Around The World in 100 Days!!

Reverse Culture Shock and Being Home

2007-08-29T22:03:00.001-06:00

I’ve been back home now for a few months. School just started again last week. I figured I would take a few minutes and reminisce about SAS and how it is to be back home. I remember arriving in San Diego and getting off the ship as if it were yesterday. Everyone was saying there last goodbyes; making plans for reunions, etc. Some (actually a lot) attended a meeting about SAS going to Burma and in July or so they decided that they are not going back to Burma, but efforts are still being made across the U.S. to bring Burma to the attention of the American People (see one of the links that I just added). Getting off the ship sea by sea wasn’t all that long of a process but it was sad to see your friends with which you had just met 3 months ago (even though it seems like you’ve known them for years) and you’ve traveled the world with them, to say bye to them is a very odd feeling. None of it really seemed real until I was in the San Diego airport. I got off the ship, said my last good-byes and headed to the San Diego airport to see if I could get an earlier flight back to Denver. I was able to get an earlier flight (I didn’t even have to pay extra $$ for my bags even though one of them weighed 80 pounds and the other one was 70 pounds, I just told them where all I had just been and they gladly waived the fees for me) so now I only had to wait around for 2 hours instead of 5 hours, which I didn’t mind at all. It gave me some time to think about what I had just done in the past 3 months. While I was sitting in the airport I was wearing my Chinese hat (with a red star on it) with my Vietnamese rice hat on top of that, since I couldn’t pack them. I got some great looks from people while I was wearing these hats, they looked at me like I was crazy and I just laughed and laughed, it was awesome. But while I was sitting around waiting for the flight, I was listening to my ipod thinking to myself. And my first clear thought since I had gotten off the ship and arrived at the airport was: “Man, everyone is so white.” Among those thoughts was whenever I’d see kids run by me, I’d instantly think of the kids in poverty that I had seen throughout the trip. Months later I still have all kinds of associations like that one. A few minutes later I turned around to look at a poster on the wall that was behind me because I had noticed that it was of a rhinoceros, my instant reaction was: “That looks like something you’d see in Africa.” Then down at the bottom of the poster it said, “Come see the rare White Rhinoceros at the San Diego Zoo, it’s like no other experience, it’ll be as if you’re in Africa.” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at that, not because it’s funny or anything but because I had just been to Africa not long ago and it just came off as funny. Once I finally got back to Denver, it was very weird seeing family and friends again. I wasn’t sure what to expect coming back but it wasn’t what I received. Everyone’s reaction was basically the same monotone reaction of, “oh, James is back, cool.” And that was about it. I guess I had been thinking of it being more extravagant but it definitely was not that; which I was pretty glad of, because I wasn’t sure what to say to people or anything like that. The first few days back in Denver were a bit odd, I didn’t unpack at all, I kept expecting to be traveling to some foreign, exotic country any minute, which obviously didn’t happen since I wasn’t on the ship anymore. I remember the drive back to my house from the airport, thoughts kept randomly popping into my head like, “it’s so easy to get around here all you have to do is get a car or get a taxi and you can go anywhere you’d like.” And it kept appearing to me how you can go to a supermarket and get all of your essential needs without any problem. And of course the biggest change for me was that everyone speaks very good English! I can talk to people again and they actually know what I’m saying!! After a few weeks I finally decided to unpack and I slowly got back into the groove of doing things again.

But after being back I knew that I just couldn’t let everything I had seen go to waste. I couldn’t forget about the people I had seen, the events I had seen take place, etc. Because of this I “adopted” a child through this program called compassion. What it is is you “adopt” a child in a foreign country and it costs $32 a month and you pay for their schooling, medical needs, food, etc. It pays for pretty much anything they need. So I adopted a 4 year old girl who lives in Rwanda. It may not seem like much, but I’m sure it makes all the difference to this one girl and her family. So I keep trying to not let myself slink back into my old ways of being oblivious to the world, I try to keep up on the world news, etc. Right now I’m trying to plan a trip somewhere (literally anywhere out of the U.S.) just so I can travel again!! Even if it is just for a week. I definitely do miss a few things about SAS and traveling in general and I’ve made a list of a few of those things which I miss:

-In the U.S. random people don’t come up to you and ask if they can have a picture taken with you (such as happened to me a lot in China, Japan, and Malaysia), it’s odd not feeling like a celebrity anymore.

-It’s odd not being in a different country every other week and exploring.

-When I got back the Colorado temperatures of the 70’s, 80’s and even the 90’s all felt cold to me, for the first month or so I had to wear a sweatshirt around a lot. People definitely thought I was crazy, but I just told them they’d be doing it too if they had just experienced the heat of the equator almost non-stop for the past few months.

-Sleeping just isn’t all that easy when you don’t have the M.V. Explorer to gently rock you to sleep (and sometimes violently wake you up in the middle of the night, haha). But it was nice to catch up on sleep, since while on SAS nights where I got 6 – 8 hours of sleep was extremely luxurious and did not happen very often, I’d say 95% of the time I got about 4 hours of sleep, and sometimes less than that, such as when in Japan!

-Travelling around with friends in foreign countries is almost non-existent now, ah I miss it.

-Now that school has started again (August) at my regular home institution, I found myself late for class for pretty much the whole first week because I had been use to being able to wake up and have my classroom be a 2 minute walk away from my room.

-It’s odd not seeing teachers (and their families) walking around and having lunch with them or casual conversations not really related to class.

-TACO DAY – it explains itself, it was awesome.

-BARBEQUE DAY- see the explanation for Taco Day.

-Talking about the experiences you just had in that country with other friends.
-Watching the sun rise as you pull into the port a new, unknown country.

-Playing hide and seek on the M.V. Explorer.

-Playing a 6 hour game of risk.

I could probably come up with a list of things that spans for pages and pages but I don’t really have time to do that right now. But I know that SAS has initially impacted my life and it will continue to do so for as long as I live. Those experiences that I had will never escape me (I don’t want them too anyways!). I will definitely be traveling more and it has only prompted me more than ever to become a pilot so I can see more of the world. If I ever want to relive any of the experience I had all I have to do is just simply, close my eyes. I know I’ll get along fine as long as I can do that and remember this quote:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain

Ambassadors Ball, Hawaii, and Beyond!!

2007-05-12T05:24:00.000-06:00

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

2007-05-02T11:12:00.000-06:00

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!

Hong Kong and China

2007-04-23T14:10:00.000-06:00

Sssooo I haven’t had any time to write anything about China and Hong Kong and I don’t think I’m going to seeing as we arrive in Japan tomorrow and then after Japan we have finals and what-not. There’s so much to say about China and not enough time for me to write about it. If you have any specific questions about anything to do with China or anything just send me an e-mail (jlissy1987@gmail.com). So instead of words I’m just posting pictures of China and Hong Kong.

Two pictures were taken in Hong Kong, one is of the skyline at night during the lightshow that they do. The other is of the hurricane force storm that hit Hong Kong right after the light show and it basically left the outside decks in ruins, it was quite cool. Overturned chairs galore!!

For China there’s a picture of the Tsinghua Campus (pond type pic) which is where I did my University stay at. Then there’s the great wall, the 2008 olympic stadium (bad pic. from the bus), then there’s a giant panda (they’re not even close to being giant, I was hoping for some 50 ft. tall pandas.) There are soldiers marching through Tian-an-men (spelling??) square. Then the kid with a flag standing next to a soldier is in the square too. Then me outside of the forbidden city with my serious face on with Chairman Mao’s picture next to me. There’s a hilarious sign outside of the forbidden city (oh how the signs muse me so). There’s a picture of the Temple of Heaven. There are 12 people on a bike at an acrobatic show. A picture of the summer palace (the biggest piece of land I’ve ever seen) and of course me with Minnie Mouse!

Vietnam

2007-04-15T15:12:00.000-06:00

I RODE AN ELEPHANT AND SHOT AN AK-47!! That’s the gist of what I did in Vietnam.

The first day in Vietnam I went around Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to a bunch of shops and bought stuff for really cheap and found a place to get some suits made and got measured for those. The second day I went out to a Cao Dai temple and to the Cu Chi tunnels, that took up the whole day. The tunnels were really cool, there’s a firing range at them where you can shoot AK-47’s, carbines, shotguns, and some fully automatic guns. So while you at the actual tunnels you here these guns going off in the background which makes the whole place come to life, plus it started raining after a little bit which just added to the realism of it all. Then at the firing range I had to shoot an AK-47, cause that’s probably the only chance I’ll ever get to shoot one of those so I bought 10 bullets to shoot. But I’ve never shot a real gun before so the first gun I ever shot was an AK-47.

