Ok, i just spent the past forever updating my windows and mcaffee watever and i'm sure u want photos so i'll make this sort of brief by telling you only of my first day in Hong Kong.
I had big plans to show up at the airport with my friends and get tickets to Bejing. But then while immigration was going thru our passports i got called out of the shower and was told to go up to purser's.
I went to the room where they were going thru 700 passports and one of the guys came up to me and showed me my passport and was like, "so did you know that you have a page missing?" and i was like, "what?"
He showed me, it jumps from 6-9 and 24-26 or something like that. So in the proccess of putting my passport together the machine missed a page before binding it. it's very obvious it wasn't ripped out. So first it took an hour for them to deem my passport invalid. Then it took another hour for them to decide that i should come down to the consulate. And then it took a while for an agent to get there to take me to the consulate.
the lady at the consulate said that she and her supervisor had never seen anything like it. and i said, "so out of the millions of passports issued, i got the one that was messed up. Great."
And by now i'm thinking of all my friends on their planes to Beijing.
So now i have to carry two passports. one with my visas and one that's good for a year. plus this extra paper that says who knows wat.
Then the agent drops me off at the ferry and says the ship is right at the end of the ferry. i'm a bit worred at this point seeing as how i don't speak Cantanese and my guide just dumped me. But you could see the ship from the ferry and it really does take u right up next to it. it was only a 15 min ride. after wondering around the mall for a while i finally found the terminal and made it back on the ship.
Now the ship.
By now it was about 400PM and it was absolutley deserted. I was a bit concerned. I traveled around by myself on the last day here (today) but i wasn't ready for that yet on my first day, i didn't know where anything was. I ended up running into this guy that was by himself and we talked about how everybody ran to Beijing.
So we (me and Jake) ran around Hong Kong for 2 days and one night in my case. I'll tell ya wat we did in the next few days.
So lesson to all
count the number of pages in ur passport
now check the link on the side to webshots and i'll try to put pics up
DD
Sunday, September 24, 2006
New Questions
Question from Shivani: What are fashions like in Japan?Question from Alice: Did you like Japan more than Hawaii?Question from Erin: How is Japanese money different from American?
Shivani- I felt sooo underdressed the whole time we were in Japan! Everyone was so put together and accessorized! All the women were wearing heals even though you walk everywhere and they all looked like they were in pain too! I was in pain and i was wearing sneakers. As far as specific fashion goes i would say they all seemed to wear a lot of layers if that makes sense. Like skirts with tights underneath and then a tankini with a thing over that and a sweater and then the jewelry! it looked like it took them a lot longer to get ready in the morning than it takes me. Not to mention i brought very few clothes with me and we can only do so much laundry on the ship! I'm doing a cross cultural comparison of woman in advertising for my trip so i looked at a lot of the fashion magazines and billboards. And i was surprised at how many fair blonde women were all over the place! Even the Asian women they showed in adverstisements were very pale.
Alice- Japan was AMAZING! and i guess i liked it more than hawaii in a different way. i like hawaii for the beaches and the laziness. i liked Japan for the people and it's rich culture. Japanese people were SO NICE! always smiling and bowing at you and wanting to help even if they didn't know English very well. Their trains are soo efficient and i don't think a train was late a single time! Oh and something i forgot to write i think--children as young as five or six run around the train stations going to school by themselves. this isn't just like the bus stop down the street. these kids are in major cities and they go all over the place in their uniforms and one was even able to tell us directions!! we heard him speaking English to some one and we just said the name of the place and he actually told us the platform to go to!!!
Erin-Japanes money is very easy to figure out. First off in appearance it's a lot more colorful and prettier than Am money, but i have been staring at it for 20 years so that could be why. 1000 yen is like 10 bucks, 10000 yen is like 100 bucks. So it was pretty easy to just move the decimal over. but it was kind of weird every now and then to pay "$1000" for something. It's even more obvious here in Hong Kong the difference in value because i just bought a $120.00 pizza yesterday that's roughly 14 bucks.
thank you all for ur questions
how many people are in ur class?
i'll try to update wat i did in Hong Kong sometime tonight when there arent SCREAMING kids in the coffee place banging on the tables on the comp next to me. and i mean SCREAMING i can feel it in my ear drums! I can't blieve their parents are letting these boys be this loud in this little coffee shop and i'm glad they can't see me writing about them on the net! :) cheers!
