The End of a New Beginning.

It’s the end of a journey, the end of the voyage… but it’s only the beginning of the rest of my life.

I want to start off my final on-ship blog entry, on the eve of arriving in San Diego, by thanking EVERYONE who has supported me throughout this incredible trip of a lifetime.

First and foremost, I want to thank our amazing Captain, Roman Krstanovic. He was the guiding force, the one who made this ship set sail in Nassau on January 19^th and is bringing us safely home tomorrow, over 3 months later, on April 28^th. Also, I want to thank the Crew. They have been absolutely wonderful and such a blast, laughing on Deck 7 or knowing exactly what I want to order, telling us about their lives and families and homes from Jamaica to the Philippines… To my awesome cabin steward, Rolando, who kept the room nice by making our beds every day and cleaning the rooms.

I am going to miss the kitchen staff, like Allan and Solomon who always make us laugh and are so friendly and courteous. My trip would have been completely different without them and I am so glad they were a part of it! Next, I want to thank my parents who made this trip come true for me and have followed me along the entire journey (especially to Vietnam!!). I cannot thank them enough for giving me the world, words are simply not enough – so these pictures are for them…

Next, in no particular order, I want to thank my brother, the rest of my family, everyone who wrote me postcards/letters, all the parents and people who read my blog and/or commented on my it, provided me with words of advice, all my friends back home both in San Diego and in Gig Harbor, and of course, all my friends on the ship who were part of the remarkable journey. All the laughter, the smiles, the hugs, the experiences.

As I sit here and reflect on the last 100 days, I am in awe. I still remember signing up for Semester At Sea and how time couldn’t pass fast enough for it to arrive. Now that it’s at an end, I don’t want to leave. The ship has truly become my home and the people on it are my family and best friends. I know I am going to miss the little things – playing poker in Classroom 1, sitting on my laptop in the Piano Lounge, going to Pub Nights on Deck 7, getting late-night hot dogs at the Grill when the ship food was just not good (which occurred quite frequently, in fact), getting smoothies and sitting in the sun, Neptune Day and Sea Olympics, sunrises in new countries, Ambassador's Ball where everyone wore the suits/dresses they had made in Vietnam or saris/langis from India or Myanmar, and getting off the ship in port and not knowing what to do or expect and just going for it. As much as it is going to be sad to leave, I know that it isn’t goodbye. Semester At Sea was not just a 3-month trip around the world, it was something that has become a part of me and will stay with me for the rest of my life. The halls and walls and cabins might be empty of pictures, maps, and luggage – but the memories and friendships will always be in my heart. In 5, 10, 15, 20 years I will look back and still not believe what I did, the places I saw, or the people I met. It’s surreal. It’s unbelievable and amazing and indescribable. I cannot answer the question, “What was your favorite country?” because once you have seen so many different ones, they all become your favorites for different reasons. Some people might not understand what I went through on this semester, and that’s okay, because I still don’t know what happen. It might hit me one day…

I am going to go home for the summer and go back to school in San Diego in the Fall. It’s going to be an adjustment for all of us. Some people are itching to get home, others want to be stow-aways on the ship, like me! But every book comes to a close and all good things have to end sometime. I’m smiling right now, because I can’t believe it. I have loved every moment of this and I will always, always have the most amazing memories to make any bad day disappear. Tomorrow, as we all go down the gangway one-by-one and return home, I know that we are all leaving a part of ourselves on the ship. I am already jealous of any future voyagers – the only advice I have for you is this: no regrets. Do what you want, do everything, and do not regret a SECOND of it. Everything happens for a reason, even if you don’t know what that is. Semester At Sea has changed me. I have grown, I have become more independent than I ever thought was possible. And as much as this is the end, it isn’t. It’s the beginning of life-long friendships, more travels around the world, and the possibilities are endless. I still don’t think that my words are adequate enough to express my emotions. Now, it is time to go back into the world with a new outlook. Everyone is taking last-minute video footage of the ship, photographs, signing maps and exchanging contact info and pictures and stories. We are taking full advantage of our last hours on the ship. Watch out, we have all been bit by the travel bug…

These are the moments, I thank God that I’m alive…

These are the moments, I’ll remember all my life…

Semester At Sea Spring 2006. The world is my home. I can only guess where I will go next…

The Final Port, Japan.

