Life on a Boat

I should probably write up my Ghana entry before typing up an entry about anything else, but I am feeling unmotivated to write about Ghana at the minute (I can tell you that it was awesome, though), so here’s an entry about living on the MV Explorer instead, since I’ve received a lot of questions about it.

So, the MV Explorer. It seemed pretty big to me when I first boarded it, but it’s actually pretty small for a cruise ship, which I think is why it rocks so much all the time. Well, that, and the fact that it’s one of the fastest cruise ships in the world, and I think the speed contributes to the roughness of the ride as well. There are 7 decks total, but everything there is to do or see (of which there isn’t much) is on decks 5, 6, and 7. The first four decks only have cabins that people sleep in, with the general rule being the higher you go up, the better your cabin is. I’m on deck 3 on the inside toward the middle of the ship, which means that I’m in a double that doesn’t have a window looking out onto the water, but I don’t feel too much of the boat moving (although believe me, I still feel it). The rooms are all pretty small, except for the faculty and Life-Long Learners’ cabins, but you get used to it.

Starting on the fifth deck, there are only a few living quarters. Instead, the 5th deck has Timitz Square, which has the Purser’s desk, which is where you go to settle your shipboard account debts, get a new room key/ID card (I’m still on my first one!), and other administrative things like that. Right across from the Purser’s Desk is the Student Life Office and Field Office. The Student Life Office is where you…well, I’m not sure exactly, since I never go there. I think you sign up for intramural sports there. Oh, and you can check out board games. The Field Office is where you sign up for trips run by SAS in port and ask any questions regarding these excursions. Near Timitz there are also several rooms which serve as offices for important figures in the shipboard community, such as the deans’ offices.

Continuing aft (toward the back of the ship), there are some cabins and I think some classrooms (I don’t walk down there much), but not much else of interest. At the rear of the ship there’s a dining hall, but it’s not as cool as the one of the 6th deck because you can’t eat outside on the 5th deck.

There is a lot more stuff on the 6th deck. Starting at the back, there is the aforementioned dining hall (or Garden Lounge, as it is officially named), and as you move forward, you’ll see the Wellness Center, where there’s a sauna and you can get a massage (not for free, of course). I think that’s also where you can get a haircut. After that you’ll see some classrooms on your left and the Piano Bar to your right, where students like to hang out and study or buy overpriced snacks. Continuing forward, you’ll pass the two stores on campus, one which sells clothes, the other which sells practical things you might need in port, such as bug spray, toothpaste, and money belts, among other things. Eventually you’ll reach the library to your left (which is very small and used to be a casino before the ship was re-equipped to be a college campus) and the computer lab to your right, which is where I’m sitting right now, since I can rarely access the Internet at all from my own computer because my computer is terrible at connecting to weak wireless connections.

If you keep going forward from here, you’ll seem to hit a dead end at the Union, the largest room on the ship and also the one I hate the most. It’s the room that’s the closest to the front, so you really feel the movements of the ship here. Unfortunately, since it’s the largest room, Global Studies (mandatory for all students, although only half are enrolled in each of the two sections of it) meets here, and pre-port meetings and optional seminars are held here as well.

Although the Union seems like a dead end, there is actually a hidden door in the room which leads to the Bridge, the command center of the ship. I took a Bridge tour toward the beginning of the voyage, so I got to see what happens there. There’s always an officer on duty and other people there doing whatever it is they do, but the ship is usually on auto-pilot. There wasn’t too much to see there aside from all of the machines and stuff that look like something out of a sci-fi movie that show where the ship is, how fast it’s going, and stuff like that. The best part of the tour was when they let us take pictures in the captain’s chair with a hat and binoculars. It was ridiculous and tourist-y, but fun. We also talked to the crew about their jobs and stuff, but I don’t remember much of what they told us (this was about a month ago, after all). I know they did say that sailors work for something like 6 months at a time and then have a few months off, regardless of whether they’re in the middle of a voyage or not. This means that new crew members are always coming and going throughout our journey whenever we dock.

As for the seventh deck, like the fifth, there’s not much here except for Desmond Tutu’s room and some staff rooms until you reach the back of the ship, where there’s a pool and the Pool Bar, which has really good smoothies and other things to eat if you’re growing tired of the dining hall food. There’s also a gym on this floor and a small basketball/volleyball court.

And that’s more or less the ship, assuming I haven’t forgotten too many things. The crew is all very friendly, but it’s weird having your room cleaned every day and having people pick up your dishes for you or getting juice for you in the dining hall. My cabin steward probably hates my roommate and I because we forget to change the in/out magnet on our door, so he usually tries to clean the room when we’re in there. I’ve tried to remember to switch the magnet, but I think our steward probably doesn’t even pay attention to it at this point, but instead just tries to find a time when neither of us are in the room by checking multiple times each day.