DD
Shivani- I felt sooo underdressed the whole time we were in Japan! Everyone was so put together and accessorized! All the women were wearing heals even though you walk everywhere and they all looked like they were in pain too! I was in pain and i was wearing sneakers. As far as specific fashion goes i would say they all seemed to wear a lot of layers if that makes sense. Like skirts with tights underneath and then a tankini with a thing over that and a sweater and then the jewelry! it looked like it took them a lot longer to get ready in the morning than it takes me. Not to mention i brought very few clothes with me and we can only do so much laundry on the ship! I'm doing a cross cultural comparison of woman in advertising for my trip so i looked at a lot of the fashion magazines and billboards. And i was surprised at how many fair blonde women were all over the place! Even the Asian women they showed in adverstisements were very pale.
Alice- Japan was AMAZING! and i guess i liked it more than hawaii in a different way. i like hawaii for the beaches and the laziness. i liked Japan for the people and it's rich culture. Japanese people were SO NICE! always smiling and bowing at you and wanting to help even if they didn't know English very well. Their trains are soo efficient and i don't think a train was late a single time! Oh and something i forgot to write i think--children as young as five or six run around the train stations going to school by themselves. this isn't just like the bus stop down the street. these kids are in major cities and they go all over the place in their uniforms and one was even able to tell us directions!! we heard him speaking English to some one and we just said the name of the place and he actually told us the platform to go to!!!
Erin-Japanes money is very easy to figure out. First off in appearance it's a lot more colorful and prettier than Am money, but i have been staring at it for 20 years so that could be why. 1000 yen is like 10 bucks, 10000 yen is like 100 bucks. So it was pretty easy to just move the decimal over. but it was kind of weird every now and then to pay "$1000" for something. It's even more obvious here in Hong Kong the difference in value because i just bought a $120.00 pizza yesterday that's roughly 14 bucks.
thank you all for ur questions
how many people are in ur class?
i'll try to update wat i did in Hong Kong sometime tonight when there arent SCREAMING kids in the coffee place banging on the tables on the comp next to me. and i mean SCREAMING i can feel it in my ear drums! I can't blieve their parents are letting these boys be this loud in this little coffee shop and i'm glad they can't see me writing about them on the net! :) cheers!
DD
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
JAPAN!!
JAPAN!!!!!
Before I tell you all what I did in Japan a few things: We’ve been rerouted straight to Hong Kong because of the typhoon—so Chrys if you sent me a letter to Qingdao (Ching-dow) then I probably won’t get it. Any info about this typhoon would be extremely interesting b/c it’s very hard to get info here on the ship. It is making the ship go UP and DOWN and ALL AROUND! And the internet hasn’t been working for the past few days. Mom, I sent you the kimono and the handkerchiefs in the mail umm…a few days ago, I guess…my days are kind of bleeding together. Please post some current events going on for me…I heard there was a shooting at a school in Canada. And I don’t know just any current events would be fascinating to me right now. Next is a segment I’m going to call, “Rumor Has It.” Oh and Chrys, are your pics of the wedding available online anywhere?
Rumor Has it—that a whole handful of students are in really big trouble for drunkenness and drugs. So, you see ladies and gentlemen, it does happen. Next is that we will be known as the “Ship that got Rerouted.” Already we’ve been moved to Hong Kong. And the ship is abuzz with talk that we may not make it to Egypt or Turkey because of terrorism. I’m all for it as long as we make it to the Mediterranean Sea. Why, you may ask. Because than we will be moved to Greece or Italy or EUROPE people. I have nothing against Africa (and in fact love the idea of visiting Africa), but if we go around Africa then we will miss Croatia and Spain as well. And the latter half of our itinerary would be down the drain! NOT COOL!! There have been a few trips in Egypt cancelled already; the ones to the Mosques and Islamic communities. Or anything that had to deal with Islam. Go figure.
Now as for Japan…I LOVED IT!! Definitely want to go back there one day and take it in more. The people are so nice and beautiful. But for a country where English is mandatory in the schools, no one really knows it! But that’s okay; it’s all about the experience, right?
