Cape Town: Part Three

On Saturday, I went on another tour that maybe I could have skipped, but it was still a little different from what I had seen before. We went to the Castle of Good Hope again, but the guide we had this time was extremely knowledgeable and loved to explain things for us when we asked questions. After the Castle of Good Hope we went back to the District Six Museum. From there we did walk a bit in front of the building where Capetonians used to appeal their racial class assignment. Outside, two benches had been placed to commemorate that –one said “non-whites”and the other said “whites.”We walked through Company’s Gardens again. We passed St. George’s church, where Desmond Tutu was the archbishop. Then we passed through Green Market Square (which is also where all of the Cape Town newspapers have their offices! Eee! :o) ). And we finally stopped for sandwiches at this little restaurant (that was oddly themed with pictures of old American movie stars). Next we went to this really cool organization called Streetwires, where they make everything out of the characteristic wire-and-beaded crafts of South Africa. To describe it, it’s kind of like those bead and ribbon things that everybody used to do a few years ago, but with a much better quality –and they can make anything out of the wire. They explained that if you want something made you can let them know and they will design it for you. They even have other stores that continually stock their designs. The point of the project is to employ people from the community and give a structure to the traditional craftmaking. There were even two sculptures of Nelson Mandela made entirely out of beads and wire. It was impressive.

After we got back from the tour, I met up with two other girls who wanted to go out shopping, so I walked around with them for a while and then did some shopping of my own for the rest of the afternoon. Then, I met up with my friend Charlie for dinner at the same restaurant that had free wi-fi as the night before. I enjoyed dinner, but the manager said there was something wrong with the internet connection, so I went outside of the mall to get their wi-fi. I talked to Mom and Dad and Amy for a little bit. Then I talked to Tim for a bit until my computer died. I went back to the ship to recharge my battery and then came back to the mall in the middle of the night so that I could talk to Tim again. When I finished, I walked back to the ship and called it a night.

I got up the next day for my FDP, which is a field-directed practicum, which are supposed to be educational. Most classes require that you do three, but my professors have been pretty lenient. Anyway, this one went to the Afrikaans language monument and museum. The monument has kind of a strange art-deco-rocket-type shape with lots of symbolic meaning about every part of it, but it was in a really beautiful location –at the top of a mountain near the winelands. It was constructed in 1975 during the apartheid government and is more symbolic of the use of the languages and it’s formation than anything else. The monument is huge –it was big enough to walk into and was probably about 3 stories high. The buildings and set up of the place around it reminded me of a state park (like when we went to go see the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon) with a ten-minute explanation of the monument by a guide and not much else. I did learn that about 56 million people speak Afrikaans, a Dutch creole –which is to say, a mix of Dutch with some native African influence –it even has some similar words in French. Everyone learns both English and Afrikaans in school and some universities even continue to lecture in Afrikaans as its primary language. So, I learned a few things, got some nice mountain vista pictures and we were on our way.

We were actually supposed to also go to the Afrikaans language museum, but because it was a Sunday, the museum was closed. Our professor didn’t seem to broken up about it –he said the museum is basically a Dutch colonial house where a meeting was held by some of the Dutch farmers to recognize Afrikaans as a language. The countryside was beautiful! All green because of the grape vineyards stretching over these pretty rolling hills. Our next stop was the Boschendal winery, which was amazingly beautiful. We had lunch there, but we didn’t have enough time to do any wine tasting. It was really pretty and the weather was just right –sunny and breezy, but cool in the shade. Our next stop was in the little town of Stellenbosch. It was so cute and nice in the hilly wine country with a bunch of little shops and restaurants and hotels. There’s also a university there, which, as our professor told us, apparently grooms many rugby players and is one of the most rugby-oriented town in South Africa. It looked like a nice little town that you could probably spend some leisurely time walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. I knew I needed to do some wine-tasting there, so there were a few people who wanted to find a place and followed them. We ended up seeing our professor at a café that had tasting, so I sat with a kid named Smith next to the professor, Professor Thomas, my English As A Global Language prof. He was with his wife and had to explain how to taste the wine to us a little bit. I think I liked the white wines better, but I like the shiraz a lot too. We had a good time tasting, but we had to get back on the bus and get back to the ship. We returned at about 5-ish and got back to the ship before our required time at 6 p.m.

I filled out some postcards and some paperwork that allows you as a foreigner to get the tax back on most of the items you buy. But, it takes three months to process and they didn’t tell us the total, they just stapled the receipts to the form. Oh well, any money back is better than no money back, right?



Whew! Finally done with this Cape Town posting! I’ll tell you about Mauritius soon –since our time there was so short the post should be too, right? And all about the events today with the Sea Olympics!

Two Tickets...erm, One Ticket to Paradise

So, I’ve been busy here the past few days at sea –that’s mostly why I’m behind on my Cape Town posts. The grades for the global studies test were posted this afternoon and I got a B. Eh, it’s OK, especially since it was on a ten point curve, but I saw many a lower score on the list, so I think I did pretty well. School work has been catching up as well –I have to finish a paper on each port themed around migration (I chose the influence of migration on music around the world).

BUT, that will wait until after Mauritius tomorrow! I am really excited for this little tropical island paradise. I bet you don’t recognize the name of the small island nation, but you would recognize the dodo bird and probably know that it’s extinct. It originated on Mauritius! So, I might try and go to the museum that has the only known dodo skeleton in it. One of the professors said there are also a number of souvenirs that feature the dodo. Would anyone like a beach towel with a dodo on it? Haha. We only have a little bit of time on the island, but I hope to do some snorkeling and see some of the coral reef! I can’t wait!

Tonight, I had dinner with my “extended family.”I don’t think I’ve mentioned them before on the blog. At the beginning of the voyage, we were allowed to sign up for an extended family, then we were assigned to a “mom and dad”who we can talk to and have dinner with and stuff. My mom and dad on the ship are Lavinia and Terry Crawford-Browne and there are four other students in our family. The Crawford-Brownes are from Cape Town, South Africa. Lavinia works as an administrative assistant and Terry is a lecturer teaching a class on foreign policy. They are really, really nice people. Terry is originally from Ireland, I think, but has moved all over and met Lavinia when he got his first job in Cape Town, I think. He works as an activist now, I think working against arms trade in South Africa. And Lavinia had been Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s personal assistant. Pretty freakin’cool, huh?! She gave a presentation about him before we got to Cape Town. He is a big supporter, incidentally, of Semester At Sea and has been a passenger on a full voyage in the past. He was supposed to come visit the ship, but, regrettably, he was out of town on business while we were in Cape Town. Go figure.

After Mauritius tomorrow we’re having the opening night of the Sea Olympics. Each side of each deck is assigned a “sea.”I’m on the port side of deck three, so I’m in the Mediterranean Sea (the others are named after real seas, too –Red, Yellow, Baltic, Agean, Adriatic, etc.). Each sea has it’s own “living-learning coordinator,”which is kind of like an RA. For the Sea Olympics there are going to be all kinds of events, including a mascot, flag and chant competition. There’s crazy stuff like mashed potato sculpting and a sudoku competition as well as a volleyball tournament and workout relay. I’m doing two events in the Olympic relay –the orange pass (where you pass the orange between your team’s necks) and the fireman’s line (where you pass water in cups from one end to a bucket on the other). It should be fun –our sea color is blue, so are mascot is a smurf. Very original, I know. So, it should be fun. Each event win gets awarded some point value, then whichever team wins gets some sort of prize, but we don’t know what yet. There is a rumor that the winning sea gets to get off the ship first in Florida. So, I hope the completions are fun and that the Med. Sea kicks some butt!

Time to get some rest before my day of fun and sun! I promise the rest of Cape Town when I get back on the ship –I have tons of pictures, so I will definitely remember it all!

Cape Town: Part Two, or "I Am A Stormer"

Cape Town: Part Two

Robben Island has a rich history that I was not aware of. It has been used since the early Dutch explorers came to Cape Town. Then, it was used as a leper colony from the mid-1800s until the 1930s. During World War II it was used (even though the guns were never fired) as a military post in case Cape Town needed to be defended. Then, from 1961 to 1991 it was used as a prison for anti-apartheid political figures –the most famous of whom is Nelson Mandela. Over three thousand political prisoners were held there.

You have to take a ferry out to the island, which is a pretty good ways away from the shore (Wikipedia says 7 km), so they play a little introductory video while you’re riding on this two-decker boat. (The upstairs is outside.) The waves got pretty choppy and I know some people got sick on the way back, but I’m an old pro at the seasickness thing now. Psssht, a 20-minute ferry ride...ooo, I’m scared. Haha. Anyway, you get off the ferry and you can see the entrance to the prison, as well as a bunch of buses parked nearby that will take you on a tour of the entire island. Well, even though we were still on a SAS trip me, my friend Emily and a few other SASers clamored onto a bus to make sure we didn’t miss it. Here, it turns out that we weren’t supposed to get on that bus. I tried to get off with Emily, but it was kind of crowded and we had to sit back down. So, we figured this had to work out OK, we just knew we couldn’t miss the ferry at 6 p.m. Haha. I believe the tour ended up being the same. There’s a memorial to an imam that died on the island, a lighthouse and a few churches. One of the churches, the Anglican church, has been there since the days of the leper colony –it was the only building used by the lepers that was not torn down because technically it was owned privately rather than by the government.

The maximum security prison, where Mandela was held, was built in 1959. We went inside and toured the place with a former political prison. He showed us the B section, where Mandela’s cell is. You can tell which one is his because they have a few things like a bed roll and a bucket set up in what was his cell. (I don't think those things are authentic, but it's better than taking a picture of an empty cell, I guess.) I got a picture taken of me near it, but it is rather unremarkable to look at. The fact he lived there for so long -- 18 years -- just amazes me. These were individual cells, but our guide took us to another section of the jail where they had bigger communal rooms. Our guide showed us the separation between the races, even down to the menu, but he said that the prisoners themselves gathered up everything from the store with the weekly ration of money they received and divided that among everyone equally.

