Ambassadors Ball, Hawaii, and Beyond!!

We just left Hawaii a few days ago and now we’re headed to San Diego. Hawaii wasn’t really anything special, it was….Hawaii. We arrived in the early morning, everyone was off the ship by 8 or 9 a.m. and everyone headed to the beaches. We docked in Honolulu which is on the island of Oahu. There’s not a whole lot to do in Hawaii except lay on the beach and go shopping, neither of which I was very inclined to do. I ended up hiking Diamond Head with Aaron, which is a very short hike. But at the top there’s a really good view of the whole island, you can see how blue the water is! That took us a whole 40 minutes (we thought it would take at least a little longer but it didn’t). We headed back to Waikiki and Aaron headed to the beach and I just walked around Waikiki for a bit. It was quite weird being back in the U.S., all the signs were in English, everyone speaks really good English and we didn’t have any trouble getting around.

I just finished my last final about an hour ago (as of writing this) and I passed all of my classes. It was quite hectic on the ship the first few days after Hawaii with everyone studying and getting ready for finals. But now it’s quite a relaxed mood and it’s weird that we’ll be forced to leave the ship in San Diego a few days from now, it still hasn’t set in all that much and it probably won’t until we’re actually off of the ship in San Diego. The past three months have gone by a whole lot faster than I ever expected them to. It feels like we haven’t been on the ship that long and things are just getting started. But at the same time it feels like it was 3 years ago when I was at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, and every port since then seems like it was so long ago. Everyone I’ve met on the ship, I don’t know them all that well, I don’t even know most peoples last name and I’m still having trouble with some first names but it really seems like I’ve known all of them for at least five years. We’ve gone through a lot together. It’ll be a bit weird just leaving all of them once we get to San Diego, we’ll all be going our separate ways, but we’ll probably all keep in touch. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I really do not want to leave the ship. I’d much rather stay on it and go around to more ports. But this adventure is quickly coming to an end, which must mean that a new one will be beginning soon! I know I’ll miss the ship, it’s become my home, I’ve caught myself in most of the ports saying, “I’m going to go home now” meaning that I’m going back to the ship. Just being out in the middle of the ocean on the ship is AWESOME! Being surrounded by nothing but water surely puts a few things into perspective for you. Plus I could sit out on one of the decks for hours and just watch the waves, flying fish, birds, the clouds move by, and the occasional dolphin, and I would never get bored. That’s what I’m doing right now as I’m writing this! And at night you can sit out on 7th deck and see ssssooo many stars, the only comparison to it is standing on top of a mountain looking up at the stars. I’ve become accustomed to the rocking of the ship, I’m able to move with the waves now and run into a minimal amount of walls while walking through the halls. And the rocking is very soothing at night when you’re trying to fall asleep in your room that’s pitch black because there aren’t any windows and you can’t even tell if your eyes are opened or closed! OOOHHH the things I’ll miss. Plus with the games of hide-and-seek at 2 a.m. sssooo much fun!!

This trip has been awesome, I’ve met tons of people, visited a good amount of countries and I’ve been going around the world at 20 mph for the last 3 months while on a ship and while going to school. I must say before I went on this I was very skeptical of being in this type of closed environment with people and especially with teachers. But living with the teachers has been a very cool experience. You get to see more of a personal side of them, you get to see that they are more than teachers. I’ve eaten meals with some of my teachers and their families and with the deans and such. I’ll play some board games with one of my teachers kids every once in a while, which is very fun. And playing with Baby Ryder is a blast! It’s fun hearing the teachers personal stories of how they’ve gotten where they are and all of that, the stories of the countries that they’ve been to. I’ve always known that I love traveling but this trip has only reinforced that and it has built up my confidence of being able to navigate countries without being able to speak the language and also getting along with the locals, I know I’ll be doing tons more traveling to a lot more countries in the future!

Basically the gist of all of this is, this voyage is coming to an end all too fast, we’ve been going around the world at 20 m.p.h. for the past 100 days, we’ve seen amazing things and done tons of things, some of which I never thought I’d do!

Here’s a list of some things that I’ve done over the past 100 days, it certainly won’t be a complete list, but it’s just a peak at a greater list that’s in my mind. It may not make a whole lot of sense to the people who are reading this, but hey, it makes sense to me!!

I’ve filled up my hard drive with 35 GB of pictures (my hard drive is officially full) which comes down to over 8000 pictures and it might even be over 10,000 pictures! Rode and elephant, rode a bullet train, walked around aimlessly and got lost doing it, met a Nobel peace prize winning Archbishop and lived with him for 100 days, shot an AK-47, saw a Japanese soccer and baseball game, kayaked in a bioluminescent bay, visited 10 countries, circumnavigated the globe going 20 mph on the M.V. Explorer, saw monkeys, ostriches, zebras, elephants, pandas, and all kinds of crazy animals. Sat on the decks of the ship for hours on end starring out into the endless ocean, passed 4 classes I didn’t think I was going to pass, learned more in the past 3 months by visiting these countries then I have throughout all of high school and college combined, met a wide variety of people (both on the ship and in ports), and there’s tons more stuff racing through my head but I don’t have nearly enough time to write all of them down.