On one of the days after the tunnels Ben, Rick and I caught an hour flight to Yok Don National Park so we could ride Elephants!!! We got on the plane and arrived there and hired a cab for the day to drive us to the park and back to the airport to catch our flight back to Ho Chi Minh. We got to the park without a hitch and we rode an elephant for an hour, which was amazingly awesome!

After the elephants the next day I went to the Mekong Delta. For a $7 trip they gave us tons of food, it was pretty cool.

I also visited the War Remnants museum that was……….good to see. A good way to describe it is as an anti-american museum. There are a lot of pictures and documents that aren’t so easy to look at, but it’s definitely a different viewpoint on the war than what is taught in schools in the U.S.

That’s about all there is to say about Vietnam. This isn’t a very in depth look into Vietnam which is mainly because I’m extremely tired and I have tons of work to do for school but also because I know have pretty much every tv show I’ve ever wanted on DVD cause you can get them in Vietnam for really cheap.

But there is one more thing to say about Vietnam and that is that the food in Vietnam is amazing!! As is the food in pretty much all the ports we’ve been to. I couldn’t get enough of the Vietnamese food, it’s some good stuff.

For pictures: Rick, Ben and I on an elephant, a Cao Dai Temple service, our elephant pretty much under water, a picture of the Mekong Delta and me by an A-37 plane at the war remnants museum.

Malaysia and Easter Sunday

2007-04-12T06:17:00.000-06:00

There’s not a whole lot to say about Malaysia, it’s an interesting country. I pretty much just stayed on the island of Penang. It was a lot more westernized than I thought it would be. There were starbucks, mcdonalds, pizza huts everywhere plus there were 7 elevens every few blocks (but they all had the same kind of slurpees, go figure). There’s even a 7 story mall which needless to say, is huge. The best thing to do was to just walk around and explore the markets. It is a pretty diverse country though, the population is mainly Muslim but there is a good amount of Buddhists and Taoists. A lot of times there would be a Mosque on one side of the street and on the other side of the street there would be a temple. I went into a few of the Mosques which were really cool, the temples were cool to go into too, they were always filled with tons of incense. Also, five times a day all the mosques would do the call to prayer which is cool to hear and you can hear it if you’re within an earshot of one of the many mosques.

On the first day Ben (my roommate) and I went and hiked Penang hill. At the base of it there were 2 Chinese-Malaysians that were hiking halfway up so we ended up hiking halfway up with them. It was pretty cool cause we talked to them about politics (which they were particularly interested in), economics, and all kinds of things. This was a fairly intense hike, it wasn’t that hard of a hike but the climate really messes with you. It was extremely hot and extremely humid, by the time we were halfway up I had drunk all of the water out of my Nalgene and my clothes were soaked. By the time we got to the top I definitely could’ve wringed out my shirt and filled up a good sized water glass with sweat. But at the top there’s a mosque and a temple and a hotel with a restaurant.

Throughout this whole trip I’ve been trying to find a futbol game to go to and watch and so far I have not succeeded at that. In Brazil there aren’t any games during Carnival. In Cape Town there weren’t any games the week that we were there. And in Malaysia we had heard from a travel agent that there was one going on at a stadium, so we had him write down the name of the stadium and that stuff. Rick, Chad and I decided to try and go see it, so we got off the ship, found a taxi driver and told him what stadium we wanted to go to. The stadium was on the mainland and we soon found out that this taxi driver had no idea where the stadium was, he was calling tons of people on his cell phone trying to get directions to the stadium and at the toll booths along the way he’d ask them where to go. Little did we know that this was just the start of things to go wrong. It ended up taking about an hour to get to the stadium, we got there and got out of the taxi and walked up to the stadium. We thought it was kind of odd that the parking lots were completely empty, but we were about 4 hours early, so we thought maybe things would pick up later. We walked around the stadium and tried to find the ticket office but the best we could find were some security guards at the VIP entrance. They didn’t really speak English but after talking to them we found out that the first game isn’t until May 2nd. So we just stood around and tried to figure out what to do. This stadium was in the middle of nowhere and our taxi driver had left. There were only trees around, a highway that didn’t seem like it was used very often and about a kilometer past the highway was a small housing development. We finally decided to walk over to the housing development and see what was over there and maybe find a taxi since our taxi had left. We walked over there and there was pretty much nothing out there. The houses looked like they were straight out of a horror movie and the majority of them appeared to not be occupied. Plus no one spoke English so that didn’t help much. After walking around for a bit we decided to go back to the stadium and talk to the security guards and see if they can call us a taxi. We walked back over there and went up to them and there was a new security guard at the gate whom we hadn’t seen before but he spoke pretty good English, we explained our situation to him and he talked to his fellow guards for about 5 minutes or so then he looked back at us and said, “Let’s go” and he walked towards his car, we were a bit confused but we just followed him to his car. He happened to just be getting off of his shift and he decided to give us a lift! At first he told us that he’d drive us to the bus station where we could catch either a bus or a taxi. Then he told us that he’d take us to the ferry that would take us from mainland Malaysia back over to Penang (since Penang’s an island). We ran into tons of traffic going back over towards Penang that was due to the Penang bridge being closed (the 3rd largest bridge in the world). We found out the next day that it was closed because someone put a bomb on the bridge. But because of the traffic we told the guy that was driving us to just drop us off at this mall that we were passing that was right next to the bridge (we didn’t know there was a bomb on the bridge), he had already driven us about 50 minutes out of his way and we didn’t want to make him wait in traffic any longer. We hung out at the mall and then when we were ready to leave we argued with taxi drivers for a while and we finally found one that would take us to the ferry for a decent price, but once we started driving our taxi driver realized that the bridge was open again and asked us if we wanted to go all the way to Georgetown in Penang (which is where our ship was docked), he offered it for a good price so we took it. So we drove over the bridge and into Georgetown and hit traffic on the island and we were stuck listening to nothing but american love songs in our taxi for an hour. We finally decided to walk the rest of the way (we were all sick of the love songs, they literally made chad sick) and we just got out of the taxi and walked to a bar! All in all this was about a six-hour adventure that pretty much got us nowhere but it was good fun!!

The Penang National Park was pretty cool to go to. I went there with a group of people and we hiked around and saw some mokeys, ants, tons of trees and also a monitor (which looks just like a komodo dragon but it’s not). That’s pretty much all the park had to offer us aside from tons of sweat.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday was pretty cool. Archbishop Desmond Tutu had a morning service on the ship. Even during his services he's really funny. Plus he was wearing his purple gown which made things all the better! In addition to the service I had class on Easter Sunday and I got a haircut!! This was the first time I had class and gotten a haircut on Easter Sunday, hopefully I won't ever have class on easter sunday again.

Pics from Malaysia

2007-04-03T21:19:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures from Malaysia, there are some pictures of some mosques, temples, a guy with a shotgun in the middle of the street, some monkeys, a monitor (komodo dragon family). and I forget what else so I'll let you decide what they're pictures of. ENJOY!!

India (For Real this Time)

2007-04-01T15:15:00.000-06:00

For India I’m just posting exactly what I wrote for my journal because there’s nothing else to write, so if it seems a little personal and really lengthy that’s because it is. Enjoy!

If you are looking for a nice vacation spot, I would not suggest going to India. But if you are looking for a place that will change you, horrify you, make your senses tingle, a place where you can’t believe what you see in the streets let alone on the sides of them, then India is the place to go. I’ve heard from everyone I know who have been to India before that India would change me and I never really thought about it all that much, it just went in one ear and out the other. Before arriving in India I was anxious, nervous and not sure what to expect. I wasn’t sure if I should expect to be robbed, mobbed by people, ran over by a rickshaw, or who knows what else. None of those things happened to me, in fact I was more comfortable walking around in India than I was in Brazil and South Africa. Now that India has come and gone I still don’t know exactly what I’ve seen, what I think of everything, or how it will impact me in my life. But I do know that it did impact my life very much. I was told so many things by locals and random people that when I heard some of these things in my mind I thought, that is the most amazing thing I have ever heard anyone say. In the town of Erode on a homestay we had some in depth conversations with the family we were staying with on the cultures of India and they would ask us about how things are in America. Within that hour-long conversation I learned more about India and about the people than I had throughout my whole life. In India you can see anything and anything goes. Cows roaming the streets, rickshaws weaving in and out of traffic, people sitting and laying on the sides of the streets in rags. I’ve just left India yesterday and already I miss the unique smell of the country. The two most valuable things I did was a homestay in Erode and I visited the Mother Teressa Orphanage.