So, I was in a group of five, originally. The people I was with were Becca, Wendy, Nate, and Lucy. I met Becca when she helped me with the skydiving thing (good times). We left after lunch and had to wait about 30 minutes for Wendy to get a new student ID card with about 30 other students whose cards weren’t working. Then we took a tram to the Sonnyoma (sort of) station which let out right near a mall. How wonderful. We waited in yet another line so we could get money out of the ATM with our credit cards. Only to find out that in order to get cash off of your credit card, you need a pin. I had wondered about that, but some one told me (MOM) not to worry about it. So after the rest of us got money off of our debit cards, we went to a bank to try to get money for Wendy, who didn’t bring her debit card with her because she didn’t think she would need it. I don’t blame her, I almost didn’t bring mine because it didn’t seem like I would be able to use it anywhere. After that was unsuccessful we decided to loan her money until she could pay us back.
Since it was so late by now we decided to go to Kyoto first on our rail pass (which was worth every cent) since it was closer than Tokyo. We got to Kyoto in about an hour and walked around for a place to live for the night. This was our first great find. It looked a little small on the outside, but it was long. They only had one room left for the five of us and it was traditional style--meaning slide opening doors and straw matt floor with futons. At 30 bucks a person (3000 yen) we took it. They even had a little table with cushions around it where we had a midnight snack later on. Wendy used her credit card on the room so we could all give her cash. And they served us iced tea and iced coffee with this orange jello type thing that was really good. Oh, and you took your shoes off upon entering and wore slippers. And you wore a different set of slippers into the bathroom. Apparently, wearing the bathroom slippers anywhere but the bathroom is a big taboo. After setting our stuff down in the room, we went off in search of food.
We found this cute restaurant with traditional and western style seating. If we had been able to understand her, we probably would have gone for the traditional style seating, but we were low on experience at this point. Dinner was very good. I had avian flu free chicken and rice. I tried the meso soup, but it didn’t look like any sort of meso soup I had ever tried before. Lucy and Becca had a sushi platter of some kind that they said was good and I don’t even know what Wendy and Nate had. Afterward, we walked around in search of Pachinko. I’m not even going to try to describe pachinko to you, but it’s like pinball sort of. We tried to find one that didn’t have a whole bunch of middle aged men smoking, but that seemed to be that standard. One of the employees had a card that told the directions in several different languages, but he still had to help us for about 30 minutes to show us what was going on. He was REALLY nice. So about and hour and 1000 yen later (10 bucks) we were off in search of food again.
We wanted to find some sort of sweet something to have around our table in our room. We went to a seven eleven and found a whole bunch of stuff and went back to our room as quietly as possible and took pictures of us eating everything. Then to bed!
The next day we got up early and went straight to Nara. Nara was amazing. We kept getting side tracked down these streets with all of these bakeries and shops and I found an old kimono for my mom to cut up and make into a quilt down one of those streets. In Nara we visited the Todai-ji (Great Eastern Temple) which has a huge bronze statue of the Buddha and a Deer Park. If you ever visit the deer park, don’t feed the RABID, CRAZY deer unless you want to be kicked, bitten, and nipped at. We also found a cute restaurant in Nara where we had our own little room (traditional style) where no one could see us stabbing our food with our chopsticks.
As for Tokyo. I wouldn’t recommend sleeping in the area that we were in, which I cannot remember the name of. It was great for night life and karaoke and all that jazz, but all of the hotels in this area were love hotels. And they weren’t nice ones either. So, after enduring about 5 minutes in the love hotel, I got Wendy to go with me in a taxi to another hotel. I just handed our driver my travel book and he took us to another hotel. It was interesting to see Tokyo change from seedy to nice through the taxi windows though. We made it to the hotel at about 2AM and I finally got to call home. See, dad I do check in! And don’t let them give my babies any shots either. Anyway, we tried meeting back up with them the next day, but it didn’t work, so Wendy and I went back to Kobe and spent the night around that area and slept on the ship.
The next day, Wendy and I went to Hiroshima, which was enjoyable, but depressing, I guess. It’s like going to the Holocaust Museum in DC. It’s stuff that you have to see with your own eyes so you can acknowledge it as a truth in our world’s past, but it’s not the type of thing you like to dwell on. I was already feeling sick from reading a newspaper (my first English one in weeks) on the train so pictures of melted people didn’t really help. All over were testimonies about children who had been sent to demolition work to keep fire from burning down the whole city and there they were exposed to immense levels of radiation that severely burned them and killed the majority of them. What I found most interesting is that in books and stuff all you see is pictures of the destruction and fire. I knew that the bomb was a long time ago, but the place was alive with restaurants and parks, and museums and businesses.
