Into Southeast Asia

Well, we’re back to summer already! The air outside is thick and humid and everyone’s back to laying out on the deck and getting sunburned. Allyn and I had to take a few moments today while basking in the sun, surrounded by the open ocean to remember that this is school. At times like this it’s way too easy to forget that we have to go to class. Life’s not too bad :)
Hong Kong is a crazy city. It would be such a great place to spend a vacation in the summer… so of course I want to come back! It has a completely different feel than the rest of China—still crowded but nothing compared to Shanghai, and definitely the most international city we’ve been to. Pretty much every sign was also in English and everyone spoke English. I felt like I saw as many Europeans as I did Chinese! So anyway, the first day I went out with Erin and Margalit to meet Erin’s two friends who are from Hong Kong. She met them in a study abroad program they did in Australia and they said they’d show us all around Hong Kong! So we met Alex and Samantha, who were soo excited to meet us and spoke perfect English. We first walked around on the island we were docked at (Kowloon) and went to the natural history museum. Then they took us to a delicioussss dim dum brunch, and I’m so glad we had them because I would’ve had no idea what to order! Dim sum is kind of like tapas, but they’re all sorts of dumplings and buns. We got some with shrimp, pork, fish, these little turnip cakes, and I ordered buns with ginger and honey inside. Everything was so good! Then Margalit decided to be adventurous and ordered duck feet… and yes they were exactly what you would imagine. Then Alex and Samantha wanted us to try all their favorite desserts so they ordered us this mango coconut soup-like stuff that had bubbles in the bottom like bubble tea. And thennn they got us this sweet red bean soup, mango jelly, and a “birthday” bun with a sweet tasting lotus seed inside. Everything is so different than what I’m used to! But luckily I’m not a picky eater so I love to try everything.
So after being filled with every kind of dumpling possible, we left Kowloon island by ferry to Hong Kong island where we walked through the Avenue of Stars, through street after street of towering skyscrapers, and then started up through the hills on the longest escalator in the world! It was never ending, and we didn’t even go all the way to the top. It was neat how the city and all the buildings are built on the hills and it just seems to go up forever. It’s hard to describe without pictures! We took a cab ride back, which literally felt like being on a rollercoaster, down to another area where all the street markets are. One entire street was like dedicated to selling pets, it was so strange. Walls were just lined with bags of goldfish and I couldn’t believe how many Chinese people were crowding around and buying them. So after shopping for a long while Samantha and Alex took us to another street that was more like a market of outdoor fast food restaurants and food vendors. We sat down at a place known for their clay rice pots and again ordered a ton of different dishes. Alex ordered these whole prawns that you snap the heads off of and suck the insides out. Then we ordered some regular Chinese noodle dishes, veggies, and clay rice pots. By the time it was dark the entire city came alive by billions of neon signs—it was definitely a sight. Exhausted from a long day of walking and eating, we said goodbye to Samantha and Alex back at our port because they had to go back to class in the morning after their long new years break. It was so nice to have local friends to show us around, because we would have never had the same experience on our own!
The next day I met back up with Allyn after her Beijing trip, and we decided to go to Lantau island to escape the city and to see the largest bronze Buddha in the world! We took a “crystal” cable car with a glass floor over the water and through the mountains of Lantau island up to Ngong Ping village, where the great Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery are. It was a pretty foggy morning so the cable cars seemed to just vanish into the distance… it was such a cool ride. At the top we walked around the cute village and then hiked the stairs to the Buddha, which was hiding peacefully in the mist. He was beautiful and then the fog began to clear so we could see the entire village below us and the mountains going on for miles. We walked back down and went in the monastery, and then hiked the “wisdom path”, which took us to this big circle of tall tree trunks sliced down the middle and carved with Chinese characters, which I assume was the “wisdom”. The entire Lantau trail goes all around the mountains and all the way back down to where the cable car starts, and apparently it takes days to hike the whole thing. I really wanted to hike back down but it takes 3-4 hours and we didn’t have time :(  soo we hiked on a few more shorter trails and then decided to take the cable car back. It was so nice to be out in the open, hiking and being away from people! I had been in the city too long… I’m so used to having my space at home.
So after a refreshing day we watched the light show that goes on every night at 8pm, which is when all the buildings on the skyline go crazy with lights and lasers and make an amaazing scene. It’s just incredible, and once again too hard to describe.
Our last day in Hong Kong I decided to go off on my own, exploring the area around the port and the biggest shopping mall in Hong Kong, which happens to actually be our port terminal. We literally had to go through the mall to get on our ship. It was nice to be on my own for once, because I’ve practically never been alone on this trip! It made me realize how much time I usually spend alone and I kind of miss it haha… being with people and especially traveling with people 24/7 can get overwhelming and tiring at times. So I got to take my time and explore and shop for all the weird Chinese snacks in the supermarkets which was fun.
Hong Kong is definitely a place I’d like to spend more time in, there is so much that I didn’t do and it is supposed to be absolutely beautiful in the summer with gorgeous beaches and the best snorkeling. And even though it seems like a big dense city, right when you step outside of that there’s lots of green land, mountains, parks, and a ton of places to get away and hike.
So now I’m sitting here fresh from China and about to be in Vietnam in 6 hours!! We just had our cultural and logistical pre-port which is like a big pep-rally getting us excited for our next adventure….. and I am SO excited. Finally back to the tropical weather and to a place less developed then anywhere we’ve been so far.  I’ve heard some amazing things and I can’t wait to write about all the new experiences :)
-Michele

my life in photos for the past month

Here are some more of my pictures starting with Japan....
(click to make them bigger)