I was very anxious to get off the ship in India, I had woken up early to watch us sail into the port. I walked out onto the seventh deck at 6:30 a.m., raised my hand to my face to block the sun from my eyes, took a deep breath and cringed. It was the smell of India, a smell that I have now become accustomed to. It’s a smell that can’t be described with words, it’s simply smells like India and when you breathe you can taste the smell on the taste buds in your mouth. To me this smell is beautiful and it can only be found in India. After smelling this smell for the first time I thought there’s no way I will ever get used to this. Little did I know that after spending about 2 hours in India I wouldn’t mind it at all. I proceeded to watch us pull into port. As we pulled into the port and docked a small band came up to the ship and started playing. We wouldn’t be getting off the ship for at least 2 hours due to customs and yet this band was playing. Two hours later when I got off of the ship they were still there playing. Little did I know that this would foreshadow the actions of almost every person I would meet in India. Every person I met would go out of their way to help you out, to make you feel at home. The first day I went around the city of Chennai with Laura and Anna (my roommate Ben joined us for an hour or so but had to go back to the ship for an SAS trip). We walked away from the ship and away from the five armed guards guarding it. Rickshaw drivers raced over to us saying: you want to go shopping? I take you shopping, very good price for you. You look like nice, I give you good price. We knew they were all full of it and we bargained with them. The bargaining is a lot of fun, at first they ask a ridiculous amount of money to take you to a place that’s 15 minutes away but you can get them to go down. They usually started out asking 200 rupees per person to go somewhere in the center of the city. Which is ridiculous, cause it shouldn’t cost more than 100 rupees for the whole rickshaw at most. We finally settled on a price of 50 rupees for the whole rickshaw to go to the city centre. We were very proud of ourselves for sticking to bargaining and not caving in to high prices. This particular rickshaw was a peddle rickshaw and it took us to the port gate and stopped, he told us to get out and get into this motorized rickshaw. We thought we were being kidnapped or something but we played along and got in the motorized rickshaw and he started driving. We were very confused and double checked that the price was 50 rupees to the city center. He said: I know, to me price is not important its what’s in your heart that counts. That was the first of many “that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard” sayings. He ended up driving us around all day. We were with him from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. He took us shopping. He took us to government shops (you don’t want to buy anything at these, the prices are ridiculous, but the rickshaw drivers get money for taking you there so they like to take you there, our driver would tell us, don’t buy anything here just look around then we go to a good store.) then he’d take us to some cheap shops, then we’d go to a shop that he’d want to go to to pick something up. By the end of the day he had taken us to a Hindu temple, a few different market places, a small mall, a grocery store, we had met his sister and he drove us by his house. We liked him a lot and he was very nice and when we got lunch we told him to go to his favorite restaurant and that we’d buy him lunch, he didn’t say much but he took us to a restaurant. He didn’t want to come in with us, he told us that he only ate at dinner time. We told him to at least come in with us. We ended up getting him to eat some food and we had some pretty cool conversations with him, we found out a lot about him about his life and family, about India. When we finally went back to the ship at the end of the day, he asked us for a ridiculous amount of money (which we were expecting because we originally agreed upon a 10 minute ride to the city centre but ended up spending the whole day with him). We didn’t give him as much as he wanted, we gave him about half, which he was fine with. It was still a ridiculous amount of money for a rickshaw ride (even for the whole day), but we were perfectly happy giving it to him because we had such a good time. I ended up running into this same driver on the second to last day in India, which was about 3 days later. I had just walked out of the dock gate and he came running up to me and said, “Hey Jimmy!! Where you want to go? I take you there very cheap, you very nice.” I didn’t need a rickshaw because I was walking but I was amazed that he had remembered my name. He hadn’t remembered my name exactly, but Jimmy if really freaking close.

One of the coolest things about India is the head bobble. When people agree to something you say or want to say yes to something without saying anything they bobble their head from side to side. At first it’s really confusing because it kind of seems like they’re shaking their head no, but not quite. It’s just really cool, I almost have the bobble down!

We left for Erode on the first night. We got there by train and stayed there for 2 days and one night. The trains were a lot nicer than I was expecting. We stayed in the first class sleeper cars. There was an aisle going down the car and off of the aisle to one side were rooms of four beds, on the other side of the aisle were rooms of two beds. The rooms were separated from the aisles by cloth curtains, not doors. The beds were not comfortable and the sheets they provided us contained all types of stains that I did not want to know what they were. The pillows they provide made my face break out. But it was a blast. On the train ride over there I didn’t sleep much because our trip leaders had told us that at night people liked to peak inside of your curtain and steal your bag if it’s in the open, so I was on guard all night. But all night I think maybe only one or two people had looked into my curtain, but only for a few seconds and when I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I found out why, with all the curtains closed you can’t tell which room is yours. We arrived in Erode and went to the houses where we would be staying. 20 people went to the house that I was going to and I was amazed when we got there. Their house was huge, and it was on a farm. I was expecting it to be a little shanty house. But it was very nice. We later found out that this is a very wealthy family who is the main family of the village. There is too much to say about this homestay, I could probably write a book on this alone. But we walked around their farm, a few of us attempted to climb one of the coconut trees, they gave us some coconuts to drink. They fed us like none other. The food they made was without a doubt the best food I have ever eaten. The food was so good I didn’t even notice that for the two days I was there that I had had strictly vegetarian food. I didn’t notice and I didn’t care! We ate one meal on the floor on this leaf, which was good. We talked to the family a bunch, we asked them tons of questions about their culture, family, and anything else we could dream up and they did the same. I found it extremely interesting how close the families in their culture are. Everyone knows their second cousins, third cousins, aunts, uncles, and other extended family really well and they always hang out. That was our main topic of conversation and we talked about this for probably an hour if not longer. This family also makes the best tea I’ve ever had and they told us how to make it and I got the ingredients so when I get back to the states I’m making some bad-ass tea. They served us tea and coffee in semester at sea mugs, we found out that they have been doing this homestay with SAS for 17 years and they’ve collected 32 mugs from students that gave them to them as gifts. By the end of this homestay we had visited 4 or 5 different schools, one of which was a disabled kids school and they performed some skits for us and in return we performed the hokey pokey. One of the schools was also one of the best private schools in India and it was a very nice school and all the kids pretty much spoke perfect English. We had also visited a sugar cane plantation, a few places where they hand make rugs, a few hindu temples. One of which had a real live elephant in it, which I got blessed by. This homestay exceeded my expectations by about 100 times. It was awesome. Also, when we were driving to one of the schools we got knicked by another bus, we pulled off to the side of the road and the other bus kept on driving. It didn’t do anything to the bus though it had just made a really loud THWACK. On our train ride back we had an interesting experience, we got on the second class instead of first class and the classes don’t connect inside of the train so we sat in some empty beds in the second class sleeper cars until the next stop (1 hour away, the whole train ride is 8 hours). Then at the stop we had to run out and run up to the first class sleepers, which ended up being about 20 cars down instead of 1 train car down like they told us. While we ran we ran into them unloading cargo from the train and just tons of people in our way; which made things very difficult. It was fun. Then we got settled.