As for what I do to pass the time? Not much, honestly. There are classes every day we’re at sea, except on Reading Days, when we catch up on classwork and take our Global Studies tests. There is no free entertainment other than the informational seminars we have almost daily, which range from how to get into the Secret Service to the food of Spain. Since there’s not too much to do entertainment-wise, I spend my time hanging out with people (usually in my room) or sleeping, with the occasional reading or studying session thrown in. I was playing a lot of video games up until we reached Ghana (I was trying to finish a game), but everyone seemed to think I was playing unhealthy amounts of them (this is true), so I’m taking a break until after South Africa. This really just means I sleep more. I don’t know if it’s the fact I don’t go outside much (I only go outside to study or eat) or that the ship is always rocking, but I always want to sleep when I’m on the ship. I think I also do it a lot because on days when the seasickness hits me pretty hard (it has never been as bad as that second day, but I still feel woozy sometimes), sleeping means I don’t have to deal with the unpleasantness.

Yesterday was actually an exception in my typical daily life at sea, since yesterday we celebrated Neptune Day, or the day we passed the Equator. We actually passed the Equator AND the Prime Meridian at the same time a few days before that, but the staff chose to carry on with the festivities yesterday because it was a Reading Day anyway and that way no one had to miss class or anything. Neptune Day was pretty special. Some of the faculty and students went around at 7:30 in the morning banging drums, cymbals, and blowing a whistle around the entire ship to make sure everyone got up. They also were sure to bang on people’s doors. I was not very happy about this, but I sort of expected it and had gone to bed at a decent hour, so I didn’t feel too strong of an urge to punch something (I’m not a morning person). During the festivities, people shaved their heads (including several of my friends), and a lot of the hair is going to be donated to charity to make wigs. I’m not sure why crossing the Equator warrants shaving your head, and I would never voluntarily shave my head, so I passed on this particular festivity. I did, however, have “fish guts” poured on me, but only after I changed into my swimsuit. The “fish guts” were, from what I could tell, actually seawater with green food dye, some random bits of plant that I’m still trying to get out of my hair, and something to make it smell like fish. Anyway, after having the “guts” poured on you, you take a lap in the pool (which is maybe 4 meters long at most), kiss a fish (I think it was actually real) and the rings of “Neptune” (aka Dean David) and his “wife” (aka the Executive Dean), and then are knighted by someone with a plastic sword and “initiated” into who-knows-what cult (I wasn’t really listening to the official name, since I was at the back when they were explaining everything). Don’t worry, this was all caught on video. Oh, I forgot to mention that all the staff was dressed up ridiculously with streamers and face paint to make them look like sea people or something. Later that day we had a midterm, though, which was not nearly as exciting, and everything was back to normal today, including my lovely 8 a.m. classes.

Well, I think that about sums up what life is like on the MV Explorer. One of these days I plan to take a video of the ship to give you all a better idea of what it looks like, but since I can never upload anything, I don’t really know how much good that will do. I’m hoping for good Internet in Cape Town, so hopefully I’ll upload some pictures at least then. But this is all for now. Keep the emails coming (I’d like to think I’m decent-ish about replying to them), and at some point I’ll have an entry on Ghana for you all to read.

Morocco

Morocco

Hello again! It’s bit later than I said, but regardless, here’s the promised entry on Morocco .

Our port this time around was Casablanca , and while it has a movie named after it and is the largest city in Morocco (I think), it is not a very interesting place. Rick’s Café does exist there, but it was made for the tourists and was not the one actually in Casablanca. It’s also a horribly overpriced place to eat, or so I’ve been told. Casablanca does have the 3^rd largest mosque in the world with the tallest minaret, though, which I went inside on my last day there. They make you take your shoes off inside and SAS told us girls to cover our arms and heads when we went inside, although it seemed as if the Moroccans were used to tourists and didn’t really enforce the head covering. I still wore one for most of it, and let me tell you, I can’t even imagine wearing something on my head all the time. It looks pretty cool, but not having the choice to remove it is something I would not enjoy, and most of the women I saw in Morocco were always covered up. The younger children and a few young women, one of whom I talked to a bit on the train and helped me get off at the right station, didn’t have them on, but the norm was clearly to cover up. We were also told not to wear shorts or revealing T-shirts, but I did see tourists breaking this norm (although I personally tried to dress conservatively). Anyway, it makes you appreciate being able to wear whatever you want.

So before I got sidetracked I was talking about the Hassan II Mosque. It was pretty cool inside – very similar to the Alhambra , for obvious reasons. It was interesting to see mosques with minarets that were much slimmer than what I was expecting, since I was expecting the more round ones like in Aladdin. I think there are mosques with that type of minaret, but I didn’t catch why the different types exist or where to find the more round ones. Anyway, the Hassan II mosque also had a green laser that pointed toward Mecca at night, which I found sort of funny, because I definitely don’t generally associate holy places with green lasers, even if said lasers are pointing to other holy places. Anyway, that was the only place of which I took any pictures, because up until the last day in Morocco I didn’t have my camera with me because we were told we’d have to get permission to take pictures of everything and I didn’t want to be charged a Euro or something to take pictures. Turns out I would’ve been OK after all and wouldn’t have been charged a Euro, but I was with people who took lots of photos, so hopefully I can bum some off of them.