Zach and I in Kamakura on our hike to the Great Buddha


Allyn getting excited for sushi with our new Japanese friends!- our first night in Yokohama


Lauren, Margalit, me, and Shannon at sushi



The Great Buddha in Kamakura.. the 2nd largest bronze buddha in the world :)


The Heian Shinto Shrine in Kyoto


In the hostel we found in Kyoto, looking pretty rough after traveling for several days- wet, dirty, and in the same clothes


Just some girls on the street in Tokyo!


Mini hello kitty waffles in Harajuku =D


The ship docking in Shanghai


Hot pot meal in Shanghai- yumm


At a local market in Shanghai


Just a bucket of fish heads I stumbled into..



Egg wontons being prepared at the market


Our host mother and the fantastic Chinese meal she prepared for us!


Eating her delicious homemade wonton soup :)


My Shanghai family!


The night skyline of Shanghai from our ship!


brothers, sisters, Denise, & Jeff- My shipboard family :)

Of course I have hundreds of pictures so it was hard to choose... but I feel like these represent everything pretty well. Hopefully I'll get a chance to post more at some point :)

finally some pictures!

so I'm in Hong Kong and finally have free wifi so I can post a few photos! yay



This is Hanauma Bay, Oahu, Hawaii, where Allyn, Lawrence and I went snorkeling! beautiful.


Swimming with sea turtles in Hanauma Bay!

ahh my computer battery is about to die, I'll finish posting these tomorrow!!