The Mother Teresa Orphanage was just insane. I went over there with Anna and Teddy to volunteer for a few hours. I was not expecting it to be how it was. 95% of the kids at that orphanage were either physically challenged or mentally challenged or both. The nuns showed us around and they were telling us about the orphanage and they took us into this room that just had a line of mats on the ground and on these mats were about 7 kids just laying on them. They ranged in age from about 5 to 7 years old They weren’t moving, they had flies flying around them and on them. They were the most malnourished kids I had ever seen, it brings new meaning to the saying, you’re all bones. The nun told us to go sit down next to a kid, she said that these kids just need to be nurtured and to be paid attention to for once. I went and sat down next to a kid, next to me was this lady that worked their with a kid, she mainly spoke Tamil but she spoke some very broken English. She told me to pick the kid up and to put him in my lap, I hesitated because he wasn’t moving and I didn’t want to hurt him. She saw my hesitation and concern so she picked him up for me and laid him in my lap (he was probably 5 years old). She told me that his name was Samoyo and to just talk to him. I said hi to him and asked him how he was, I knew he couldn’t understand me let alone respond. I held him and just talked to him. As I talked to him I stroked his face and arm to let him know that I was there. I did this for about an hour. As I was doing this I found out from the lady next to me that the Samoyo stopped eating food 3 days ago, he wouldn’t eat any food and they could only get him to drink water. On this note she handed me a cup of water with a spoon in it, I took it and starred at her. She pointed to Samoyo and I took it that she wanted me to give him water. So I gave him water spoonful by spoonful until the water was gone. Everytime I put the spoon up to his face he would open up his mouth and as I poured the water into his mouth he would stick his tongue out to meet and embrace the water. The lady that was next to me got up and told me to come with her, so I gently put Samoyo back onto the mat and left the room. She told me to take this other kid that was in a wheelchair for a walk outside. So I grabbed the girls wheelchair and wheeled her outside and we slowly did laps around the orphanage. We stopped in the shade for a little bit with Anna and Teddy who had also been taking a few kids for walks. The kids we had taken outside had big smiles on their face and they were just taking in the scenery. We would talk to them, we didn’t talk much to each other though, I don’t think we quite knew what to say to each other, we just looked at each other. But this other kid from the orphanage came out and played with us while we were sitting down. From what we could tell she was one of the few completely normal kids. She was very happy, and we had seen her earlier in the day but this was the first interaction with her. She was probably 10 years old or so. She didn’t really speak any English, she knew how to say hi and ask how are you, but that was all. But it’s amazing how much can be said without being able to talk to each other. She played these games with us while we were sitting down and we would get her to laugh and she would get us to laugh and it was a great time. After we had gone back inside this other kid came up to me, it was hard to tell how old he was but I’d say about 4 years old. I wasn’t sure exactly what his condition was but he was walking on his knees and his legs were folded up towards his back. His arms were very very short and unproportional with the rest of his body. Half of his nose wasn’t there and one of his main teeth was right below his nose, kind of outside of his mouth but kind of not. But he came up to me and started speaking Tamil, he didn’t speak any English at all. I didn’t know what he wanted so I bent down to get closer to him and shrugged my shoulders and he walked a few steps and looked back at me so I gathered that he wanted me to follow him, so I followed him. He took me to a little toy truck that little kids like to be pushed around on. He stood next to it, looked at me and smiled. I did a little motion of putting him up onto it and he did the head bobble that means ok. So I lifted him up on the truck and I started pushing him around. I pushed him around for at least an hour on this. Every once in a while a nun or two would stop and talk to him in Tamil and one of the times they were talking and after they talked the nun came up to me and said, “I just asked him if he wanted one of us to push him around and he said no, he just wants you to push him around, not us.” I didn’t know what to think of that and I still don’t, but one of these days maybe I’ll know what to think. And that’s that. I was very glad that I went and volunteered there for a few hours. It was a good experience.

After the Mother Teresa orphanage we went out to lunch at this really good restaurant that was about a 15 minute rickshaw ride away. After we ate we decided to try and find Spencers Plaza. This is just a place that has tons of shops and it looks a lot like an American mall, except it’s a lot more confusing because the shops are not laid out in any logical order (you have to see it to know what I’m talking about) and all the shops are Indian shops. But there’s a Pizza Hut inside and stuff like that. We tried to find this just by walking around and hoping to run into it. We had asked the restaurant for directions and they told us the general area it was in so we started walking. We walked around for a while and we came to a dead end in the street so we asked two cops where it was. When we asked them they both pointed opposite directions of each other. It gave us a good laugh. We figured we were headed in the right direction after talking to them for a few minutes. We continued walking for probably 45 minutes and we still didn’t find it so we gave in and took a rickshaw. We bargained with them for a while and finally settled on a price. Our driver was crazy, he was singing all kinds of songs to us and laughing. Right after we got in the rickshaw he floored it to pull a U turn and ran his rickshaw straight into a biker. The second accident I was involved in in India. But it didn’t do anything to him, he didn’t even fall over or anything so it was all good. But we continued to Spencers and found out that we had walked right by it and not even known, and we spent the rest of the day there. I’m pretty sure every person from the ship joined us in the Plaza.

Here’s a little ditty about India that I wrote:

They told us not to give anything to beggars, to say no to them and continue on our way. They told us that if we caved and gave money to the beggars that we would be mobbed. So I obeyed. As I walked down the streets, a little girl dressed in rags came running up to me holding out her hand, she started speaking Tamil but I didn’t need to understand what she was saying to know that she wanted money. I remembered what I was told and I looked her sternly in the eyes and firmly said no and continued on my way. I came across an older lady sitting on a street corner, I got closer and realized that she did not have any fingers on her hands, as I passed she reached her hands out to me, I didn’t need to understand what she was saying to know that she wanted money. I remembered what I had been told and ignored her and walked right by her as my legs brushed up against her fingerless hands. Further down the street I came across a mother with a baby, she came up to me and got in my face, she was holding out her hand and pointing to her baby’s mouth while speaking Tamil. I didn’t need to understand what she was saying to know that she wanted money. I remembered what I had been told, I glanced at the baby then I looked into the depths of the mother’s eyes and said more prominently than ever, NO, and I continued on my way. When I saw fellow students get surrounded by beggars I laughed as if amused, but as an Archbishop once told me, “If you’re not laughing, you’re crying.” They told us to just ignore the beggars and say no and continue on our way. They made it sound so easy, they failed to mention how hard it would be to do just that. They failed to mention the lepers, crippled children and mothers with babies that would come up to you. But I remembered what I was told, I said no, I ignored them and I continued on my way. After India, many things have changed.

India may be a place where you can’t do much to help people out but if I learned anything in India it’s this: a smile bridges any language barrier and brightens anyones day. There were many times when I’d walk by or just see someone on the sidewalk and just by looking into their eyes and smile at them and their faces would instantly light up. India is an amazing place. It’s impossible to be able to describe it with any amount words, pictures, or even videos. There’s nothing like actually being there, smelling it, tasting it, experiencing it. India is the land of overly nice people. People will come up to you and just start talking to you no matter where you are or who you are. People were very interested in where I was from, why I was in India and they loved to hear about Semester At Sea. It didn’t matter where you were or who you were, someone would always start talking to you. There were times where I’d pop out of the bathroom on the train and people would start talking to me and I would end up talking to them for half an hour. When I would step off the gangway I sometimes had people come up to me and say, “Can we have a few minutes of your time to ask you some questions?” And we would talk, sometimes for just a few minutes sometimes for who knows how long.

Without a doubt India has affected me. I’ve seen things I never thought I’d see. As of right now I have no idea how any of this has affected me, that’s something that only time will tell. I think that everyone should visit India at least once in their lifetime, because it’s amazing. I absolutely loved it, I’ve been told that you either hate India or you love it. I loved it and I haven’t ran into anyone on the ship who hated it, everyone I talk to absolutely loved it. I know that I will be back to India, there is no doubt in my mind about this. I liked it way too much to never go back. I will be going back one way or another!! After all, I still need to see the Taj Mahal!!

Here are three pictures from India: One if of me and an elephant inside of a Hindu temple, one is of a rickshaw, and that’s Eric’s head sticking out from the right. The other one is after the homestay when we got on the wrong class in the train, so we’re waiting around for the next stop to get off and run up to first class.

India and Mauritius Update.

2007-03-28T07:16:00.000-06:00

We are currently in India and it may be a little while before I post anything about India. There's so much to take in about this country and it'll take a little while to process, plus after India there are only 3 days until Malaysia!! and I have a ton of work that I need to do for school (or that I should do anyways). But in short India is Awesome (with a capital A). The homestay that I did in Erode was everything I wanted to be plus tons more. The city is busy, insane, and the rickshaw rides are possibly the funnest thing ever (and the scariest thing ever). I also went to the Mother Teresa (spelling?) orphanage today and volunteered for a few hours, which was....................... good. More to come on all that plus more at a later day (after I've processed and realized what I've actually done in this country).

MAURITIUS:

There were a few things that I was waiting to post on about Mauritius until I found out the legality of the situations. During out stay in Mauritius there were some incidents involving some students the most severe were the destruction of villa property and one girl also got raped. All of which result in poor representation of the program and it only adds to the stereotype of Americans that other countries have of us. The destruction of villas makes it a lot harder for future SAS students to actually rent out the villas. AS I UNDERSTAND IT, the raping of the girl was due to being obscenely drunk which resulted in being taken advantage of by one or two of the locals. Whether that is what happened or not I do not know. But she had to stay in Mauritius for a court hearing and what happens after that no one knows. As a result of this behavior the faculty has implemented more STRICT alcohol requirements for behavior on the ship as well as in the port. The consequences of even being a little drunk and making a scene (on the ship or in port) can now result in immediate explusion from the program. And that's my daily rant for now. On a lighter note.............INDIAS AWESOME. If someone is reading this that is thinking about doing SAS in the future don't let these little incidents result in you not going on this program. There are some risks in going on this, but if your just make smart decisions you won't have any problems. This is an AWESOME program.

Maritius and Sea Olympics

2007-03-19T21:33:00.000-06:00

Mauritius, well there’s not a lot to say about Mauritius. We arrived at noon instead of 8 a.m. because we had to dodge a cyclone that had just hit Mauritius the day before we arrived and the seas were a little rough the night before we arrived. I have a funny story about that actually, I woke up in the morning and reached for my alarm clock to see what time it was, I was searching for my clock with my hand (because our room is pitch black) but it wasn’t on the table next to my bed, in fact nothing was. After searching for a little bit I found all of my stuff inside the top drawer of the table. I guess what happened was in the middle of the night our drawers opened, our stuff slid into the top drawer and the drawers closed. That’s my funny story for this post, and it’s not really that funny!! Hahahahaha.