On a completely unrelated note, drivers in Casablanca and Morocco are crazy. Crossing the road is literally life-threatening, as is taking a ride in a cab (which I did frequently). Oh, and I don’t know why they bother drawing lanes on the roads. Nobody stays in them. I also don’t know why they have crosswalks, since no one uses them. Also, you have to barter for everything, and they know tourists have no idea what they’re doing, so I was ripped off a lot, especially by cab drivers. Speaking of cab drivers, my first (and probably best) experience in Morocco was a cab ride to the train station to buy tickets, followed by a cab tour of the city. Our driver was really friendly (almost everyone was, especially if you were either going to be paying them or already had, although there were some people in the souks who were really friendly toward us even when we said we weren’t buying anything) but INSANE. At one point he got out a guidebook and was flipping through it to show us pictures of Casablanca while driving, and other times he’d turn and talk to us instead of watching the road at all for substantial amounts of time. It was definitely a cultural experience. Our cab driver also got this random group of Asian tourists to take a picture of us (me, the girls I was in the cab with, and the driver) on their cameras (so we’ll never even see the picture) and when we saw a random girl who he thought was Indian he yelled “Look! India !” and pointed enthusiastically from one of the girls I was with (who was obviously of Indian heritage) and the random stranger, to which the stranger replied “Um, I’m from South Africa .” He also kept saying that once nighttime fell (it was Ramadan at the time) that he would drink, smoke, eat, and “Be a king!” He also got this restaurant to pretty much open just for us (although other people came a bit later) before sundown even though it was Ramadan. It was a good restaurant, too, although kind of pricey.

As for what I actually did in Morocco ? Not much, honestly. I spent two days in Marrakech, which pretty much conforms to all the stereotypes of a Middle Eastern city I think Westerners have of them – snake charmers, huge marketplaces, music performances, etc. Except we didn’t get very close to any of the above because we didn’t want to have monkeys thrown on us and then charged 5 Euros for it, which is what happened to some other SAS kids. Some kids apparently got peed on by monkeys, which is hilarious and disgusting, and some others got bit, which is not good. One of the people I was with almost had a snake put on him, but he avoided that because we all knew we’d get charged an outrageous amount of money for it. Anyway, the souk (marketplace) in Marrakech was really neat. I didn’t buy anything there, but just walking around was really something else. There were all sorts of crafts for sale, and you knew they were handmade by Moroccans, so that was really awesome. There were also all sorts of spices and natural healing things for sale, and those stalls smelled amazing – I wish I could have packaged the smell as a souvenir or a present for someone. Oh, and apparently the Moroccans use charcoal, indigo, and what looked like a sort of clay as make-up. I thought it was super neat that they still use natural products like that as cosmetics.

Marrakech was even cooler at night, though. The group I was with sat at a restaurant with a view of the central square (Jamaa el Fna, if I’ve got the spelling right) right before sundown, so we watched the sun fall and the marketplace slowly fill up with more and more people. That day was also the end of Ramadan, so it may have been even livelier than usual. Regardless, it was a really cool sight, and even though I didn’t get any pictures of it, I bought a postcard of pretty much the exact same view I saw, so one of you lucky people will get to see that at some point. I also took a picture of the postcard, so I guess I can post that.

Oh, I’ve somehow neglected to mention the hostel I stayed at in Marrakech. It was down a really shady alley, so the first time my group and I went there, we were starting to doubt its legitimacy. But when we got inside, all doubts were extinguished. I don’t know how to describe it other than it was awesome. The entire place was very Arabic in style, with abstract designs and tiling that looked like something from the Alhambra palaces, but obviously on a much smaller scale. The staff was really, really sweet, too. The men gave us a map of the city and explained to us how to get everywhere and made us some delicious mint tea, and in the morning the women took pictures with us and tied our head scarves properly for us (since we had no idea what we were doing) and wrote our names out in Arabic (which appears to use a phonetic alphabet). They also made a breakfast of crepes, bread, coffee, and tea (not free of charge, but I hardly think 2 Euros is expensive for a home-cooked meal). The crepes were really interesting because they definitely weren’t French crepes – they were much thicker and chewier, but they tasted great with jam and butter. One of the women also taught me how to make the Moroccan mint tea, which I greatly appreciated because that stuff is good and I want to make some when I get back home. According to her (if I’m remembering correctly), you take however many teaspoons of Chinese green tea you want (I think it was around 3-5 for a full teapot), add in hot water and something like 5 to 7 sugar cubes (it is very sweet), some fresh mint, mix it all together, and then put this all together in the awesome traditional teapot and put it on the stove for a few minutes before serving it.