Ni hao

I just realized it’s been exactly one month since we embarked. I really don’t believe it—time is flying by way too fast.
Shanghai is an insane city. What a difference from Japan! I think as soon as we arrived everyone automatically compared it to Japan which is neat, orderly, and pretty high-tech, but China was just pure chaos. Without much time to research or make plans between the two countries, we just decided to go out and explore the city on our first day. First of all, our ship is docked in the most amazing spot possible. Surrounding the entire ship is pure city skyline with incredible buildings of all different shapes and at night they all light up in flashing colors. Right outside me and allyn’s window is the Pearl Tower (the needle point tower you’ll see in every picture of Shanghai) and the 2 tallest buildings in China. So the first morning me, Allyn, Lauren, Margalit, and Erin set out having no idea where we’re going…. we thought we had to take a ferry across the river to the Bund area and Nanjing Road (the main shopping road) so we finally found the ferry, got lost, got on a bus, then a metro, and somehow made it to a section of Nanjing road. Later we realized we could have easily walked over the bridge and been right there, or taken a cab which costs less than $2 to go about anywhere. But we were exploring. So of course the section of Nanjing Road we first come to is the area blocked off just for pedestrians, and it was literally just a solid mass of moving Chinese people. What a first impression of the most populous country in the world… you could literally not walk and just be pushed along. What is so different about Chinese people from Japanese is how aggressive and pushy they are! It’s just common and not considered rude to shove people and get elbowed and pushed around. And cars do not stop for anyone, even when you have a walking sign to cross the street. Drivers are crazy! Anyway, it was cool seeing all the shops and markets along the main street but the people were overwhelming! This was a typical Tuesday and it was WAY worse than any shopping mall the day after Christmas. We went in a department store and I think all I saw were sweaters, just lining the walls on every floor. So then we wandered into this hot pot restaurant which turned out to be the highlight of our day. We weren’t exactly sure what hot pots were or what to order, but it turned out that everyone orders their own soup boiling over a flame, and then, following what the waitresses recommended, we ordered raw shrimp dumplings, chicken wah, balls of beef, mushrooms, noodles, a huge plate of greens, fish wah, and tofu, and you cook it all in your hot pot and dip it in a sauce you make yourself out of all these varieties. It was soo delicious! It sounds like a ton of food but you just order a bunch of small plates and share them all. I was worried because I felt like we ordered a lot and it was a pretty fancy restaurant, but the bill was only like $6 a person! That’s when we realized things are a bit cheaper in China.  So after that fulfilling experience we continued wandering with the worst map we possibly could have had, found People’s Square which is a big park in the middle of Nanjing Road, and then continued down the road to the west end where the higher end shopping is. After walking forever in the bitterrrly cold air, we found this temple that Margalit wanted to find, and decided to take a cab back which we found to be ridiculously cheap. It was only about 8:00 but we were so overwhelmed and exhausted from the day. So chaotic! You can definitely tell you’re in a city of 20 million people.
The next day was quite a different experience. Allyn and I had a field trip called “Tasting the daily life of a Shanghai citizen” so first we got on a bus and rode all throughout the city. Driving along the highway the high rises just never end- there’s over 5,000 of them and each one is unique and of different architecture. Everyone lives in high rise apartments, most of which looked pretty run down, and rent is only about $2!! We stopped and spent some time at a community center for the elderly where Allyn danced with an old man who got mad at her for not knowing the steps. We then went to a local market where all the fresh meat and produce is sold. And let me tell you, they eat some strange things. We saw every kind of raw fish, seafood, including live eels and things I’ve neverrrr seen before, raw eggs of all kinds, whole pig carcasses, geese hanging from the ceiling, mushrooms and veggies galore, whole sugarcanes, nuts, teas, and women cooking fresh spring rolls and wontons. I was walking along in awe at everything and ran into a bucket, which I looked down to find full of bloody fish heads. This is their typical grocery shopping… a bit different than ours. After the market we went to visit our host families who spent hours cooking an authentic meal for us with all the fresh food from the market! Allyn and I and 5 others went into a lower-middle class woman’s apartment where we found a feast already set for us on the table. The apartment was tiny and she had been cooking all morning. We had to take turns going into the kitchen to watch her cook because it hardly fit 3 people! She was soo kind and kept bringing out more and more dishes! We started out with pork, tofu, duck, eggrolls, balls of beef, quail eggs, tomatoes, radishes, and bamboo shoots….. and then she brought out real kung pao chicken, egg and meat dumplings, a sweet dessert rice, and thennn we went in to help her cook a shrimp and celery dish and then a beef and onions dish. She was the most fantastic cook ever—it all tasted so fresh and authentic. And to top it off she brought out homemade wonton soup! Talk about a filling meal. They obviously don’t feast like this every day but she said since it’s the Chinese New Year they make elaborate dishes like this one. We got to talk through an interpreter with the woman for a while who said she works at a convenience store and her husband is a cab driver. They both work 24 hour shifts and then get a day off! I can’t imagine being a citizen of Shanghai and living in one of a million tiny apartments in one of a thousand apartment high-rises. Our host mother was so sweet though and so happy to be cooking for us. It was definitely a real view of their culture. After saying goodbye we walked through the French concession, which was strange because all the buildings were western-colonial type. It’s like the opposite of “Chinatown” in every other country—instead they have French town.
We got back to the ship after an amazing day and were ready to go out and see the city at night. We had heard about Cloud 9, one of the highest bars in the world on the 87th floor of the Jin Mao tower (which we discovered was one of the giant skyscrapers out our window). So me, Allyn, Lawrence, and Margalit went to check it out, found our way to the 87th floor and got a table in the Sky Lounge, by far the classiest place I have ever been. Windows lined the entire lounge with the most incredible view of the city lights. We towered over every other skyscraper in the city. We ordered some chocolate fondue and spent a long time just sitting in disbelief at our typical Wednesday night in the Sky Lounge of the 2nd highest building in China towering over an entire city of flashing lights. And then to top it off, it’s the Chinese New Year so at one point fireworks began going off below us from different points throughout the city. I’ve never seen fireworks from above before! They were shooting up right at us, and everywhere you looked in the distance you could see more clusters of them. It was truly magical… we just sat there in awe. I wanted to take a picture but it would not come close to capturing the moment that it was. So after feeling like the luckiest people in the world, we went home to our ship to get ready for our final day in Shanghai.
On this morning Allyn left for Beijing for her Great Wall trip. I hope she comes back--  It’s supposed to be freeeezing and they’re spending 2 nights sleeping on the Great Wall! I almost froze in Shanghai (which is way south of Beijing) so I’m somewhat glad to be taking the ship to warmer Hong Kong. So on my last day I went back to Nanjing Road with my friends Margalit, Jess, and Alyssa and we did some shopping and went to the Shanghai museum. There are these huge malls full of booths of fake and illegal things like northfaces, uggs, ipods, and pirated dvds which you can bargain down to nothing! I got the first 5 seasons of the office for $3 which I was skeptical to buy but it plays perfectly. The vendors are extremely annoying though and will chase you down the hall shouting lower and lower prices. That entire road is just an insane madhouse- on the part sectioned off for pedestrians there are these mini trains driving around every which way and they will literally run you over, and you can’t see them coming until they are right behind you because all you can see is a solid mass of people!
Although I had no expectations for China, it definitely lives up to being the most populated country in the world and I don’t know how much I could handle. Their culture is very unique and surely different than anything I’ve seen but a bit too hectic for me personally. I think Hong Kong will be a sight to see and very different, and I can’t wait to be warm again! Now it’s two days on the ship for me, my first real break to relax and finally get homework done. It’ll be good to catch up, cause a day after Hong Kong we’re in Vietnam!!  My life is unreal, I love it :)
-Michele

