After our stay in Dresden, I left Gordon with his beer-drinking, football-watching friends and went on a 9 day tour with my mom to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest.  We took a bus from Dresden to Prague and stayed 4 days.  I loved the city!  It seemed so vibrant and alive.  Plus, the architecture is stunning.  We took a boat trip down the Vltava River and saw all the beautiful sights including Prague Castle and the famous Charles Bridge.  The highlight of Prague was the main square in the old part where they have the Astronomical clock and many beautiful buildings.  They had a giant TV in the center where crowds would gather to watch the World Cup.  We spent one afternoon in a beer garden just watching all those crazy fans.  One group of English fans were particularly colorful and they were entertaining the crowd with songs. I would definitely go back to Prague again.

 

We boarded our bus again and took the trip from the Czech Republic to Austria.  The landscape reminded me of Canada except the little farmhouses looked much older! J Vienna was just as lovely as I expected.  The architecture was great and our tour guides did a fantastic job telling us all about the history of what we were seeing.  I especially enjoyed the trip to Schloss Shoenbrunn which is a 2000-room palace of the Hapsburgs that has been fully restored.  Although Vienna was beautiful, it did not seem as youthful or lively as Prague.  Vienna seemed much more formal or even stuffy and did not suit my taste as well, I guess.

 

From Vienna, we took a hydrofoil up the Danube River to Budapest.  Hungary, like the Czech Republic, has recently been accepted into the EU and they are so excited and optimistic about the economic prosperity this might bring.  I liked Budapest because although it has beautiful architecture and monuments like Prague and Vienna, but it seemed a little rough around the edges and less touristy than the others.  The highlight of Budapest for me was the very last day.  Mom and I stayed an extra day after the tour and visited the Széchenyi Baths.  It is the largest thermal baths in all of Europe and has lovely outdoor pools in a Romanesque building (and they wear bathing suits—whew!).  After several days of walking and touring, a day lounging around a hot pool was just was we needed.  If you are in Central Europe, definitely make a stop in Budapest!

Gordon and I attended a meeting of the International Communication Association in Dresden, Germany.  Dresden is in Eastern Germany and is still suffering from some of the ill-effects of WWII but I think they are making a recovery.  This is most apparent in the reconstruction of the famous Frauenkirche (see their website at http://www.frauenkirche-dresden.org/).  Dresden was almost totally derstoyed during the war and this beautiful church was reduced to rubble.  During the Soviet era, much of the city was rebuilt but the Frauenkirche was left as an "open wound", a reminder of the horrors of war.  A few years ago, the local Bishop suggested that the church be rebuilt and many people protested saying the church should be left as a reminder.  The Bishop said that wounds should be allowed to heal and that even if the church was be rebulit, the wound would leave scars and those scars would serve as the war memorial.  So, the church was rebulit and they have done a fantastic job.  Many of the old bricks from the original church were reused and so the church itself is dotted with black bricks interspersed with the new light colored ones.  They were able to use computer generations to place many of the old bricks back in their original locations.  It is really remarkable.

We spent 3 weeks at our rustic little lake cabin in Ontario Canada in Early June.  It was earlier than usual for us but we had to make room for our upcoming Germany trip in our schedule.  We visited friends and family in Winnipeg and worked on making our cabin more livable.  Since we froze our butts off the past 2 summers, we decided some insulation might be in order.  We used the rigid foam insulation to warm up the bedroom.  We also cleared tons of brush around the cottage to act as a fire break in case of forest forst.  We had some unexpected delays, so we did not make as much progress as we had hoped, but the weather was beautiful and we enjoyed visiting with our Fox Lake neighbors and family there.  Next year, we hope to come for even longer and enjoy the lake again.

This year, I have more travels planned.  My husband and I are going to Calistoga, California for a week of massages and wine for a second honeymoon in April.  Then, we are going back to Canada to our lake cottage for 3 weeks in May.  The big trip is our trip to Germany in June.  We will watch some world cup games, explore Germany, and then my mom and I take 9 days to tour Prague, Vienna, and Budapest.  I will post pictures here when I return!  Can't wait!

 

Update:  We had a great week of wineries and massages.  I highly recommend "Hideaway Cottages" in Calistoga California.  Eat at the Greystone Culinary Institute.

We had the Ambassador's Ball the other night and we were joking that is was like prom—there was a nice dinner with wine, a slide show by Chris the Photographer about the trip, and a dance.  I had a really good time spending time joking and laughing with my new friends.  But what really struck me was that people dressed up, but not in a conventional way.  People took it as an opportunity to show off the dress of the various places we had been.  Many women had dresses made in Vietnam.  Others wore outfits like mine that I got in Myanmar.  There were women wearing sarees and men wearing suits with flip flops because those were the only shoes they had.  It was the strangest co-mingling of styles but really not a display of wealth like I have seen at the proms in California where kids spend thousands on their dresses and hire Hummer limos.   I wonder if this experience is actually reaching some of the students.  It was disappointing to have them head straight for Starbucks in Hong Kong or jump on their cell phones as soon as the port was in sight in Hawaii but seeing all the pictures of their activities in the various ports was great because I got to see all the other things they have been doing like building a house for Habitat for Humanity in South Africa, and feeding the monks in Myanmar, and visiting a Dalit village in India.  I hope these things make a difference to them in the long run.  I know they have to me.

We left Japan a couple of days ago and are now sailing toward home.  We have 2 weeks to cross the Pacific with a 12 hour stop in Hawaii.  Getting the students to focus on work when we have 8 days of class in a row and when their thoughts are turning toward home is proving to be tough.  Kobe, Japan was a great experience, especially for me because my husband, Gordon, came to visit.  We only got to spend 3 days together but I think it was worth the trip for him because we really needed to re-connect and he needed to experience a taste of what I am going through.  We stayed on the ship and ate the ship’s food and had a fun time just hanging out.  We went on a cable car ride up Mt. Rokko, went on a tour of a sake brewery and museum, and walked all over downtown Kobe.  It was really interesting to explore the city of Kobe with Gordon because he was experiencing culture shock in a very different way than I was.  He said he felt like he was “through the looking glass” because Japan is developed and westernized but in a strange sort of way.   Everything is different (different language, different clothes, different food) but still very modern at the same time.   I am glad I saw it with him because I started looking at Japan with fresh eyes when he said that.  India and Myanmar were my culture shock experiences and everything after that seemed sort of tame by comparison. Its too bad Japan was not at the start of our trip instead of the end because I saw Japan as sort of a relief because it was so much more familiar than other places I have seen.  I need to go back and visit it again when I am not immersed in SAS because I think it will be different the second time, especially if we go to Tokyo instead of Kobe which is a smaller city  Gordon is still in Kobe exploring until Sunday and I can’t wait to hear what fun he is having there.