The showers were certainly something else, though. One of them had the toilet and shower in the same room with no separation between them, and if you weren’t careful the water would spill out into the hallway. There was also no toilet paper, something that happens in a lot of Morocco . In fact in Casablanca there were some little girls on the street trying to sell packets of tissues for a Euro or something because they knew tourists would buy it. And in the train station bathroom in Marrakech, the toilets didn’t have a flush – you dumped a bucket of water down them to flush them.

There were also random hoses in the hallways of the hostel with pots underneath that were not large enough to catch all the water that fell out of the hoses. I also have no idea where the water came from in the first place, but I assume it was from the showers. There was also no lock on our bedroom door, the towels had holes, and I didn’t use any of the blankets for fear of bed bugs. It really made me appreciate the showers and clean bed back at the ship. But really, it was an awesome place. There was also an open roof, so at nighttime the group I was with and I went there to catch the cool evening breeze.

Oh, the trains are also something else. The group I was with decided to save 50 dirham (something around $5 or $5.50) by going second class instead of first class, which meant we were very crowded and a lot of people didn’t get a seat. I got a seat an hour into the train ride to Marrakech, but some people stood the entire 4 hour ride. Ouch. On the way back the train was much less crowded, so I had a seat the whole way, but our window was locked shut for an hour or so, so there was no circulation and our compartment was stifling hot. I don’t think I ever appreciated an open window as much as when someone who worked on the train unlocked it for us.

Other than that, all I really did was hang around Casablanca and its souk with some friends from SAS. I didn’t end up buying anything in Marrakech, but I did get a really cool camel leather cushion and a nicely crafted leather purse (since the one I brought with me to SAS is a bit too conspicuous) in Casablanca , as well as a present for my mother. Jacob, Michaella and I also took a cab to the ritzy part of town one day, which basically meant it had a lot of private beaches and nice café-type places. There was also a movie theater, and I almost regret not seeing some random movie in Arabic with no subtitles.

I guess before I close up I should talk about the food. I actually didn’t have as much authentic Moroccan food as I would have liked (I ended up eating at a few European places and even a McDonald’s once, much to my chagrin), but what I did have was really good. The couscous was great, but some places only serve it on Fridays or Fridays and Saturdays. I haven’t the faintest idea why this is, and I probably should have asked. Anyway, I also had lemon chicken and various kinds of tagine (food cooked in a special kind of dish), most of which contained either lamb or chicken. I also had cooked vegetables, including the best carrots I’ve ever tasted in my life. I don’t know what they were flavored with, but they were awesome. There was also a lot of bread, which went very well with the vegetables. I heard someone else had pigeon, but I didn’t have that particular experience. I did have coke a few times though, and their coke bottles are a lot cooler than ours – they’re glass and have Coca-Cola written in English and in Arabic. I also had a lot of freshly-squeezed orange juice, which is the only kind of orange juice I enjoy.

And I guess that more or less sums it up. Morocco was certainly an interesting place to visit, but I would never, ever visit it again. Nothing was bad about it (that I experienced) other than being ripped off all the time and having people try to sell me things I didn’t want, it was just a place that I wasn’t particularly interested in and still am not. Well, and it was weird when my friends and I were walking back to the ship one night and the only people still out were men. It’s a little hard to want to return to a nation where you’re so obviously an outsider and your gender isn’t really respected. Although I was pleasantly surprised by the young woman in the train who did not have a head covering and was chatting excitedly with a middle-aged man the entire train ride, since it showed that some women don’t constantly cover themselves and some men, at least, clearly aren’t bothered by it. And no one was rude to me or anything – quite the opposite, in fact – but it was just sort of uncomfortable being there, especially because I didn’t feel safe. I was less anxious and on my toes after the first few days, but the first day I was worried about being robbed the entire time.

Actually, my experience was a good one, especially compared to some other people’s. One of my friends was robbed at knifepoint, some people had things thrown at them, and others had people yell lovely things like “Fuck the U.S. !” at them. A few people made fun of the group I was with by loudly yelling things in English at us (they weren’t rude things, but were obviously said to mock us) and my cab driver the first day playfully said that Hindus were crazy when he found out the Indian girl we were with was Hindu and not Muslim, but other than that I didn’t come across any real discrimination or American hate. I was also in Morocco on 9/11 and faced absolutely no problems whatsoever (that was actually the day I talked to the nice lady on the train), and according to the U.S. diplomat who debriefed us before our visit, the whole burning the Qu’ran issue wasn’t even very well-known there.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I had a good experience, but I definitely don’t have plans return to Morocco. Next is Ghana (we dock in Takoradi tomorrow), which I previously never even thought of visiting, but I’m hoping that it’ll be a really awesome experience. At least a lot of people speak English there. I tried to use my French in Morocco , but people opted to speak to me in English instead, which is a little sad since I’ve taken around 5 years of French, but also made things less complicated because I often misunderstood things or couldn’t make myself understood very well in French. As my roommate tells me, the one thing I am very good at is saying “Non merci!” to persistent cab drivers.