my first steps into Asia

Japan….. where do I begin. The days flew by incredibly fast and everything is already blurred together in my head…. and I hardly have time to even think about what happened because in 1 day we’ll be in China! It’s insane. All I can say is I wish I could have spent at least a week in each city we visited and I want to go back and I am just inspired to travel more and more and more.
I guess I’ll just begin with day one, possibly my favorite day----
I woke up at 7 to watch us sailing into land (FINALLY!), then went back to bed until 10. Unfortunately our deck didn’t get called off the ship until about 12 because customs takes so long, but anyhow I stepped into Japan (also my first step in Asia) and a group of us,- Allyn, Lauren, Zach, Margalit, Lawrence, Erin, Lexi, and myself- rushed to find the subway to Yokohama Station so we could go to Kamakura for the day. Kamakura is about 25 minutes away by train and the trains are super efficient and easy to use all over Japan. I could probably travel by train all over Japan now easier than I could take the metro at home around DC. It was a little difficult at first with everything being in Japanese but a lot of people spoke some English and helped us out, so pretty much by the end of our stay I felt like a master of the trains. Anyway, we decided to explore Kamakura and take this hike passing through a bunch of Shinto shrines and ending at the Great Buddha. I found the idea for the hike on wikipedia so I wasn’t really sure where we were going but we eventually found the beginning of it. And wow did it feel amazing to finally hike for hours after being trapped on a ship for ten days. The trail wound around through town, up through the mountains in the woods where it was so tranquil and quiet, up what felt like 500 stairs, through several shrines, and then at some point the arrows kind of ended and we were back down on the road in town not sure where to go. We asked someone for the Daibutsu which means Great Buddha and they pointed us in the right direction. So after a long refreshing hike we ended up at the biggest prettiest Buddha I’ve ever seen. There’s no better way to end a hike than with a giant Buddha sitting peacefully in front of you. I really just wanted to sit there for hours and meditate in front of him but we got there soon before it closed. We left, explored a bit more downtown Kamakura, which is an adorable smaller city and much calmer and quieter than anywhere else we went. Then we took the train back to Yokohama, changed on the ship, and set out to find sushi! It was pretty late and most restaurants were closing, so we asked this Japanese lady where we could find sushi. She was with a man in a business suit and they talked for a little bit and he kept laughing at us. Finally he said to follow him and he would take us, so we all followed him outside down the street for a ways to the 2nd floor of this office building where there were all these hidden restaurants. He took us in a little sushi place and sat down with all 10 of us in this big private table in the back! Then the woman Kazumi, who was his boss, showed up and they had dinner with us! They bought us 2 big bottles of sake and showed us the right way to drink it, and then ordered us edamame, some strange looking but delicious vegetables, and 3 huge sushi platters. It was so neat to talk to them and they were soo friendly to us! It was late on a Tuesday night and the man had obviously just finished work and they just randomly took a bunch of strangers out for dinner! We were the last people in the restaurant so we got to talk to the sushi chef as we left, and then Kazumi insisted on taking us out to another restaurant for dessert! We went to this fancy place and I tried this dish of green tea ice cream with red beans and seaweed cubes (which looked like clear cubes of jelly) with syrup that you pour over top. It was actually really good! Once again, there was about 10 of us and Kazumi insisted on buying each of us a dessert and she wouldn’t let us share. We couldn’t believe how friendly they were and then she gave us her card and said we have to contact her if we come back so we can stay at her house. It was a perfect night to a perfect first day in Japan, and none of us expected that to happen. We were just looking for a place to eat! So we all wandered our way back to the ship- exhausted, happy, loving Japan, and so ready for more.