I’ve been asked a lot where exactly Mauritius is, so I’ll help you guys out with that one. Pull out a map, find Africa (the big mass of land right under Spain and France). When you’ve found Africa, look off the eastern coast of Africa and find Madagascar. Then look east of Madagascar and there’s Mauritius!!

For those of you who haven’t ever heard of Mauritius, I bet you’ve heard of it but you just don’t remember it. It’s the only place where the Dodo bird was found. Until it became extinct in the 1600’s from people eating them non-stop.

Mauritius was basically our spring break, now as to what it’s a break from; well I’ll let you figure that one out cause I’m having a hard time figuring it out. For the duration of our stay here I really didn’t do a whole lot, I pretty much just relaxed. I hung out in Downtown Mauritius with my roommate on the first day and the last day in Mauritius, we just walked around and attempted to find the Natural History Museum but no one knew where it was and the locals who had actually heard of it, highly advised that we don’t go there because it’s not good at all. One of our taxi drivers insisted that we go to the postal museum instead because “they have stamps from all over the world there!!” So we ended up not going to the history museum because we couldn’t find it. The funny thing about Mauritius is that no one knows where anything is. In one day we probably asked 10 different locals where the exact same thing is and their responses are something like this, they look very confident in what they’re talking about and say, “go down this street, take a left by that building down there, go down that street and you’ll see it.” Then you go there and it ends up being a dead end so you ask someone else and they tell you to go back to exactly the place where you just came from. It’s madness!! What makes it even better is 95% of the people we asked for directions were local cops!

On the second day here, my roommate (Ben), Chad and I went hiking. We took a taxi to this little town called Mocca which is on the other side of the mountains. Our taxi driver dropped us off at the very beginning of this dirt road that took you down some fields of sugar cane. We had no idea where we were, except for the mountains were right there. We just went down the road and after a while of going on the wrong trail we found the right one to go up this mountain on. So we hiked up this mountain which overlooks the city, and from the top of it you can see the whole island. We hung out up there for a good while then we decided to hike back into the city and then back to the ship. The trail to the city was great fun!! It was just like jungle trekking, the path was pretty much just bent brush and we had these tall plants on both sides of us the majority of the time, and we all got tons of mosquito bites. It was fun. All together from the time we started hiking until the time we reached the city it took us about 3.5 hours or so. That’s about all I did in Mauritius. We were going to go to a beach but we didn’t want to pay for the cab ride out to one and back so we didn’t, plus it was an overcast day. And that’s all I have for Mauritius.

For the Photos:

One is the view from the top of the mountain, that’s the city of Port Louis below.

One is of the French warship that we were docked next to, but also the mountain that we climbed is in the background and I labeled it, and you can see the Port Louis skyline.

One is of me in front of the mountain (or mini-mountain?) we’re about to climb.

There’s also one of the trail we followed to take down to the city from the top of the mountain, cool trail eh?? Standing there is Ben pondering what we’ll find up ahead. Chad is also in that picture, so let’s all play a game called find Chad. The object is to find Chad in that picture. Ready……….Set……….GO!

We also had the Sea Olympics this week, the day after we got back on the ship from Mauritius. This is just a competition between all the seas (we’re split up depending on where our room is) there’s about 8 or 9 seas total. They have a bunch of activities such as tug of war, a relay race, slippery twister (those are the events that I competed in). The prize if your sea wins is that you get to get off the ship first in San Diego. My sea did not win, we tied for last place!! But it was tons of fun anyways. Plus we didn’t have classes on this day!! That’s all I’m going to say about this for now because I just woke up and I have classes to go to!

South Africa, Part II

2007-03-12T22:13:00.000-06:00

I have a quiz for everyone, where in the world do you go if you want to visit winelands, go wine tasting, cage diving with great white sharks, see first hand a township and in them the cutest kids in the world, hike up a mountain, see one of the best views of a city, go to night clubs and jazz clubs, visit an old prison that’s on an island, go to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point, see wild zebras, ostriches, springbok, kudu, baboons, penguins, and tons of various birds, hang out on the roof of a restaurant downtown with some friends, eat crocodile, springbok, and ostrich?? The answer is Cape Town, South Africa of course!! And I did do all of those things! On top of that my goal for this port was accomplished, that was to see penguins, and I saw penguins!!! Cape Town is a very amazing city, it has almost everything you could ever want, the only thing it doesn’t have is snowboarding, if it had that I’d probably be moving to this city very soon. Just the way the city is situated is amazing, there’s the water, then the city, then Table Mountain and other mountains in the background. It’s simply a stunning view. What’s even better is hiking to the top of Table Mountain (roughly 3000 ft. tall) and standing on the edge of the rocks just looking down on the city, the ocean, robben island, and if you turn around you can see the Cape of Good Hope and other mountains. If I had the time to I could just stand in that spot for hours looking out on the city. I could spend a month in this port and never have a day where I’m bored. I’ll list off some of the activities you can do: cage diving with greak white sharks, skydiving, paragliding, abseiling, kloofing, sand boarding, scuba diving, rock climbing, hiking, wineland tours and wine tasting, safaris, futbol games, rugby games, spend a night in a township etc. Plus there are malls and tons of shops. It’s impossible to get bored!

Cage diving with great white sharks was awesome, we saw seven different sharks, I was in the cage for two of them. Some of them swam right next to the cage. It’s amazing having a great white shark within a foot of you with only small pieces of steel separating you from it. These creatures are extremely powerful. One of them even jumped out of the water to grab the chum and it was just amazing; we had lost sight of the shark (the visibility in the water is only 2 meters) and a few seconds later the shark was half way out of the water with the chum in it’s mouth. I would not want to be stuck in the ocean with one of these (on the surface of the ocean anyways, if you’re not on the surface they won’t attack you).

The winelands were great fun, me and three other people from SAS went on a wine tasting tour, and at the end of the day we had tried twenty different wines and one brandy from four different vineyards. We were suppose to go the a fifth vineyard but we ran out of time. We had our first wine at 9:30 in the morning!

On the second to last day in Cape Town, this girl (Jessica) and me really wanted to go to Cape Point (where the Cape of Good Hope is) and on the way back stop at Boulders Beach to see the Penguins! We couldn’t find anyone else to go with us so we rented a cab for the afternoon for 800 rand for the whole cab ($115) and he would drive us to anywhere we wanted to go. So we went to Cape Point, which was cool. We saw some baboons there; we hiked around on some of the trails and almost got blown off the cliffs a few times from the wind. If I post a picture where my hair is standing straight up and my mouth is open that’s where this picture was taken. When we had spent a few hours here we headed over to Boulders Beach. After a few minutes of walking around here we found penguins! They were hanging out on the rocks so we went on the rocks and walked around with them, took pictures of them/with them. These are the coolest animals ever, they don’t smell, they’re not annoying, they’re not mean, and the babies look extremely soft and they sound squeaky (not even kidding, they squeak). All they do is lay around and every once in a while they waddle around. Now I have over 200 pictures of just penguins!!!

On the last day a few people from SAS and me went to Robben Island and then we hiked Table Mountain in the afternoon. Robben Island used to be where a political prison was situated. They stopped using this prison in the early 90’s, so not that long ago. Its biggest prisoner was Nelson Mandela, who was released in 1990 and then became the president of South Africa in 1994. 1994 was also the first year that blacks and colored South Africans could vote. The prison was cool to see but the tour got old fast and was kind of boring. Although our tour guide was an ex-prisoner, so it was cool to hear his stories. Hiking Table Mountain is pretty self-explanatory. We hiked up it under the intense, hot African sun with a cloudless sky. The trails up this are pretty funny, I was expecting it to be all these dirt trails since that’s mostly what’s in Colorado. But all the trails were basically just stairs up the mountain. So it was like being on a Stairmaster for 2 hours. It brought me back to the days of working for Observ. But once you get to the top, the view is definitely worth it, I won’t even attempt to describe this view again, just look at the pictures I post.