 

The first day we arrived in Japan, the customs and immigration process took a really long time so we did not get off the ship until about 11:30am even though we arrived at 8:00.  While we were waiting, though the City of Kobe had some representatives come on the ship and gave us a really great welcome reception.  Funny how some countries did not give us much of a reception at all and in fact seemed somewhat annoyed that we were there (Venezuela and India, for example) while others made a huge deal out of it and acted like our arrival was the most exciting thing they had ever seen (Brazil, Myanmar, and Japan were the best examples of that).  The welcome included the Mayor of Kobe and some members of the tourist office of the local government who made speeches and presented Dean John and Captain Jeremy and some of the other officers with gifts.  The highlight of the whole day was a great presentation put on by a drumming troupe who had both women and men and who gave a stunning performance on these huge drums and they seemed to be using their entire body to make the music. It was truly invigorating and really fantastic.

 

Getting around in Kobe is actually pretty easy when you are on the trains or busses because their transportation network is amazingly efficient but when you are out in the streets looking for some place, it is a different story.  I got lost a couple of times, looking for a Japanese garden the first day and then a sake museum later with Gordon because it’s hard to find things when most of the street signs are in Japanese.  My friend Michael was trying to match symbols on the signs with symbols on the map by giving them names like “birthday cake,” “leaning on a stick,” “Upside down fork” etc.  I found out later from a menu that the “birthday cake” symbol means white.   It was a fun adventure, though.

 

 

The best part of Japan was the food!  We ate pastries every day that were fantastic!  They were as good as any I ate in France, as far as I am concerned.  I went out for Kobe steak a couple of times to a place on Tor Road called Aoyama. The restaurant was really wonderful because not only was the food amazing (Kobe beef is almost worth the trip to Kobe by itself), but the presentation and experience was great too.  It’s a little “mom and pop” restaurant run by a married couple and the husband cooks the food right in front of you on a big grill.  I ate there the first night with some friends and then took Gordon back again a few nights later and one of the people I ate with the first time actually showed up the second time just as a coincidence!  It was that good. 

 

Thanksgiving on the ship was the day after we left Kobe and it was very odd.  It was a class day so, for the most part, we went about our business of teaching class.  Lunch was my favorite they serve here—grilled cheese and fries with tomato soup.  I actually had to keep reminding myself that it was Thanksgiving.  Dinner was really great too.  They had turkey and all the fixings with pumpkin pie for dessert.  They told us the next day that we ate 50 turkeys (that’s 1000 pounds of meat!).  I stuffed myself but I went to the gym the next day to make up for it.

 

Up next, on the 28^th we have one of the biggest events on the ship—the Ambassador’s Ball.  Everyone gets dressed up with their finest clothes they have found on the trip and there is a sit-down dinner and dance.  I will be sure to blog about that afterwards.

 

I will have to wait until I get home before I can post pictures because my laptop died and the computer lab computers don’t have the right software installed.  I will be sure to post them as soon as I get home, though.

Did I just spend the past 5 days in China?  It seems like such a blur that I am not sure I was even there.  Some of the ports we have visited, I have felt content that I got a good sample of the culture while we were there.  Other ports, I was actually a little relieved to see in the wake of the ship as we sailed on.  China is a place that I felt sorry to leave.  I really feel like I did not even get a good sample of Hong Kong and I need to go back there and explore more.  Hong Kong, which is actually made up of over 200 islands, is now part of China but has had a strong western influence since it spent 150 years under the control of the British.  For this reason, I expected to see a big difference between Hong Kong and “mainland” China but I did not really experience that.  Both seem very modern and have big western influences.  Our ship was docked at a shopping mall in Kowloon with Starbucks, 7-11, and KFC waiting for us when we got off the ship.  I did manage to venture away from the mall for a few days, though.  I spent a couple of days exploring Hong Kong Island which is a short ferry ride from Kowloon.  I had an old friend from High School who lives in Hong Kong now who showed us around a bit and took him to some of his favorite restaurants (Thanks, Bryan).  I went to Lantau Island with some friends and visited the Po Lin Monastery and saw the 2^nd largest Buddha in the world.  Visiting it actually made me think of the huge Christ the Redeemer statue I saw in Rio.  Although Hong Kong is quite crowded (they have 7 million people in just 400 square miles), Lantau has some lovely landscapes and open spaces around the Monastery.    I took a day trip to Guangzhou, China which is about 190 kms from Hong Kong and we visited a school, went to the zoo, and visited a temple and went to a traditional Chinese market where the locals buy their produce.  They were selling many strange-looking fruits and vegetables I did not recognize along with frogs, snakes and scorpions.  Them’s good eatin’--apparently!

 

We also went to the Museum in Guangzhou where they have a display of 5 of Emperor Qin’s terracotta warriors.  Around 200 B.C., the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty built a tomb for himself that contained 8000 terracotta warriors, horses, and Chariots to protect himself in the afterlife.  I never realized until I saw them that they were life sized!  For some reason, when I had heard about the terracotta warriors, I imagined them small like dolls or something.  Qin killed all the artists who made them and buried them in the tomb so that no one would know about the tomb and loot it.  He also killed his 3300 concubines and buried them with him also.  The tomb was forgotten until 1974 when a farmer stumbled across pieces of pottery when digging a well and the tomb was unearthed.  They have built a museum on the site and are still excavating and reconstructing it, but I think it is in northern China and so I only saw 5 of the figures in Guangzhou.  It was still impressive.

 

My favorite thing was an SAS field trip in Hong Kong with some students where I went for a Dim Sum breakfast, a Tai Chi lesson and then to a tea house where we learned how to brew tea from a traditional Chinese tea master.  On my last day, I visited the Chinese University of Hong Kong with some students and we had a nice time meeting some students who study there.  They took us for a Dim Sum lunch and gave us a tour of their campus.

 

In looking back, I saw quite a bit in China but I still feel like I did not see enough and I need to go back.  I will put it back on my list.

 

Tomorrow we are due to arrive in Japan and my husband, Gordon, is due to join me there.  I can’t wait to show him the ship and spend a few days with him.  Being so far from home without my friends and family is tougher than I thought it would be.

 

Note: My laptop died so I can't post pictures right now but keep checking and hopefully I can post some in a few days.