Hm… I realized I just wrote all that and only got through my first day…. I think I’ll have to be a little more brief from now on. The second day Allyn and I had a trip through SAS which was a Tokyo tour lead by Sofia University students. Our group met the four of them outside the ship and we took the train to Shibuya, the main shopping district in Tokyo. Walking around with them was awesome because they knew the best places to go and took us wherever we wanted. Crazy enough, one of the girls lived in Bethesda MD a few summers ago!! Allyn and I swear we can never escape Montgomery County. So stepping off the train in Tokyo was absolutely breathtaking…. it was Times Square x30. The people and the streets and the signs and the buildings… the sounds and the fashion… I’ve never seen anything like it and I wish there was some way I could show you all. We crossed the main intersection outside the train station and the crosswalks go across each street as well as diagonally… so it was just a mass of people (almost everyone wore black) crossing this enormous intersection. On one side was the biggest Starbucks I have ever seen- it took up the first 2 floors of this office building. I found Starbucks and McDonalds to be pretty popular throughout all of Japan and I spotted a few KFCs too. So just winding around the streets of Shibuya and taking it all in was overwhelming… everything was so colorful and massive and over the top. I can’t even find the right words. We walked around and stopped at this stand where the students said we had to try these popular “octopus pancakes” (I forget what they’re called) but they’re basically balls of fried pancake dough with octopus inside—and absolutely delicious! I highly recommend it if you ever come across them. We walked over to Harajuku and down Takeshita street, the main narrow shopping street of Harajuku where every single Japanese girl is dressed up in the most insane outfits. The fashion was incredible and I wanted to buy everything! We passed Hello Kitty shops where we tried mini hello kitty waffles filled with chocolate, and a whole Tamagotchi store where they sell tamagotchi donuts and Allyn of course bought a real tamagotchi. There were tons of crepe stands where they sell crepes wrapped like ice cream cones filled with ice cream and fruit and chocolate- umm YUM! Then we split up and Allyn and I went with a few others and the 2 Japanese boys to find sushi while the others and the 2 girls went to eat somewhere else. Hard to believe but we couldn’t find sushi, so we went to this little underground Japanese restaurant. I found that sushi restaurants are less common than just regular Japanese restaurants which are everywhere, and they have dishes like ramen, udon, eggs, pork, and various rice dishes with meat or vegetables. I thought sushi would be everywhere! So at this restaurant we tried maccha, which is real Japanese green tea, and it’s basically just a ground powder of green tea leaves mixed in hot water- very bitter and different than our green tea but interesting. After lunch we took a train to the electronics district where the streets were literally lined with stores and markets selling everything electronic you can imagine. The guys took us into this insane arcade which beats any arcade I’ve seen in the US, and then there’s a room just full of different photo booths where you can change your face to have bigger eyes like the Japanese girls like and put different backgrounds behind you. Everything was just way over the top! We met back up with the girls and decided to end the day going to Tokyo Tower where you can see the whole Tokyo city skyline. It was a breathtaking view. Allyn and I then said our goodbyes to the students who took the rest of the group back to the ship in Yokohama, and we got on a train to the Asakusa district of Tokyo where our capsule hotel was! I had no idea what to expect of a capsule hotel other than picturing a tiny cubby in the wall. We were planning to meet up at the hotel with our friends Lauren, Margalit, Erin, Lawrence, Ashley, Patrick, Matt, and Zach, and then go out to a karaoke bar for the night. We actually all got to the hotel at the same time and finally got a chance to relax for a second. The hotel was actually so much nicer than I expected! (other than the shower which was a communal room with a bucket you sat on and poured water over yourself) but each floor had a room with bathrooms, lockers for your stuff, and then a hall of capsules which were basically a bed with a tv in them. It was perfect :) So the group of us set out finding a place to eat, and we finally wandered into this place where there was absolutely no English. There were little grills in the middle of each table so we finally figured out it was a shabu shabu restaurant, where you order raw meat or vegetables and then grill it yourself. We were split into 2 tables so we each just pointed to random Japanese characters on the menu and hoped for the best. Our table was relatively lucky-- we ended up with raw beef, mushrooms, cabbage, and what looked like chicken skins. But the other table was not as fortunate…. they got chicken beaks and cow livers…. yum? It was an experience for sure. After dinner we happened to find Zach and Isaac and then we found a karaoke bar. Karaoke is much different in Japan- basically your group rents out a private room with a big tv in it and you’re allowed to stay the whole night there until about 6am. Zach and Isaac just decided to sleep there because they didn’t have a place to stay but we were excited to sleep in our capsules. Karaoke was soo much fun, we spent hours singing and dancing and had no voices left by the end. All of us except Zach and Isaac left around 3 and went back to our capsule hotel to get the little rest that we could before our next adventure in Japan!

Allyn and I woke up at about 7 the next morning to get an early start on our day. We wanted to spend a little more time in Tokyo and then get on the 2-hour train to Kyoto before it got too late. We realized from the night before how difficult it is to travel in big groups so we just decided to break off on our own. Plus we wanted to go shopping in Harajuku and shopping is impossible with too many people! So we left, took the train to Shibuya, and somehow found it extremely simple to navigate our way around! Right away we found the streets we took the day before and made our way right to Harajuku. It turned out to be a big holiday in Japan (I think it was Founder’s Day), so we found ourselves on the main street of Harajuku where there was about to be a huge parade! We watched it for a while and then went back down the tiny Takeshita street in Harajuku to take our time and do some real shopping :)  I can’t get over how adorable all the Japanese girls are- they have the greatest fashion and made me feel disgusting after I haven’t showered and was wearing the same clothes I’ve worn for days.
After we had our fill of shopping and realized how much money we were spending, Allyn and I got on the bullet train headed for Kyoto. This is where the exhaustion started to kick in. It felt so nice to sit for 2 hours on a train and not have to carry our backpacks full of 4 days worth of stuff. We got to Kyoto Station at about 4pm and wow it was not what I expected. I pictured Kyoto as more of a rural, smaller town area with temples and gardens spread throughout. Just the Kyoto Station alone blew my mind. I wish I took a picture of this massive place- it’s 10 stories high and had to cover several acres- I think the most expansive building I’ve ever seen- and it had about 5 different shopping malls, escalators and stairs and hallways going every which way…. it was just an overwhelming maze. We walked around for about an hour getting lost and trying to find the tourist bureau so we could find a hostel to stay in. I am 100% positive I could navigate my way around all of Tokyo easier than I could in this one building. We finally found the tourist center where we got a map and found out where this one hostel was that our friend Emily who we ran into in Harajuku was staying in. Unfortunately it had begun pouring rain and we weren’t ready to try and find our way to this hostel just yet so we decided to explore and get lost in the station for a little longer. You wouldn’t believe how many sweets shops and pastry shops there are- I don’t know if it was because Valentine’s Day was so close or what, but every single shop was just selling boxes and boxes of sweets and chocolate and mochi and green tea everything. There were tons of pastry shops where you just walk in and are surrounded by pastries of every sort which you just scoop into bags. Allyn got one that turned out to be filled with seaweed and fish… definitely not the chocolate she expected. We decided to try and find a sushi restaurant for dinner so we asked a cop and he lead us to a conveyor belt sushi place! Of course who do we see in there but a bunch of SAS kids…. they’re everywhere! The first sushi I pulled off the belt was this little bowl with some kind of roll with fish inside. I wondered why it was in a bowl and the chef came over and was like motioning me to fill it with hot water. I was a little skeptical but I filled it and then he mixed it all together for me—it was a strange idea but soo good! Apparently you can mix it with green tea also. Anyway, we ate so much sushi—a lot which I had no idea what I was eating—but it was all delicious. Full and happy we left the station and decided to get a taxi to the hostel. It was only a minute away but they ended up being full, so we walked in the rain down the street to another. It was cheap and we got our own bathroom and shower so it was all we needed. At this point we were rough—dead tired, wet, and dirty. Our room was just a square with tatami mats and a rolled up mattress to sleep on, but it was perfect. A hot shower was amazing and being able to put our backpacks down was even more amazing. It was still relatively early but we had no idea where to go in this surprisingly ginormous city, nor did we really want to go out in the rain, so we just decided to make the 2 minute walk back to the station to look around and get lost more. The shops in the malls started to close so we were out of luck but we spent a little time just looking at all the cool foods and sweets in the convenience stores and gift shops…. I could literally spend hours just looking at all the unique foods and candies. As everything was closing down we just decided to go back to the hostel and get some rest for our next day in Kyoto, and pray for better weather!