There are a few of the leper graves left on the island, compared to the actual number that were actually buried there. A small town has also sprung up for people living on the island who now give tours and all that, which was originally built for those tending to the lepers and the prison guards. There’s even a school that about 20 kids attend. A surprisingly large number of animals live on the island as well, including a large amount of birds, penguins (that I got to see for a little bit!), ostriches (I saw one of those too!) and rabbits (which were introduced as a food source by the Dutch). A light house was built after 11 shipwrecks because of the rough waters near the island, but after it was built there were like 18 more...not the best feat of engineering, I guess.

The political prisoners were released in 1980, but Nelson Mandela stayed until 1984 when he was transferred to another prison until his release in 1990. He was then made president of South Africa after the end of the apartheid regime in 1994. The island was used as a criminal prison until 1996 and after that was used, as it is now, as a museum to commemorate the cultural significance of apartheid -- and it's a World Heritage site.

It’s such a tribute to the social significance that comes from this terrible era of racial segregation in South Africa. The trouble is it seems like after Nelson Mandela was no longer president, the country has been sunk into corruption and perceived loyalty with its current administration, headed by Thabo Mbecki. The country is set to elect a new president in April, but it seems like many people are still divided by racial party lines –however, much of the information I learned while there was about South Africa’s history and now I am interested in its current events –which I think is one of the main benefits of this entire voyage. I now have a personal connection to South Africa that won't leave me anytime soon.

That night, I found a group of people to go out to dinner with. We actually went to Long Street, the party street in Cape Town, kind of like E. Carson St. in Pittsburgh or Bourbon St. in New Orleans or South St. in Philly (if that’s a party street –I was there during the day). Anyhow, instead of traditional African food, which is kind of what I wanted to get (and because the wait for the African restaurant was really long), we went and ate sushi instead. It was really good because I was really hungry. Then we decided to try and go to a few of the bars on Long St. one of my friends, Jane, was given a suggestion the night before and walked a block or so to the Waiting Room. It’s kind of cool and indie-feeling, since there really was no sign for the place except on the back of the entrance door. The bar was upstairs, so there’s literally like a small stairwell with those collapsible stairs up to the bar. It was so cool! The DJ was really good (and reminded me of someone from school, actually) and they had lots of comfortable couches to sit around and talk, a balcony across the front with small tables, then if you went up some more stairs there was another sitting area, then, up the final set of stairs was the rooftop! It had a really good vibe, but for some reason, the group I was with didn’t just want to sit and chat and drink, they wanted to barhop, so we tried two more places –one was a pool hall called “Stones”which had really loud music, but not that many people. The rest of the group played pool while I watched because I didn’t want to embarrass myself. Then we went to another bar with lots of people dancing and just danced along for a little while. Finally, we actually went back to the Waiting Room, but again only stayed there about 45 minutes, which was sad. I could’ve spent the whole night there. The bar was so cool that I wished it was in Pittsburgh so that all my friends could hang out there. Then we took a taxi back to the ship. It was a fun night.

The next morning I made arrangements to eat breakfast with a girl named Emily that was on my Robben Island trip the day before. We had some time in the morning and decided to go to Table Mountain together. Lots of people actually hiked up the mountain, but there is also a cable car that runs up the side of it that only takes about 5 minutes, instead of hiking for an hour and a half, so I was game for the cable car. Haha. It was actually really clear Friday, which I was kind of surprised about –all the other days had been kind of cloudy and when clouds cover the top of the mountain they call it the “tablecloth.”Clever, eh? So, when you’re on top of the mountain, which is oddly flat and square, you can see a pretty good view of all of the surroundings, including downtown Cape Town. It’s pretty strange to see the huge mountain in the background of this thriving city. It was beautiful!! (You’re just gonna have to wait for all the pretty pictures). We also saw some lizards and these cute little mountain rodents called Dassies, which are somehow the closet relative of the elephant…don’t ask me how. They’re these cute little beaver-looking animals that are apparently very well adapted to the mountain climbing and everything –we saw some hanging out on some rock outcroppings on the side of the mountain. (There were really cute stuffed dassies in the gift shop –I stopped myself before I bought one. As we were getting off the cable car at about 11 o’clock, we realized that there was a huge line of people waiting to get tickets for the cable car and we were thankful that we had made the decision to come as early as we did. We then took a van taxi down from the mountain. It was a nice beautiful day, weather-wise and we met two girl from England and a couple on their honeymoon, so that was fun.

We ate lunch together at a little bay side restaurant there in the waterfront and I left my souvenirs with Emily so that I could meet for my next SAS trip, which was actually going back to the township we were in the day before.

Even though I was in the same township again, I still went on the trip because I knew we might have some more time there and it would be a different experience. First, we went to another crafts center, similar to the first one, but a little bit smaller. I bought a beaded pin with an AIDS ribbon and South African flag and promptly attached to my bag. They had some really cool jewelry that I was going to pick up for Amy, but I didn’t have enough cash on me. Anyway, then we were allowed to go across the street to the school/church where the kids had finished for the day and were waiting to be picked up, mostly by their older siblings. I sat down with two other girls who were on a blanket on the floor interacting with four little kids –three boys and one girl. One of the other girls had given out some stickers and the little girl was having fun sticking it in different places. Then, we tried to clap hands with them and play some games that didn’t really involve rhymes or anything –which was tough, because not only did they not speak English, they also were young kids who were kind of shy to boot. But, we did manage just to play paddy cake with the little girl using the number one to ten. It was really cute. One of the little boys had a Spiderman book bag and we were playing with him. The church was an Anglican church, St. Michael's Church &All Angels School. There was an almost life-size Jesus hanging on the wall behind the modest altar and –he was black! It was awesome. There was also a banner on the wall about AIDS that said “If you’re not infected, you’re definitely affected”which I thought was very eye-opening.

Then we visited another bed and breakfast –Kopanong B&B –run by a woman named Thope. She introduced herself and told us a little bit about the business that she had started. She actually had received a fellowship with Pitt!! She studied business there then came back and started the bed and breakfast and is also working on other projects with other members of community to start a “green”taxi service with cars that run on natural gas. She mentioned that her philosophy was getting everyone involved and giving them a “slice,"or an opportunity, for themselves. I told her I was from Pittsburgh and got a picture with her afterward –it was crazy! Someone with a connection to Pittsburgh halfway around the world!

After we made our way back to the ship, I had to go right away with another group that was taking a taxi to the Newlands Stadium for the RUGBY GAME! It was pretty cool –there were a ton of people there. Our seats weren’t that great –I was up in the very top few rows of the first tier, so I was under the shadow of the second tier and it was a little darker and hotter there than it was down closer to the field, but it was still really cool. The people around me weren’t quite as rowdy as I’d have liked them to be, but I cheered on the Stormers as much as I could. Rugby’s such a hard game to watch in a stadium, because no sooner are you settled in your seats when the game starts, then it’s halftime. The game goes so fast –it started at 7:10 p.m. and was over by 9 p.m. But lots of people had their flags waving when the team scored and speakers played a little bit of music during a few dull points and every once and a while it would start the familiar, “Clap, clap, clapclap, clap, Let’s go Stormers, clap, clap, clapclap, clap”or “Stooooorrrr-merssss”it was great. The Stormers, which are the team that represents Cape Town in the “Super 14”league, played the Reds from Queensland, Australia. And the Stormers ended up winning! The score was 27-24. It was a great time. I got a big free cardboard sign with a newspaper page on it that has some of the players and says “I Am A Stormer”in Afrikaans.

I caught a taxi with some other people and met up with a few people at a bar in the bay. It was really nice. We sat outside and talked for a little bit and I still hadn’t eaten dinner, so I ordered some food. I had intended to use the internet because the place had free wi-fi, but was informed that it’s shut off after 10 p.m. The food was good, I guess, so it didn’t matter. On to Saturday - perhaps in the next part –this one’s getting kind of long.

Cape Town: Part One, Saxes to Shantys

Cape Town is an incredible city. (I used the thesaurus to look up another word for amazing, haha.) It is modern as well as full of culture, history and diverse people. I really enjoyed it and would suggest it to anyone who is thinking of traveling internationally but doesn’t know where to begin. I would have liked to see and do more outside of the city itself, but only having a few days and being signed up for trips that meet at the port is a little bit limiting.

My first impressions of Cape Town were extremely positive –there wasn’t an industrial harbor! It was a lovely commercial harbor and there was an extremely swanky hotel right in front of where the ship was docked called the Table Bay Hotel. There was also lots of shopping –including two malls and lots of restaurants with views of the bay. The V &A Waterfront, as it is called, is also near the Cape Town Aquarium and is where the ferry to Robben Island is located.

As soon as we were debriefed by the diplomats from the US embassy in South Africa, we were allowed to get off the ship. So, since I didn’t have a trip until the afternoon, I decided to wander around in the mall for a while. This mall was huge. There are even Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Jimmy Choo stores on the top floor. They have everything from African souvenir stores and a Crocs store to a movie theater and a grocery store. It was just huge, but there were many pedestrian walkways to stroll around the other stores outside, just like a boardwalk in the US would have lots of different stores and restaurants. There was also a small outdoor amphitheater that had groups performing at various times as well as street performers –dance groups, jazz bands, marimbas bands and even some kind of magician storyteller. I quickly ate at a fish and chips place with the girls I was with so I could hurry up and get back to the place near the ship where our trip was meeting.