The ports are coming much faster these days—I will be in 4 different countries in just 15 days.  I spent the past 5 days touring Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City) and took a side trip into northern Cambodia for 2 days to see the Temples of Angkor.  It was a phenomenal trip.  The first day we arrived, I went on a tour of Saigon  and we went to the museum, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Reunification Palace.  Saigon, in general, is very nice.  It is much more modern than I was expecting after seeing India and Myanmar.  It is very clean and orderly with nice flowers along all the main streets.  It looks very European but most everyone drives scooters instead of cars.  The traffic is a little crazy and they don’t have many stoplights so you really take your life in your hands when crossing the street.

 

We visited the “Reunification Palace” which was the former headquarters of the South Vietnamese President and they have turned it into a museum and pretty much left it as it was since the Communists stormed the gates in 1975.  They have tanks on the grounds out front and the Palace has a shrine to Ho Chi Minh (“Uncle Ho”) in it but other than that, it is just the same.  The basement is full of old communications equipment and they have left the war room as it was from when the South Vietnamese were there, supposedly.  The Palace has beautiful furnishings and rugs and you can walk around seeing all the rooms.  A few of the faculty met afterwards at this fantastic restaurant called Nam Phan for dinner.  Jo Ellen had seen it rated in Bon Appetit magazine and wanted to try it.  It was expensive but really excellent food.  I spent the rest of my time in Saigon wandering around and shopping with friends.  Although the government is Communist, Capitalism is alive and well in Vietnam.  The government is becoming more open to foreign investment and there is quite a bit of Western influence here.  Although the Vietnamese really wear Western-style clothes, most of us were buying their traditional silk garments.  There are definite bargains on clothes here and the tailors are quite good.  They will custom make a suit or a dress for you in whatever style you want in just 24 hours!  Amazing.

 

I went on my trip to Cambodia with 58 other faculty and students from SAS.  It was a short flight from Saigon to Siem Reap and buying a visa at the airport and going through customs was pretty painless.  We arrived in the evening and the next day we got up at 4:30am to go see the sunrise at Angkor Wat, the largest of the Angkor temples.  It was built in the early 12^th Century by the Khmer civilization with later additions.  Unlike many of the other temples, Angkor Wat was not “lost” to the jungle, as the local Monks have always been using it and so it was not looted during the civil war and is the best preserved of all the Angkor temples.  Angkor Wat is becoming more of a tourist attraction and the locals are banking on more people coming to the area to see it so Western hotels are springing up all over Siem Reap and boosting the local economy but making it less likely you will experience traditional Cambodian culture.  I hardly saw any Cambodians on the first day, the place was crawling with Japanese, French, and German tourists so it was hard to find the peace and serenity I think you are supposed to experience at a temple at sunrise.  It was still beautiful and the carvings are very impressive.

 

After breakfast, we toured four more temples and each one was very different and lovely.  Most of them were forgotten about during the 15^th Century and so the jungle just took over. My favorite of all the temples was Ta Prohm because that is the one that the French Explorers who re-discovered the temples in the 19^th Century decided to leave untouched and unrestored.  There are enormous trees growing all around the temple, right up through the walls and so it has a really beautiful feel.  Tomb Raider was filmed there and you can see why—it is a ready-made movie set and I kept thinking Indiana Jones would pop out at any moment.  The other one I really liked was Bayon which was built in the late 12^th-early 13^th Centuries.  It is really different from the others because it has faces carved into all the walls that are huge and really impressive.

 

The heat and humidity in Angkor were so oppressive.  I thought I was going to sweat every ounce of moisture in my body right out of me. I took 4 showers in 1 day--every time we went back to the hotel--because I needed to cool off.  The next day, we visited 4 more temples and the heat was a little more manageable because there was some cloud and it even rained for about 15 mins which cooled the air a bit.  These temples were interesting architecturally but were not as well preserved as the ones we saw the day before.  If I ever come back here, I will definitely come for longer.  I could spend about a week going from temple to temple and exploring them more and looking at the various carvings.  What I think would be really cool would be to rent a bike and ride between them at a leisurely pace.  They are relatively close together and the terrain is flat so it would not be that much of a strain if you did it at a cooler time of year. 

 

After all the temples and the fancy hotel, I was starting to think all we would see of Cambodia was the tourist destinations but on our second day, our tour guide took us to Tonle Sap Lake to see a floating village.  There were a few other boats around with tourists but it felt a little less sanitized than the other places we had been.  Tonle Sap Lake is fed by the Mekong River which comes from China and during the rainy season, the lake is 60 km wider than it is during the dry season.  The people there fish for a living and so they have to move their village twice a year to follow where the lake goes.  People live in houseboats, large and small, and have floating schools, floating shops, floating churches…the whole village moves when the fishermen have to move.  We stopped at a fishing cooperative and they had a little souvenir shop and restaurant (guess what—it floats!).  I bought a DVD documentary they had made about their village to support their fishing co-op which I thought might be a cool thing to show my students at home.  This was definitely an intercultural experience. 

 

We leave Vietnam tomorrow morning and sail to Hong Kong.  It will take us just two days to get there so we have just 2 days of class to prepare for China and then just three days between China and Japan.  Many people are taking trips into mainland China from Hong Kong but I decided not to do another big (and expensive) overnight trip and explore Hong Kong.  I am sure there is enough there to keep me occupied for 5 days but since I have a visa for China, I might try to take a day trip there.

 

Hope all is well at home.  Just 30 more days until we get home!

 

Halloween on the ship was great fun.  During the day, we had classes as usual.  We started the day with some bad news—Mitch Strumpf, our music Professor, suffered a heart attack and was taken off the ship in an Ambulance in Myanmar and was flown to Bangkok.  We have since heard that he is doing well and recovering nicely and we hope he will join our voyage again soon.  His picture with me and the Myanmar English teacher is posted on my blog.

 

Surprisingly, three people I knew had birthdays today—Janet Eastman’s boyfriend Ron, Mandee the librarian, and Angelina, the wife of one of the faculty Willie Smyth.  Janet arranged for a birthday party for all three in the dining room with cake and then we had champagne afterwards in the faculty lounge.  The head chef gave a great demonstration tonight on pumpkin carving and how to make flowers out of fruits and vegetables which was great.  They had carved pumpkins all over the ship that were really spectacular and I learned some neat tricks I will try next year. 