I saved the best experience for last. Which was visiting the Khayelitsha Township. We got to see first hand one of the poorest towns in South Africa (it’s also the biggest township). Khayelitsha is home to 2 million people. This population is growing rapidly too. The majority of these people/families live on less than $1 a day. Their houses are no more than poorly built, one room shacks. The material that they’re built out of is scrap metal and scrap wood. Very few of these houses are made out of a solid material that wouldn’t be blown to the ground in harsh winds. These houses are one right next to each other for miles upon miles. On average a family of seven lives in these one-room houses. The room is no bigger than my bedroom back in the states. To see this with my own eyes was very eye opening. To be driving down the street in our bus looking out the window and all you see for miles on all sides of you are these shacks, one right after the other. The people who live in these houses walking the streets starring at you as you drive by. The kids frantically waving at you. These houses do have electricity. The government gives them a very limited amount of electricity per month and if they want more electricity they have to buy more. By now you’re probably wondering why I liked this so much if this township is like this. It’s not that this was a “fun” experience it was just…amazing. When we got off the bus in this township we visited two bed and breakfasts and a local craft market; where the women of the township make everything in the market. Then we were allowed to walk around a little and talk to the locals. It was hard to talk to the locals because they usually didn’t speak English they usually spoke Afrikaans, Zulu, or Xhosa (usually the adults could speak a little English, but the kids generally couldn’t). But the best thing to do was to play with the kids. These kids are the cutest kids I’ve ever seen. Even just driving by them in the bus they’d wave frantically at you and try to run along side of the bus. But when they would come up to us on the streets, they’d run up to us with the biggest smiles on their faces, they’d hug us, grab onto our legs and arms and not want to let go, then they would want us to take their picture. After we’d take their picture they’d run back to us so they could see what they look like on our camera. They absolutely loved it. Some of them would try and teach us some games and how to make sounds with our hands. There’s this one kid that I distinctly remember, we had just visited a bed and breakfast and me and this girl really wanted to go play with the kids instead of looking around the bed and breakfast, so we went outside and this one kid saw us, he was probably five or six years old, he just booked it towards us at full speed then he jumped up on me, wrapped his arms around my neck and his legs around my waist and just held onto me for probably thirty seconds or so then he jumped down and went over to the girl that I had gone outside with and did the same thing except he gave her a kiss on the cheek. What makes this worse is when you look at these kids, all you want to do is help them, to make their lives better for them, to instantly make AIDS not a problem for them but there’s no possible way to help all of them at once. What’s remarkable to me is just by looking at the houses that these people live in and the way that they live, you’d never expect them to act as happy as they do. One out of nine of them have AIDS. Ten years ago they couldn’t even talk to us white people, they were forced to live in these townships they had no choice, politically they had no voice, but yet it doesn’t matter to them at all now. They’ve all moved on.

On top of that one out of nine people in South Africa has AIDS (in all of South Africa, not just in the townships) which is a huge problem. In the smaller townships they bury about 50 people every week (kids and adults) due to AIDS. And the amount of people that have AIDS in South Africa is growing rapidly every year along with the poverty level. Here are a few facts from my global studies class: Last year in the U.S. there were 43,000 people newly infected with AIDS, in Sub-Saharan Africa there were 2.8 million. Africa currently has 35% of the worlds poverty, it’s projected that by 2015 that will be at 68% unless something is changed.

I did take some pencils and stickers and other things of that nature to hand out to the kids, but we were asked by our tour guide to not give them directly to the kids as in a few other tours the kids started punching each other for the gifts and they don’t want the kids to turn into beggars and to expect these kinds of gifts whenever people visit the township. Instead I gave them to the owner of one of the bed and breakfasts, she runs an after school type program for the kdis and said that she would distribute them to the kids.

One other thing I must mention about South Africa is the food. They have really good seafood and a few really good random restaurants. If you’re ever in Cape Town go to the restaurant called “Royale” on Long Street. This is a gourmet burger restaurant. The building it’s in consists of about 3 floors, all of which belong to this restaurant. On the bottom floor is the restaurant then the other 2 floors are waiting rooms for the restaurant complete with bars. One night we had a group of 18 people to go out to dinner, since it was someone’s birthday. We showed up at this restaurant and asked if we could be seated, they said that they were all booked up for the night since you’re suppose to make reservations for this restaurant 2 weeks in advance and we hadn’t done that. But they said that despite this they could probably get us a table in an hour if we go upstairs and wait in their waiting rooms. So we went upstairs to the waiting rooms which were pretty crowded with people, but then we discovered that we could go up onto the roof of this restaurant and on the roof there were tables, chairs and benches and there was no one up there. We went up there and hung out there until our table in the restaurant was ready. There’s not a better way to wait for a table than hanging out with 17 friends on the roof of a long street building which overlooks long street, the city and table mountain in the background.

This is probably long enough for now. This is a really compressed version of what I did in South Africa and I could ramble on and on about South Africa for many more pages but I won’t cause I have a bunch of essays that I have to go write, and tests to study for. But basically in the end what I’m saying is CAPE TOWN ROCKS!! I will definitely be coming back as soon as I can. Hopefully I’ll be back by the 2010 World Cup in South Africa!!

As far as the pictures go, for the group picture on a rock, in order from left to right is: Mark (red shirt), Matt (yellow shirt), Jessica, Me (brown shirt), and Rick on the right end. I lied in a previous post, Rick isn’t in the Archbishop picture, but it’s the same people as in the other one except for Rick. There’s one of a township doctors office (I put that one up here for you Brooke). The other pictures are pretty self-explanatory, a shark coming at the shark cage, the view of Cape Town from Table Mountain, the township kids. I think that covers all of the pictures. There are some pictures of me with some kids on someones computer, I just need to get it from them sometime. After I get those I may post one or two of them. ALSO, the group pictures are courtesy of Matt!!

Until Next Time, Ciao.

Early Cape Town Pictures

2007-03-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

If anyone really wanted to see pictures from Cape Town very soon then you’re lucky, because I’m posting them right now because it’s raining outside and so I figure it’s a good day to go to the internet café. Here are some EARLY pictures of Cape Town and Neptune Day. The Cape Town pictures should explain themselves, if not then you should double check what website you’re at. There were some Sea Lions right next to the boat and so that’s where those were. Neptune Day was on the 24th, I think. You’re suppose to do it when the ship crosses the equator, which would’ve been before Brazil, but because they scheduled it wrong or who-knows-what we did it after Brazil and way after we had passed the equator. What happens is that you’re suppose to pay omage to King Neptune for crossing the equator the first time by shaving your head or having “fish guts” poured on you and then jumping in the pool, climbing out, kissing a fish, and finally kissing king neptune’s ring. I guess it’s an old sea tradition or maybe it’s just a Semester At Sea tradition, I have no idea, I do know that they do it every year though (or every semester rather). The best part about it by far is that we got the day off from classes!!! So far Cape Town is awesome. We just got here yesterday so it’s kinda hard to tell, but so far it’s great! If I get a hold of the picture in time, it’s a picture of me, matt, and rick with Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Cape Town in the background (if I don’t get it in time then I’ll post it later). I just remembered that there’s a picture of a baby on there, that’s little baby Ryder. He’s the youngest person on the voyage. He was 7 months old at the beginning of the voyage and my math skills are horrible so I don’t know how old he is now, but around there. His dad is one of the professors onboard.

The pictures are probably scattered about, sorry about that but I messed up when I attempted to organize them (the constant time zone change from brazil to cape town really messed me up!). But I just explained a lot of them sssooo yeah, enjoy!

That is Captain Jeremy painted green and dressed up as King Neptune (personally I think he looks like the hulk, I was hoping he’d get really mad and then just become huge and start throwing stuff off of the ship!). Some of my pictures have a spot right in the middle of them because I had a piece of dust on my lens that I didn’t notice til afterwards and I’m too lazy right now to take it out.

Brazil

2007-02-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

Oi Everybody!! (that’s Portuguese for hi)

Sssoooo Brazil!! First off if any of you ever have a chance to go to Carnaval in Brazil, whether it be in Salvador or in Rio, go to it!! Rio has the more touristy Carnaval and Salvador has the more authentic Carnaval. I stayed in Salvador the whole time; The Guiness Book of World Records lists Carnaval in Salvador as the largest festive gathering in the world. There are 2 million people on the streets at times. The party starts at roughly noon, sometimes before that, sometimes after that. But it lasts until about 6 or 7 a.m. I didn’t stay out that late, the latest I stayed out was until 3 a.m.!! A lot of the locals stay out until 6 a.m. go sleep a little, then go back in the afternoon and do it all over again, day after day! Basically how it works in Salvador is there are 3 different circuits that the bands parade down. Each circuit varies in length. They have a really small one (for families and kids, not even kidding, tons of kids and families up at that one in the upper city in the Pelerinho area). Then they have a medium sized on that starts at a lighthouse (I posted a distant picture of it yesterday), this is the main one that I was at. Then they have a really big one. For simplicities sake I’ll just describe the setup for the Trio Electrico bands (the other kind in Salvador is the afro bloco bands). How it works is at the starting place they have all these huge trucks lined up that the bands play on (the bigger bands have 2 trucks, one truck for the band and a second truck that has a bar and a bathroom for select special people who have a certain t-shirt). At a certain pre-determined time the first band starts playing and then they send the truck down the street at a snails pace, literally a snails pace. Then when that truck gets down the street a ways (I have no idea how far apart they space them out all I know is that they’re about a half-hour apart) the second band starts playing and going down the street. And they have it down so that if you’re standing in one spot you can always hear one band, but the sounds from the different trucks don’t collide, I don’t know how it works. But the bands play until they finish the circuit and the bands that I saw played about half an hour after that too. But the bands play from the start of the circuit to the end of the circuit non-stop, they don’t take any breaks or anything, just song after song. And these are not short circuits either. The Barra circuit (the one by the lighthouse) is the one that I followed a band from start to finish on and it took them 5 and a half hours from start to finish. They started playing at 8 p.m. and finished the circuit at 1:30 a.m. and they kept playing until 2 a.m. I got back to the ship at 3 a.m. And I hear that the largest circuit takes 7 to 8 hours to complete. On the Barra circuit (the lighthouse one) each night they had probably about 15 different bands play, if not more. So basically those Brazilians sure know how to throw a party!!