It was a city orientation trip. The first stop was at the Castle of Good Hope, which actually looks more like a fort. I has five bastions sticking out around it, kind of like a star. It was mostly controlled by the Dutch, who were the first to settle and colonize Cape Town. There was a brief period that the British controlled it, then power went back to the Dutch. The castle was used as the governor’s house then and is still used by the military in addition to being considered one of the museums of Cape Town. We went inside the portion that was the governor’s house that has many paintings of Cape Town –it was interesting to see the city from Table Bay and False Bay, which is now entirely built up by the city, completely green and uninhabited. In the upstairs of the governor’s quarters was a long room that was designed to accommodate over 100 people for dinner set up with a series of tables stretching from one end of the room to the other. (There were no pictures allowed in that room for some reason.) The second-in-command (I forget what his title was) also lived there. We even checked out a dungeon, too, where slaves were held and punished.

Our next stop was a stroll through the Company’s Gardens, which is flanked by buildings like the Parliament’s House, the South African equivalent of the White House, where the president works and the National Library. Cape Town is South Africa’s legislative capital and Johannesburg is the judicial capital. The gardens were begun when the Dutch East India Company, who founded Cape Town, decided to colonize the southern part of Africa as a refreshment port for ships rounding Africa on the trade routes. There is also an extensive botanical garden that I believe was started by the same man that started the gardens. The gardens are used like a mall with people strolling through them and others taking naps on the grass. We stopped at a café there to have coffee and scones. The weather was beautiful for mostly entire trip and it was breezy but sunny, perfect for sitting at a café.

Our next stop was the Natural History Museum in Cape Town, which had a really good display featuring some of the prehistoric cave drawings and the significance of the migration from Africa, which we have been studying in Global Studies. They also had the typical natural history exhibits on dinosaurs, fish and mammals. The fish exhibit featured huge whale skeletons in a large hall connecting all three floors of the museum. The mammal exhibit reminded me of the Carnegie museum –all the taxidermied samples that are about 30 years old. There was also a traveling exhibit featuring a nature photography contest sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. It seemed like the museum was under some construction, which is probably warranted because of the big event happening in Cape Town in 2010 –the World Cup! We saw the semi-completed stadium many times, because it is not far from the waterfront. A lot of the places in Cape Town are getting ready for that –they’re repaving a parking lot in front of the city hall to make it a pedestrian-friendly “Fan Walk"instead.

I came back from the tour and didn’t have very much time –I got back on the ship really quickly to change for my next trip, which was the “jazz safari.”It was really cool –we went to a jazz club and a trio played for us –a drummer, a bassist and a saxophonist. They only played for a little while, but they were really good –the sax player and the bassist did some awesome stuff. I got a compilation CD that has a track that we heard performed. We were in the upstairs of the club and I would have liked to stay there longer, but the second part of our evening was worth it. We got back in our respective vans and even though there was a total of 40 of us each van went to a different house.

Our van went to the home of sax player Robbie Jansen. His son, a chef, cooked us a wonderful dinner, complete with Malva pudding (which is delicious, by the way!). Then Robbie sat with his saxophone on the couch in his living room and played to an accompanying CD. He’s an older man with graying hair and he uses oxygen, since he fell ill (I forget with what) in 2005 and almost died. He had no trouble breathing or talking or anything like that, and his playing was great! He told us the story of how he came from a family of nine and started playing when he was young after learning by ear from the radio. The band he was with won a trip to London and he was introduced to jazz music. He said that at one time he had the chance to play with Eric Clapton. He told some other stories about his experiences playing –making friends with Angolan policemen who caught him and his friends smoking in their hotel room, getting beaten up before a show, playing in Botswana in the pouring rain only to have the clouds break and the moon shine down. “Music covers all,”he said. “There’s no color there.”

It was a great evening and none of us wanted to leave. His wife was extremely nice and welcoming as well and a few of us did the dishes for her after dinner. She laughed and joked right along with a few students out on the Jansens patio while we sat and listened to Robbie play. The night was one of the best on the trip so far.

The next day I got up and ate breakfast in order to meet up with my next trip, which was themed around apartheid. Our first stop was the District Six Museum, which used to be a Methodist church in a neighborhood of Cape Town that was shared by a mixture of races. Sixty thousand people were displaced beginning in 1966. The oppressive government under the racial segregation of apartheid declared the neighborhood a whites only area and forced all of the people to be removed to the dismal Cape Flats township area and bulldozed all of their homes. The museum reminds me of what Sutersville might have been like, and in some regard, is still like. A neighborhood of people who live together and had built things like sports teams, held dances and festivals, and worshiped together. The museum, as I remember the tour guide mentioning, is not just to commemorate the loss of the homes and buildings, but more importantly the social networks and organizations that were lost in the relocation. The sense of community was taken away with the bulldozers. It was pretty powerful. I don’t know if it more sad that the community was lost –or that it was all for naught, because almost nothing has been built on the land where District Six was. The government has tried to rebuild a few homes, but it seems the damage has been done.

Next we visited the Khayelitsha township. Because of the diplomatic briefing before we got off the ship, I was a little worried about us going there. When you see the houses you think that the conditions must be terrible. These shacks are made out of different kinds of ramshackle materials, most of corrugated metal and are the size maybe of a large shed or outbuilding. Some of the shantys and businesses in the townships are ingeniously made out of metal storage containers. There were many hair salons built that way that I thought were really cleaver, most with portraits of different hairstyles painted on the sides of them. Many of the shantys have electricity because of these sporadic poles with dozens of lines cascading from them. The townships in most cases do not have running water, however. There are communal bathrooms and water pumps. Near where we stopped on the bus, at Vicky’s B&B, a shebeen, or tavern, was called the “waterfront”bar, because it was near the communal water. What would be considered a modest home was actually a hotel being run by a woman in Khayelitsha. She began it in 1997 with two rooms and would open her home to visitors from all over so that they could recognize and understand the conditions in the townships. Now, she has two floors –six rooms –and they were pretty nice! I would stay there! I didn’t take too many pictures while I was there because I didn’t want to be too disrespectful. Vicky said that she runs two programs fro children in the community –one that serves bread, soup and fruit to kids before they go to school twice a week and another that collects small items like pens and soap for them for Christmas. I commend her work wholeheartedly. I was glad to see that my perception of what the townships would be like was transformed. I realized that most of the people living there are just people trying to live their lives like you and me. It is quite unfortunate, however, that they have no means by which to improve their status. Many of the people were either historically displaced by apartheid or have joined the townships because they have tried to find work in Cape Town, but because of their low education level, cannot find work. Over 1 million live in the townships outside of Cape Town. It is crazy to see these shacks stretch out beyond the main highway, the highway we took to get there, N2. But, there have been some attempts to improve things in the townships. Some block houses have been and are being built to replace some of the shacks. There are area councils within the townships and Vicky was telling us that in order to set up a shack a person must apply to the council. There is also a semi-organized way of identifying the location of the shacks, which Vicky tried to explain to us –there’s supposed to be two rows of houses, a water source or bathroom and then two more rows between two of the streets. There are schools there –there was even a school behind Vicky’s and we heard a chorus of “Hi!Hi!Hi!Hi!”from the children in the school when we circled around the building. We also hung around the entrance to another school close to where the bus was parked and said hello to the children, gave them high fives, and stickers. It was actually kind of fun, even though it was a strange situation, especially since we didn’t speak Xhosa and the children are so young anyway.

Afterward, we had lunch at a restaurant in a house of a normal size that was on the edges of the township. The meal was served buffet-style and I tried a little bit of most of the things –there was some pretty good vegetable masala-like stuff and chicken fingers (haha!) among all of the dishes, one of which was supposed to be ostrich, I think. There was also a marimba band that played while we were eating. We also stopped at a crafts center called Guga Sthebe or “old platter,”which comes from when everyone would share in the community from the same platter. There they trained people to make small crafts to support themselves like wire art, ceramics and paintings. We were also shown a workshop where ceramics were made, they even have filled large orders from the government for visiting dignitaries. It was very cool.

After that we were taken back to downtown Cape Town in order to catch the ferry out to Robben Island. It’s getting kind of late here, so I will tell you more about that later!

Back To The Ship, Back To Schoolwork

Our visit to Cape Town was a great experience - I had a great time enjoying the historical, cultural and natural aspects of the city that make it unique. I realized that I need to come up with new descriptions instead of using the word "awesome"because I have probably already overused it in describing my experiences. Haha.

So, I'm back on the ship. Even though we were supposed to leave last night at 8 p.m., due to high winds we didn't disembark until about 8 a.m. I hope that doesn't shorten our time in Mauritius because it is already only one full day. Everybody's scrambling now because we have our first exam in Global Studies tomorrow. We were supposed to have a review day, but they decided that having the 12 professors that have spoken in class review material would take too long, instead we were told that professors were assigned to specific rooms to discuss further questions. There was a general disgust about the system among student who would rather have had an informative review. I have at least been to every class, which is more than I can say for some people, so I feel like I'll do fine on the test.

I really, really want to tell everyone about Cape Town, but I probably won't have much time today, since I'll be trying to study for the test. I tried to update last night after we got on the ship, but I was so tired that I was falling asleep while I was typing and subsequently went to bed at 10 p.m., after cleaning my room and sorting my laundry for our laundry day today.

So, more exciting stories later!

Namibia: Part Three, or "CONQUERING THE DUNE"

On the last day, I had another trip planned, so I had breakfast on the ship and set off for the Salt, Sea and Sand excursion.

I’d like to make a side note that it’s weird to come back and sleep on the ship at night. To go from a place that is so unfamiliar, no matter in what country, and come back at night to a place that is very familiar is so strange. It’s like if you had your house in a boat and carted it with you everywhere. Even eating the same old breakfast on the ship then going outside and realizing that you’re in an entirely different place is a little jarring. Just a thought.