 

The students had a costume contest and a Halloween dance which was a good time.  I was amazed at how inventive they were with limited supplies.  The most popular costume by far was the Buddhist monk and many people were dressed like that.  The best costumes were the ones relating to our journey but they are really like inside jokes to us—3 students made a cardboard box into a scooter rickshaw which was quite funny and there was a student who went as the Dean’s memo.  One girl went as the “map channel” because they have a map with our position on TV channel one 24 hours a day.  Another good costume was a woman who was painted and dressed all black with an ipod who was one of the people on the ipod commercial.  A few students went as pregnant girls with signs that said “7 months after the voyage”.  There were lots of creative costumes and many that were just dressed in ethnic garb from one of the countries we were in.  I bought a witch hat with orange hair and a witch nose and some black lipstick and nail polish in Cape Town and wore with my black outfit from India.  The funny thing is that several people did not recognize me—I mean faculty who I know pretty well.  I guess I did not realize how much orange hair and a fake nose would change my appearance.  Sony took a great picture of me with a pumpkin that I love. 

 

We are off the coast of Thailand now and we will be “bunkering”--that’s ship talk for refueling—in Singapore tomorrow but we won’t get off the ship.  We are due in Vietnam in 2 days. 

Mingalaba!--That is hello in Burmese.  I absolutely adore Myanmar. I spent three days in the capital city of Yangon and two days visiting rural villages. My experience there is necessarily contrasted with India because I just came from there but I found Myanmar to be far more enjoyable than India.  India claims to be the largest democracy in the world while Myanmar is run by an oppressive military regime.  However, I found the people of India to be far more oppressed than those in Myanmar.  India is still dominated by the Caste system which, although it is technically illegal, still controls the social standing of most people.  It is a system which determines where one lives, what type of food one eats, who one may socialize with, and who one marries.  It is a system that keeps many people in desperate poverty with no hope of escape and which keeps women in a subordinate place in society.  In contrast, Myanmar society is heavily influenced by the Buddhist religion which emphasizes peace, good will, equality, and harmony with nature.  The people in Myanmar carry themselves with great dignity and peace.  They are very open and kind and are probably the most respectful and polite people I have ever encountered (even more so than Canadians!).  In India, the military has a very obvious presence with soldiers standing on street corners and in the train stations with machine guns and rifles—the recent bombing in Delhi proves why they feel this is necessary.  In Myanmar, however, the military is much more discrete.  I saw some soldiers in the streets but they looked very relaxed and did not carry weapons.  Before we went, we were told not to discuss politics or the military regime with the locals because “big brother” is watching and they could be arrested for speaking out against the government.  However, I found them to be very open about their feelings toward the government and some even told me anti-military jokes!  They definitely do not enjoy free speech, however, and they were very careful to not say things like this in public, but kept them to our private conversations.  I had many conversations about American movies—Tom Hanks seems to be their favorite—and are very widely interested in learning English and about western culture.  I visited an English school and one of the students told me Jennifer Lopez was his favorite singer.  Bizarre.  Their society is very traditional, though, and western influences while present, are very subtle.  There is no McDonald’s in Myanmar.

 

One thing I should mention, which has already sparked some political debates with people who have been reading my blog, is my use of the name Myanmar instead of Burma and calling the capital Yangon instead of Rangoon.  The U.S. does not recognize the name Myanmar or Yangon and insists on calling them Burma and Rangoon.  This is because they oppose the military regime and have imposed sanctions against the country.  It is the military government who kept the democratically elected president of the country, Aung San Suu Kyi, from taking office and has had her under house arrest for the past decade. The military changed the name of the country to Myanmar in 1989 without a referendum.  I noticed immediately, though, that the locals all use the name Myanmar and I wondered if it was out of fear of the military.  After many conversations with the people here, it has become obvious to me that they really do prefer the name Myanmar.  The name dates back to the 12^th Century whereas the name Burma is the name used by the British during the colonial period.  There are 135 ethnic groups with their own cultures and dialects and 8 of these are considered majority groups.  The Burmese are by far the largest with 69% of the population and so the British thought Burma was a fitting name.  The people here though, recognize that Burma does not represent their country well because it does not reflect all the other groups.  They even sometimes refer to their national language which is Burmese, as “the Myanmar language.” Plus, the name Burma reminds them of their subjugation to the British while they were a colony and the name Myanmar is a symbol of their independence. Since the people here prefer the name Myanmar that is the name I will continue to use even though the U.S. government opposes it.  I also saw the real effects of the U.S. sanctions while I was here.  It does not seem to be having a big effect on the government but is causing real harm to the people.  They cannot get medicine because the U.S. drug companies cannot ship to Myanmar.  I visited a rattan factory where they had piles of baskets, furniture, and household items that they cannot ship to their two main buyers, Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel, because of the sanctions.  I do not know what the answer is but I think diplomacy and conversation is probably preferable to sanctions and closed borders. 

 

The highlight of my visit was definitely the visit to the rural village near our port in Thilawa, about and hour from Yangon.  We walked around the local market and then they took us on a ride around the village in Trishaws, which are bicycles with a side car.  We rode over dirt roads and past the thatched huts that the people live in.  We must have been quite a spectacle because people came out of their homes and waved to us as we went by like we were in a parade.  At first they were just staring but when I smiled and said “Mingalaba” to people as I rode past, they smiled and said it back.  Any attempt to learn Burmese was greeted with a smile and I managed to pick up a couple of words but the script is very different from anything I have seen before. 

 

The culture of Myanmar is really interesting.  The men and women both wear long skirts called a lon gyi (pronounced loan gee) although the men tie theirs in the front and the women on the side and the women wear brighter colors than the men.  They are very modest and we were advised not to wear shorts or bare shoulders despite the heat and humidity and so I bought several lon gyi because wearing pants in that climate is unbearable.  I love them so much that I will keep wearing them at home. The women selling them in the market would whip one up for you in 10 mins. on their sewing machine once you had picked out the fabric.  The shopping there was so cheap, most of my lon gyi cost between $3 and $5 although I did get a fancy one that came with a matching top that cost a whopping $11. Good thing they cannot accept U.S. credit cards there.  Even some of the men on the voyage bought lon gyi and have been wearing them around the ship.  My favorite cultural experience though, was my visit to a Buddhist temple called Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon which is surrounded by hundreds of golden Buddha statues.  The pagoda itself is covered with gold and has a 76 karat diamond on the top of it.  It was a fantastic sight at sunset.  I chatted with a Monk and learned so much about the Buddhist religion.  Their emphasis on peace and harmony is so appealing that I need to check out some books on Buddhism to learn more.