In the morning the sky was still pretty gray and drizzly, but at least it had stopped pouring. I wanted to see a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine that my religion professor had recommended to me, so we set out on a bus to find the Kiyomizu-dera temple. We got off on the right stop but didn’t know exactly where to find the temple, so we wandered around the little streets until we saw what we thought might be it. After going inside and looking around we found out it was probably someone’s house and then a woman came out and told us where Kiyomizu was. Oops! So we finally found it, up in the mountains past this long narrow street of gift and souvenir shops. The whole complex was elaborate and beautiful—the ornate pagodas and the bright colors and beautiful architecture—it was all stunning, even on an ugly day. After spending a while there taking it all in and seeing the view of Kyoto city beneath us, we left back down the street and went into some shops where they had samples of all the cool looking sweets I wanted to try! They had green tea everything you can imagine- green tea chocolate, green tea cookies, little triangles of green tea mochi with chocolate bean paste inside—it was all so delicious and different. So we then got back on the bus to try and find the Heian Jingu Shrine, another beautiful complex of ornate orange and green structures with a huge courtyard in the middle. Beyond the buildings are extensive gardens that I imagine are gorgeous in the springtime. We left to make it to the train station by 2 so I could get back to the ship in Kobe in time for my FDP (like a field trip for one of my classes) and we made it just in time. My FDP was going to a Japanese pop music livehouse club, which turned out to be one of the most popular in Kobe. It was an underground place and reminded me a lot of the 930 club except it was even much smaller (but considered big for most live houses in Japan) and everyone sits at tables and chairs. There were 3 different performers but they all kind of played together at different points. The first was this trio of younger guys who played like a soft rock and they were really fun and good. Then a younger girl named Leyona came on and sang for a while- she was really good and her voice kind of sounds like Corrine Bailey Rae. Then this really quirky and funny pianist came on, who was apparently a special guest, and he was amazing and really funny.  At the end this 70-year old Japanese rocker with long hair came out and played rock songs… he even sang “I can’t get no Satisfaction” in English! Apparently he was a big hit back when the Beatles were popular and so all the young performers had a great time playing with him. I was having such a great time and it was funny to think that this was part of my school work, and that we could be there dancing and ordering drinks with my professor. Definitely the best field trip ever!

I wish I had more time to see Kobe because it looked like such a neat city from what I saw walking to the live house the night before. But my last day in Kobe I had another FDP which was back in Kyoto participating in a traditional tea ceremony at one of the temples. This was really neat and definitely something I wanted to experience. We sat on mats along the walls of the tea room in the Shunko-in temple, and an old Japanese woman who is a tea master carefully prepared the maccha tea in front of us and then served it along with 2 rice cookies. The tea was the same traditional powdery bitter stuff I had in the restaurant in Tokyo, and you had to eat your cookies and then drink it all in 3 or 4 gulps. I actually didn’t mind the bitterness but the texture is thick and sort of foamy, not your typical tea.
We got back to the ship at exactly on-ship time, about 6:00, and I was about ready to get in bed and sleep for 2 days until China. Everyone on the ship was so excited and talking about all their stories but dead at the same time, and most people slept through their classes the next day. I of course had a paper due at 8am which I had to write about the tea ceremony so I was up all night :(

Wow- I can’t believe how much I had to write to cover Japan, and this doesn’t even come close to covering all my thoughts and feelings. I loved that each day was a completely new and different adventure and I got a taste of so many major cities. I know I’ll say this for every country but I REALLY want to come back and spend a longer time in all of these cities! I felt like we were always on the rush and on the go but we got to do so much. It was a great feeling to travel independently too and find our way from city to city without knowing any of the language or much about these places at all! I was really worried and stressed out beforehand because we didn’t have very detailed plans or places to stay and I am bad at navigating on transportation systems…. but I found it all to be so so easy, and so many people were willing to help us out. This really makes me never want to stop traveling and lucky for me, I still have 3 months and 7 countries to go!!