First, the “salt”part of the trip was a visit to the salt refinery in Walvis Bay that uses evaporated sea water to collect and manufacture usable salt. It was kind of interesting to see this huge mound of salt in the lot of the refinery, which was bordered all around by these very shallow but wide lagoon-like bodies of water. Pictures would make this sound cooler, haha. Anyway, we were given a presentation by a woman at the refinery explaining how the process worked, using a system that evaporates the water, crystallizes the salt, collects it and cleans it so that it can be packaged or shipped in bulk. On the same property there’s also an oyster farm. We drove in vans from the salt refinery around all the lagoons to the oysters farm. The water was pretty desolate except for the awesome birdlife. There are a great many pelicans and flamingoes there in those waters as well as around other parts of Walvis Bay. They were so cool! Especially as they took off and landed from flight. They also squish down the mud to find worms that looks like a little dance, as our driver John told us. Some of the flamingoes were kind of far off in this HUGE group of them. Very cool to see! Too bad the road was so bumpy, I only got a few pictures.
So, we stopped at a little building where they sort oysters that are fully grown and ready to be sold. A man there told us that they actually buy baby oysters from Chile. These are put into trays and attached to wooden poles in the lagoons, which the man told us are deeper so that they can grow. Then, they’re moved to another tray in a shallower lagoon so that the oysters’shells can harden. The man said it usually takes from 6 to 9 months I think, depending on the weather, for an oyster to become fully grown.

After hearing all about them, the group got to eat some oysters! They had crackers and cheese, olives, jerky and champagne with the oysters in another little building down the lane. I asked how to eat them and was instructed to squeeze lime on them, pry them off the shell and just shallow it. One of my professors who was on the trip said that I did it like a pro, haha! They were interesting, but I don’t know if I would classify them in a group of foods I would go out of my way to eat. It was fun though, and I almost got stuck in the bathroom of this shack –so the key turned twice before opening the door, oops.

The next leg of our trip was my favorite, although two van-fuls of people dropped off because they had already seen the sand dunes. We traveled to Dune Seven, just outside Walvis Bay, which our driver said was somewhere above 70 meters tall usually. So, you do the math –it’s pretty tall but not too tall. Anyway, so I get up to it and a lot of people are trying to climb it, but not many are going to the top. Then, I was about one-quarter of the way up some girl decided to turn around, along with a few others. But, I told myself I’d just go a little bit further before turning around. And I go up some more, and I heard a girl cheering me on from the bottom, “You’re almost halfway, Stacey, you can do it!”It was really steep and it felt like every step you took you weren’t really going anywhere because your feet sink in the sand, then the sand from in front of your feet starts to cover your feet. I was so glad I had tennis shoes on, otherwise the sand would be burning on my feet. I was also glad I had brought my water bottle because I was dying. It was so hard. Then I was about halfway and ready to quit, but once again, someone yelled from the bottom –“Stacey, you’re halfway –you can do it!”By this time there were also about three other SASers at the top and they were cheering me on too. I honestly was so out of breath, I would just take a few steps and then stop. I was almost there. I had to do it. So, the students at the top kept encouraging me and I finally made it! One of the girls held out their hand and helped pull me up to the top. It was totally worth it!! The view was awesome! That was probably one of the best moments of my whole trip so far –just because I don’t think I would have finished, had the other students not been cheering me on. I felt so good when I finally was at the top. The girl at the bottom took a picture of the four of us at the top. It was awesome. I took some pictures (and some video!) too.

We just ran down the side to get down, although I wish I could have slid on my butt the whole way, but the sand is too hot. When we got to the bottom, my feet felt like they had weights tied to them because there was so much sand inside my socks and shoes. I swear I dumped out at least two cups of sand. It was pretty funny. That was the end of our trip, so we all got back in the vans and the driver had the A/C cranked up, which I was totally grateful for since I was sweating buckets and exhausted from climbing.

We got back to the ship –I ate lunch in the dining hall and then set out to try and get my water bottle back as I mentioned earlier. It was really a bust, but the good thing was that there was like this Mission to Seafarer’s place right outside the port, which is kind dumpy, but had two computers and phones and souvenirs. So, I just got a few little things there, tried to use the internet to upload photos, but the connection was too slow. I should be able to upload a lot in South Africa –their internet connections should be pretty good. Then, I waited outside of the building to meet that taxi driver to try and get my water bottle. I think Namibians had a general interest in Americans, since not many of them come there. I was waiting and three guys came over and started talking to me. I didn’t really feel threatened, because we were right outside the port gate and there were students all over buying things at this little market on the side of the road. I only talked to them for a few minutes and the only creepy thing that happened was that some guy walked right up and took a picture of me on his cell phone. I tried to tell him that he was supposed to say hello before he just snaps my pictures, but he just showed me the picture and attempted at conversation. A little strange. Anyway, I asked that taxi driver to take me to a music store so that I could buy some CDs and he drove me like 3 blocks, so I gave him like nothing because I was disappointed about the water bottle. I bought a few CDs at the store, walked back to the Mission, attempted to use the slow internet and then walked back to the ship about an hour before we were required to be onboard and wrote out some postcards.

So, here we are this morning in Cape Town, South Africa! I have a lot of day trips planned –on to Robben Island, one about Cape Town jazz, a township visit. And we’re going to go to the South African rugby game on Friday night! How cool is that?! Time to go eat breakfast –hope you enjoyed Namibia! On to South Africa!

Namibia: Part Two

On the way back from a short bit of wandering, I heard music coming from our campsite. I remembered that we were to be entertained by a musical group before dinner. The group was an a capella vocal group of five guys, each dressed in some sort of traditional shirt and black pants. There were three drums that they would use for some of the pieces and they introduced each one in English. They were really good! I asked one of the men (actually, they were all between the ages of 18 and 22, I believe), Linus, later about how they learned to sing and he said they were all in a choir together as kids, and continued singing from there. They sang in Oshivambo, a native language of one of the peoples of Namibia, even though Linus said that many people know English, Afrikaans and a native language, depending on their background. They did a great version of the Lord’s Prayer and Amazing Grace in English. They had did some choreography with a few of the dances that were pretty cool. And they asked for audience participation in one of the songs where they were jamming on the drums. The SAS photographer was on our trip and later he came up to me and said that he got a good picture of me dancing. Hooray. :-/ haha.
I talked to two of the guys in the group, Linus and Bobby, and got my picture taken with them. Linus told me to look them up on Facebook. How cool is that? Anyway, I talked to them so long that they started serving dinner, so I grabbed a plate and had some of the stew and rice that was served. The desert was AMAZING. It was like this sweet, moist bread pudding that is served with this warm, syrupy cream over the top. I was told later that it is called Malva pudding. It was so good –and this was at a campsite, so I’m sure there are other places where it is 100 times better.

After dinner, everyone just hung around, especially since there were clouds, hence the “cloudgazing.”The stargazing guide showed up and set up the telescope hoping that the weather would clear, but there were only stars in a bit of the sky for about 10 to 20 minutes. I still went over and talked to the guide, Arnold, who was 23 and was under the employ of his mother, Lynette who showed up later. She came to tell Arnold to pack up the telescope so that they could drive home and pointed out some of the places the stars and constellation would have been if it weren’t cloudy. Perhaps it will be better in Cape Town and I’ll get to see the Southern Cross. There has been usually wet weather in Namibia so far this year, considering that it is a desert climate and usually only gets a ridiculously small amount of rainfall normally. Liz, my roommate, went on the camping trip the next night and said that she knew it was unusual when even the guide was taking pictures of the rain.

A bunch of people sat around the campfire talking, so I sat down. There happened to be one of the camp workers who was watching the fire in one of the chairs who started talking to a girl next to me, so I decided to join in the conversation. Eventually, I moved to the seat next to him because I figured I could probably get another chance to talk to the American kids on my right, but I wouldn’t have another chance to talk to the Namibian guy on my left. His name was Saki and he first asked about what kind of sports I liked. His English was OK, but his accent made it a little tough for us to talk. He said that he likes the English Premier League and that everyone gathers to watch the games, sometimes even paying just to go somewhere and watch them on TV. I tried to ask if they liked rugby there, like I know they do in South Africa, but he seemed confused, which might mean they don’t. He said he liked the work outdoors with the camping company. Then I asked about his family –he said he has four brothers and two sisters and that he was the second oldest. He said that all his siblings get along well. He was 27 and told me that his girlfriend of three years was as old as me –born on August 9. “I remember him asking. Strange to think that his girlfriend and I were born about two months apart in entirely different places, leading entirely different lives. Saki did not study any further than grade 12. Much like in the United States, he said that if you’re poor it’s difficult to get money from the government unless you have very high marks in school. He said that his girlfriend did not go to university either. I should have asked what his girlfriend and his parents did for a living, but I didn’t think about it at the time. Saki did, however, tell me that he only wants to have one girl and one boy, because if you’re poor then you can’t afford to have all those kids. This is particularly interesting to me because of my studies in sociology. It goes to show that even in Namibia, which would fit the profile of a less developed country I think, younger generations are deciding to have less children (which, of course, could be different when Saki actually has kids). That was a really fun conversation and then he asked if we could get a picture together –which I happily did. Then, he gave me his address so that I could send him one. He also asked to take one in the morning when it was light out, so we did that too. I think he had a genuine interest in what I was like as an American, as was I in his life as a Namibian. It was refreshing to talk to someone on that level, rather than just someone trying to hassle you as a tourist. Pretty cool.