On the last night of Carnaval I went to the Barra circuit with about 10 other people and we watched the bands go by and we saw Fat Boy Slim. Which was pretty cool. I’m not a huge fan of the techno music, but nonetheless, with a huge crowd it was pretty awesome.

That’s probably about enough about Carnaval, I could probably type about 20 more pages on it, so if you want to know anything else about it, E-MAIL ME!!

Brazil in itself is kind of an unsettling country. The middle class in Brazil is pretty much non-existent, everyone is either extremely rich or extremely poor. To put things in perspective for you here is a little tid-bit from my notes from the global studies class, “In Brazil the richest 20% of the population has 62% of the total income for the whole country. On the opposite end, the poorest 20% of the population has 3% of the total income.” Because of this the country has an extremely high crime rate. The poor don’t have enough money to get by so therefore they end up mugging/robbing people for money. Before we even got to the country we had to go to a bunch of meetings about how unsafe Brazil is and how we shouldn’t take anything that we wouldn’t want stolen. They told us this kind of stuff more times than I can count. But nonetheless after the first day in Brazil I came back to the ship to tons of stories of people getting mugged. After everyday we were in Brazil the amount of stories kept growing. Some people were mugged at knifepoint. I’m fairly sure no one got mugged at gunpoint, that story would definitely be going around the ship. And as far as we know, no one got hurt in any of these incidents!! In case your freaking out right now mom, I didn’t get mugged!! But some of the people in Brazil are pretty desperate it’s crazy as to the extents that some of them will go for even a few dollars. Some people got their cameras taken from them and that kind of stuff. But one of my favorites has to be how my roommate got held up, pretty much at knife-point for 10 Reals (Reals are the currency in Brazil). 10 Reals is not a lot of money. Two Reals is equal to one U.S. dollar. So he got held up for 5 U.S. dollars (there is more of a story to that, it wasn’t just a guy running up to him). That’s definitely not something you’d run into in the U.S. On top of that there’s no way that the police can control the crime because of how much of it there is. Another one of my favorite things about Brazil is at night the cars are not required to stop at red lights. They are just required to make sure that no one is coming the other way before they go through it. This is because if you stop at a stoplight there’s a chance that your car will get stolen. There was an incident of this that they told us about that happened in Rio about two weeks ago, I’m not going to tell that story on here, if you want to know what it is then E-MAIL ME and I’ll tell you. So it was fun to get in a taxi and go through all the redlights. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Plus a lot of the drivers go pretty fast, it twas fun!

But as a consequence of the crime, when you’re not in a populated area or if your by yourself (which is very stupid to do) or even just at night you constantly have to be aware of your surroundings and who is around you. That’s the one of the few things that I didn’t like about Brazil (the other one is the smell that you gain from Carnaval, very nasty). You constantly have to be on the look out. But if you stay in groups and you’re aware of things and aren’t being stupid you probably won’t run into any troubles.

That’s all I’m going to say for Brazil, if you have any questions or want to hear more than E-MAIL ME!! Jlissy1987@gmail.com

I just got the pictures of Carnaval from one person and the pictures are alright, I’ll probably post 2 of them or so when I get a chance and when the internet is being fast. But I also got some short videos but I can’t post those cause of the file size. But when I get back to the states be prepared for some short awesome Carnaval videos!! If you want to see more pictures from Carnaval go to the image part of google and search for, “Salvador Carnaval 2007”. There’s probably some pretty good pictures of the crowds and such on there.

One of the pictures that I’ll post is of the group of us that went. The orange shirts were our ticket to get into the (secure) area directly around the huge truck to follow the band around. And I look like a zombie in that picture, bah. The other one is just of a crowd.

And a few other small tidbits. One of the photos that I did post yesterday is of me with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and he signed my journal too! And today I got to each lunch with Captain Jeremy along with about 10 other students. Which was really cool, cause that doesn’t happen very often at all. Plus he’s the captain, he’s kind of a big deal.

Another thing I didn't mention is about Capoeira, it's a form of martial arts and it's done to music and it's everywhere in Brazil, it's pretty awesome. The picture where the guy is upside down is a picture of Capoeira. Google Capoeira for more info on it!

Pictures from Brazil

2007-02-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

We´re leaving Salvador in a few hours and there´s an internet cafe right by the dock so I figured that I´d use it to post some pictures!! I don´t have any pictures of Carnaval because I didn´t want to take my camera to Carnaval and end up having it stolen. But to a few of the things that I went to during Carnaval people did have their cameras and they got some cool pictures. I´m going to get those from them tonight or tomorrow and I´ll try to post a few of those then, cause Carnaval was just awesome and amazing. I´ll also write something about Brazil and I´ll probably post it tomorrow sometime (maybe). But here are the pictures:

As for Captions it won´t let me look at them and put some captions so I forget which pictures I´m posting. One of them is from a tour of the Bridge that I did, I have the Captains hat on and some binoculars. And in the background is Captain Jeremy (our captain of the ship) starring me down. A few of them are us pulling into the docks. In one you can see peoples heads and the guy on the bottom far right is Matt, I´m not sure who the other people are. I don´t know what other pictures I posted ssssoooo yeah.

Puerto Rico

2007-02-11T03:50:00.000-07:00

I woke up at about 6 a.m. on the 7th to watch us pull into Puerto Rico. When I walked outside on the 7th deck I could hardly believe my eyes of the view. The sun was just starting to rise and right next to it you could just see Puerto Rico. I won’t even try to describe how the sun rising and the clouds and scenery looked. All I can say about that is that the clouds were a pinkish-red-orange hue and the only place I had ever seen anything like this before were the drawings and paintings that you can only find in children’s books. It did remind me of a song too, which is, “Orange Sky” by Alexi Murdoch. If the internet on the ship is being fast when I post this I’ll post a few pictures for you guys. There’s no way to describe it, you just have to see it to believe it and even then the pictures don’t do it enough justice. But the pictures that I got are still amazing. As we finally pulled into the port in Puerto Rico we had the governor of Puerto Rico come onto our ship and give us a speech. Which was pretty cool. From his speech we learned that Viagra is made in Puerto Rico along with tons of other pharmaceuticals. He talked about a lot of other stuff too, but that’s the main thing that I remember.

Puerto Rico is an interesting place. It’s pretty much just a mini USA (I say mini because it’s a small island). Except for that all the signs are in spanish and everybody speaks Spanish. But 98% of the people that I talked to also spoke English, which was very nice because due to the wonderous nature of the Jefferson County Public school system in Colorado I could say hi to them and ask them how they were and that was about all. But they don’t consider themselves to be Americans or Puerto-Rican Americans at all. If you ask them what nationality they are they say with a very strong emphasis and a Puerto-Rican accent, “Puerto Rican of course.”

Over the three days that I was there I walked around with some people and explored Old San Juan. Old San Juan is pretty much your olden day town. It still has a bunch of culture in it. It consists of 2 forts, one of which is on the very tip (we passed by it coming in to the port and is in a few pictures). Old San Juan also has a ton of shops, everywhere you go there are shops. I also hit some beaches!!!!!!!!! Which were very nice, except for the extremely high content of salt in the ocean. My roommate and I ended up taking a very expensive cab ride. And I’m sure I’m forgetting about a bunch of other things that I did. One other thing that I did was the Bioluminescent Kayak Tour. I had arranged this back in the states for a group of people. We put 33 people into two 15 passenger vans and took an hour and a half drive out to a certain shoreline (it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it sounds). Then we got a bunch of kayaks and tour guides and we kayaked for about a mile down this pitch black, jungle-like, small trail (some of us un-intentionally played bumper-kayaks) to this bay. What happens in this bay is that when the water is disturbed the plankton in the water give off little ions of light, thus making the water glow when you move it. We were allowed to swim in it and it was the coolest thing ever. When you’re in this water and you’re swimming your arms and legs and pretty much your whole body has this turquoisish glow to it. If you splash it on yourself you can see the individual plankton glowing. It’s pretty sweet, plus we got complimentary Pina Coladas afterwards.