Our last port. A mixture of feelings and emotions…but that’ll come later.

 

 During PrePort, we had been told that Kobe, Japan is the sister city to Seattle. I found that extremely interesting. When we got off the ship, it was raining and very cold. That’s like Seattle. I wandered around Kobe in the afternoon with my friends and at one point I saw a Starbucks and a Tully’s Coffee on the same block. That’s like Seattle, too. Walking around downtown Kobe definitely made me feel like I was in Seattle. Seattle has a large Asian population, lots of Japanese, so of course that’s like Kobe to a smaller degree ;) In Kobe, everyone used umbrellas – unlike Seattleites who just deal with the rain since it basically is a daily occurrence from September through May! Unlike Seattle, there were people on every corner, on every street, in every restaurant and café that we passed. When you have a population of 130 million and your country is about the size of California, that’s a lot of people inhabiting the cities when most of the country is uninhabitable mountain ranges. Despite the rain, it was great to be in Japan.

 

Japan is by far the CLEANEST country I have visited in my entire life. There was no litter anywhere on the streets. Japanese people do not walk and eat at the same time, so it was impossible for us to find trash cans. There were none on the streets at all, we always had to duck into McDonald’s (of which there was at least one every two blocks) or some other place just to throw away our trash! Sometimes we spent 10 to 15 minutes trying to find a place to toss it, most of the time we just carried it around with us. The complete opposite of India…

 

One of my favorite things to do is people watch. I do it so often, wherever I am, that if I have to get something done like homework or reading I will lock myself in my room or in a library. Well, wandering around Kobe (as well as Kyoto and Osaka), there was a lot of people-watching to do. Especially the women. Think NYC is fashionable? Try Kobe, Japan! Every woman was dressed to a T. They all wore pointed, close-toed heels (usually boots), short skirts or long skirts or jeans, and fitted blazers with designer purses and perfect makeup. Wandering around in my old jeans, dirty sneakers, sweatshirt and fleece with my backpack, I definitely felt like I did not fit in!! We all stuck out pretty badly as tourists. It was quite amusing, since it seemed like the women would get completely dressed up just to go to the grocery store! All the men wore suits, but at 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon, you’d like they’d be in an office somewhere instead of the street? Apparently that’s the fashion trend, too – so much so that on the last day in port, I ran into a group of SAS guys who were all wearing their tailored suits from Vietnam out in Kobe! That was awesome.

 

I ate Japanese food every day while in port. At the one small sit-down restaurant we found, we took a booth and looked over the menu and then signaled to the waitress that we were ready to order. She said something in Japanese, leaving us confused until she pointed to a vending machine near the entrance that we had completely ignored. It was then that I realized that you ordered your food via vending machine! We pulled out our Yen and then chose a meal by hitting a button that looked like what we wanted. Out came a ticket, which the waitress ripped in half when we got back to the table, and 10 minutes later our food arrived. How easy is that! It was fun and so interesting.

