kelley's apartment and had.. Wait for it... A HOME COOKED MEAL. It was amazing, i hadn't realized how much I'd missed home cooked food before that, it was incredible. So many props to Bayley for cooking it. It was so nice to get to just relax and catch up with everything late into the night. We headed home around 1.
The next day we woke up fairly early to go to the train station to go to Toledo. Before that we went to a Dunks, that's number two of the trip and never fails to be amazing, I can't wait to always have it available when we're back. The trip to Toledo is about a half hour by train. I didn't know what to expect there because I'd never heard of it. It was a beautiful old fashioned medieval like town build on huge hills. We spent the whole day walking around looking at the shops and sights. We also got some traditional Spanish food which was real good and real filling. We got back around 7 and showered and stuff then met with Casey to go to dinner. We went to another place near their apartment where you could get a pitcher of sangria and 4 tapas for really cheap. After we left we went back to devin's to get ready to go out. We went to this place called Kapital which is one of the best clubs in Madrid. It was more expensive to get into than most places I've gone but so worth it. It was by far the coolest place I've been abroad and maybe the coolest place I've ever been to. Imagine 6 floors of Groove Boston times 10, if you don't know what that means you might not want to. Basically a really large party. Spanish people stay out super late we probably got home at around 4:30 or 5 and the club was still full.
The next morning we went to a place to get breakfast then to Devin's favorite park, it was a huge beautiful park and it smelled like fall but was also really hot out so I was in Heaven. We went out on this little pond in the middle of the park and rowed around on a boat for a bit, since I haven't seen nearly enough water on the trip thus far. After spending a while there we went back to Devin's.
After that we went to a tattoo ship because surprise if you didn't already know I got a tattoo. Sydney did too. The first place we went the guy was really expensive and a douchebag so we left since we figured, well maybe I want to feel comfortable with the man who is going to permanently put something on my body, but that might also just be me idk. We then went to another place where the guy spoke great English and was so sweet and patient with us. I'd known for a whole what I wanted but didn't have a precise design and the thing he designed for me was amazing, I couldn't have ever explained it as perfectly as he drew it. So luckily for me, I don't have some ugly, weird, or misspelled thing on me forever. I even think he used a clean needle!
That night we went to a bar near where they live for a more low key night, much needed after our crazy night the night before. It was an Irish pub and they were playing college football, yes actual football not futbol. We didn't stay there for very long.
The next morning we had to be up super early to catch our bus to Cadiz to get back on the ship. Nothing like a 8 and a half hour bus ride! When we got back we dropped off our stuff on the ship and went to a cafe nearby to get a little wifi to try to get some homework done. Yes, real schoolwork because some professors decide to give projects that require internet access even though we don't have internet access on the ship. I'm not bitter........
It was nice to get back on the ship but Madrid and Portugal were so fun so it was definitely bittersweet.
Next stop Morocco (it actually already happened) I might get around to writing it tonight or tomorrow idk we'll be in Italy on Wednesday. I'm currently focused on taking a nice little nap on the 7th deck because it's about 75 and sunny here.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Technical difficulties
Sorry if you've been waiting on my post for Spain, you'll have to wait a little.. Or a lot longer
I had a fun little mishap yesterday with my laptop where my water bottle spilled on it. According to the ship's IT it might get fixed but I don't think chances are very high. If that's the case I'll either get to buy a new laptop in Italy or just stop doing my schoolwork completely.
At this point I'm thinking I'll do the latter since the former is not a very economical option
stay tuned
I had a fun little mishap yesterday with my laptop where my water bottle spilled on it. According to the ship's IT it might get fixed but I don't think chances are very high. If that's the case I'll either get to buy a new laptop in Italy or just stop doing my schoolwork completely.
At this point I'm thinking I'll do the latter since the former is not a very economical option
stay tuned
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Hang Ten
So we get off the ship tomorrow for Morocco and I was just like "Oh shit I haven't blogged yet about Portugal or Spain" So here's Portugal for ya.
I'll start with the day before we actually got to Portugal just so I can brag about how great my life currently is. Sorry. I got out of my Marketing class at 2 in the afternoon and was done for the day and it looked nice out so I decided to throw on a bathing suit and a tank top and go up to the top deck where there's our little baby pool and a ton of lounge chairs. It was packed with everyone who was done with or in between classes. Everyone was laying around in bathing suits blasting music. It was so nice to lay in the sun and finally get a little tan, I'm still pretty pale though but we're working on it. It's going to stay fairly nice weather for the rest of my trip so I'm going to try to show up to class but can't make any promises. Am I studying abroad or on a vacation? I don't know anymore.
I guess technically Portugal is the homeland, I think I'm like 12.5% Portuguese although I really have no idea what I am I can never get a straight answer out of my parents (is there something you guys need to tell me??) The place we ported was absolutely beautiful, we could see all of the beautiful buildings, it looked just like I pictured it to look like. It was nice to have a different view than what we'd seen throughout the other ports in Europe which had all looked more or less the same.
The day we got there I had signed up for a surf and yoga lesson. As you all know very well, I'm extremely dainty and coordinated so this was the best program for me to do for sure. The weather was so nice and warm, according to some of the locals it was actually a lot warmer than usual.
