Random thoughts

Running on a treadmill while the ship is rocking back and forth is near impossible. Someone should record me.

It’s a little scary that the captain only actually steers the ship when we dock.  I toured the bridge (where the control room is) today and he told us that the ship is always on auto-pilot.  But I got to sit in the captain’s chair with a captain’s hat!

I’m having the hardest time getting work done now that I’ve ever had.  There is always something going on here and I can’t bring myself to sit down and do work.  I woke up early today to write a 4 page paper in like an hour before class because I thought it was a good idea to watch a movie last night.

Gossip on the ship is 52937491x worse than high school ever was.  Literally everyone on the ship will have heard about something that happened within 2 days of it actually happening. There is this person called the “Rumor Ranger” who is an anonymous source that we can ask questions to figure out the legitimacy of something. The only thing is, I’m 99.9999% sure that it’s a dean or at least faculty member because all of the answers are straight out of the voyager’s handbook and usually don’t even answer the question.  For example: Someone emailed Rumor Ranger and asked if it was true that you would be expelled if SAS found out that you skydived, bungee jumped, or shark cage dived, and they responded that these activities were considered dangerous and we were not advised to do them.

I’m going to get really into making videos.  One of my friends on the ship has this sick camera and he records EVERYTHING. He makes really sweet movies about each country, and I decided that I need to do this too.  (I may or may not have stolen all of his videos to use too). One of my roommates is pretty good at making videos too, so she’s going to show me how to use iMovie.

Oh, and I'LL BE IN SOUTH AFRICA TOMORROW!!!

Oh Africa (the theme song of the trip)

I still can’t believe I was in Africa!! It’s pretty much how I would have expected it. Women carry their children in blankets on their backs and carry heavy things on their heads. People are crazy here. They swarm us wherever we go trying to sell us random fruit or souvenirs, and they always stop and stare at us because they aren’t used to seeing white people…

The first day in Ghana we went on a 10-hour bus ride to a monkey village, so everyone slept an ungodly amount on the way there. We got to see Togo (but only the border because we couldn’t leave the country). The people that lived in the village put on a celebration for us and we got to dance with them.  All of the kids were super precious. Then in the morning we fed monkeys with bananas!! (Shout out to Erin: Thanks for uploading my pictures for me since I didn’t have time to!) We got to see the school there and all the kids put on a little presentation for us, and then we had another long bus ride to Accra, the capital, where we stayed the night. Later that night and I chipped my tooth :( But I got to go to a Ghanaian dentist to get it filled and it was only about 60 US dollars, and I got the best souvenir out of all my friends.

Wednesday a group of us went to this old slave castle where they used to keep all of the slaves before they shipped them to the Americas. It was really sad.  And after that we went to this national park and did a canopy walk which was really cool. I was the asshole jumping up and down on the little rope bridges pissing everyone off that was afraid of heights.

Thursday Greg and I went to this water village, which was a town built on stilts.  The trip was really long.  We had a 2 hour bus ride there, then a 45 minute canoe ride to the village in the pouring rain, and we only got to stay at the village for about 20 minutes. It was cool to see, but I don't think it was worth it. And then we left Ghana Thursday night.

We just crossed the intersection of the prime meridian and equator about two hours ago, so that was pretty cool. And we get to South Africa on Thursday!!

On a sidenote: Hershey uses child labor to harvest the cocoa they use in their chocolates, so don’t buy Hershey products. And write them angry letters!!

Back in the ocean

I went to this science center thing called Inpa that was kinds of like a free roaming zoo. All of the animals could go wherever they wanted, so I liked it a lot more than a zoo. (I got a lot of turtle pictures for you, Jenny!) And Erin and I had the most productive shopping trip on our last day.

We got out of the Amazon River late Saturday night, so the ship is rocking a lot again. Still haven’t gotten seasick though. Class for 6 straight days with one reading day and then 2 more classes before Ghana is rough. And the reading day isn’t even a reading day because we all have to participate in the “Sea Olympics.”

We lost 2 hours in the last three days, so now we’re 3 hours ahead of Pittsburgh, and we still have to lose 2 more hours in the next 5 days before we get to Ghana. The only thing I have to look forward to with losing all these hours is getting two April 12ths. I still don’t understand how exactly this happens, but it will be cool anyway. Though we’ll have class on both days, so maybe it’s not such a good thing after all.

It’s sunny out today, so I’m off to lay out :) See Susie, I really don’t have anything interesting going on yet.  I’ll update after Ghana!

Here you go Susie

Brazil is amazing! We walked around Manaus Sunday afternoon, and it was really crowded, but nice. There are parks and courtyards everywhere. Sunday night, there was a Samba school of dance. (Sidenote: the drivers here are nuts! Our cab driver backed up an entire street without turning around going about 40 mph! He also put in the Beatles for us!) At the samba dance thing, the entire street was just full of Brazilian dancers (some with little drums and tambourines). They let us all dance with them and play their instruments. It was fun. Then on our walk back to the ship, I heard that the Steelers won the football game, and even though I have no Pittsburgh pride, I started singing the Pittsburgh’s going to the superbowl song (really loudly) with Erin.