Thank Buddha I finished writing Japan, because China is TOMORROW!
-Michele

Happy ASIA DAY

Finally finally finally…. It’s hard to believe we’re going to be in Yokohama TOMORROW! Even though I’ve been so busy I’m realizing how sick I am of being on this boat. Eleven days is just a little much.. I think it’s the food and the no movement though. I literally feel like I’ve been sitting for 10 days straight.
So last night we all took our first global studies exam. It was our last day of this long stretch of classes and the feeling after was like finally being done with my finals and getting ready for summer vacation…. Except it’s Japan! It’s funny how instead of “have a great weekend” my professors say “hope you have a great time in Japan!”
So today is Asia Day where there are tons of activities and information sessions going on and then we apparently get a big Asian feast prepared for us…. we’ll see how much of a feast it really is though. This morning they showed the Superbowl in the union… which they played through the internet so it was pretty blurry. It was soo weird to walk in there and hear such familiar sounds that I feel like I haven’t heard in forever! To watch football (even though I hate football) and see the commercials, and just the sounds of the crowd and the music….. it just seems so strange to me now! I mean technically we haven’t even been to another country yet but I just feel so isolated and apart from America. It’s nice that we all feel the same way… we’re all in the same boat (literally) and it’s almost like we’re one huge family now. They say the biggest culture shock is going back home, and I already can’t imagine going back to life in the U.S. I know that’s dumb because we haven’t even been anywhere different yet, but being so isolated and being with people who all feel the same way, and just anticipating the experiences we’re about to have…… I just already can’t imagine going back to “normal” life.
Unfortunately we’re going to be delayed a few hours arriving in Yokohama…. because just our luck, we had to go around another huge storm. Apparently it’s from a volcano that just erupted in Japan?.. I might be wrong but that’s what I heard. The ocean is even more rough than it was on the way to Hawaii. The swells are ginormous and sometimes the whole porthole in our room goes underwater! The maintenance guys had to come close and bolt down our porthole yesterday… soo it must be pretty bad. This time however instead of the boat rolling side to side, we’re hitting these huge waves head on so every so often there’s a huge bump and then it feels like an earthquake. I woke up the other night thinking we must have hit a whale! Before the global studies test last night we hit a big one and Allyn completely flipped off her chair… it was hilarious. It’s so funny how adjusted we are to zig-zagging down the halls and not even thinking about it.
Well I am so ready for Asia…. between Japan, China, and Vietnam we only have 4 more days of classes in February! crazy. Wish me luck- we don’t have very detailed plans/ no idea how we’ll find our way around with no English…. but I guess the goal is just to make it back to the ship on time. I have faith in us :)
Sayonara!!

-Michele

“Dreaming of the Osaka sun…. Dreaming, of when the morning comes”