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how this trip has changed them and all kinds of stuff like that and I’ve been wondering, how has this trip changed me?? I’m not really sure yet how it has, but just from being in Hawaii I can tell that I’m looking at all kinds of things completely differently than I was before this trip. But I’ll definitely still have the same personality and all that stuff but who knows, maybe other things about me have changed.

Now all I’m wondering is who all has been reading this blog??? So everyone who has actually been reading it should post a comment (complete with your name) on this post so I can see about how many people and who all has been reading it!


The pictures are of the ambassadors ball, where we had a really fancy dinner and then dancing and such and everyone wore their suits/dresses that they got in Vietnam! It was kinda like prom, but….better? There’s a Chocolate Taj Mahal, made out of chocolate, and a chocolate eagle and a castle, and fruit flowers (flowers carved out of fruit), a butter dragon (a dragon made out of butter)(all of these creations are part of the ambassadors ball), and also some pictures from Hawaii. There’s also a picture of Baby Ryder and I, he’s probably the smartest and cutest baby ever (he’s 10 months old and he can say, “Ryder, bye, bottle, hat” and he can wave, clap and blow kisses to you).

JAPAN

JAPAN!!! WOW, what a miracle their public transportation system is!! Their public transportation is without a doubt the most impressive system I’ve ever seen and it’s also about a billion times better than any public transportation system I’ve seen in the U.S. You can get anywhere and everywhere you want to go without any problems and basically whenever you want.
I went around Japan with Rick (you should know who he is by now). We had both picked up rail passes in Vietnam so we could ride the trains and most of the subways in Japan for free (after buying the $230 rail pass of course). Which was without a doubt one of my best buys for Japan. Seeing as a one way ticket from Kobe to Tokyo is $140, and we did a lot more traveling than that!! We went to Tokyo for two days, Kyoto for two days, and then I hung out in Kobe the last day while Rick went to Nara. We took a bullet train (THAT’S RIGHT, A BULLET TRAIN, it really is as cool as it looks and sounds) from Kobe to Tokyo, which took about 3 hours. We left Kobe pretty much not knowing what we were going to do in Tokyo or Kyoto and we had no idea where we were going to sleep, but that’s ok, we’ve become accustomed to that by now. In Tokyo we went to the building where lost in translation was filmed, the imperial gardens, the Sony building, the Godzilla statue, a karaoke bar, a manga cafe, some sushi restaurants, a few temples, random Americans and businessmen, rode the subways like there’s no tomorrow, saw a Japanese baseball game (tons better than American baseball) and we walked around tons. I know there are a few things I’m leaving out but I don’t remember what they are right now and I don’t have much time to write this (maybe Ricks blog will have the missing holes of my blog?). I should throw in there that we stayed in a karaoke room the first night and a manga café the second night (an internet café). We met up with some other SAS people at one point and we did some of that stuff with them but some of it we didn’t do with them.
Kyoto, after Tokyo we bullet-trained (my new word that I made up) down to Kyoto. We knew that Kyoto has tons of temples so we set out to find them. We ended up running into some other SAS’ers and we ended up going around Kyoto with them which turned out to not be that glamorous (too long of a story for this). But Kyoto is cool. We saw tons of different temples, we saw some Geishas and Peter Macintosh (you Japan lonely planet book holders know who he is, hahaha), and stayed in another manga café. Then the next day Rick and I went back to Kobe because we found out on our first day in Japan that there was a soccer game in Kobe on this day. Right about now you’re probably expecting some story as to how there ended up not being a game and such, but you’re wrong. WE FINALLY SAW A FUTBOL GAME!!!!!!!!! It was a really good game too. It was the J League Division One, Kobe Vissel Vs. F.C. Tokyo (Japans International Team). We made it to the stadium (after taking a taxi because we couldn’t find it) and we bought tickets and saw the game. The game was in one of the stadiums where the 2002 World Cup Soccer was held!! It was a good day. On a quick side note, on the taxis in Japan, the back doors open and close for you. The next day I hung out around Kobe, I ate some Kobe beef. It was the best beef I’ve ever had. It cost me $50 but it was well worth it. It reminds me of chocolate. You don’t really need to chew it all that much, it just melts in your mouth. Then after that I got sucked into some arcade games cause they’re everywhere. That’s all I have for now. It should also be noted that in the first 3 nights in Japan I got a total of 12 hours of sleep for all 3 nights. Then on the fourth night I got 6 hours of sleep, those were some good 6 hours. So I need to go catch up on sleep! One more thing worth noting though is that the toilets in Japan are probably the coolest gadgets ever, ssooo many buttons!!

I’ll probably throw in some pictures of Japan too, so enjoy!