Monday we got to go piranha fishing (I caught one!) and see baby crocodiles. Everyone got to hold it, but when it was my turn I freaked out when it started squirming around and dropped it in our canoe. It was a huge fiasco because we all jumped up onto our seats and had to wait for our guide to catch it again so that it wouldn’t bite any of us. Our guide was crazy! She drank the water from the Amazon and walked waist deep in the river at night barefoot to catch the crocodile with her bare hands! Then we went back to the “lodge” to sleep, but Charli, Emmy, and I were too scared to sleep in the beds they had made for us because people found cockroaches and lizards in their beds. So we got to sleep in hammocks. It was actually really comfortable.

Everyone here speaks Portuguese, but most of the time the language barrier isn’t too difficult. We’ve just been pointing and miming a lot to get our point across. They do understand some words though (like beer, thank God). And everyone is very friendly. Shelly and I were at the mall in a shoe store, and after pointing to our size, all three workers in the store just kept bringing us shoe after shoe to try on.

I'm in the jungle bitch!

We sailed down the Amazon. The water is brown. Really brown. And shallow. At one point we only cleared the bottom of the river by 4 feet. And apparently there is this sandbar that is always changing shape somewhere along the river that's the size of Switzerland??! There are bugs everywhere. Everywhere. And they are on steroids. There was a beetle literally the size of my hand on the pool deck. I hate bugs. And my bug spray apparently attracts more bugs than it repels, because I have about 5 bites on my legs from today alone. But we're like 2 degrees south of the equator, so the sunshine is amazing! We had a "reading day" today, and I got to lay out for 5 hours :) The river is actually really wide; at some points you can't even see the banks from the middle. But we got to a narrower part of the river and sailed pretty close to the shore today. It was so cool to see all the huts along the banks. People left their little houses to come out onto canoes so that they could see the ship up close. The little kids were especially cute. I took so many pictures, but none of them can even begin to describe how pretty the jungle is (and I've only seen it from my boat so far!). We get to Manaus, Brazil tomorrow!

Dominica (doh-min-EEK-a, not doh-MIN-ick-a)

I love Dominica. It's so beautiful, I can't even describe it. When we got there, we walked around the city for a while. There are little trenches on either side of the street where the overflow water (and God knows what else) goes. Literally everything is closed down on Sundays there because I guess the Dominicans are super religious. Anyway, here's a list of some things that I did while in Dominica:
+We went to the botanical garden and accidentally ended up hiking up a mountain (luckily I decided to wear my keds so that I wouldn't get a staph infection while walking around town). We had a great view from the top; we could see the entire side of the island where the ship was docked.
+I went river tubing in the afternoon.
+Even though the island was basically shut down Sunday, since there were over 600 students that wanted to drink, a few bars opened up for us. Drinks here are strong and cheap, just how I like them. I was really chatty at night, and Greg's roommate told me that he didn't know whether to describe us (Greg and I) as brother and sister or an old married couple. This could not be a more accurate way to think of us.
+I climbed down these massive rocks so that I could swim in the ocean. It was fun. My friend has a waterproof camera too, so that got some use.
+My friend and I snuck into a hotel (his idea, not mine) so that we could swim in the sweet pool there with a waterfall, then we got drinks at the very overpriced bar there. The rum punch here is STRONG.

Now I have to start my homework :( but I guess I can't complain too much because I've only had 2 days of classes so far and this is the first time I'll be opening a book

because my room is being cleaned and I can't go take a nap..

Well, I spent close to $100 at the campus store yesterday, but now I have all of my SAS gear for the rest of the trip (sweatshirt, sweatpants, tee shirt, and long sleeve tee shirt—all completely necessary). It was so nice out yesterday, and I was done with class by noon, so I got to lay out by the pool all day! I did get a little bit burnt though… The wind really cools you off, so you don’t think you’re getting a lot of sun. And I keep forgetting how much further south we are. We stopped in Puerto Rico to refuel, and since it’s a U.S. territory, I got to call home and say hi to my family and a couple friends! We were only there for a few hours, but it was like Christmas morning on the ship. Everyone was calling home and texting like crazy.  We’re currently sailing by the Virgin Islands, and I can see land from my window in my room (to the left, or port side, of the ship). Classes are boring, as usual. I fell asleep in my first one today because they turned off the lights… what do they expect? A group of us tried to sleep out on the deck last night since it was so nice out, but once we left Puerto Rico and the winds picked up, it got too cold, so three of the five left.

My roommate found a quote yesterday that I really like, so I'm repeating it: "The world is a book, and those who don't travel read only the first page." (or something along those lines anyway).