I simply cannot wait to wake up under the Japan sun.
But for now we’re once again in the middle of the Pacific ocean… and I really can’t complain. Instead of being bored like I thought I’ve actually not had enough time to do everything! It’s crazy how much there is happening on the ship at all times…. Every day there’s either yoga, aerobics, zumba, meditation, salsa, etc etc plus different “seminars” like origami making or learning Chinese, and the endless planning and researching we have to do for traveling. Luckily schoolwork seems to be the least priority even of the professors, who would rather have us learn from interactions and activities and experiences. I wish all school was like this.
Also, fun fact: last night I went to sleep on Tuesday, February 2nd, and a few hours later woke up on Thursday, February 4th. No Wednesday for us! I still don’t fully understand how the International Dateline works but yesterday we crossed it at about 1:30pm and apparently we didn’t exist in any time. So anyhow even though we lost yesterday, the good news is that we get 24 extra hours of sleep which happen about every other night. So that’s nice :)
Well I totally forgot that I never updated this about Hawaii… I guess it’s been 6 days since leaving but I feel like I’ve done nothing but write about it. I have about 4 other journals for my classes plus my own journal so it’s hard to remember where I’ve written what! Anyway, I’m sure you can guess that it was an amazing time. A bunch of us slept out on the deck the night before we reached Hilo, and woke up around 4am to see the city lights as we finally came in! Allyn and I didn’t really have expectations or a plan for the day so we just ran off the ship and decided to explore the town. We rode the public bus around to a black sand beach where I saw a sea turtle hanging out in a tide pool! Then we got a ride with some crazy lady named Theresa to downtown Hilo. I don’t really know what I expected Hilo to be but it wasn’t whatever I expected. And I loved it! It’s not a huge built-up city and it’s a little run down, but it has such a cool vibe and it’s all about the locals. We were stopped so many times and asked if we were from the “floating school” and all the locals were so fascinated by it. I think we must have been the only tourists in the whole city so they all knew about us.
We wandered around town for a while and wanted to eat where all the locals go, so someone recommended this Hawaiian fast food place… which is not at all like our fast food. Allyn got this typical Hawaiian “bowl” that consisted of rice on the bottom, then a hamburger, an over-easy egg, and gravy on top of it all. It was quite interesting….
After exploring for a while and talking to so many friendly people we took the necessary bus ride to Walmart… where we literally spent about 2 hours and saw at least 60 SAS kids. But we came out of it with Pocahontas and a little chocolate so I’d say it was a success.
The next morning Allyn and our friends Haley and Becca decided to get a ride to Akaka falls… which is absolutely beautiful and I wish I could post a picture! We then rode back downtown and learned how to standup paddleboard in the bay. It was so much fun and easier than I expected. This guy’s two sons took us out and we paddled over to a bridge and jumped off a few times. It was a gorgeous day and it felt so nice to be in the water after staring at it for 10 days. We paddled out into the bay which was a little choppy…. we had a couple entertaining falls but overall it was pretty successful. At one point we were just paddling along and really enjoying the moment and allyn goes, “wow, this is what you guys get to do every day… what a life” and in my head I was like yeah, this is such a beautiful place and we’re having so much fun…. And one of the guys just looks at us and goes “you guys are traveling the world on a boat….” And we were like Oh yeahhh.. It’s funny how we just forget about how lucky we are sometimes because it all just seems ridiculous and unreal.
Hilo was definitely an experience that I didn’t expect, but I really enjoyed their culture and friendliness and how it wasn’t just a big tourist city.
Honolulu was completely the opposite, but I loved my time there just as much! The city is beautiful and wayyy bigger than I expected it to be… I felt like I could be in Hollywood or Las Vegas. I wish I knew where exactly you had lived Grandma- I’m sure it looks completely different now. The first morning some of us rode the bus to Pearl Harbor, which was pretty incredible to see. Then Allyn, Lawrence (our neighbor!) and I decided to make the epic journey on the bus to Hanauma Bay. Waiting for buses and having to transfer took a while, but we finally made it and it was absolutely stunning and worth the trip. We grabbed some snorkel gear and literally ran into the water and found ourselves in the middle of a coral reef filled with colorful fish and sea turtles! It was so neat to swim so close to the turtles and fish. This might possibly have been the prettiest beach I’ve ever been to… and once again I wish I could post my pictures. I’ll find a way somehow. So we spent the rest of the day there until the park closed, and rode the bus back to Waikiki where we walked along the beach and ate at this really nice hotel restaurant where our waiter told us that half of the things on the menu sucked. I thought our dinners were delicious. We spent the rest of the night hanging out on the beach with a bunch of SAS kids. And eventually made it back to the ship.
Our last day in Honolulu we spent surfing, laying on the beach, and savoring real fresh food before leaving it again for 10 days. Surfing was of course awesome… 5 of us took lessons from an old toothless guy named Mad-dog (and I’m really glad I took lessons because the waves are totally different than in NC!) and I got up on every wave!! The waves break really far out so it was awesome to have a long ride in. We had to paddle a long ways down the beach and then out to where the waves break so it was definitely more of an arm workout than I’ve ever had. I felt that for about 4 days after. Anywho the lessons were for sure worth it and put me in a fantastic mood for the rest of the day (not that I wouldn’t be otherwise). We walked down the beach in Waikiki and found some of our friends laying out so we soaked in the sun for a while, swam in the turquoise ocean, and then went out to eat our last fresh meal. Me and Allyn split a deliciously fresh salad with curried chicken and a mahi mahi taco spinach wrap, which I know sounds dumb but it was heaven to us. I really just miss fresh food and fresh fruit…. I’m really not a picky eater but the food in our dining hall just has this old smell to it.. and nothing is ever fresh. AND we can’t bring fruit on the ship! But I’ll stop complaining.
So as you could expect Hawaii was an amazing time….. a nice relaxing “weekend” and break from our hard life at sea…. =P After remembering what land was like I was pretty reluctant to get back on the ship knowing we had an even longer trip to Japan. The funny thing is though my body never adjusted back to being on land…. I was constantly rocking and swaying back and forth.
Surprisingly the days back at sea have been flying by, and like I said I don’t even have enough time to do everything! Tonight we were rushing through Japan guidebooks and Wikipedia-ing everything we could…. This is definitely going to be an adventure like I’ve never had before and trying to meet up with people in a huge city like Tokyo will be interesting. I’ve honestly never thought of Japan as a place I’d love to travel to but the more I think about it, the more we talk about it, and the more I realize that we’re almost there makes me SO excited. I sometimes just get random moments in the middle of nowhere where I just start freaking out in my head with excitement. Once again, it’s just not real! And basically before Japan we have to have all of China figured out because we only have 1 day on the ship in between! And after China….. it’s just going to be like bang bang bang with every country.. it’s hard to even believe it. I really wish I could better express my thoughts on here but I can hardly express them in my head.
I know there’s a ton I forgot to write about and a ton more that my pictures could tell you, but I promise to update while in Japan or right after. The photography club is trying to get a photo-blog linked to the SAS site where you can see all our best pictures so I’ll post a link to that as soon as it happens. Sooooo, I was going to say goodbye in Japanese but all I’ve learned so far is Konichiwa, which is not goodbye. I’ll be fluent when I get back though.
So goodbye finally America, hello world :)

-Michele
PS.. Good news- I am no longer an orphan! I now have a shipboard family and my mother is the lady with the worst Southern accent who is the speaker on all the ship announcements. Buttt we have family dinners every now and then and she got our family a huge platter of fresh cookies. So I like her!