Our last day in Kobe was pretty uneventful for me. I was feeling sick and only spent an hour outside the ship and then called it quits. I came to my room and tried to relax and watch the movies they were playing on our little TVs. After dinner I knocked myself out with Tylenol PM and missed the 9PM meeting about skipping Qingdao. The one meeting I miss and they finally announce something worth hearing.
And to add on to that…I was still feeling sick up until today. So skipping Qingdao worked out okay for me b/c it would not have been fun!
This may seem long, but there is a lot I didn’t tell you. Like the woman in Hiroshima who prayed for Wendy and I and said that our “blood will be purified”—she had it written on a little card in multiple languages. And about how everybody really does bow to each other even groups of friends. Oh! And about the drunk guys in Kobe after Hiroshima who (we think) tried to get us to buy them beer. The last thing they needed was more beer. Or how I really don’t like sake either, BLEH! Or about the thousands of vending machines selling cigarettes and beer and other stuff that we don’t know what it was! But this is long enough. And you know most of what I did in Japan! And that I had fun! And hopefully I’ll have as much fun in the rest of the countries we visit!
LOVE U ALL FOREVER!
DD
Before I tell you all what I did in Japan a few things: We’ve been rerouted straight to Hong Kong because of the typhoon—so Chrys if you sent me a letter to Qingdao (Ching-dow) then I probably won’t get it. Any info about this typhoon would be extremely interesting b/c it’s very hard to get info here on the ship. It is making the ship go UP and DOWN and ALL AROUND! And the internet hasn’t been working for the past few days. Mom, I sent you the kimono and the handkerchiefs in the mail umm…a few days ago, I guess…my days are kind of bleeding together. Please post some current events going on for me…I heard there was a shooting at a school in Canada. And I don’t know just any current events would be fascinating to me right now. Next is a segment I’m going to call, “Rumor Has It.” Oh and Chrys, are your pics of the wedding available online anywhere?
Rumor Has it—that a whole handful of students are in really big trouble for drunkenness and drugs. So, you see ladies and gentlemen, it does happen. Next is that we will be known as the “Ship that got Rerouted.” Already we’ve been moved to Hong Kong. And the ship is abuzz with talk that we may not make it to Egypt or Turkey because of terrorism. I’m all for it as long as we make it to the Mediterranean Sea. Why, you may ask. Because than we will be moved to Greece or Italy or EUROPE people. I have nothing against Africa (and in fact love the idea of visiting Africa), but if we go around Africa then we will miss Croatia and Spain as well. And the latter half of our itinerary would be down the drain! NOT COOL!! There have been a few trips in Egypt cancelled already; the ones to the Mosques and Islamic communities. Or anything that had to deal with Islam. Go figure.
Now as for Japan…I LOVED IT!! Definitely want to go back there one day and take it in more. The people are so nice and beautiful. But for a country where English is mandatory in the schools, no one really knows it! But that’s okay; it’s all about the experience, right?
So, I was in a group of five, originally. The people I was with were Becca, Wendy, Nate, and Lucy. I met Becca when she helped me with the skydiving thing (good times). We left after lunch and had to wait about 30 minutes for Wendy to get a new student ID card with about 30 other students whose cards weren’t working. Then we took a tram to the Sonnyoma (sort of) station which let out right near a mall. How wonderful. We waited in yet another line so we could get money out of the ATM with our credit cards. Only to find out that in order to get cash off of your credit card, you need a pin. I had wondered about that, but some one told me (MOM) not to worry about it. So after the rest of us got money off of our debit cards, we went to a bank to try to get money for Wendy, who didn’t bring her debit card with her because she didn’t think she would need it. I don’t blame her, I almost didn’t bring mine because it didn’t seem like I would be able to use it anywhere. After that was unsuccessful we decided to loan her money until she could pay us back.
Since it was so late by now we decided to go to Kyoto first on our rail pass (which was worth every cent) since it was closer than Tokyo. We got to Kyoto in about an hour and walked around for a place to live for the night. This was our first great find. It looked a little small on the outside, but it was long. They only had one room left for the five of us and it was traditional style--meaning slide opening doors and straw matt floor with futons. At 30 bucks a person (3000 yen) we took it. They even had a little table with cushions around it where we had a midnight snack later on. Wendy used her credit card on the room so we could all give her cash. And they served us iced tea and iced coffee with this orange jello type thing that was really good. Oh, and you took your shoes off upon entering and wore slippers. And you wore a different set of slippers into the bathroom. Apparently, wearing the bathroom slippers anywhere but the bathroom is a big taboo. After setting our stuff down in the room, we went off in search of food.