 

I feel so lucky to have visited Myanmar.  They are desperate for tourists and really went out of their way to make us feel comfortable.  They have built many five-star resorts in recent years in hopes of luring travelers into the country.  The French, Germans, and Japanese seem to be their primary market now and very few Americans visit. Many people told me that they think having foreigners in is a way to boost the economy and open the eyes of the world to their political situation.  We were careful to visit privately owned establishments and buy souvenirs directly from the people and I encourage anyone who is planning a trip to Thailand or India to make a stop in Myanmar.  I was told they issue visas to Americans both in advance or at the border.  I think you will be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

I know most of you have heard about the bombings in India yesterday.  From the reports, I am fairly sure that it was at the same train station in Delhi where I caught my train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal just 8 days ago.  Many foreigners go through there but none were killed in this bombing.  We are far away from there now so rest assured that I am not in any danger.  Myanmar has been very safe and lovely and I will blog about it soon but I just wanted you to know I am safe.  It serves as a reminder that many places in the world are dealing with conflicts that I cannot fully comprehend.  I will keep the people of India in my thoughts as I continue my journey.

Well we left India 2 days ago and sped across the Bay of Bengal with all 4 engines blazing for the first time since we left home.  We had only one day at sea between India and Myanmar and had to get to Myanmar a day early because we had to sail up a river to the port in Yangon at high tide.  That only gave us one day of classes to digest our India experiences and prepare for Myanmar which was not nearly enough time.  I have spent the last couple of days trying to reconcile my experiences in India in my mind.  I spent one day in the south in Chennai where our ship was docked, then took a flight to Delhi and Agra in northern India to see the Taj Mahal and other sights for three days, and then spent my last day in the holy city of Kancheepuram south of Chennai visiting ancient Hindu Temples.

 

India was both horrible and wonderful all at the same time.  First, the horrible…The poverty and pollution were really awful.  The street beggars were the most pathetic people I have ever seen in my life.  They were so thin and most had black teeth and were completely filthy.  Many had grotesque physical deformities.  There were entire communities literally living on the sidewalks in tents and thatched huts and cooking food in pots over a fire.  The cities were so dirty and people went to the bathroom right out in public because there was no where else to go.  People threw their garbage right on the street or alongside the train tracks so the place was full of litter.  The worst was the street vendors who came up to us trying to sell us various souvenirs.  They closed in on you and felt like they were right on top of you.  It was uncomfortable and oppressive and a few times I was actually scared even though they were quite polite despite being pushy.  They were more aggressive than the ones in Brazil but seemed friendlier and I did not hear any stories of muggings in India like we had experienced in Brazil.  It was a really tough experience in many ways and some of the women I had with me on my trip to Delhi were crying in the train station.  I felt like throwing up.  I think I was as well prepared as I could have been for India but seeing abject poverty in person is a shocking experience, especially for some of these students who have lived sheltered lives.  I hope we all grow and become better people because of it. 

 

On the other hand, India has some of the most beautiful landscape and sights I have ever seen in my life.  The Taj Mahal was magnificent.  It was full of tourists, mostly Indians, and no vendors and so it was relatively peaceful even though there must have been thousands of people there.  The grounds are enormous and you enter through a big red sandstone gate and then see the Taj Mahal in front of you.  There is a large reflecting pool and beautiful gardens as you make your way up.  We arrived just as the sun was setting and it glistened in the light.  As I walked up closer, I saw that it is entirely made of white marble and has incredibly intricate inlays of other semi-precious stones.  It was built by Shah Jahan as memorial and mausoleum for his beloved wife who died in childbirth in 1631.  It took 20,000 stone masons 22 years to construct.  The workmanship is phenomenal but you really have to see it up close and touch it in order to get as sense of it.  I bought a book with some great close-up pictures and some souvenirs made of marble with the inlay so I can show people at home what it is really like. 

 

One highlight of the Delhi tour was the Ghandi memorial.  They have turned the very spot where he was shot into a memorial.  They even have his final footsteps cast in clay.  The grounds are lovely and they have a replica of one of Ghandi’s ashrams with a mural of his life painted on it.  The strangest part though, is the multi-media display.  India has a well developed IT sector and they have put it to use in the strangest way.  They have re-created some of Ghandi’s teachings using digital displays and other media.  In a replica of an ashram, there is a cube you place in a hole and a digital display lights up and says a quote from Ghandi.  There was a ceramic pot that had smoke coming out of it and when you blow on the smoke, the words “be true” light up and then disperse.  The coolest one was this large carved pillar that had a light inside of it.  On the floor was a hand-shaped pad on either side.  Two people put one hand on each of the pads and then hold hands with other people.  When the chain is completed, the pillar lights up.  If even one person lets go, the light turns off which is meant to show the concept of unity and cooperation.  Very cool.  We did not get enough time to explore them all but there were dozens of displays like this.  I could have spent a whole day there.

 

For my last day in India, I took a trip with an SAS group to several Hindu Temples in Kancheepuram and Mamallapuram which are two towns about an hour and a half south of Chennai which are considered holy cities. Kancheepuram is one of the 7 holy cities in India for Hindus and is the only one in the south so many people go on a pilgrimage there and not many foreign tourists go.  It was totally worth the trip.  We saw five different temples, mostly ruins but we started at a large, working Hindu temple that was built out of granite between 600 and 1600 AD.  Hinduism had hundreds of gods but the main three in the trinity are Vishnu, Siva, and Brahma.  This was a temple to Siva.  It’s interesting because the Hindu religion is so lax because they don’t have services and people get to worship however they want so there are many variations on the religion.  I went into a little enclave where a Hindu priest was standing with a shrine surrounded by mirrors.  He asked me my name and put some red stuff on my forehead put some kind of a metal hat on my head and blessed me.  He wished me wealth and strength.  It was quite an experience.  My favorite one was a beautiful temple in Mamallapuram that is right on the beach called the Shore Temple that is made out of sandstone and was built in the 8^th Century.  Unfortunately, the sea air has corroded most of it and the Indian archeological committee had tried to do some restorations on it but it is still quite worn.  Despite this, the seaside setting and the ancient carvings make quite a lovely setting.  I kept thinking I was on the set of an Indiana Jones movie because it did not seem real.