 

On the second day in port, I attempted to get on the SAS Kyoto day trip since half my friends were on it. I didn’t make it on, but in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t get on it. I found a group of people who wanted to Kyoto that day too and who didn’t have Japan Rail Passes like three-quarters of the ship did (those people all went to Tokyo). We bought tickets to Kyoto, an hour away from Kobe, and took the very efficient, very fast train to the city. Again, let’s compare that with the gross sleeper trains in India… it was SO CLEAN! The transportation system with the trains, subways, and buses in each city made it so easy to get around. Kyoto was amazing, and the rain let up for that day. The infamous Cherry Blossoms were still in bloom, which was amazing to see them around the city. Just like Kobe, the women were all in top fashion and the men were all in suits. The Kyoto Station was ridiculously huge but very modern and it looked almost brand new. We bought bus passes for the day and visited a temple with a small flea market, Nijo Castle with wall paintings and lots of cherry blossoms, and the downtown and Gion districts. Gion is known as the Geisha area – we saw 1 real Geisha shopping and then two fake Geisha who were European girls being led around by their mother and a guide. They looked nervous and were obviously too tall to be real Japanese Geisha, plus you could see it in their eyes – they were deer caught in headlights with all the tourists surrounding them and thinking they were real. I talked to the guide who was helping to pose the girls and move them around, and in broken English she told me that one of the girls had paid $350 (US) and the other had paid $150 to be dressed up as Geisha, where the price difference is based on the type of material used. We spent the evening in the district, Geisha-hunting, but no luck except for the one we had seen briefly in the afternoon get out of a cab and run into a store. Slightly disappointing, but fun nonetheless.

 

The next day was my Overnight Homestay which I was VERY excited for. After an amazing homestay in India, I didn’t think anything could top that, but the one in Japan was awesome as well. My host family had a sign with my name on it in the Union at 11am when 50 SASers and about 40 families got placed together. We played some traditional Japanese “introduction” games like Rock/Paper/Scissors and then were sent on our way. My host was Mayumi Kekibo, her husband, and their children Yulia (2) and Hariacko (5). The children were ADORABLE and I loved playing with them. Mayumi and her friend, who was also a host for another SASer (Brett), took all of us to a beautiful botanical garden to explore and admire the landscaping and play in the cherry blossoms. For lunch, we were taken to a sushi restaurant 20 minutes outside of Kobe – it was AMAZING. All the booths were next to a winding conveyor belt where the sushi just came by on plates and you could take whatever you wanted. Of course, I had my share of Unagi (eel) which is my favorite. Between 7 of us, we polished off about 40 plates of sushi (about 2 pieces per plate) and each plate only cost 1 Yen! Definitely the cheapest sushi I have ever had! I tried some new items, but I couldn’t tell you what they are or what they were called… In the evening, the family threw a dinner party where they invited all of their neighbors and friends (about 20 extra people) to come and bring food. Japanese food is amazing, lots of noodles and fish and other stuff. I repeated the whole concept about Semester At Sea about a billion times that night, I showed some of my pictures I have in a photo album of Washington State and my family. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the picture of me and my car… “Honda! Honda! Good car, Honda!” That was awesome. One of the neighbor’s daughters, Yuko, is 17 and (get this) going on a 6-week exchange to SPOKANE, Washington in October!! Her English was very good, she was really excited, and we exchanged e-mail addresses since I’d love to hear about her experience. Most of the women could speak English very well at the dinner party, the men were alright but they gave an amazing effort (a million times better than I could ever do at Japanese!) and I spent 5 hours just talking with them about the countries I’ve been to, about America, asking them about Japan, and just learning about their lives. I loved my Homestay and my Homestay family who were so welcoming and open and excited to have me, just as I was excited to be there.

 

One of my favorite things in Japan? Heated toilet seats. Basically amazing. And taking a bath instead of a shower where there is a heater inside the bathtub so the water heats up after the tub is filled! The Japanese cookies/snacks are so good, too. I now have a bag full of “Koalas” (little cookies shaped like koalas with chocolate/vanilla filling) and “Fish” (same as Koalas, only fish) and Collons and chips that taste like baked Ramen noodles. The ice cream was great, too!