We found this cute restaurant with traditional and western style seating. If we had been able to understand her, we probably would have gone for the traditional style seating, but we were low on experience at this point. Dinner was very good. I had avian flu free chicken and rice. I tried the meso soup, but it didn’t look like any sort of meso soup I had ever tried before. Lucy and Becca had a sushi platter of some kind that they said was good and I don’t even know what Wendy and Nate had. Afterward, we walked around in search of Pachinko. I’m not even going to try to describe pachinko to you, but it’s like pinball sort of. We tried to find one that didn’t have a whole bunch of middle aged men smoking, but that seemed to be that standard. One of the employees had a card that told the directions in several different languages, but he still had to help us for about 30 minutes to show us what was going on. He was REALLY nice. So about and hour and 1000 yen later (10 bucks) we were off in search of food again.
We wanted to find some sort of sweet something to have around our table in our room. We went to a seven eleven and found a whole bunch of stuff and went back to our room as quietly as possible and took pictures of us eating everything. Then to bed!
The next day we got up early and went straight to Nara. Nara was amazing. We kept getting side tracked down these streets with all of these bakeries and shops and I found an old kimono for my mom to cut up and make into a quilt down one of those streets. In Nara we visited the Todai-ji (Great Eastern Temple) which has a huge bronze statue of the Buddha and a Deer Park. If you ever visit the deer park, don’t feed the RABID, CRAZY deer unless you want to be kicked, bitten, and nipped at. We also found a cute restaurant in Nara where we had our own little room (traditional style) where no one could see us stabbing our food with our chopsticks.
As for Tokyo. I wouldn’t recommend sleeping in the area that we were in, which I cannot remember the name of. It was great for night life and karaoke and all that jazz, but all of the hotels in this area were love hotels. And they weren’t nice ones either. So, after enduring about 5 minutes in the love hotel, I got Wendy to go with me in a taxi to another hotel. I just handed our driver my travel book and he took us to another hotel. It was interesting to see Tokyo change from seedy to nice through the taxi windows though. We made it to the hotel at about 2AM and I finally got to call home. See, dad I do check in! And don’t let them give my babies any shots either. Anyway, we tried meeting back up with them the next day, but it didn’t work, so Wendy and I went back to Kobe and spent the night around that area and slept on the ship.
The next day, Wendy and I went to Hiroshima, which was enjoyable, but depressing, I guess. It’s like going to the Holocaust Museum in DC. It’s stuff that you have to see with your own eyes so you can acknowledge it as a truth in our world’s past, but it’s not the type of thing you like to dwell on. I was already feeling sick from reading a newspaper (my first English one in weeks) on the train so pictures of melted people didn’t really help. All over were testimonies about children who had been sent to demolition work to keep fire from burning down the whole city and there they were exposed to immense levels of radiation that severely burned them and killed the majority of them. What I found most interesting is that in books and stuff all you see is pictures of the destruction and fire. I knew that the bomb was a long time ago, but the place was alive with restaurants and parks, and museums and businesses.
Our last day in Kobe was pretty uneventful for me. I was feeling sick and only spent an hour outside the ship and then called it quits. I came to my room and tried to relax and watch the movies they were playing on our little TVs. After dinner I knocked myself out with Tylenol PM and missed the 9PM meeting about skipping Qingdao. The one meeting I miss and they finally announce something worth hearing.
And to add on to that…I was still feeling sick up until today. So skipping Qingdao worked out okay for me b/c it would not have been fun!
This may seem long, but there is a lot I didn’t tell you. Like the woman in Hiroshima who prayed for Wendy and I and said that our “blood will be purified”—she had it written on a little card in multiple languages. And about how everybody really does bow to each other even groups of friends. Oh! And about the drunk guys in Kobe after Hiroshima who (we think) tried to get us to buy them beer. The last thing they needed was more beer. Or how I really don’t like sake either, BLEH! Or about the thousands of vending machines selling cigarettes and beer and other stuff that we don’t know what it was! But this is long enough. And you know most of what I did in Japan! And that I had fun! And hopefully I’ll have as much fun in the rest of the countries we visit!
LOVE U ALL FOREVER!
DD
Sunday, September 10, 2006
I love QUESTIONS!!