 

This is getting long but I want to say a couple more things about Indian culture.  First, the food I had was amazing and I can rest assured that the restaurants we have in little India in Artesia are authentic.  I loved everything I ate.  Second, this was our first port where the people do not wear western clothing.  The women for the most part wore sarees but many also wore the tunic and pants with a scarf that some people call a Punjab suit and others call a churadura (I think that is it).  Those are more prevalent in the north than in the south but they are starting to catch on in the south also.  In the rural areas it was almost entirely sarees though.  The saree is very interesting because it is just a long 6 yard piece of fabric that gets wrapped around, pleated, and then thrown over the shoulder.  They wear a petticoat underneath (that is what you tuck the saree into) and a blouse on top made out of the same fabric as the saree or a coordinating fabric. In the urban areas, men mostly wore pants and a button up shirt but many men also wore a half-saree just tied around their waist, especially in the rural villages.  Seeing all the bright colors of the sarees all over the streets of India was a delight!

 

One of the coolest things about India is the great respect they give to teachers.  Priests and teachers are in the highest caste and when people figured out I was the teacher in my group, they bowed down and gave me the “namaste” gesture which means respect.  Put palms of your hands together pointed up and you got it.  One vendor selling paintings just wanted to show me his paintings and when I said they were beautiful, he ran and got more to show me.  He was not trying to sell them to me; he just wanted my opinion as a teacher.  You should have seen him beaming with pride when I said he was a talented artist.  He strutted off like he was on the top of the world.  When we got on the plane to Delhi, I joked to the flight attendant that the American students were taking over the plane (there were about 90 of us on the flight).  He asked if I was the teacher and when I said yes, he bowed, and said “Namaste!  Great respect! Great respect!”  Too bad teachers don’t get great respect in the US.

 

I learned so many things about the culture in India that I hope to talk about more with my classes at home.  Their nonverbals were very different from ours and most people get married through arranged marriages which is a very interesting concept to discuss with my Interpersonal Communication classes.  They have a very low divorce rate, less than 2%, so maybe it is not something to dismiss so easily.  I think I understand the concept of a collectivistic culture in a fuller way, something I never really got before but did not realize it. 

 

We are in Myanmar now and I spent the first day touring the city of Yangon.  It is very different from India but I will wait to blog about it until I have a few more experiences to write about.

We just had a day off during our 8-day stretch to India.  Actually we are going so slow that the ship is rocking around much more than usual.  We could probably get there in half the time but are stretching it out for our schedule. 

 

On our day off, we had the SAS Olympics which was great fun.  It was totally organized by the students and virtually everyone on board participated.   On the ship, all the students who live together are separated into 8 different groups called “Seas” and are named after a Sea like the Caribbean Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Red Sea, etc.  The faculty, staff, adult passengers and dependents team called ourselves the “Vitamin Sea”.  I love puns.   The night before our day off, there was an opening ceremony.  The students put on a talent show that was really great.  Each sea put on two acts and they were great.  There were comedy routines, air bands, dance numbers, songs the students had written and all kinds of fun things.  Plus, each sea came up with a chant and so the noise in the room was deafening with all the cheering and chanting.  Our two entries were a play the 12 kids in our sea wrote and put on which was a combination of various fairy tales (we were going for the cute factor) and a video that Sony, Jason and Rico (all are AV professionals) put together.  It was a Truman Show kind of thing where they made it seem like SAS is all a put-on.  They had various faculty and crew “auditioning” for parts and it showed the kids as the “real” crew of the ship.  Very clever and very funny—also very professional looking given that they had only a few days to put it together.  I will get a copy.

 

The next day, it was pouring rain so right away the agenda had to change.  It was our first day of rain in 3 weeks so its too bad it happened on the Olympics day.  Several events that were scheduled to be outside were cancelled or postponed like basketball, ping pong, and synchronized swimming. There was so much going on at once that it was hard to follow and some of it was not that well organized because the students putting it on weren’t that organized and the rain screwed up the schedule but overall it was great fun.  I played monopoly in a timed game for 1 hour but a guy at my table actually was dealt Boardwalk and Park Place!  Can you imagine that luck?  I survived and came 2^nd at my table but we did not finish in the top standings overall.  The Vitamin Sea did finish in the top three in a few events like checkers, the scavenger hunt, the relay race, and the pie eating contest (a skinny woman named Amy who is our IT coordinator came second and never even puked—very impressive).  Overall, we placed 7^th out of 9 which is not bad considering we had mostly kids and old fogies.  The Aegean sea won the whole thing and the Caribbean sea came dead last despite winning the tug-of-war.  I also watched several other events that were funny like Twister and Mashed potato sculpting.  They had 20 mins to make a replica of the ship from mashed potatoes and it was impressive what creative things they came up with.

 

The highlight of the whole day was synchronized swimming though.  It was supposed to be outside in the pool in the afternoon but because of the bad weather, the crew would not let us onto the pool deck for safety reasons.  The Olympic Committee made the decision to move the event indoors into the Union later that evening rather than cancel it and it was great!  Some teams were pissed because they had been practicing in the pool all week but it was even better than outside, actually, because on the dance floor, you could see their costumes and dance routines better than had they been in the pool.  The best was the Arabian sea.  They did this hilarious dance routine wearing swimsuits and life jackets.  I cracked up the whole time.  The Vitamin Sea was a group of women who were dressed as parts of a dragon (that was our mascot) who danced in the background while Rico, the AV coordinator, who is a gymnast, did what amounted to a circus routine.  He juggled, he balanced things like a guitar and a stack of beer cans on his nose, he did a parallel bars routine on some huge hand weights…it was amazing what that guy can do.  The students were really great and it was such a fun day.  The end of the day, the crew set up a giant dessert bar for us. A nice end to a fun day.

 

Today we arrived in India!  I have not gotten off the ship but early tomorrow morning I leave for my trip to Delhi and the Taj Mahal.  I will blog again when I return to the ship.

We spent only 3 days in Mauritius but I think we were all pleasantly surprised.  None of us knew that much about it before going except a few historical facts we had heard in lecture before our arrival and we were still disappointed about missing Kenya.  The Mauitians were very friendly and welcoming and I had a great time.  Only 2% of the visitors to Mauritius every year are Americans so we were quite a novelty to them.  They have seen American TV and movies but our accents were still very unfamiliar to them. To get a sense of Mauritius, imagine somewhere in the Caribbean like Barbados or the Bahamas but poor and full of Indian immigrants who speak French and you have Mauritius.  They have a lovely waterfront area in the capital where we docked sort of like the wharf in San Francisco or Cape Town.  They are trying to build up their tourist industry so the government is encouraging the building of large tourist hotels and they normally get tourists from South Africa, Australia, China, and Europe.  We ate a gorgeous French dinner at a 5-star hotel in the waterfront and enjoyed a game of golf at a resort on the south of the island.  The golf course was right on the ocean with stunning views—so breathtaking that it was hard for me to concentrate on the golf.  I’m told there is an exclusive 7-star hotel on the east coast of the island at Le Tousserok that is the second most luxurious hotel in the world (#1 is in Dubai).  Their golf course is on its own island!  I heard it costs $1300 a night USD, though, so I chose a more reasonably priced place for golf.