The night in the tent was fine –they gave us too many blankets, though, because it was kindy stuffy in the tent. I guess we should have opened a few more flaps before we went to bed. I saw two dragonflies in the tent –one we shooed out and the other I don’t think we did –so I slept kind of light because I was paranoid about the bugs. Other than that, I actually woke up a few mintutes before our trip leader started yelling, “Breakfast!!”at 8 a.m. Breakfast was yogurt and granola. Then, for some reason, the vans weren’t supposed to pick us up until 11. It was so hot and everybody was so tired that we mostly just sat around in the pavilion, some playing cards, most just talking. The vans didn’t actually arrive until about noon and we were supposed to be back at 12:30 p.m. Not, like it really mattered, because I didn’t have anything else planned for the day, but it was kind of annoying. Although, in the van –which, for somehow had the air conditioning on while blasting really hot air from under the seats –I sat next to Yash and had a nice, long conversation the whole way back about his girlfriend, Ariel, which he knows from Boston where he goes to school. And I talked a little about Tim, of course. Just a little, haha. So that was nice.

We got back to the ship and there was a general consensus that we should take a little time to regroup, then I met a bunch of people who all wanted to go to Swakopmund around 3 p.m.
There was a large group of about 12 people, but I mostly stuck with Yash and his friend Anchal (who’s name I don’t think I’m spelling right). Anyway, we took a cab outside the port with a girl name Kara, who was really nice –she’s from San Francisco and I mentioned that Lauren’s from Windsor. (She said she had been to the Windsor Waterworks, a water park, and remembered the jingle, but Lauren has never mentioned that to me.) Swakopmund is a cute medium-sized walkable town with lots of little stores that have both some African and German influence, since Namibia used to be a German colony. We went into a bookstore that had books both in English and in German. We saw a lot of SAS people getting ice cream at one place –partly because it was Sunday and almost everything was closed, partly because, of course, it was hot. Then we passed some people who also wanted to go up Woermann tower. The tower is only about 4 or 5 stories high, but is taller than almost everything else in Swakopmund. It was built as a part of the lodging for the management of the Woermann trading company building as a landmark. It was built at the turn of the century, but by 1924 it was used as a school hostel up until 1972. We took lots of pictures at the top.

After that, we walked down to the beach! It was free, public beach lined with houses that were either rented or owned. Actually, in the house behind us there were other SASers who had rented it. That was the first time, after seeing ocean for almost a month that I got to actually go in it! Well, technically, we just stuck our feet in, but same difference. It was awesome. When I thought of Namibia before, I would have never thought of such a place, with a beach and pretty little houses. It was great. We spent some time there and afterwards walked down the street to where there was an open air market of sorts. They were lots of people hawking African carvings in the shape of animals, bowls, baskets, necklaces, rings, and other things like that. I bought a couple small things, which will remain unmentioned because they’re presents! I kind of wanted to go closer to the lighthouse, which we even saw with it’s light on later in the evening, but the group wanted to go get dinner. We were meeting some other SASers at a pizza place, but there were lots of people in the tiny restaurant. Yash, Anchal and I started walking around to try and find another place, but nothing close seemed to have vegetarian food for them, so we resolved instead to go watch the sunset on the beach and go back to the pizzeria. I saw some old Volkswagens there! After a moment, I realized it was probably because of the German people who live there. Pretty cool. I got a pizza with bacon, garlic, pineapple and BANANA on it. It was awesome! After dinner, it was about 9:30 p.m., so we just caught a taxi back to Walvis Bay to retire on the ship, even though we were going to try and go out to a bar that some people had mentioned earlier called the raft, but the guys didn’t want to chance it being closed on a Sunday night. No biggie, I was tired from camping the night before anyway.

Speaking of catching a taxi –I realized about 5 minutes after we got out of the taxi that took us to Swakopmund in the afternoon that I had left my water bottle in it. I had gotten the driver’s number because he had mentioned that we should call him when we wanted a taxi back, but by the time we tried him after dinner he said it was too late for him to drive out to Swakopmund and back, so we should try again in the morning. Since I was on a trip on Monday morning, I waited until after we got back in the early afternoon and called the driver, who’s name was Saari, back again. I had hopes that he remembered who I was and had asked if he still had my water bottle and he seemed like he did, but when he found me outside the port Monday he said he had cleaned out his taxi and had it at home or something like that. Oh well. My only emotional attachment to it was that it had my Spain sticker and a Morocco sticker on it. I happen to have an extra Morocco sticker from the Hassan II mosque and of course, a few new stickers from Namibia, so I think I will start putting them on the back of my laptop. If I leave that in the back seat of a taxi, I think I would have a heart attack and, I haven’t taken it off the ship at all yet, so I’d say the laptop’s a safer bet.

Anyway, the last day in Namibia next!

Namibia Part One

When we pulled into port in Walvis Bay, Namibia, I was feeling totally positive, especially after that long stretch at sea from Casablanca. The ship pulled into the port on Saturday morning and we were first greeted by representatives from the American Embassy in the capital of Namibia, Windhoek. This was the first of the “diplomatic briefings”we will have upon arriving in most of the ports. The presentation by the officials repeated most of the information we already knew about the history and population of Namibia, etc. Then, after the briefing, we were told that we could go up to the top deck and watch a girl’s choir perform on the ground below the ship. They were good –dancing and singing together in matching outfits. I have some video (I took a few in Namibia –I think I’m getting the hang of taking videos) of them performing!

There was a group of us –Sara, Julia, Ji, Rachel and Spencer –who all had some time before our first trip was leaving after lunch. So, we decided to go into town. We hit up one of the ATMs (along with a long ling of other SASers) and walked around a bit before deciding on a restaurant for lunch. I think the place was just called “A1 Pizzeria and Restaurant.”We were all hungry and drawn in by a sign that said “PIZZA”that we could read from down the street. The place was very nice and we got a big table and moved another one next to it to accommodate two guys who came in right after us that we knew, Yash and Anchal, and they sat with us.
[SIDE NOTE: UUUUUggghhh. My left shift key just broke –like the button detached from the keyboard. That’s what I get for carrying my laptop around. I’ll have to see if the computer guy can fix it. :o(. Ugh.]
We thought we would have plenty of time, since we got there at about 11:55 a.m. and didn’t need to be back at the ship until about 1:30 p.m. We all ordered pizzas, even though the waitress told us that it might a little while because they hadn’t turned on the oven for the day yet. “Oh well,”we thought. “We have plenty of time.”While we were waiting the same waitress came back and had a bowl full of little bags. She held it above Sara’s head and told her to pick one out of the bowl. Here, it turns out the waitress had made little charms for Valentine’s Day –and she handed them out to all the girls in our group. It was so nice. Mine has red and green beads with a leaf charm on the end. I think it will find a home on the rearview mirror of the Beetle! So, we continue to wait for the pizzas. It’s 12:30, then it’s 12:45 and we start to get worried. We saw them through a few windows still making one of the pizzas. So, we had Spencer go talk to another woman in charge and ask to just take whatever they have done because we were in a hurry to get back to the SAS ship for our trips. They brought out three of the pizzas and we all started sharing and scarfing down the food. They were really good. Then the woman comes over to us, and this is at, like, 1:15 p.m., and tells us that they’re only charging us for those three and that they’ve arranged to give us a ride back to the port in two cars. That was so nice! We were so grateful! So, the girls got in one car, and the driver said that his girlfriend, who’s mother owns the place, was the woman in charge. That was such a genuinely nice thing to do for us! Then, he went back and got the guys. Well, he could only take us to the gate of the port because you need to be authorized to go into the huge commercial harbor. We girls started walking and kept a lookout for the guys behind us –the walk from the gate to the ship was about 15 minutes! As luck would have it, the guys see us from the back of a pickup truck that they hitched onto! It was hilariously lucky! We jumped into the back and sped our way back to the ship. It was just so lucky and exhilarating to have everything work out as well as it did! We got back in just enough time (since we weren’t actually leaving ‘til 2 p.m. –they just like us to be a half an hour early for overnight trips) to have everyone split up, grab our stuff and go to the meeting point in the Union.

The whole group proceeded to the vans outside of the ship to depart for the desert for overnight camping. The ride there was pretty uneventful and I fell asleep for a little bit because I had stayed up late the night before and we lost an hour to a time change. We got to the campsite after at least a couple hours in the van (which had air conditioning, but the bottom vents were spewing hot air :-). It was so strange to see the city, which, is not very big, then have it all change to mounds and mounds and dunes of sand. There are many palm trees among the houses –some big, some small –that are usually surrounded by stone fences (which I later found are popular because they are low maintenance). Then, the sand turns to beach! There were lots of houses along the beach and a development with the roads built and little ‘For Sale’signs on each sandy, houseless lot. We made it to the city closet to Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, after a while and I was fascinated to see their use of English and German in most of the stores, etc. Swakopmund has a lot of German influence on architecture, etc. It’s popular among visiting Germans because Swapkopmund used to be a German colony (when it was West Africa, then South-west Africa.). We were winding and bumping across roads and I didn’t know how the drivers could tell where to go, especially once we got further into the desert where the roads were packed dirt. Then, all of a sudden, we came up on the camp! There were 35 tents in a row around two campfires with big, dry logs and chairs to sit on, a big white pavilion with round tables underneath. There were also portable toilets in little trailers and portable showers (which, I don’t know if anyone actually used. Each tent, including mine –number five –had two cots with blankets and a pillow, a bottle of water and a bar of soap. The first thing everyone did was wander around and try and climb the small rocky mountains that encompassed the camp. I came back to the camp, then decided to wander a little bit further in the desert.

I’m falling asleep as I write, so, more to come later!

Namibia: A Smile On The Face Of Africa

I bought a sticker that says that on it and it is so true.

The short time (the three days went by so fast!) we had in Namibia was amazing! Hands down my favorite so far. This is just a short post to let you know that I will be updating as soon as possible. Expect the entire tale in parts, just like Morocco.