 

On the last day, I went to Osaka for a few hours with Brittany, Ellen and William. It was raining and we got very lost. We had lunch at a sushi restaurant, attempted to go downtown but none of us had a LonelyPlanet or had any idea what to do there so we just wandered and looked at stores. In the evening we went back to Kobe and shopped, attempting to use up the last of our Japanese Yen playing video games, going bowling, and buying snacks. I enjoyed Japan, even though I didn’t go to Tokyo. But I always leave SOMETHING in each country – it gives me a reason to come back one day. :)

 

When we got back on the ship with only 1 injury (a girl was piggybacking on one of her friend’s backs on the way to the ship and apparently fell off and hit her head on the cement and had to get stitches – but she doesn’t remember any of it, so you get the picture…) and no one was left in port. When the ship started to pull away from the port, I stood out on the back deck and watched as Toshi, a Japanese man who had befriended many of the students and faculty and had too much disposable income and too much time on his hands, was doing donuts in his car right next to the port and kept waving and honking! I stood out on the back deck with some friends for 2 hours, talking about Semester At Sea and how it was our last port and how the voyage has changed us and how we know it is going to continue to change us years from now.

 

We watched until the very last lights of Japan disappeared behind the horizon.

6 Days In China And I Still Can't Use Chopsticks...

We ported in Hong Kong which has to be 10 times the size of New York City (or so it seemed…). There were skyscrapers in every direction and the city never seemed to end. I got off the ship for a few hours, had bowls of noodles for lunch at a restaurant where the Chinese patrons laughed at a group of Westerners failing with their chopsticks. One word that makes me happy: Starbucks! Yes, there were Starbucks and McDonald’s and KFC’s all over China. Don’t you just love globalization? (The worst was the Starbucks we saw in The Forbidden City in Beijing). After the brief time in Hong Kong, it was time for a big adventure with my friend Charlie! We gathered all our stuff in a large duffel and went to the Sheraton Hong Kong where we had been informed that a driver would be picking us up to drive us an hour outside of Hong Kong where we would meet up with his step-dad’s business partner, Michael Woo and his wife Kristine, in Shenzen to fly to Shanghai. The Woos were our guides for the next 6 days, which was just amazing… We arrived at the Sheraton and waited for 20 minutes, getting nervous that our entire trip would fall through right then and there. All of a sudden, a short Chinese man comes in with a sign that has our names on it! That was such a relief. When we met up with the Woos, they were extremely friendly and so much fun. I was nervous that it could have been awkward, but it wasn’t at all. We flew to Shanghai and checked into our hotel near “The Bund” area with all the skyscrapers and then explored the city and its nightlife. One of the bars we went to had a stage and there was a band performing. Michael, at one point, translated what the singer was saying in between songs: he was asking if anyone in the audience wanted to play on stage and Charlie immediately said he would. I doubt the small, 25-person audience in the room knew “When I Come Around” by Green Day, but everyone applauded and it was so much fun. Way to go, Charlie!

 