Anyway, that's all for Morocco, so I'll write again once I'm back from Ghana!

Spain (9/4 - 9/8)

And now for the much more interesting stuff! But first, I need to make a logistical announcement: Most of you probably already know this, but I can’t for the life of me get my Semester at Sea account (the one to which I have free access on the ship) to receive the verification emails from my yahoo accounts that needs to go through for me to be able to set up forwarding, so I’m mostly unreachable from my usual @pacbell.net emails. Instead, if you want to reach me for whatever reason, email me at n d mylastname @ semester at sea . net (but obviously remove the spaces and use my real last name).

That aside, let’s talk about Spain ! (Or Espagna, as the Spanish call it). So we arrived in Cadiz on September 4^tharound 7 in the morning. I’m not sure exactly what time we got in, since I opted to sleep in instead, but I might as well have gotten up because Michaella and Jacob decided (out of the goodness of their hearts, I’m sure) to make sure that I was up not too long afterward. After getting up, Lorelei (my RA who I traveled around southern Spain with) and I met up with two other girls from SAS to look at bus schedules and explore the city a bit. We also got some excellent tapas at a bar, which, in Spain , is more like a small restaurant or café and is not, according to one of our deans, a place to get “shwasted.” (The bar, that is. Not the tapas.) It’s amazing how much you can learn about your own culture by being on a cruise ship with several college students, since I had no idea that the term “shwasted” existed prior to this journey. For those of you who are not in the know, “shwasted” is a combination of two other terms that describe someone who is incredibly inebriated. But enough of U.S. slang, and back to Spanish food!

So, tapas. They’re small servings of appetizers, but the origin of their name is pretty interesting. If I’m remembering correctly, way back when, the Spanish used to prevent things from falling into their drinks by putting food on top, and over time that food came to be known as tapas. Anyway, the tapas we got late that morning/early afternoon were really good, even though we had to eat in a hurry because I had to be back on the ship by 1 for my tour of Cadiz with SAS. Although we had to eat quickly, which is incredibly un-Spanish, we still appreciated the food. Actually, that first meal was the best I had in Spain . We had some Iberian ham; the best pork I’ve ever had in my life, even though I have no idea what it was called; the national dish of Spain , which, by the way, I have no idea how to spell (paella?) but it has rice and seafood in it; and meatballs in “traditional sauce,” according to the English-translated menu, which apparently tastes a lot like sauerkraut. Luckily Lorelei is fluent in Spanish, because I don’t speak a word of Spanish, and neither did the other girls. (On a somewhat-related note, I really disliked being <i>that</i> tourist. You know, the one who expects everyone to speak English them. At least in Morocco I kind of sort of knew what was going on.)

So we eat our tapas and head back to the ship, and then after almost forgetting my ticket to get on the tour, I manage to successfully be on the dock when the tour starts. It was actually really cool, but of course being the awesome person I am, I forgot to take my camera with me. At any rate, our tour was really awesome. We walked around all of the Old Town , which really isn’t all that big. Apparently Cadiz is only about 10 km in radius and has 135,000 people. Its claims to fame are its beaches (where Spaniards from the big cities come to escape the tourists in their hometowns), its age (its one of, if not the oldest, continually occupied cities in Europe, dating all the way back to the Phoenicians), and the fact that it was not conquered by Napolean, so the Spanish Constitution was written there. Oh, and its venue for exhibitions and stuff nowadays was the first tobacco factory in Europe , if I remember correctly. Anyway, there are some nice shops and stuff in the alleyways and the drivers sometimes actually let you cross the street without trying to kill you, which is a nice difference from France . What I don’t understand, though, is how anyone makes any money here. It seems like they’re never working. Supposedly the Spaniards work just as much as Americans, but I find that hard to believe. The shops are only open from around 12-3 and then 5:30-9:00, which can be really frustrating. Anyway, the town has a cool cathedral and a watchtower with a great view of the city & a device that projects a bird’s-eye-view image of the city. I didn’t go inside either of them, but I did go inside the Museo de Cadiz, which has paintings, an archaeology exhibit, and traditional puppets from the region. I didn’t care much for the puppets or paintings, but the archaeology stuff was cool – there was lots of Phoenician jewelry, two sarcophagi, Roman statues, and other odds and ends, including a Phoenician baby bottle that looks like the lamp in Aladdin. According to our guide, the heads of the Roman statues were made separately from the bodies, because the bodies could be made anywhere, but the heads were carved by the best artisans who lived in Rome . I thought that was pretty cool. She also told us that this one guy dedicated his life to finding another Phoenician sarcophagus after the first had been discovered, but never found one. It wasn’t until his kids decided to demolish his house after his death that the second one was found. Talk about irony.