I would’ve loved to spend some more time in Puerto Rico and see Puerto Rico’s rain forest (El Yunque) or go visit the town of Ponce or just spend more time exploring the island. But our next stop is Brazil and I cannot wait for Carnival. But right now I have a ton of homework to do and I’m really tired so until next time, Ciao. As always if you have any questions/comments/suggestions e-mail me: jlissy1987@gmail.com

Ship Life and Classes

2007-02-06T12:29:00.001-07:00

I’m finally gone!!!! WWWOOOOO. We left the Bahamas on time (I think) and now we’re out in the ocean and arriving in Puerto Rico tomorrow! We have the largest amount of students in the history of SAS, there are 702 students!! And I can hardly remember anybody’s name, haha. The ship is pretty sweet, it’s extremely nice inside (and outside) and the crew is really friendly and nice. In a lot of places the floors are granite with those gold handrails. In the dining rooms we have buffet style meals, but some of the crew act as waiters and take our plates away when we’re done eating and that kind of stuff, which I definitely was not expecting at all. The ship and crew has definitely without a doubt surpassed my expectations of what I thought it would be. Before we left Nassau we got to do a lovely life-boat drill that lasted for at least 30 minutes cause a few people got placed in the wrong place for their life-boat so they weren’t around for the roll-call at their station so we got to stand around in our life-jackets and long sleeve shirts and pants until the crew figured out where they were. Oh and my dad lost his passport on the ship when my parents came to visit me on it in Nassau. WAY TO GO DAD, GEEZE. YOU MADE ME HAVE TO GO TO THE DEANS OFFICE AND WE HADN’T EVEN LEFT YET, GEEZE. I bet you didn’t even know it was missing until they delivered it back to the Atlantis, eh? Well hopefully they delivered it back, I have no idea, let me know on that one. But on the bright side the Archbishop talked to me because of that, haha. I’m putting that in here just for Chris, hehehehe. There’ll be more about him later.

I’m still trying to get used to the motions of the boat in the ocean, it’s not making me sick or anything, I actually enjoy it quite a bit. It makes it extremely easy to fall asleep especially during class, hehe. I keep stumbling into walls and into random people cause of the rocking of the boat. But I’m starting to get the hang of it. It’s actually making me eat a lot more than I usually do, which is kinda weird. My roommate is pretty cool he’s from Pennsylvania. Our room is extremely small it is half the size of a dorm room and there’s not a port hole in it so when you turn out the lights it’s literally pitch black. Which is perfect for falling asleep but it sucks for waking up, cause you don’t know what time it is or if the sun is even out until you go look out of one of the windows on the other decks.

Our orientation day wasn’t very fun, it was just meeting after meeting after meeting. But I’ve eaten almost every meal out on the outside part of one of the decks, which is extremely nice. It’s been 70 to 80 degrees (I laugh at those of you in Colorado, hahaha). They pretty much just told us what we can do and what we can’t do (mostly what we can’t do). Our captain is pretty cool, he has an English accent and has the dry British humor, which I find to be extremely funny because he really tries to be funny and most of the time no one laughs at his jokes so it’s just him standing their waiting for someone to laugh and I end up laughing from the silence and the corny dry joke. I just had my first classes today and they seem like they’re going to be kinda hard because there isn’t any room for us to put anything off. We already have very little time to sleep and I’m definitely not going to be doing a whole lot of work while we’re in port so that doesn’t leave me too much time to do assignments for all of my classes. I have to keep journals for all of them and everything. OH, I have the largest amount of students in one of my classes that I’ve ever had, we have an amazing 702 students in that class (the whole ship). It’s a big class.

For those of you wondering about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I’ve seen him twice and talked to him once. I saw him when we were leaving Nassau, I was behind/next to him on the 7th deck when we were leaving (that’s where he asked me about my dad’s passport). And I saw him today at breakfast, I had just finished eating breakfast and he came walking into the room. But he’s really nice. I don’t see him wandering around too much though, I don’t know if he just stays in his room or what he does. I’ve also heard that he’s only giving one lecture on the ship and that better not be the case. Hopefully that’s just a rumor.

I’m sick of writing now because I’ve written a boat load (get the pun?? Ha). And I really need to go sit out in the sun and star off into the seemingly endless ocean cause I have yet to do that today, and I hear a few people saying that they saw whales earlier. Oh and it rained yesterday but I was completely oblivious to that. But I’m having tons of fun and I’ll write again after Puerto Rico. But hopefully it won’t be this long cause I’ve been writing this for a ridiculous long time. If you have any questions about this stuff or anything e-mail me: jlissy1987@gmail.com

ADIOS

Mailing Me Stuff!

2007-01-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

If anybody feels like writing me a letter or postcard while I'm gone you can!! Just send it to the address(s) below and if all goes well I should recieve it. But you need to send it by AIRMAIL and they recommend sending letters at least 2 weeks before the arrival date. Here are the addresses:

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: February 7, 2007
Cruise Plus Service & Sales
1760 Fernandez Juncos Avenue
San Juan, PUERTO RICO, 00909

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: February 17, 2007
Oceanus Agencia Maritima
Av. Estados Unidos, 397, Room 601-604
40018-900 Salvador, BAHIA-BRASIL

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: March 2, 2007
John T. Rennie & Sons
PO Box 702, 1 Thibault House
8000 Cape Town, SOUTH AFRICA

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: March 15, 2007
Ireland Blyth Limited
1 Queen Street, P.O. Box 53
Port Louis, MAURITIUS

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: March 25, 2007
J.M. Baxi & CO.
52 Rajaji Salai
Chennai-600 001, INDIA

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: April 2, 2007
Inchcape Shipping Services SDN
4th Floor Unit 4B
Wisma Saw Chong Thuah
39-c, Pengkalan Weld
10300 Penang, MALAYSIA

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: April 9, 2007
General Forwarding & Agency
5th Floor Osic Building
8 Nguyen Hue Avenue
D. 1, Ho Chi Minh City, VIETNAM

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: April 17, 2007
Inchcape Shipping Services (HK) Ltd.
Units 1802-1805, 18th Floor
No 3 Lockhart Road
Wanchai, HONG KONG-CHINA

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: April 21, 2007
Penavico Qingdao
21 Wuxia Road
Quingdao, 266002, P.R. CHINA

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: April 25, 2007
Inchcape Shipping Services
Kenryu Bldg II, Room 303
6, Kaigan-dori, Chuo-ku
Kobe-shi, Hyogo-Ken 650-0024, JAPAN

James Lissy
Care of: MV Explorer
Arrives: May 7, 2007
Inchcape Shipping Services
Gentry Pacific Center
260 North Numitz Hwy, Suite 103
HONOLULU, Hawaii 96817, USA

That took a rediculous amount of time to type up and I even have a link to those addresses ssssoooo send me mail!! Go here if my typing has confused you: Mail Link

PPPSSSSS, now I leave in about 30 days!!! hehehehehehehe

Getting Closer!

2006-12-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

In 44 days I'll be getting on an airplane headed for Nassau in the Bahamas. A few days later on February 4th I'll be embarking on the adventure of a liftetime! I'll be boarding the ship MV Explorer with 600+ other college students, teachers, and also nobel peace prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, together we'll sail around the world. We'll be visiting 10 different countries spread across 4 continents over the period of 100 days. On here I'll be documenting my journey for my friends, family, whoever else is interested and for myself. This is my story.

Yep that's right, I get to take classes while I'm on a ship!! I'll be taking a total of 12 credit hours and it's on the usual block schedule (A and B days). The classes that I'll be taking are:

Global Studies (required)
Intro to World Music
Intro to International Relations
Intro to World Religions

Our itinerary is as follows:

February 4th - May 14th

Nassau, Bahamas
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Salvador, Brazil
Cape Town, South Africa
Port Louis, Mauritius
Chennai, India
Penang, Malaysia
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Hong Kong
Qingdao, China
Kobe, Japan
Honolulu, Hawaii
San Diego, California

I'll try and keep this updated as much as possible while I'm gone, but I have a limited amount of internet time on the ship and once I use that up I have to pay for my internet useage, so I'm not really sure how often I'll be able to update this, maybe once a week or so. After I update this page every time I will send an e-mail out to my list of people who wish to recieve it. If you're not on this e-mail list and want to be on it or you just want to send me an e-mail while I'm gone you can send me an e-mail at: jlissy1987@gmail.com