 

I also spent several hours shopping at the local markets.  They have a large one a short walk from the ship and I really enjoyed just wandering around looking at what people were selling.  One large part of it was a huge farmer’s market with fresh fruits and vegetables that smelled fantastic.  Another section was crafters selling their wares.  I bought a few things and spent quite a while at one jewelry booth with a student talking to the artist about life in Mauritius.  I bought a few things to bring home.  The national bird of Mauritius is the dodo bird which is quite funny because it is now extinct.  Strange national symbol if you ask me.  They have that bird on everything!

 

Absolutely the best experience was talking with the locals.  It was a long drive from the ship to the golf course, about 1.5 hours each way.  The local tour company helped us hire a driver (Thank God because they drive like maniacs here, on the wrong side of the street so I would not have wanted to try a rental).  His name was Rakech (pronounced ra-kesh) and it turns out we were the first Americans he has ever met in real life.   I took a picture of him with his map of Mauritius.  We were the first Americans he has ever met in real life so he was excited to talk with us about life in the US and tell us all about Mauritius.  He is Hindu but is 4^th generation Mauritian and has never left the island in his life.  He lives at home with his family.  I mean his WHOLE family.  There are 23 of them who live in the same large house and all of them eat dinner together every night and then they each have their own separate living space.  He was surprised to hear that most Americans live with just their nuclear family.  Most of what he knows about the US is what he sees in movies which is scary.  He wanted to hear what New York and Las Vegas is like and said when he wins the lottery, the first place he will go is the US. He was also surprised to hear that most Americans would not know where Mauritius was--I had to admit I did not know until I heard we were going there.  He said that we should know where Mauritius is because Bush was planning a trip here and it was cancelled when Sept. 11 happened.  I did not have the heart to tell him that a cancelled Presidential trip to Mauritius would not make the CNN crawl even on a slow news day.  They get CNN for 2 hours a day and he says he watches it all the time.  On the way back to the ship, he took us up a mountain that overlooks Port Louis for a view of the city and a view of our ship in the harbor.  It was great to talk to someone so excited and enthusiastic about his own culture and learning about ours.  It was a great experience. 

 

We have 8 days a sea before getting to India which I am glad because I have a lot to learn about the culture before I get there.  One day during the trip we get 1 day off for the SAS Olympics.  The non-student team is preparing very hard and we expect to clean the floor with those inexperienced students.  The events sound very fun.  Some are athletic like 2-on-2 basketball but many are academic like trivia, scrabble, and monopoly.  Some are goofy like synchronized swimming and whistling with peanut butter in your mouth.  I can’t wait.

We are sailing on our way to Mauritius now and I was sad to leave Cape Town.  It really is a beautiful place.  My favorite thing was the steak at Belthazar restaurant with the chocolate and chilli sauce.  I went back for it three times with various groups of people after the word about the chocolate steak was out.  I will have to try to recreate it at home. 

 

A couple of days ago, several of us took the train out to Simonstown and then hired a van to take us to the Cape of Good Hope.  Cape Point is the most south westerly point in Africa and there are two light houses there.  There is a large park right at the tip and a funicular you can take up but instead, we opted for the hike.  It is a very nice path with steps that takes about 45 mins to climb up to the highest lighthouse.  We stopped for a picnic and it was really lovely.  The air was a bit chilly but the sun was shining and the view was truly spectacular.  A whale was jumping in the waves just off the coast.  It was pristine and beautiful and I just sat and stared out at the sea for about ½ an hour. Very peaceful.  After Cape Point, we went to boulders beach where there is a huge penguin colony!  It was so neat.  They park has built bridges and platforms out over the sand so you can go out onto the beach without disturbing the penguins and they all sort of hang around without really noticing the humans.  They were molting so they were sort of half-fuzzy but some were really cute.  They looked just like in the movie March of the Penguins but they are smaller because these are African penguins.  Seeing them might be the highlight of Cape Town. 

 

We did lots of other great things too and we were really happy to get those extra 2 days in Cape Town.  I went to the University of Cape Town with some students to hear a lecture that I had arranged with a media professor.  I think the students really enjoyed getting to meet some of the South African students.  I went golfing with some friends which was a really interesting experience because we hired caddies to help us find our way around.  The golf courses are very Scottish in style in South Africa.  I also went with some friends to an African craft market on the weekend which was a neat trip and I bought lots of souvenirs to take home.  We visited a Jazz club one night and heard a great band play and had a Township choir come on board last night which was fabulous.  African music, what I heard of it at least, is really unique and beautiful.  I also met up with some of my mother-in-law’s relatives, Linda and Leo DeVilliers, who live in Cape Town and they took me out for a great dinner at the Waterfront and I showed them some pictures from my trip so far.   They were really interested in our ship which was docked just outside.  We had a very lovely time.

 

All in all, I found South Africa to be very beautiful but also very sad.  The people are friendly but they have some tough times ahead of them as they try to deal with the continued strife of post-Apartheid politics.  Some people I met have a very bleak and pessimistic view of what the future holds but I think I will continue to think about what Archbishop Tutu told us about the power of forgiveness.  Hopefully in time, the people of South Africa can learn to forgive each other and move on. 

 

We have 6 days of travel before arriving in Mauritius, off the coast of Madagascar.  We are short 3 students who were expelled from the program and sent home for substance abuse issues but other than that, I think the students are really enjoying their trip.  This journey has been a real gift.

Well, I did get my Safari even though we are not going to Kenya.  We are spending 2 extra days in Cape Town and then going to Mauritius for 3 days before sailing to India (I had to look up Mauritius on a map because I had no idea where it was).  We arrived in Cape Town 3 days ago and it is a really beautiful city.  Janet and I went to Aquila, a private game reserve about 2 hours outside Cape Town for a horseback Safari.  It was spectacular.  The landscape was stunning and there were all sorts of wild animals roaming around.  I got within 4 feet of a giraffe.  We also saw ostriches, hippos, rhinos, zebras, wildebeests, 2 or 3 kinds of antelopes, buffalos, and warthogs.  Being on horseback meant we got a lot closer to the animals than the people in jeeps or on ATVs.  I could not stop smiling.  It was pretty cold but I was dressed warmly--were so lucky because it had rained all morning but just cleared up and the sun came out just as we started out on our ride.  It was a perfect day.