After the museum, we had a break in the Flower Market, where I got some nice ice cream, and then we continued to the New Cathedral, which took over 100 years to construct. The bottom of it is made out of fossilized sand (or something like that), but the top is made of limestone because the people of Cadiz had to stop digging up the fossilized sand or else nothing would be holding up their city any more. The upper part of the cathedral is also not as nice because by the time the city finished building it, it wasn’t as rich as when the construction began (construction commenced during a time when Cadiz was the only port with access to the Americas ). We didn’t go inside, but it was still pretty neat from the outside. After that, we walked past the Old Cathedral (which was destroyed somehow and wasn’t rebuilt because they decided to build the new one instead) and then saw some sort of government building with a bell tower on top that plays a tune composed by Manuel de Falla (the composer of the broomstick piece in Disney’s <i>Fantasia</i>) every hour on the hour. Actually, we saw where de Falla was born and the house he spent a good deal of his life, too.

After the tour, I honestly don’t remember what I did…probably bought my bus tickets and stuff and ate. Oh!  Just kidding. I decided last minute to do the SAS field program where we went to a Flamenco show and saw a bull fight and equestrian show. The equestrian show was OK – it was basically a lot of dressage (which is supposed to be dancing on horseback) and some Flamenco dancing. The bull fight was more hilarious than exciting because it was actually a test run to see if these two baby bulls would be suitable to actually be in a bull fight, but I think they probably failed the test because they were much more afraid of the people and the flailing capes than angered by them. One of the guys who was maybe 16 (they weren’t official matadors) was almost hurt by one of the bulls, but most of the bulls’ attempts were half-hearted so it wasn’t very exciting. Though to be honest, after talking with a friend who saw an actual bullfight where one bull’s guts were flung all over the stadium and another was dragged around the stadium before it was fully dead, I think I prefer the fight I saw.

Still, the evening was a lot of fun, because after that we had tapas at a nice restaurant with a Flamenco show and then we danced afterward. One of the SAS kids knew salsa and I tried dancing with him but sort of failed. Oh, and the Macarena was played twice, which was kind of hilarious.

So that was all just the first day. I’ll try to be a bit more brief from here on out because I’ve already spent several days trying to finish this blog and my attention span isn’t long enough to be as detailed for the rest of this particular entry. Anyway, on the second day Lorelei and I went to Tarifa, the “southest point of Europe ,” according to a street sign. We meant to go whale-watching but it was pretty windy so none of the companies there were sailing that day, and the one that normally sails out of a different bay when it’s windy had a mechanical failure. Lorelei and I think the SAS kids broke the boat because the SAS whale-watching trip had used the same company and boat the day before. Anyway, we tried pretty much every single whale-watching place, but it was no use. We still had fun, though, because we took pictures of Morocco across the water, the Strait of Gibralter , and of ourselves touching both the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean . Funny how simply changing the name of the ocean at a specific point can seem so cool. We ended up heading back pretty early, though, because around 3 all the stores were closing and we didn’t have anything to do. But we still had a good time because we grabbed some other SAS kids back in Cadiz and hit up the beach. It kind of reminded me of the beaches of Antibes in summer (i.e. very crowded and a little dirty), but the water was really nice and it felt good to get out of the hot sun.

The next day Lorelei and I took a bus to Granada , where we ended up joining forces with 2 other SAS girls and a guy that decided last minute to join us as well. The bus ride took about a half an hour more than expected and we already didn’t have much time to explore the Alhambra (the main reason we were going to Granada), so that kind of stressed me out, but after booking the hostel and dropping our stuff off there, we were able to finally get to the Alhambra with a good 4 hours to explore.

The Alhambra was pretty interesting. It was the last stronghold of the Muslim population against the Spanish back when the Muslims ruled southern Spain . There weren’t many of the informational blurbs of the things we were looking at that you usually find in museums (either in Spanish or English) so I missed out on a lot of the history of the place, the but the architecture was still quite a sight to behold. I did see the place where Ferdinand and Isabella (you know, Columbus ’s financial backers) were originally buried, though. But the Nasrid Palace and the Garden Palace were definitely the highlights of the fortress. The intricate Islamic carvings in the Nasrid Palace and the way it was set up was so much nicer than a European castle, and I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to live there in the…1300s, I believe it was. And the gardens and fountains in the Garden Palace were just so nice to look at. I took lots of pictures, but unfortunately my skills as a photographer are quite lacking and my camera, while nice, just couldn’t capture the detail and splendor of the palaces. When I eventually get them uploaded, I don’t think they can even begin to show you all what it was like there.

Later that night, we spent a very significant amount of time trying to figure out traveling logistics for the next day and trying to figure out how the guy we were with, who decided to go off on his own that night, would meet up with us again to get the train together. I think this trip taught me that I worry a lot more than I ever thought – I was constantly stressing out about getting to the trains on time and making sure we saw everything. I still had a lot of fun, but I’m thinking that I will do more SAS-organized trips in the future or simply visit fewer places in each country, because I think that will be much less stressful.