Hello everybody!! I am so excited to get to Japan tomorrow, I can’t even begin to tell you. Time on the internet is limited, so I am writing this up on word and then pasting it to my blog. If I don’t update it often, that is why.
Um…I’m trying to remember some of the questions that my sixth graders had….
Yes, we have seen some fishies. Some whales from far away when we were doing a life boat drill. A lot of flying fish. When we docked in Mexico there were some otters that came to shore. Occasionally, when I look out I’ll see a dark shadow in the water and will try to see what it is, but it’s tricky to see.
Living on a ship is easier than I thought it would be. You get your sea legs and get used to the rocking pretty fast. And at night when you’re going to bed it’s like some one’s rocking you to sleep. I think I’m probably going to have a hard time adjusting to dry land when it comes to sleeping in a bed that’s not moving! Not to mention the ship isn’t very big at all, so if you need to go somewhere, well you don’t have to go very far. Food is getting pretty old. After this I’ll no longer want pasta again. I’m sure I’ll be more appreciative after seeing struggling families in some of the countries, but for now…I just wanna get off the boat…ship, sorry! You can buy food in port and bring it sealed on to the ship. And they sell smoothies and candy bars, but I’m trying to be good. These things add up you know. In any case, I’m down to two meals a day because the pasta thing is getting old. Yesterday they had plane, steamed rice and I was as excited as my Asian friends. Ruby, John, and I started a Mixed Martial Arts and Self Defense club and there are a lot of other clubs going on like Yoga, Tai Chi, and a whole bunch of stuff. Classes are HARD! I haven’t done this much reading and studying since I was at Talent House! And before all the clubs got started it felt like the only thing there was to do on the ship was read, but now it’s getting better. When it’s sunny you can always lay out by this oversized bath tub they call a pool. We do have TV in our room, but they only play movies at night. And most of the time (except for when we are in port) they only play documentaries or foreign films from our next port of call. But there is this channel that shows you where the ship is in the world and the coordinates and stuff so that’s neat. When we left Honolulu they played United Flight 93 (which I refuse to watch) and Superman Returns (which I did watch) so that was nice. And it’s been weird to have classes for nine days in a row without a weekend. Our in port time counts as our weekends, but even that is going to be constantly moving! So we’re basically not going to sleep until we get back to the states.
And languages. I don’t speak any of the languages of the ports we are going to visit. But they do have these pre port seminars where they’ll teach you some key phrases and about cultural dos and don’ts—always good to know. And we have students come aboard the ship from a port before we reach it (so we have some Japanese students on board now) who we can asks for directions or tips and things like that.
Back to Honolulu—urs truly went SKYDIVING!! I haven’t written about it till now because I didn’t want my parental units to talk me out of it (love you mom and dad!). At the beginning of the first week, I was trying to get a group together to go, but I didn’t know anybody. So during a Q and A session at our last orientation meeting—we had like five—I asked how we can get groups together for people who want to do certain things. The lady didn’t really answer my question so I was like, “well, I want to go skydiving and I want to know if there is anybody else who wants to go. Does anybody else want to go skydiving?” And like half the place raised there hands! So I asked her how I can get a touch with all of them. So they told me they would put a bulletin board up in front of the Field office. Next thing I know I’m the “skydiving girl” (not a bad nickname by the way) and we broke the record for number of jumps in one day for this place that we found, Pacific Skydive, with 113 jumps in one day. It was amazing; you could see the whole island from up there. Not to mention a great way to meet and bond with people, jump out of a plane together!!!
Anyway it’s 800 in the morning here and I want to go eat breakfast. Thank you for ur questions and PLEASE try to send me mail, since eventually it will cost me money to update on the internet from the ship. I will try to get to an internet café sometime in Japan to update pictures from skydiving. It simply will take to long to try to do it from sea. Hopefully, I’ll be sending you guys your first cultural packets within the next two ports.
LOVE u ALL
DD
To Talent House--please tell me all of ur names and how many of you there are in the class!!! :)
Um…I’m trying to remember some of the questions that my sixth graders had….
Yes, we have seen some fishies. Some whales from far away when we were doing a life boat drill. A lot of flying fish. When we docked in Mexico there were some otters that came to shore. Occasionally, when I look out I’ll see a dark shadow in the water and will try to see what it is, but it’s tricky to see.