The next day we explored Shanghai and visited “The Bund” and some parts of the city, visited the City God Temple, did some bargaining and had amazing Chinese food and snacks. The morning of the 3^rd day we flew to Beijing and visited the Temple of Heaven and Tianamen Square at night, after having dinner at the QuanJade Peking Duck Restaurant. That was amazing, it was the restaurant that actually started the entire Peking Duck phenomenon. They have an actual counter on the wall to show how many Peking Ducks have been sold! Each night in Beijing, the Woos found friends from when Michael lived and worked there years ago, and their friends took us out to dinner each night. The dinners were fantastic, Chinese food that is NOTHING like the Americanized stuff that I won’t be able to eat anymore now that I’ve had the real thing! ;) 3 of the nights for dinner, we were seated in private rooms! That was so cool, even when Michael, Kristine, and whoever their friends were would talk the entire time and Charlie and I would be (literally) lost in translation, haha. The next day was incredible: we got up early and visited the Great Wall of China at a tourist area known as Badaling. It was freezing cold… and SNOWING!!! I bought gloves because it was so cold and climbing the Great Wall was an adventure. There were a lot of tourists, but it was so much fun. We had snowball fights as we explored the Wall and hid in the towers. The Great Wall was definitely a sight to see, even just driving next to it was cool. It was bigger (and LONGER!) than I expected, we spent a few hours there and I could have easily spent more. I am going to go back. After the Great Wall we visited the Ming Tombs where it started to rain and then hail. On our last day in Beijing we visited Tianamen Square and The Forbidden City which was gigantic. I don’t think I have EVER seen a larger concentration of tourists in one place at any one time, except maybe DisneyWorld. It was almost ridiculous, the tour groups in their matching baseball hats or shirts, and the guides holding up flags and talking into microphones and yelling at their groups. The Forbidden City was so huge and astounding, it was interesting to learn that it is being completely repainted and the ground is being redone for the 2008 Olympics. The place was so huge that even after spending 4 hours there, we could have easily gotten lost and spent 4 more and still not seen everything – and that was only the places that the tourists were allowed to see! That afternoon we visited the Beijing Silk Market which was 4 floors of anything and everything you could think of. I found myself in the shoe/purse floor where the knockoffs were some of the BEST I have ever seen. It was really fun to bargain and I was overwhelmed by everything that was there. Dinner was at a Mongolian restaurant where we had a lot of lamb and this green vegetable that I am convinced was some form of grass, but it tasted really good! During the dinner, a group of Mongolians dressed up in traditional garments came into the room and sang Mongolian songs and wrapped all of us in silk scarves. It was hilarious – unfortunately that was the night that neither Michael, Charlie, nor I had our cameras on us. Oh well! After dinner, we were taken out by Michael’s friend Steve and his girlfriend, who took us to a “Members Only” VIP club somewhere in Beijing. Low and behold, of all places, we ran into other SASers!! It was a group of 5 who were with Anna’s parents who live and work and Beijing. That was just about the most random thing ever, it just comes to show that there is NO avoiding Semester At Sea even in ports! The morning of the last day we flew to Qingdao, which was very much a suburban port city with not a lot to do… it was still very, very cold and I wasn’t that impressed with the city – I’m sure it’s much nicer in summer, though! We had our final lunch with Michael and then explored a local market for a while before getting back onto the ship.

 

And yes, after 6 days of using chopsticks, I failed miserably and still can’t use them! China was a very populous, very interesting country. The people were so friendly and I am very glad I did the trip independently. Without our awesome new Chinese friends, who we told to come visit us in America, it would have been difficult and we were lucky as we did not have any frustrations.

 

Japan tomorrow… our. last. port. I can’t believe it.

Rice Hats, Tiger Beer, Street Vendors, and Knockoffs... (Vietnam Part II)

Of course, that doesn’t even come close to summing up Vietnam and all this amazing country has to offer. Vietnam completely blew my mind and I had NO idea what to expect at all. We officially have less than one month left which is pretty sad, but at the same time this trip is just flying by and I can’t describe how much more amazing it gets day by day and country by country.

 

After spending one more day in Hanoi, skipping out on some museums (indy travel rocks!) and exploring some markets and more of the Old Quarter, buying North Face backpacks, Puma shoes, t-shirts, and lots of DVDs, we flew back to Saigon. The last day in Saigon was awesome – I got my dress fitted and finished and I really like it, went to the huge Post Office, bought a really cool painting of a bar/poker scene with people in fedoras, then found some friends we all wandered around the Russian Market which I liked a LOT better than Ben Than. The food in Vietnam was amazing, for dinner my parents and about 8 of my friends and I all went out to Ngon on our last night, a restaurant that has essentially taken “street food” and offers it in a sanitized setting. You could walk around and watch people making the food and then pick what you wanted or ordered off the menu. Everything was fantastic, the best part was when our waiter would show us how to eat some of the food after we would just stare at it for a while! It was absolutely wonderful to have my parents with me in Vietnam. It’s definitely on par with India as being the country I want to return to the most!