Anyway, after finally figuring out our plans, we got dinner at this really cool restaurant that had probably 50 pig legs just hanging on the ceiling. I ordered an assortment of meats (I have no idea what they were), and it was really good. Well, except for this really strange black meat that tasted sort of like it had been pickled and fell apart in your mouth. After that, we got ice cream from this really stellar (I’m running out of adjectives here) place. The displays there were awesome – the watermelon-flavored ice cream had an actual watermelon in it that was carved like an animal, and there were actual fruits on top of the fruit-flavored ones and candy bars still in their wrappers perched on top of the candy-flavored ones. It was a good marketing strategy, because seeing the actual thing from which the ice cream got its flavor right on top of the ice cream just made me want the ice cream even more.

We eventually finished eating, headed back to the hostel, and got ready for bed/went to sleep, although not much sleeping occurred because the room was stifling hot and I was freaking out about the kid who wandered off (he was staying in a mosque, but he was super reckless and didn’t really seem to think things through, and I could definitely see something terrible happening to him because he wasn’t coming back until 6 in the morning or so). Eventually the kid came back, and then about an hour later we called two cabs to take us to the train station so we could catch a train to Sevilla. We were about an hour early because we wanted to be sure we could get tickets for the train, so once we had our tickets we had about an hour to kill. We decided to use this time to get some breakfast, and luckily there was a little coffee place in the station. I had some donuts (very Spanish, I know). The train ride itself was pretty fun – four of us had seats facing each other, so we chatted for a bit before passing out because of the lack of sleep from the previous night and the fact we had had two early mornings in a row.

Once we got to Sevilla, we wandered around kind of aimlessly. Well, I really wanted to see the Alcazar (another Moor palace thing) and the cathedral, but one of the other girls wanted to wander, so that was kinda lame that we had pretty different agendas. We also had to meet up with two other girls from SAS, but we weren’t sure exactly when or where we were going to meet up with them because we weren’t sure if they had gotten our email the night before or not, but luckily we ran into them when we were wandering around. We never did end up seeing the Alcazar, but Lorelei and I saw the inside of the cathedral, which is apparently the 3^rd-largest in the world. Christopher Columbus is buried there, but I forgot that at the time, so I didn’t really look for his resting place. I did notice the organ in there, though. It was huge, and its pipes took up a huge portion of the center of the main room. The ceilings were really awesome, too, and the view from the bell tower was something to behold. We also wandered around the Spanish Plaza , which I mistook for the cathedral (this was before we had found the cathedral) and the other girls thought was the Alcazar. Apparently it was actually built in the 1900’s for something (I don’t remember what), so we were both wrong. Regardless, even if it was a newer building, it looked really cool and I took a bunch of pictures before my camera died. The other landmark we saw was the university, which used to be a tobacco factory but now just looks cool/is a place to learn.

Anyway, I had originally planned to spend the night in Sevilla, but I decided to head back early with the two girls who had hung out in Granada with Lorelei and I instead. They were really loopy off of sugar the whole way back, and we kept taking silly pictures, eating candy, and giggling on the train. When we got back to Cadiz we tried to find someplace that was open to eat, but Spain (or, well, Cadiz , anyway) has terrible hours, so nothing was open. At that point I met up with Michaella and Jacob and we wandered around for awhile and eventually found a club/bar place where some of the other SAS kids were. We stayed for awhile and then walked back to the ship and went to bed. The next day was our last day, so Michaella and I walked around, went to a grocery store to pick up some things, and took some pictures. We got back onto the ship about an hour and a half before we had to be, just to be safe. Around 8 p.m. we finally left the port, and when I woke up I was in Morocco .

Yes! FINALLY done with this entry! I’ve been working on this for days. Don’t expect as much detail in the future, because finishing this was painful. Anyway, I hope now you have a better idea of what I’ve been up to recently. Hopefully I’ll get an entry on Morocco posted around Friday or so, but until then, adios! 

The Voyage Across the Atlantic

NOTE: This was written awhile ago (around the 5th or so, but started even earlier than that), but I didn’t post it because of logistical reasons, one of which was that I wanted to post it with my entry on Spain. Unfortunately, the entry on Spain is taking longer than expected (mostly because I’ve already spent too long on it and have therefore grown tired of it, but I’ll finish it eventually), so this is all you get for now. I just thought I’d give the head’s up so I wouldn’t have to edit it to make the dates and such make sense with today’s date. But without further ado, please read on!



Hello, everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates, but honestly not too much of anything happened up until my arrival in Spain. Honestly, after leaving Halifax, all I did was start classes and saw nothing but the Atlantic for 7 days solid. Oh, and I may have played some PSP somewhere in there, too (P3P is epic. I’d say some really nerdy things about it, but only my little sister would get them, so I won’t). That being said, there are a few things worth mentioning that occurred during the journey across the Atlantic, which I will try to summarize for you. Unfortunately, summary is not my forte, so this entry is incredibly long.