Living on a ship is easier than I thought it would be. You get your sea legs and get used to the rocking pretty fast. And at night when you’re going to bed it’s like some one’s rocking you to sleep. I think I’m probably going to have a hard time adjusting to dry land when it comes to sleeping in a bed that’s not moving! Not to mention the ship isn’t very big at all, so if you need to go somewhere, well you don’t have to go very far. Food is getting pretty old. After this I’ll no longer want pasta again. I’m sure I’ll be more appreciative after seeing struggling families in some of the countries, but for now…I just wanna get off the boat…ship, sorry! You can buy food in port and bring it sealed on to the ship. And they sell smoothies and candy bars, but I’m trying to be good. These things add up you know. In any case, I’m down to two meals a day because the pasta thing is getting old. Yesterday they had plane, steamed rice and I was as excited as my Asian friends. Ruby, John, and I started a Mixed Martial Arts and Self Defense club and there are a lot of other clubs going on like Yoga, Tai Chi, and a whole bunch of stuff. Classes are HARD! I haven’t done this much reading and studying since I was at Talent House! And before all the clubs got started it felt like the only thing there was to do on the ship was read, but now it’s getting better. When it’s sunny you can always lay out by this oversized bath tub they call a pool. We do have TV in our room, but they only play movies at night. And most of the time (except for when we are in port) they only play documentaries or foreign films from our next port of call. But there is this channel that shows you where the ship is in the world and the coordinates and stuff so that’s neat. When we left Honolulu they played United Flight 93 (which I refuse to watch) and Superman Returns (which I did watch) so that was nice. And it’s been weird to have classes for nine days in a row without a weekend. Our in port time counts as our weekends, but even that is going to be constantly moving! So we’re basically not going to sleep until we get back to the states.
And languages. I don’t speak any of the languages of the ports we are going to visit. But they do have these pre port seminars where they’ll teach you some key phrases and about cultural dos and don’ts—always good to know. And we have students come aboard the ship from a port before we reach it (so we have some Japanese students on board now) who we can asks for directions or tips and things like that.
Back to Honolulu—urs truly went SKYDIVING!! I haven’t written about it till now because I didn’t want my parental units to talk me out of it (love you mom and dad!). At the beginning of the first week, I was trying to get a group together to go, but I didn’t know anybody. So during a Q and A session at our last orientation meeting—we had like five—I asked how we can get groups together for people who want to do certain things. The lady didn’t really answer my question so I was like, “well, I want to go skydiving and I want to know if there is anybody else who wants to go. Does anybody else want to go skydiving?” And like half the place raised there hands! So I asked her how I can get a touch with all of them. So they told me they would put a bulletin board up in front of the Field office. Next thing I know I’m the “skydiving girl” (not a bad nickname by the way) and we broke the record for number of jumps in one day for this place that we found, Pacific Skydive, with 113 jumps in one day. It was amazing; you could see the whole island from up there. Not to mention a great way to meet and bond with people, jump out of a plane together!!!
Anyway it’s 800 in the morning here and I want to go eat breakfast. Thank you for ur questions and PLEASE try to send me mail, since eventually it will cost me money to update on the internet from the ship. I will try to get to an internet café sometime in Japan to update pictures from skydiving. It simply will take to long to try to do it from sea. Hopefully, I’ll be sending you guys your first cultural packets within the next two ports.
LOVE u ALL
DD
To Talent House--please tell me all of ur names and how many of you there are in the class!!! :)
Friday, September 1, 2006
Hello people
Chrys--u so funny. and my room number is 4044
Okay, here’s the update, MY WRIST IS KILLING ME!! I can barely take notes! Which is why I’m updating this site. It hurts to journal. I don’t know what I did to it, but I wish I could figure it out.
Anyway, that was my complaint for the day. I’m trying not to do too much of that since I’m on a CRUISE SHIP going around the world and all. But I’ll tell ya—some of these kids…all they know is how to complain! “The internet is sooo slow, the lines to buy beer are ridiculous, I don’t wanna wait in line for my shirt, and on and on and on.” GET OVER IT ALREADY! We’re in the middle of the ocean, people, how fast do you expect the internet to work? And you can buy beer a lot cheaper when we get into port instead of wasting it here on the ship. My goodness!