 

One of the most intense parts of SAS so far was the Museum of War Remnants. The photographs were very graphic and tough to handle. The entire place was really somber, and it was one of those places where you just want to look at the stuff and leave and forget… but the pictures are just imprinted in my mind. I wanted to turn away so many times but I forced myself to look and see and learn. When things are shown to you in a different perspective, in a different light, it changes you. It certainly made me more aware of the war atrocities. The only other time something was this hard to stomach was when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Berlin a few years ago… It just gives me chills thinking about both those places, but I think they are amazing to have because people shouldn’t just think of history and wars as nothing. People need to know, to take pictures, to tell stories and not just hold everything up inside. War is war. It kills and destroys and causes more damage than people realize, especially when the war is not in their own country and not just a name on a TV or a country on a map. It’s reality.

 

This was definitely the port where people bought the most stuff. Guys were running around in their suits when we all got on the ship, a lot of girls had dresses/skirts/shirts made, people bought backpacks and rice hats and DVDs and t-shirts (Tiger Beer, Good Morning Vietnam, Same Same…but Different) and shoes (well, maybe that was just me since I’m the size of the Vietnamese and fit into the ones on the racks!) and all the guys bought Polos. The Voice even joked about it this morning at the Noon Report, saying that we are testing the capacity of the ship with all our stuff!!

 

3 days at sea and then it’s China. Soon I’ll be able to check off my top thing that I was looking forward to the most on this trip, the Great Wall.

Vietnam, Part I

Hey all my readers!! So here I am in one of the cheapest Internet Cafes in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. This is just a brief update - I am here with my PARENTS! It is a blast. This morning we were in Halong Bay, considered the Eighth "Wonder of the World" which was awesome - we went along in a boat with other SAS parents/students and got to see some amazing limestone formations in the middle of this bay. Yesterday was a travel day to Hanoi from Saigon (aka HCMC but no one calls it that) and then a 3.5 hour bus ride to Halong Bay. Meeting my parents in Saigon was the best thing ever, I had a huge sign for my Dad that read "Happy 50th Birthday Dad!" and I held it up when all the parents arrived, then got my friends to sing him Happy Birthday. Of course, he was embarassed, but it was so much fun. Spent the day exploring the insane streets of the city...if I said that India was insane, multiply it by 10 and you've got the streets of Vietnam!! I loved it. Did a lot of very, VERY cheap shopping, bought shoes that fit me right off the rack, and when we get back to Saigon from Hanoi on Thursday I'll be picking up the dress I had tailored! It's so exciting, this is why I love huge cities. They are nonstop from morning to night and there is way too much to do, hear, see, and eat. According to my Tourism professor, I could fit anywhere, "even into a rabbit hole" and yes, I definitely fit in here except that I stick out with my blonde hair and I keep getting asked if it's real or not. The $1 t-shirts are my favorite, I have the infamous Tiger Beer ones as random Vietnam ones. Next... the CHEAP North Face backpacks and who knows what else! Currently, my parents and I have skipped out on the Water Puppet Show and dinner with the SAS trip we are on and are exploring Hanoi, where we just walked down "Electronic Street" and "Shoe Street"...saying there was a lot of those items is an UNDERSTATEMENT. It's mindboggling, I don't even know where to begin. All the streets in the Old Quarter are named according to what is sold there. It's awesome, I am sitting here typing this, listening to the incessant and never-ceasing honking from the cars and scooters (or simply "Hondas" as they are called here) outside and hey, my Dad just brought me a pastry that is similar to a pancake that is drenched in chocolate. Mmm...Time to eat!! Don't get run over by a scooter, but if you walk in a fluid motion across the crowded streets, they will avoid you like a river flowing around a rock. And yes, it REALLY does look like that!! :) I love boycotting SAS excursions...