 

Today, Janet and I took our students to the facilities where the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust operates.  Amy Biehl was an American Fullbright Scholar studying in South Africa in 1993, just as they were transitioning out of Apartheid.  She was helping teach people about voting rights and working with women in the Townships.  She was dropping some friends off at the Gugulethu Township when she was attacked by an angry group of protesters.  They did not know she was an American, they just saw her white skin and it was a very tumultuous time so they killed her.  Her parents, Linda and Peter Biehl came to South Africa to claim her body and when they saw the townships and realized what squalor the people lived in, they realized they had to do something.  They went before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and forgave her killers.  Actually, they said “they had nothing to forgive” which sounds unbelievable to me. Her killers came forward and confessed what they had done in exchange for amnesty, as part of the TRC’s mission.  It turns out that our tour guide for today, Ntobeko, lives in Gugulethu and was one of the four men responsible for Amy’s death.  Now, he works for the foundation and is friends with Linda Beihl (Peter Biehl has since died of cancer).    We went to a school where they have set up a computer lab to teach computer literacy to children and adults in the township but since none of the teachers at the school have ever used a computer, they are still trying to develop a curriculum and find people to teach the classes. 

 

The townships are unbelievable, I am not sure I can even describe them.  The people live in shacks made out of corrugated metal and scrap wood.  We were able to get out and walk around one neighborhood and the kids thought we were quite a novelty—they all came out and started following us around.  The parents just watched us from a distance with skepticism.  I’m not sure what they thought about a tour bus pulling up and us wandering around their streets.  I tried to only take pictures when no one was looking because I felt like we were treating these people like zoo animals, but I also felt that if I did not take pictures, no one at home would understand what we had seen.  The kids loved having their pictures taken because we would show them the picture on the digital screen and they would crack up. 

 

We also went to a golf driving range in Khayelitsha, another township, where they are trying to bring golf to the masses because it is now just a sport for elites and whites.  They have 50 year-old clubs with hard and slick grips, old beat-up and cracked golf balls, and barely any grass.  The mats are just rubber and there is no putting green.  The kids there were really enthusiastic about playing and some of the girls told me they are there every day.  They have never seen a real course, though, and I asked the teacher if they are going to get to play on a course some day.  He said that he is trying to take some of the kids who are really good to a course but it is really hard.  I think he means both too expensive and not yet open to blacks.  The foundation wants to get some of the kids memberships to the clubs around here but I wonder how realistic that is.  I have a game booked for Friday at a local public course, I just called up and made a reservation.   I am so lucky and I will never bitch about old clubs or bad course conditions again.  

 

We had lunch in the Township at a restaurant that serves traditional Xhosa foods, which was sausage, chicken, and beef all in a spicy sauce with mashed potatoes—no vegetables at all.  The white bus driver, Johann, looked especially uncomfortable.  He was sitting alone at the next table and I smiled at him.  He gave me a look and said, “Quite an interesting experience today is, isn’t it?”   I asked him if it was hard for him and he put his hand on his heart and said, “it hurts."  It is hard for me to realize that Apartheid ended just 10 years ago.  The racial tensions that still exist here are palpable.  I talked with Johann for quite some time about how it felt to be a white South African now and he said they were harmed by Apartheid as well--that is just what Desmond Tutu said to us also a week ago.  It will take them generations to recover from this, I think. 

 

As you know, we were fortunate enough to have the esteemed Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his wife join us on our voyage to Cape Town.  I have seen him several times and have had the opportunity to speak with him twice.  The first morning he was on board, I joined him at a table for breakfast with a few other faculty and staff .  He spoke with us about the Human Rights abuses in Myanmar and told us that the President of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was democratically elected by 80% of the people and who is currently under house arrest, is his “pin up”.  He chuckled when he said that but you could see the admiration of her in his face.  At our faculty meeting the next day, we had a discussion about the best way to teach our students about the conflict in Myanmar.  For them, visiting a country under military rule will be an eye-opening experience.  The point of this voyage is education after all.

 

My second encounter with him was at our faculty/staff reception for the Tutus last night. The crew had a beautiful spread of food and wine in the faculty lounge and everyone dressed up for the occasion.  The Tutus sat at a table in the middle and let people come up to talk to them and take pictures.  They were very gracious about it.  I spoke with him for a few minutes and asked him to autograph my copy of his latest book, God has a Dream.  He wrote “Norah, God Bless You.  9.22.05 Semester at Sea” and then signed it.  I was very homored.  Annie took a picture of me sitting and talking with him which I will have to get from her.  He is not lecturing in our core Global Studies class while he is here, but instead they have set up a round table discussion with him and 3 faculty and 3 students for the day after tomorrow.  He does not seem very interested in lecturing any more, he says he is retired. 

 

Funny story: I saw him in the faculty lounge yesterday and he was working on his laptop.   It’s so funny to see him walking around the ship in t-shirts and baseball caps.  He opened his laptop and I heard, “You’ve got mail!”  It cracked me up to think Tutu is on AOL.  What do you think his screen name is? 

Yesterday was Neptune Day and so I am officially a “shellback”.  Those who have not crossed the equator before by ship are called “pollywogs” until they go through the initiation ceremony.  We actually crossed the equator last week but we waited to celebrate when we had a day off from classes so as not to disrupt the class schedule.  We were awoken to the sound of drummers marching up and down the hallway.  The crew and staff shellbacks were dressed in goofy costumes and Captain Jeremy was Captain Neptune.  He was painted green all over; I actually did not recognize who it was until I heard him speak.  We followed the procession up to the pool area on Deck 7 where they began the initiation of the pollywogs.  One by one, we stepped into the small pool where a crew member dumped some kind of brown sludge with fish guts on us and then we jumped into the freezing pool.  It smelled pretty bad.  Then, before we could get out of the pool, we had to kiss a dead fish and then we kissed King Neptune’s ring and become a shellback.  About 300 of us did it.  It was a hoot!  Then they started shaving the heads of the people who volunteered—it looked like about 100 people or so did that.  Some women with really long hair donated their hair to Locks of Love and shaved their heads.  There were plenty of bald people running around the ship today.  I was tempted but decided not to since I was worried about getting my head sunburned in Africa.  None of the female faculty did it that I could see which is probably not surprising.  It was pretty crazy!  The rest of the day was very relaxing since it was our first real day off with no classes or in-port activities since leaving Nassau.  There are no weekends on Semester at Sea!