Firstly, I made friends. This is a very good thing, because I was honestly a bit worried I would have nobody to hang out with and that most everyone would be the sort of people I’d rather not talk to (i.e. stuck-up, stupid people who do nothing but party). Luckily, that is not the case. I spend most of my time hanging out with Michaella (my awesome roommate who giggles with me over who-knows-what until the wee hours of the morning), Jacob (who I knew a little bit before the voyage because he came to visit my friend David at UCLA during my freshman year), and Johnny, who lives in the same town in Pennsylvania where I spent the first 7 years of my life and was also born in the same hospital. There are also people that I have class with and join the 4 of us to play Mafia or who hang out with me on occasion, but I mostly hang out with the aforementioned 3 people. I’m also spending my entire time in Spain with my RA, Lorelei, but I’ll get to that later.

Anyway, back to crossing the Atlantic. The first day was pretty cool even though I had to get up kind of early and didn’t get much sleep the night before. I split a cab with one of my roomies from the hostel in Halifax to the port because we had too much luggage to carry by ourselves, and then we spent forever getting on the ship. After that I sort of just hung around for awhile before the ship finally set sail some 5ish hours later. Well, I did do a bit of exploring around the ship with Jacob and met Michaella, but I don’t even remember what I did besides that. I probably played PSP or something. Oh, and I think we started our very long and lame orientation. My schedule reminds me that we also had a lifeboat drill, of which I was not fond. But the cool part was when we left port at 5. Jacob and I watched as we slowly passed through Halifax, and I took pictures every few minutes to document our departure. It was really windy, but it was worth it.

What’s kind of funny, though, was that I didn’t even really notice the ship rocking until I went back inside the ship. It definitely took awhile to get used to the motion, and on the second day the motion was at least 10 times worse because we were booking it out of the East Coast so we’d miss Hurricane…Earl, I believe it was, and we were also trying to cut south of some other storm that was starting to form or something on the other side of the Atlantic. I actually have no idea what the deal was with the other storm because a) I have no news to refer to and b) the crew wasn’t really clear on it when I asked about it, so if someone knows what was going on hurricane-wise in the Atlantic between August 27th and August 29th or so, please enlighten me.

Anyway, this increased motion resulted in much unpleasantness, and I was on seasickness meds all day, which led to lots of sleeping. During the third day, I got really seasick during Global Studies and I started to wonder if I’d be miserable for the next 4 months, but luckily things got better the next day, and I haven’t touched the meds since. And even though I was miserable that day, something good happened, too – I saw a dolphin out of my window during Global Studies! I don’t know about you, but I don’t many people who can see dolphins from their classroom windows. Then again, I rarely see anything besides ocean out of the windows, so the dolphin was actually a nice change of scenery. To be frank, other than the cool sunsets, there really wasn’t anything to see besides the ocean for 7 days solid (and the Azores for a few hours a few days ago, but I slept through seeing them). I don’t have anything against the ocean and I like doing my class readings (when I do them) out on the open decks where I can admire the view and enjoy some fresh air, but seeing nothing but The Big Blue Wet Thing (Muppet Treasure Island, anyone?) gets a bit old. Makes you wonder how all those sailors who crossed the same ocean (without meds) in months, rather than days, felt.

I’d like to move on to more interesting things, like Spain, but I suppose I should dedicate a few words to my classes first. After all, the whole reason I’m here is to learn, and the deans are always stressing that we’re on a voyage, not a cruise, because I guess in their minds you can only learn when you’re voyaging. It’s sort of funny, because even though they’re trying to differentiate our cruise from others, it seems pretty darn similar to me in a lot of ways. But I digress, so let’s get back to my classes!

So, I’m taking The Anthropology of Tourism, Aging and Culture, Women in Royal Courts, and Global Studies. I get credit for my major for the first two, I really like the third, and the 4th is stupid because I already took Global Studies at UCLA but they require you to take it here because the entire voyage is themed around the topic of that class: globalization. I’d talk about them all, but my history class on court women is by far the most interesting, so I’ll talk about it instead. This class is super cool because not only does it mean I get to go to Kyoto for the class, but it also means that our readings are actually interesting. Before next class (which isn’t until after we leave Morocco), I’m supposed to have at least started The Treasure of the City of Ladies, which is apparently an advice book by a woman who lived in the middle ages about how to live as a woman in the middle ages. We’re also reading the book written by the same Anna that Anna & The King/The King and I is about and an abridged version of The Tale of Genji. It should be pretty epic.

Hmm. Somehow my intended one or two paragraphs on the last week ended up being quite a bit longer. I think I’ll just write an entirely separate entry on Spain, so you have the option to skip this (probably very boring) one, if you so choose.