An Indiana Jones Movie... aka Bagan, Myanmar

 

Prior to reaching the government/junta-run country known as Myanmar, formerly Burma, our Inter-Port lecturer for the country was Dr. Monique Skidmore. She’s Australian but has written many articles on Myanmar, visited it numerous times and even lived there. The most interesting buzz on the ship was the fact that she was very openly adamant about NOT wanting SAS and us to visit Myanmar, but obviously she couldn’t do anything about it. From what I have heard, no one stayed on the ship, so her efforts where futile and probably more of a tactic just to warn us and let the students know more about the dark side of the country. In Global Studies, we learned that the people are very much in favor of democracy, and in the last election in 1992, a woman named Suu Kyi ran and received 80% of the votes but the government forced her under house-arrest and denied democracy, holding onto their own rule instead.

 

In fact, everyone I’ve talked to so far on the ship LOVED Myanmar. The military were not everywhere like we were told, and the oppression did not seem to exist. All the Burmese people were so friendly, loved to say hi and talk to us about where we were from, and wanted to help us out in anyway possible. Of course, the oppression is there, the government controls a lot of the country and there is lots of civil war near the borders, but it was not nearly as bad as it had been made to sound! We hardly noticed it even when trying to look. In terms of exchange rate, the “official” or government rate is 6 kyat for $1, but the black market exchange rate is 1100 kyat for $1. Of course we love the better exchange rate and NO ONE uses the other one. We were approached everywhere in Yangon to exchange money and felt quite rich since the largest bill in circulation is 1,000 kyat and everything was very cheap.

 

On the first day, I explored the capital of Yangon with Stacey and Kevin. It was an absolute blast – we bought stuff in Scott Market which was gigantic and never-ending, getting lost in the stalls of t-shirts, jewelry, langees (the skirts that all the men wore), and artwork. In the afternoon we hired a driver and saw all the main sites like the Sitting Stone Buddha, the Reclining Buddha, white elephants, a floating restaurant, some lakes, and watched the sunset at the famous Schwedagon Pagoda. We also got to speak and interact with a lot of Buddhist Monks who live at the pagoda which was extremely interesting to hear about their lives. On the second day I left for the archeological city of Bagan. The trip was really fun and I felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie the entire time, especially while exploring and climbing the pagodas! Now only if  It was hot, humid, dusty, and mostly desolate except for the thousands (over 2,000 in fact) of pagodas that were everywhere. The sunsets were absolutely amazing, we would climb some of the tallest pagodas and get the most incredible views of the dry land just littered with the pagodas that were made to honor Buddha (there are statues in each of the pagodas). We also visited a local village, did pony cart rides one night, had a puppet performance at dinner, climbed pagodas, and explored a local market. On the last day, we flew back to Yangon and got to ride tri-shaws (bicycle with a passenger seat on the side, like a motorcycle) and bought lots of cool t-shirts in Scott Market. The food, of course, was AMAZING. I’m obsessed with foreign food… thanks Mom and Dad for raising me on it instead of on fast food! I ate papadums, lots of rice, papaya, fried vegetables and the most amazing fish one night that tasted like chicken.

 

Myanmar was so interesting. I met a German woman on my flight back from Bagan who had visited the country numerous times and has started up an organization to help educate the children in Myanmar in the rural areas. It was neat to hear how much the country had left an impact on her and how much she wanted to help these people by getting people to donate old computers to give to the schools in the country. It’s incredible how one simple experience or a few words exchanged can deepen a person’s experience and understanding of a country and want to help them out. The United States has disaffiliated themselves with the entire country due to the military regime, but I think visiting it and learning about it and returning is the best possible thing.

 

Travel is the best education possible.

Rickshaw, anyone?