Back on the ship now with one full day between Walvis Bay, Namibia, and Cape Town, South Africa!

Zero Degrees Latitude!

We just passed the Equator! The captain made an announcement joking about feeling a bump when we crossed it and watching the water go the opposite direction. They did blow the whistle when we crossed it, but I missed it before I could get up to the deck. So, far the Southern Hemisphere is pretty cool, looks the same as the Northern Hemisphere - all ocean! Haha.

Also, in today's Dean's memo they had some info about the flying fish I saw yesterday, just in case you wanted to know:

From the Crow's Nest:
Keep a lookout for...flying fish! The ship’s passage startles these fish that live near the surface, and they take to the air to escape this big ‘predator’, the MV Explorer. Flying fishes are fish with very large pectoral fins. These fins allow flying fish to glide for long distances (up to several hundred yards), using their outstretched pectoral fins as wings. They become airborne through rapid vibrations of their tail, and they can remain airborne for up to 30 seconds and achieve speeds up to about 40 mph, skimming just above the waves. As they glide, their pectoral fins are kept rigid, without any flapping motions. When flying fish are swimming in the water, these pectoral fins are held flat against the body. Flying fishes primarily live in the open ocean, feeding on plankton. There are about 65 species of flying fish, and they are found in all warm seas. The ones around here are rather small, less than 10 inches long.

Kiss The Fish!

Today I was awakened by the ringing of pots and pans and yelling through the halls. A group of crew members, I think, were dressed in togas, making all kinds of racket and knocking on everyone’s doors. This was at about 7:30 a.m., the start of Neptune Day! Apparently, the celebration is a tribute to those of yore that commemorated new sailors’first crossing of the Equator.

After breakfast, we all gathered out on the back of the top deck, the one with the swimming pool, and with great pomp and circumstance we were introduced to Neptune, which was actually the real captain of the ship dressed in a long, white plastic wig and skirt with his body painted green, and his royal court. (I got a picture with him later! Haha) We were instructed to be anointed by “fish guts,”which was actually some sort of dyed water, then kiss a large fish, kiss Neptune’s ring and bow to the queen. After that, we had to jump into the pool. It was great! The “fish guts”and the pool water were so cold! I didn’t really go with a group, since there were so many people up there on the deck, but a friend I talked to later showed me a great picture she got of me with the “guts”being poured on. Then, what you’re also supposed to shave your head, but they make that part optional. Lots of people did it! Tons of guys, of course, but also I’d say about 20 girls or so. I actually thought about doing it. Like seriously considered it for a while –I kept feeling like if I were ever to shave my head this would be the time to do it, and I’d have a great story to tell. But, it took me too long to warm up to the idea and by that time there wasn’t too much of a crowd left. For some reason, when convincing myself that I should do it, I was hearing Uncle Marty’s voice in my head, mentioning something about seizing the great experience. After all of that, my hair is still intact.

It was such a relaxing day. Before lunch they were blaring music on the back deck and “Island In the Sun”came on by Weezer. I thought it was just perfect. A group of people I was with went to the front of the seventh deck and laid down right on the deck (there aren’t any chairs up there). It was pretty windy, so that made the 80-degree weather just right. We chatted for a bit, walked back to the snack bar and got some ice cream, came back to the deck and just relaxed for most of the afternoon. Many of them went in around 3, but I alternated between the shade and the sun after that and read some Hemingway. Audrey (who you may remember is the girl from the flight down to Nassau) and I watched the water for a while. I went back and forth between reading and watching flying fish pop out of the water and skim over it for 100 feet or so. It was a great afternoon.

Then there was a barbecue for dinner! It was probably the best food that we’ve had so far on the ship! Hot dogs, hamburgers, ribs, little corn-on-the-cobs, baked beans, macaroni salad. It was all so good! And the buffet was all set up out there by the pool and they had two large barbecues grilling the ribs. Yum. It was just a great day out at sea.

Morocco Part Three (The last!)

So, we started out our second day in Morocco with breakfast in the hotel, which was pretty good –the coffee was good, and of course the orange juice and oranges were awesome. The whole SAS group checked out of the hotel and boarded the bus. We had a pretty far drive, which was about two hours, to the Berber villages in the Atlas Mountains. The Berbers are like the native people of Morocco who still live a pretty rural lifestyle in the foothills of the mountains. The mountains were absolutely beautiful –most either covered with greenery or some in the far distance capped with snow. It threatened to rain early on during our drive, but cleared and the view from the bus was gorgeous. It was so cool to see the little towns amid the huge mountains. Many of the ramshackle homes are near rivers fed by melting snow in the mountains and they’re dangerously close to it. The guide mentioned a flood that killed over 300 people, as I recall, a few years ago.

We stopped at one of the small homes to see their working water-powered grist mill and small home. The mill was quite ingenious, rolling along easily with the power of the rushing water beneath it. The house however, also had a little store attached with various curiosities native to Morocco.

Our next stop was another Berber home where we were demonstrated the way to properly create and drink mint tea, one of the most popular drinks in Morocco. Again, the home was pretty modest, despite a pretty large area to accommodate all the people stopping for tea, built on a beautiful hillside in the mountains with an attached stable for a few animals and a traditional steam bath chamber, a hammam (in lieu of showering).

Once we left the mountains and the villages, we headed back toward Marrakesh and stopped at a school set up by some sort of charitable French organization. The school was called Terre Des Jeunes Marrakesh, after the organization sponsoring it. A few of the leaders of the school took us for a tour of the small building, which was rather modern, despite how cold the temperature was on the inside. Most of the students had gone home for lunch, so we weren’t able to interact with them, but their drawings and artwork were all over the walls. The school teaches underprivileged kids and encourages them to take up a trade. Students ranged in age from grade school age up to college age. The head of the school explained that the students even take classes in physics. The school also had a computer room with about 6 computers and a large central room with a small library and many more of the kids’art projects. The school also emphasized recycling, from posters on the wall and bins near the entrance. The students had also made art from used plastic bottles that looked like tall plants with red flowers –it was cute. I wish we had been able to interact with the students and spend more time asking questions about the school. It was a nice visit.

Afterwards we ate lunch at a Moroccan restaurant near the market and ventured back out for a short time to test our bartering skills –I found out that mine aren’t very good. Then, we took the three hour bus trip back to Casablanca, returning to the ship just in time for dinner.

I stayed on the ship for the rest of the night, and my final day in Morocco began when I woke up a few times during the early morning hours with a terrible stomach ache. But, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from enjoying my final day in Casablanca! I skipped breakfast and instead drank some electrolyte-infused powder. As I was walking out of the port, I actually began to feel better and just as I was noticing that, I slipped and fell while crossing over a little median. Ugh. I got a little dirt on my jacket, pants, purse and all over my hand, but I recovered.

Along with a group of about a dozen other people, I wanted to go see the Hassan II Mosque, the second largest mosque in the world and the largest landmark in Casablanca. Some of the people in the group thought it would be fine just to walk there, since the mosque’s minaret is easily visible from where we were. It still seemed kind of far and we wanted to make it to the 10 a.m. tour, so two other girls and I took a short cab ride to the giant landmark instead.

The minaret is 600 feet tall and the inside of the mosque holds over 200,000 people. The floor is heated and the ceiling retracts. There are about a dozen huge chandeliers that weigh something ridiculous (I can’t remember the exact amount). Two-thirds of the entire building is built over the water on the coast. There are 41 absolution fountains in the bottom floor of the place. It was aaammmazing! (Grr for not being able to show you pictures!)

During the mosque tour, I noticed that one of the SASers from Penn State, Colin, and a few of his friends were in the tour and asked if I could tag along with whatever they were up to. They were off to lunch next, which sounded like a good idea to me. One of the girls needed some more money, so we wandered for a bit to find an ATM, then we were going to try and eat one final Moroccan meal at a restaurant. We tried to walk for a bit and find a nice place, but ended up deciding to get two taxis (because there were six of us) to take us all to Rick’s Café.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Rick’s Café was the setting for most of the famous film Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. However, the movie was shot entirely on a Hollywood set so, there is no real Rick’s Café from that time period. This café was actually built in 2004. But, the simple fact of being able to say you’ve been there is still pretty cool. They had a small lunch menu including cheeseburgers, steak and fish, as well as a few Moroccan dishes. I was glad that I was feeling better than the morning and was able to eat lunch. The setting was all very well done with plates and salt and pepper shakers embellished with the restaurant’s name. There was a piano further back near the bar and an upstairs dining area as well. It was funny, but not totally surprising, that there were a lot of SAS people there, and, one of the staff members (the A.V. guy) had arranged to play guitar and sing during lunch that day. He sat near the piano and played “As Time Goes By,”of course, a few other songs from the era and others like “Summertime”and a pretty cool rendition of “Stairway to Heaven.”

After lunch, Colin and his friend Spencer stayed behind to use the free wi-fi at Rick’s and the other girls and I decided we wanted to do a little shopping. We got into a taxi (that was dumping more SAS kids off at Rick’s, haha) and one of the girls actually recognized the driver from the day before. He was really nice and accommodating with us –the other girls wanted to buy scarves, so he took us to a pretty big store with just about everything and they bought a few things. Then, I mentioned that I wanted to buy some Moroccan music and, (after a bit of time struggling to communicate) the driver took us to a bootleg music stand. On our way there we also stopped in a place where he knew we could buy stamps (for postcards). One of the girls even stopped at another one of the small stands and the driver, Aziz, helped her barter a bit for some bracelets. We went back to the taxi, but the girls wanted to continue shopping. We split the cab fare and I said I just wanted to go back to the ship (since I was back to not feeling very good again). So, Aziz brought me back within about 100 feet of the gangway. He was really a very congenial and helpful man, so I gave him the fare and told him to spend it on his 12 kids (whom he had mentioned earlier) and he surprisingly gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek!