The beach was so nice, definitely a lot nicer than what we have on the Cape, The sand was so soft and the water was pretty warm too, not tropical but definitely warmer than I'm used to. There were a bunch of students that did the trip so we split up into two groups, one doing yoga first and one doing surf, I did surfing. We put our wet suits on and they gave us our boards and we did some warm ups and practiced the technique to get up on the board. The waves weren't extremely large thankfully otherwise I probably would have severely injured myself. It was really hard to stand up on the board, most of the times I would get halfway up, then fall. I managed to fully stand up on the last wave. I didn't really take into account my bad shoulder so it was really difficult to lift myself up to stand.
After the lesson I was exhausted and it was really starting to get hot out so I'm definitely glad that I surfed first. I figured it would be really nice to relax and do yoga but that wasn't exactly the case. Sand is really hard to balance on in the first place. Then take away one of my legs or make me do weird positions and I was done for. So I'm definitely not a yoga master like I had expected, weird because I can almost touch my toes. It was still fun though.
Once we finished our lesson we had a couple hours on the beach to lay around or do whatever. I just layed out for the rest of the time since I had only been to the beach one time in the summer and I was going through withdrawals.
We headed back to the ship afterwards and we decided to just eat dinner on the ship. Our friends booked a hostel and had two extra rooms for that night so we decided to stay there since it was right in the center of Lisbon and only 13 euros a night. It ended up being the nicest hostel we've stayed at by far. There was a girl around our age that worked there and she showed us everywhere to go and eat in the city and they were so nice and helpful, so much different than all the other places we've stayed. Plus it was super clean. If that wasn't enough they had bottomless sangria for 5 euros...amazing.
In Portugal people don't go out to nightclubs until like 1 or 2 at night which is slightly outrageous. We met up with some of our friends at a bar in the center at around 12:30 and hung around there for a while. Then we went to a nightclub that was actually right next to the ship which was convenient. It was really cool, it was right on a beach and there were blacklights and they painted everyone's faces with neon paint. We stayed there pretty late until one of my friends suddenly came down with a stomach bug or something because she was throwing up, Don't worry I didn't catch whatever she had and we made it home alive..
We had a flight in the morning to Madrid so by the time we got back to the hostel it was really late and we went right to sleep.
I'll start with the day before we actually got to Portugal just so I can brag about how great my life currently is. Sorry. I got out of my Marketing class at 2 in the afternoon and was done for the day and it looked nice out so I decided to throw on a bathing suit and a tank top and go up to the top deck where there's our little baby pool and a ton of lounge chairs. It was packed with everyone who was done with or in between classes. Everyone was laying around in bathing suits blasting music. It was so nice to lay in the sun and finally get a little tan, I'm still pretty pale though but we're working on it. It's going to stay fairly nice weather for the rest of my trip so I'm going to try to show up to class but can't make any promises. Am I studying abroad or on a vacation? I don't know anymore.
I guess technically Portugal is the homeland, I think I'm like 12.5% Portuguese although I really have no idea what I am I can never get a straight answer out of my parents (is there something you guys need to tell me??) The place we ported was absolutely beautiful, we could see all of the beautiful buildings, it looked just like I pictured it to look like. It was nice to have a different view than what we'd seen throughout the other ports in Europe which had all looked more or less the same.
The day we got there I had signed up for a surf and yoga lesson. As you all know very well, I'm extremely dainty and coordinated so this was the best program for me to do for sure. The weather was so nice and warm, according to some of the locals it was actually a lot warmer than usual.
The beach was so nice, definitely a lot nicer than what we have on the Cape, The sand was so soft and the water was pretty warm too, not tropical but definitely warmer than I'm used to. There were a bunch of students that did the trip so we split up into two groups, one doing yoga first and one doing surf, I did surfing. We put our wet suits on and they gave us our boards and we did some warm ups and practiced the technique to get up on the board. The waves weren't extremely large thankfully otherwise I probably would have severely injured myself. It was really hard to stand up on the board, most of the times I would get halfway up, then fall. I managed to fully stand up on the last wave. I didn't really take into account my bad shoulder so it was really difficult to lift myself up to stand.
After the lesson I was exhausted and it was really starting to get hot out so I'm definitely glad that I surfed first. I figured it would be really nice to relax and do yoga but that wasn't exactly the case. Sand is really hard to balance on in the first place. Then take away one of my legs or make me do weird positions and I was done for. So I'm definitely not a yoga master like I had expected, weird because I can almost touch my toes. It was still fun though.
Once we finished our lesson we had a couple hours on the beach to lay around or do whatever. I just layed out for the rest of the time since I had only been to the beach one time in the summer and I was going through withdrawals.
We headed back to the ship afterwards and we decided to just eat dinner on the ship. Our friends booked a hostel and had two extra rooms for that night so we decided to stay there since it was right in the center of Lisbon and only 13 euros a night. It ended up being the nicest hostel we've stayed at by far. There was a girl around our age that worked there and she showed us everywhere to go and eat in the city and they were so nice and helpful, so much different than all the other places we've stayed. Plus it was super clean. If that wasn't enough they had bottomless sangria for 5 euros...amazing.
In Portugal people don't go out to nightclubs until like 1 or 2 at night which is slightly outrageous. We met up with some of our friends at a bar in the center at around 12:30 and hung around there for a while. Then we went to a nightclub that was actually right next to the ship which was convenient. It was really cool, it was right on a beach and there were blacklights and they painted everyone's faces with neon paint. We stayed there pretty late until one of my friends suddenly came down with a stomach bug or something because she was throwing up, Don't worry I didn't catch whatever she had and we made it home alive..
We had a flight in the morning to Madrid so by the time we got back to the hostel it was really late and we went right to sleep.
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