India completely blew my mind. The culture was incredible. The people were the nicest I have ever met. I got stared at, smiled at, laughed at, and I had a blast. I rode insane auto-rickshaws for less than 50 cents per ride and it was like being on crazy roller coasters all the time. I ate the spiciest food, ate with my right hand only (the left is considered unclean) and did a homestay to a town called Erode where we stayed with the landlord of the Jamalpuram (or something to that effect) village and his family who were unbelievably hospitable and have been hosting SAS kids twice a year for the past 17 years! We also spent time at a private high school in Erode where we got to talk to the students who were taking board exams, eat awesome food including samosas and a billion things that I can’t pronounce and lots and lots of curry! I am dirty and tired and I know I smell like human waste (that is the NORMAL smell of this country!)… but I can’t stop smiling. I could write pages and pages and pages on this country…I will return one day.

 

This is what I enjoy the most. Being completely out of your comfort zone and loving every second of it. Zero sleep, too many memories, lots of laughter, peeing “Indian style” in holes, taking ghetto sleeper trains, riding in “The Little Rickshaw That Could”, having my mouth be on fire from the spicy food, walking through thousands of people in the markets, being called “Auntie” by children who can’t say our names (and we hurt ourselves trying to say theirs!), watching traditional Indian dance performances, learning about all the gods, bargaining until we are blue in the face, having rickshaw races, being offered to drive the rickshaw while it was in motion (don’t worry Mom and Dad – I declined!!), getting blessed by an elephant at the Bhavani Temple for Shiva in Erode… so many more things that I know I have forgotten!

 

As more comes back to me, I will update my blog with random thoughts on India. I took a ton of pictures, bought way too much stuff for extremely cheap and nearly died from the spicy food and got laughed at by all the Indians in the restaurants when we were the only white people who couldn’t handle the spiciness and kept shoving rice in our mouths, turning red, and trying to eat only with our right hand since the left one is considered “unclean”…

 

Some people have wanted to hear more details about my homestay, so here goes. The family was the landlord of Jamalpuram, as I already said. We hung out with the women, his daughter-in-laws, daughters, and grand-daughters. Puni and Raji are amazing women who just love their lives in the cities (Erode and Chennai). We spent hours on that first day talking to them, learning about their lives, arranged marriages, marriage issues, culture, living on a farm versus living in the cities, going to university, and so many more things. We all exchanged stories about our lives. We all slept on the floor on mattresses which was really fun, and in the evening we had a performance by a local drum group and we all danced around with them. Their family was upper-middle class since they are the landlords, so they were very comfortable in terms of money. They were the nicest, friendliest, and most hospitable people I have ever met. They always made sure we were comfortable and had enough water or were wearing hats or had umbrellas while we were walking in the sun. That night we taught them how to play Mafia, the card game, and played until 1am! They told us they’d never had that much fun with a group. We also played random silly little games which was a blast, too. On the second day, we got up early to leave for the school in Erode, where we had breakfast and got to talk to a bunch of the teachers and learn about the private school. Later in the afternoon after going to the Bavani/Shiva Temple and getting blessed by an elephant, we visited a handicap school where it turns out that Semester At Sea is the fourth largest donor since it’s installation! The children mostly had Polio and many of them couldn’t walk but some of them had had surgery, but we got performances by some of the kids who had other disabilities. They were so sweet and just wanted pictures with us, one of them came right over and sat on my lap and didn’t move! She was adorable. After lunch and a nap at the school, we played games with the children (basketball, volleyball, and soccer where it was 10 SAS students versus about 75 kids.. haha) and our last stop was the Siddha Medicine Factory which earns $2.5 million per year and uses only raw materials such as Acacia wood, ginger root, and other herbal remedies. After one last amazing meal at the school which included butterscotch ice cream, it was onto the sleeper train to go back home to the ship.

 

Chennai, even though it was dirty and polluted, was one of my favorite cities I have ever been to.  The markets were so busy and bustling, the smell of human waste was everywhere, there were women in all different colors and patterns of sarees… and surprisingly, I felt normal at my height!! Yes, I think I really like India. Next time, it’ll be the Taj Mahal!