So, Morocco ended with a pleasant experience, even though I wasn’t feeling well. The ship wasn’t set to leave until 8 p.m. and I got back at about 3 p.m., so I played a game of Scrabble with some students I came across passing through the lounge. The worst part of the evening, however, was when we left the port at about 8 p.m. The captain warned us that there would be rough waters, just as there had been when we arrived in Casablanca. So, I tried to find a stationery place in the middle of the ship, playing cards with a few people, but the rocking made my already upset stomach worse. People were sliding all over the place, trying to have fun with it, but I think a few got a little too goofy, as I heard (and have since seen) and got hurt (I’ve seen two or three people with wrist braces, etc.).

Since then we have been at sea –yesterday we stopped for a few hours in the harbor of Dakar, Sengal to refuel. The scenery was pretty awesome while we sat on the ship and ate lunch and dinner. We watched the sun set there and shortly after set off.

Back to "normal"...?

So, amid my lengthy Morocco posts, which should have at least one more installment, I just wanted to let everyone know that I am feeling much better since Thursday. I woke up yesterday and felt totally fine. So, we're getting back to "normal"for our second long stretch of the voyage. We should be stopping, just as we did off Gibraltar, in Dakar, Senegal, to bunker for fuel perhaps tomorrow. We've been trucking along - across the Atlantic the ship's average speed was about 20 knots, here along Africa we've been going about 24 knots. The best part is that even though we're going faster, despite that rocky start on Thursday, now it almost feels as though we're sitting in the port because the ship's only rocking the slightest bit. Pretty cool. And, I sat out on the deck all afternoon and read. Let me repeat that just so it sinks in for me - I sat out on the deck all afternoon and read. Pretty much my dream come true (yeah, I'm a nerd with a penchant for wind through my hair). Ah, if only it were leisure reading, then my life would be complete.

So, I'll finish up Morocco tomorrow, I just wanted to throw in this little non sequitur so no one thought I was still green in the face while feverishly typing my updates.

Morocco , or, I bet YOU'VE never been to a horse fantasia!

The SAS trip description when I signed up for it had said something about a “horse fantasia”, which sounded fascinating, even though I had no idea what such a thing was. It was my understanding, by they way the description mentioned it, that this show would be located in the main market, Djemaa el Fna, which we had visited earlier, but I was totally wrong. Instead we went to this place, which was, if I can put any sort of description to it, is like the restaurant/show at Medieval Times or something in Disney World or the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival. It was strictly for tourists and artificially built off in the middle of nowhere (kind of like the Ren Faire).

The whole thing was walled in and you enter with this group of men atop horses dressed in this Middle Eastern (think Lawrence of Arabia, I guess) garb creating a tunnel near the entrance. They kind of coax you to take your picture with them. Then, you go through the entrance, which even has a giant head of a cobra (we of course used the photo opportunity). After that you get your picture taken by a photographer (the Disney part) with these two costumed women, which you can buy later. Then, after winding up and down some stairs with displays of mannequins set with costumes and props, you come out into this giant courtyard with groups of musicians playing down the one side. After walking around we saw that you could take camel rides up and down the middle of the courtyard, like a horse show ring, covered with dirt for the horse show. As you continued to travel around the other side of the courtyard had four or five little connected building, which were made to look like lush tents on the inside. Embellished cloth was draped from the ceiling and even covered a pole in the middle. This is where we ate dinner, so the couches along the walls, tables and chairs also matched the “tent”fabric. I have a picture I wish I could show you (perhaps once I get home I will fill in all the posts with their corresponding pictures).

The food was really good and authentically Moroccan, it seemed. The first dish was some kind of soup that tasted like vegetable soup with some extra spices, then a huge plate of cous cous with squash and other vegetables, then a course with meatballs and fried eggs in some kind of tomato sauce. And for dessert fresh oranges, which were really good! During dinner they had the musicians travel from tent to tent (or building to building) and perform while dinner continued.

After dinner, while still unpeeling my final orange, the horse fantasia started. It was chilly outside, but the show wasn’t very long. There were cement steps lining the ring where the horses were performing, but they were too cold to sit on. First, all the groups of musicians carrying different “flags”(more like large scarves on flag-size poles) paraded past the crowd performing and into the ring (reminding me of the Ren. Faire once again), then the horse show began, all set to music blaring from speakers. It was also dark by this time, so they also had lights rigged up that were used for effect throughout the whole thing. It seemed like there sort of was a “good side”and a “bad side”with guys dressed in black (who entered to with the Star Wars soundtrack…hahaha) and white. But, as I said the whole thing was pretty short. The five or six guys in black took turns going around the ring doing tricks while the horse while still moving, like standing up and touching the ground with their feet, doing a somersault of sorts, etc. In between, a float, which was reminiscent of the tank float in Animal House, painted like some kind of castle moved forward in the ring and a belly dancer rose from the center and did some dancing to the music. Then, the dozen guys in white all came out together in a line and fired guns off, charging about 5 times. The finale was one last charge with the guys in white firing the guns again with the musicians in tow making a racket. Then, two palm fronds were lit on fire on either side and a message in the back of the ring was also lit on fire. It said: “Choukran Maa Salama”, which means “Thank You and Goodnight”in Arabic. As we were all leaving they had some upbeat music that sounded like Moroccan music mixed with American dance music and then you could hear “Everybody dance now”every once and while, just like the 80’s song usually played at weddings, which capped off the evening and actually did get at least one group of tourists to stay in their seats and dance.

Now, it seems that my description of the horse fantasia comes off as a bit cynical and disgusted, which I was just a tiny bit, but don’t get me wrong –I had a great time! The food was great, we had some great dinner conversation and the show was interesting, to say the least. We got back onto the tour bus, as did all the other guests at the performance, after it was over and got back to the hotel at about midnight. And, as I said, I had fun even though I knew that that was nowhere near the authentic Moroccan culture.

Morocco Part One

For Morocco, I decided it would be best to do one of the SAS-sponsored trips. This was my first one, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Looking back, it was a good mixture of being able to see the most things in the shortest amount of time as well as doing tourist-y things that were kind of artificial. Those two conditions both have their pros and cons. On one hand, we were only there for three days, so I wanted to maximize the time I had there. On the other hand, while traveling sometimes I want to try and see things that not everyone sees and achieve a personal experience rather than a manufactured one.

That being said, the first thing I did in Morocco was get on a tour bus. Haha. We traveled from Casablanca to Marrakesh, which is about a three-hour drive. On the way, our guide, Larbi, pointed out some notable places as we were leaving Morocco and entering Marrakesh. The countryside in between was interesting, even as seen from a bus window. The gentle green hills are very similar to those in Spain, actually, which isn’t too surprising considering that we learned in Global Studies class that the countries both share the Mediterranean climate –a dry, hot summer and cool, wet winter. That also explains the common crops of oranges and olives that they share. I swear we had oranges with every meal in Morocco. It was interesting to see singular figures overseeing sheep grazing in the middle of nowhere beyond the highway, as well as little towns offset with the minaret of a mosque as its only landmark.

Upon our arrival in Marrakesh, we stopped at the Majorelle Garden. This botanical garden was started in 1947 by the Frenchman who is its namesake. Since 1980, it was partly owned by Yves Saint-Laurent and there was a memorial there to him, which I didn’t understand until I read the Wikipedia article, which also said that the designer’s ashes were spread there after his death last June. Anyway, the garden was pretty, with lots of different types of cacti and palm trees. I wish I could post pictures of it.

We stopped next in a library with a large mural inside depicting the Green March, which I believe was some sort of march for independence in 1975 (Wikipedia’s not working right now or I would confirm that). It was hard to hear the guide in the echoing room we were in.

Then, our next stop was lunch on the plaza of the central market, Djemaa el Fna, in the old city, or medina, of Marrakesh. We were grouped together on the terrace of the restaurant and didn’t have to order (since we were in such a big group) they just brought the food out to us –some sort of salad with eggplant, a tajine (stew) with lamb (I think), prunes and almonds, and a creamy vanilla yogurt for dessert.

After that we stopped at the Bahia Palace, which was one of the king’s palaces in the past that is not in use today. It had multiple wings for the king’s multiple wives and a Koran school attached, presumably for the king’s children. The craftsmanship on most of the buildings we saw is so ornate and intricate. Most of the ceilings were carved cedar, usually dyed with plant-derived dyes –so beautiful and detailed. Only geometric shapes are used in most of the ornate work in the Muslim world because otherwise creating images of people or animals is seen as worshipping or glorifying something other than God (Allah). Larbi pointed out, however, that the palace also incorporated other symbols, such as a Jewish star of David that he pointed out and French fleur de lis (sp?) as well as stained glass, which comes from Christian churches.

Then we did something kind of touristy –we stopped at this pharmacy buried among the souks (tiny market stores) for a presentation about Moroccan spices and remedies. Among the group, I think there was a kind of consensus later that Larbi was probably getting a cut of the profits from bringing us there. But, it was interesting nonetheless. The walls of the place were lined with jars (about the size of those large pickle jars we have) full of tons of different kinds of things, some spices, solids, liquids, powders, etc. So, even though it was touristy it was a cool place to see.
I bought some mint tea, the most popular drink in Morocco –the man called it Morrocan “whisk-key”in the same cadence as “mint tea”as a joke –and some henna powder and some small gifts.

Then we wandered through the souks –some of which had touristy stuff like souvenirs, some had real handcrafted goods, others had modern clothes like knock-off watches, clothes and purses. We stopped at one rather large one, which Larbi was also probably getting some kickback from, but I bought a brown kaftan, which is kind of like those Indian-looking hippie shirts that I like. It has blue embroidery on it around the sleeves and neck and is about the length of a short dress.