Ok, I’ll be honest. The only thing that’s actually annoyed me is the cutoff for classes. I wasn’t able to take Bioethics because apparently it is indeed full. The prof. told me that there was one spot left, but no. And they wouldn’t set up a waiting list in case people dropped. So in order to get that spot you had to be at the right place at the right time. When I found this out my reaction was, “oh well.” I’m not going to spend my day in line waiting to see if I may make it into a class only if some one else standing in front of my happens to drop my particular class. Some profs are kind of annoyed that they are soo strict about the number of students allowed in the class. Apparantly it’s a UVA thing… but it’s worked out okay. This way, I’m not taking too many classes and I can still sit in and sort of audit the ones that sound interesting without worrying about doing the papers and stuff. And I can join more clubs now too. (i'm starting a Self Defense club) With bioethics I would have had class on B days from 9:20 to 2:00 with only lunch in between. FUN!
Anyway, we get to Hawaii on Sat. and it’s going to be a day of beaches, shopping for food, and beaches. I only have one project I need to do in Hawaii for Field Methods and I’m golden.
Something interesting—I thought being on a ship and living on a ship would feel weird. But it doesn’t. It feels perfectly normal to wake up every day and go up to the six deck to work out, then stretch for a while outside while the sun’s still rising, shower, breakfast, Global Studies, then the rest of my day. Normal. All of it. Maybe it’s because the stuff we do on the ship is so mundane and normal, or the same as what we’d be doing back at home….with maybe a little less TV—which I’ll be honest and say I miss. But hopefully I’ll get over soon enough.
Today was the first day when the sun came out and people could actually lay out in the sun. It’s been pretty cloudy since we got on and actually kind of cool on deck.
I’m starting to plan for Japan and China now. I might have found a group of people I can do Japan with. A girl named Becca and I think her roommate named Lucy, I can’t quite remember.
More on that when I have more information. Oh and the addresses too….because I cant expect any mail without giving you guys the addresses.
Okay that’s all for now!! LOVE YOU ALL!!!!
Okay, here’s the update, MY WRIST IS KILLING ME!! I can barely take notes! Which is why I’m updating this site. It hurts to journal. I don’t know what I did to it, but I wish I could figure it out.
Anyway, that was my complaint for the day. I’m trying not to do too much of that since I’m on a CRUISE SHIP going around the world and all. But I’ll tell ya—some of these kids…all they know is how to complain! “The internet is sooo slow, the lines to buy beer are ridiculous, I don’t wanna wait in line for my shirt, and on and on and on.” GET OVER IT ALREADY! We’re in the middle of the ocean, people, how fast do you expect the internet to work? And you can buy beer a lot cheaper when we get into port instead of wasting it here on the ship. My goodness!
Ok, I’ll be honest. The only thing that’s actually annoyed me is the cutoff for classes. I wasn’t able to take Bioethics because apparently it is indeed full. The prof. told me that there was one spot left, but no. And they wouldn’t set up a waiting list in case people dropped. So in order to get that spot you had to be at the right place at the right time. When I found this out my reaction was, “oh well.” I’m not going to spend my day in line waiting to see if I may make it into a class only if some one else standing in front of my happens to drop my particular class. Some profs are kind of annoyed that they are soo strict about the number of students allowed in the class. Apparantly it’s a UVA thing… but it’s worked out okay. This way, I’m not taking too many classes and I can still sit in and sort of audit the ones that sound interesting without worrying about doing the papers and stuff. And I can join more clubs now too. (i'm starting a Self Defense club) With bioethics I would have had class on B days from 9:20 to 2:00 with only lunch in between. FUN!
Anyway, we get to Hawaii on Sat. and it’s going to be a day of beaches, shopping for food, and beaches. I only have one project I need to do in Hawaii for Field Methods and I’m golden.
Something interesting—I thought being on a ship and living on a ship would feel weird. But it doesn’t. It feels perfectly normal to wake up every day and go up to the six deck to work out, then stretch for a while outside while the sun’s still rising, shower, breakfast, Global Studies, then the rest of my day. Normal. All of it. Maybe it’s because the stuff we do on the ship is so mundane and normal, or the same as what we’d be doing back at home….with maybe a little less TV—which I’ll be honest and say I miss. But hopefully I’ll get over soon enough.
Today was the first day when the sun came out and people could actually lay out in the sun. It’s been pretty cloudy since we got on and actually kind of cool on deck.
I’m starting to plan for Japan and China now. I might have found a group of people I can do Japan with. A girl named Becca and I think her roommate named Lucy, I can’t quite remember.
More on that when I have more information. Oh and the addresses too….because I cant expect any mail without giving you guys the addresses.
Okay that’s all for now!! LOVE YOU ALL!!!!
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