We were all getting a little tired from the stress of walking the crowded, narrow alleyways of the souks by this time, so the bus took us to the hotel, which was pretty nice. The hotel was pretty nice, it was in two parts, separated by one courtyard with a fountain and café and another with a swimming pool (it was too cold to go in, of course –about in the 50s, similar in Spain, too).

The night wasn’t over, however, but since this post is getting on in length, I’ll split my Morrocan adventures into parts.

Here's Looking at You, Kid.

Despite not feeling 100 percent today, I wanted to post and say that Morocco was awesome. I went with a two day SAS-sponsored trip to Marrakesh and the Ourika Valley, which is in the Atlas Mountains. Then, today I went with a group to the Hassan II Mosque, the second largest mosque in the world with a 600-foot-tall minaret and room for 200,000 people inside. We ate lunch at Rick’s Café, and, although it was built way after the film Casablanca that is set there, it was still pretty cool.

I’ve had a stomach ache since early this morning and the rocky waters and extreme swaying in my cabin, which is near the front of the ship, have not made it any better. But, we will be on the sea for eight days now until we reach Walvis Bay, Namibia, so once I feel better I will update you more on Morocco.

Don't Rock the Boat

Today has been going pretty good so far, despite not being in Morocco as was planned. I’m still feeling good about the Steelers winning the Super Bowl last night. For the past couple days, we’ve actually been getting some kind of CNN International broadcast to our cabins. Anyway, I just turned it on and caught some wrap up of the game – Big Ben talking about how he played and everything. Who was the MVP? Was it Santonio Holmes? I didn’t catch the entire report. Email me about it, whenever you want, about whatever - I still love to get emails!

Also, the SAS people planned a bunch of things last minute for us to do today without class. And...one of the activities is a showing of the season premiere of Lost! So, I was pretty excited about that. I also met some girls at lunch that I’m going to play Scrabble with in a bit.

The seas have been really rough to today. There have been some pretty big shudders throughout the ship along with the rolling back and forth. Since my cabin is the very front of the ship, you can really hear the waves pounding the side of the ship and feel the rocking pull you back and forth. I haven’t really had too much trouble with motion sickness yet, but I shouldn’t stay in my cabin too long or it might start to get to me.

Oh, and Happy Groundhog Day, by the way! Did Phil see his shadow?

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!

That was the most awesome football game I have ever seen. I watched my hometown team win. By four points. In the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar. At 3 o’clock in the morning. Yeah, it was amazing!

At first, we were watching some online feed from NBC, but the picture was really bad, so they switched to some German broadcast with video from NFL Network. It really didn’t matter that there wasn’t any commentary because the picture was way better.

The Union was packed with people – including the executive dean, who told us on the first day that he was a Steelers fan – when the game started, then the crowd fizzled out after halftime. There were about, say, 50 people left in the Union and about a dozen diehard Steelers fans (including me!) sitting in the front up to the very end. It was awesome. We even got a picture together! I think all of us almost had a collective heart attack in those last 35 seconds of the game. And, even though we moved our clocks forward for Morocco, it's 3:30 a.m. But it was totally worth it.

It's actually OK that I'm going to bed so late because we had trouble fueling today. I guess the conditions were too windy, so we have to refuel in the morning, which means one less day in Morocco. :o( But, it also means no class and sleeping in, so as to enjoy the sweet victory of the Super Bowl. GO STEELERS!!!!! :oD

SPAIN (parte dos)

After the Mezquita, we walked around Cordoba and looked in some of the shops and stores. I wanted to find a music store, so, naturally, I stopped a woman carrying a guitar and she said there was one down the street that she would walk me to. And, to make it even better, she spoke a little bit of English. She said she learned English in Germany, which was interesting. The store, however, was closed, but the woman ran into her husband pushing her daughter in a stroller. So, that was a pretty cool experience and I walked back up the street. As I was walking, I noticed a hippie-type store that was open and went in. There were a lot of posters, incense, scarves, jewelry and other music-oriented stuff. I started asking the store owner about the music shop, and realized that he spoke English, too! He looked to be in his 20’s or 30’s, as was the woman I talked to. As Cristina had said on the train, more young people know English and this proved it, so I asked the guy why that was. He said it was because people of the older generation were young while Francisco Franco was still the dictator in charge of the strict government. The guy in the store said that he learned English in school, but it always seemed like the same thing over and over (which is the same experience I’ve had with Spanish!). Because the things from India in the store, the guy said he has actually been there a few times and that is why his English improved. That was awesome. I enjoyed that more than any frustration I had had with my other experiences with the language.

We got back to the hotel and knew that there were some futbol, or soccer, games on TV, so we tried to find a place to go for dinner that would be kind of into the game, but I think we were directly wrong, but the little bar we went to had good food, so it worked out fine.

The next day, Friday, we decided to travel back to Cadiz. Everything was going fine until we made it to the train station. We weren’t exactly sure if it would be more advantageous to take the train or the bus, and we knew we might miss it because there were only two to three trains that leave directly for Cordoba. There was a train about to leave that was actually delayed for about 10 minutes and we had just enough time to get on it. But, as the man behind the ticket counter was printing the tickets and he told us how much the tickets cost, Jordan and Shannon decided that 20 euro was too much and everyone started disagreeing. I didn’t make the situation any better by trying to yell over everyone that we had the tickets and we should just take the train. But, Jordan and Shannon said that we could split up and walked away from the three of us. So, we made the decision to stay together as a group and decline the train tickets. Instead, we were going to take the bus. There is no direct bus from Cordoba to Cadiz. We had to take one from Cordoba to Seville and then from Seville to Cadiz and the price ended up being the same. Jordan and Shannon later said in hindsight that they didn’t realize that the distance was what made the ticket more expensive than the train from Cadiz to Seville. Oh well. We got back to the ship at about 5 p.m. then I unpacked and went to get dinner with Sara and Jane and another girl, Rachel. We enjoyed our meal and I came back to the ship. I was trying to meet some other friends to go out for the night and ended up running into my roommate and her boyfriend (while it was pouring down rain) so I hung with them late into the night and had a lot of fun.

On Saturday, I got showered and ready and just as I was about to go out the door, Jane called and said they were leaving for breakfast. So, we went out with Rachel, Sara, Jane and another girl, nicknamed G (because of her Korean name).

The coffee in Spain is really, really good. Café con leche is served in smaller cups because it’s basically espresso and milk. I really, really liked it. They also drink chocolaté, which is more like thick, liquid chocolate than what we think of as hot chocolate. It was great! For lunch in Spain, you can get tapas, which are like little portions of appetizers. Some of the good ones we had were chequetos, which were like little fried dough balls with bits of ham inside them; aceitunas (olives); tortilla Espanola, which is like an egg-potato omlet; calamari; paella, which is like a rice dish with veggies and seafood mixed in; they also like to throw either French fries or fried potatoes with a lot of things – like meatballs with French fries, or pollo y patatas con queso. You can also get bocadillos, which are sandwiches on rolls with just meat and cheese. We also ate a lot of queso manchego, which I mentioned in my last post, and it was really good too.

After breakfast, we walked around and saw the Cathedral, which was amazing. I was the only one that paid to get in, but I think it was worth it. You can even walk down into the crypt below the cathedral where many of the bishops and priests are buried, along with a famous Spanish poet and writer who were from Cadiz. Then we walked to the ruins of a Roman theater that was discovered in Cadiz. The stairs of the theater were easy to recognize and you can also walk underneath of the seating in the gallery, which was really cool, especially if you consider that those stones have been there for ages. Only part of the circular theater has been excavated because otherwise, many of the buildings surrounding it would have to be demolished. After that we walked to the Paza de Flores, a small triangular plaza where there are four or five flower stalls and cafes all around. Near there is covered market with stalls selling fish, fruit and other produce. Shortly after that I broke away from the group to do a little wandering by myself.

All of the streets in Spain would be considered alleys in America. They’re narrow, turn abruptly, have little or no sidewalk and are mostly all paved by stone or tile. The streets are really cool, but hard on your feet after walking for days on end! In Seville, many of the streets were lined with orange trees! I had never known that Spain could even grow oranges, but they were everywhere. I was imagining that maybe when the oranges are too ripe they fall and hit people on the head, but who knows? Maybe the Spanish have learned to dodge them when they fall. I also wouldn’t want to be driving on the Spanish streets because some of them aren’t marked with many signs or markings. In Seville and Cordoba, they also have extra lanes next to the sidewalks for bicycles, but the motorcycles seem to weave in and out of traffic as they please. That would be pretty scary.

On ship time was 6 p.m., so I wanted to make sure I was back on the ship by 5. So, I walked to the store and bought a few snacks for on the ship. We’re allowed to bring things back, as long as they’re in sealed packages. I finally made it onto the ship safely and ate some dinner. The ship didn’t actually leave until everyone turns their passport back in, so we left at about 8 p.m.

I woke up to go to Global Studies this morning and then came back and went back to sleep to try and catch up from Spain. I woke up for lunch and sat with two guys who were trying to figure out if we were going to get to watch the Super Bowl or not. He had his Steelers jersey on, so I remembered that I should wear my Steelers shirt and cross my fingers that we’d get to see them play. We’re refueling now near the rock of Gibraltar. It’s awesome how it just juts out of the curving, hilly coast line, partly covered with vegetation. I went up and took some pictures of it – I wish I could post some of them.

I was working on this post when the 5 o’clock announcements came on and broadcast that we WILL, in fact, be able to either see or at least hear on the radio the Super Bowl! How awesome is that?! It will be about 11 o’clock here when it starts, but we’re gaining an hour tonight, so it won’t be so bad. I’m excited! Here we go Steelers!!!