The Kitschen

In Virtual Memoriam

2010-07-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

A friend passed away this week. A friend that was an avid commentator on this blog and a presence that filled any room he entered. Yes, he was that guy. The guy that took time out of his busy day as a husband, father, and man of a million talents to make sure that you know, when you're out at sea and feeling lost, that someone is there and listening.

Though we met back in the late 90s on our student Semester at Sea voyage, I have had the pleasure of staying in touch with he and his lovely wife, who was also a college friend on the S.S. Universe Explorer. Since hearing of this tragic news, I have been struggling with what to say and where to say it. So many of our interactions over the past few years have been via facebook, and as I've now witnessed this virtual collage of memoriams and shout outs, sadly on more than one occasion, I've been faced with a moral dilemma. Is this what we do now?

Part of me feels like it is a community space, a place where friends from all around the world can share and remember, and another part of me feels like it is cheap and impersonal, and perhaps the ultimate relegation of a life to less than 140 characters. Then there is the question of presence. Some seem to write as if he is reading. Others immediately dispel him to the past, which is grammatically correct but somehow feels hollow and raw, like a giant bug bite that appeared out of nowhere and has suddenly taken over your leg.

My mind is heavy and my heart still aches as I continue to wake up every morning having dreamt about him and/or the loss of a loved one, but in thinking about the incredible legacy this lovely man is leaving behind, I am reminded of Ubuntu and how he put it into action. Having sailed with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2007, my friend was so inspired by his wisdom, that he took it upon himself to spread the word and pay it forward. Not only did he create and hand out T-shirts, he literally lived by it:

‎"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate

In honor of my friend, please think about paying it forward today. Pick up the phone and reconnect with someone. Help out a stranger on the street or remind a loved one of how much you care. He did it. Every. Day. And will continue to, in all of us. Which is how, past or present, he will always be alive ...

Why I love San Francisco

2010-06-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

This just happened about 5 minutes ago while I was on the phone with SAS.

EXT. PACIFIC HEIGHTS -- NOON

The doorbell rings. I open the door to find a 60-something man dressed in a light blue suit with a tweed cap.

MAN: "I'm here to have lunch with Mr. Wilkerson."

ME: "I'm sorry. He doesn't live here, this is the Owens-Ganatas residence."

MAN: "He lives at 2333."

ME: "This is 2333. But unfortunately, he doesn't live here. And neither do I. I'm just a house guest. Maybe try next door?"

MAN: "I need your yellow pages."

ME: "If you want to come in we can try to look him up on my computer. I don't think my friends that live here have the yellow pages. And if they do, I have no idea where they'd be."

MAN: "I'm going to be late for lunch. (snarky) Are you gonna help me or not! ."

ME: "I don't have the yellow pages, sir. I'm sorry."

MAN: "No, you're not sorry! You won't even help me!"

ME: "I just offered for you to use my personal computer. What else can I do?"

MAN: "Screw you." (He walks off in a huff, and the office is hysterical on the other end of the phone.)

END SCENE.

Roan if You Want To ...

2010-04-06T05:46:00.000-07:00

I had initially tried to arrange a safari on my own before realizing that our time in South Africa would fall over Easter weekend, making it a busy, extended weekend for locals and foreign tourists and void of any deals. I don't normally partake in any of the big trips offered through Semester at Sea, partly because I'm not fond of big groups, and in larger part because I just simply can't afford it. So when it worked out for me to lead one of the safari trips to Kruger, making a jaunt into the South African bush fiscally feasible, a lifelong dream was solidified. I chuckle as I write that, for every other day someone on this ship has "a dream come true." Seeing the 'Taj,' as so many flippantly call her as if they are dating, climbing the Great Wall, and as I can now relate, seeing a giraffe outside of the Los Angeles Zoo.

I chose the trip to Motswari, a private reserve in the Greater Kruger area after my friend Hans, whose parents used to own a South African travel agency confirmed my initial hunch -- it is the way to go for anyone seeking a comfortable but not obnoxiously luxurious stay in the African bush. It's glamor is understated -- local art, clean cement and thatched floors, circular en-suite bungalows. Fluffy white bed and deep bathtub, yes, but no flat screen TV or modern distractors. Set right on a watering hole, I could literally sit on my front porch and watch giraffes grazing on trees and hear warthogs talking as I soaked. And with a 30 person maximum, the lodge is quite intimate -- oftentimes giving you the feeling that is just you and the spiders. Which speaking of, they were abundant, mighty, and took up residence all around my bungalow named "Roan."

There were 21 of us, and the cast of characters couldn't have been better written by Christopher Guest. The rather conservative and older science professors, who cracked the virtual whip on the kids though they weren't in charge and offered me lots of free leadership advice -- um yeah, thanks, but if they want to sleep in instead of going on the game drives they spent thousands of dollars on, so be it. Lah-weese from Louisiana and her delightful husband, whom I could picture drinkin' tall boys of mint julep as they paraded around the African bush in perfectly pressed khaki and sun hats. The laid back librarian who carries around a plastic statue of Einstein and his jockey wife who, toned as a lightweight bodybuilder sports a pair of boots with 4 visible inches of metal coil for shock absorption. Malcom the tour leader whose perspiring pores give away the secret that the wrinkles in his hardened skin are so anxiously trying to spill, "look at me, I'm a big smoker with heart problems who probably shouldn't be leading vigorous trips." A kid who never stops listening to his ipod. A 19 year-old who fancies himself a verbal expert on absolutely everything, including the African Bush. A girl who has a rapidly-increasing allergic reaction to her malaria medication, and four Jewish girls from Vanderbilt who, sigh, could not give any greater ammo to caricature writers of JAPS.

We were divided into three groups for our game drives, thus we spent a large chunk of time with the same people. I had waited around on the first day to ensure that everyone made it onto a jeep. Which consequently meant that I would end up hanging with the kids who were late in the first place. The good news is that we were assigned to Godfrey's jeep, who just so happens to be the senior guide and has 12 years of exploring the Bush everyday under his wing and is further a bird specialist. He has the top level of certification, and if he soon passes the test, will become the first black man in South Africa with a credential in birds -- the most difficult of the specializations as it requires visual and sound recognition of 1000s of species.

Heading out on a game drive, both at dawn and at sunset is like living in a Disney movie, and not the scary 80s ones with the dark undertones, perhaps a blend of "The Lion King," "The Jungle Book," and "Indiana Jones." Tiani, our tracker, would sit at the helm of the jeep, shining a spotlight until the sun took over, and while driving 20 KPH could spot something as small and incognito as a chameleon. Thus, when Little Expert (who sidenote spoke about himself in third person multiple times) demanded to sit in Tiani's seat one night and shined the floodlight right on a group of 3 giraffes, I had to ask myself whether these girls were legitimately impressed or were smooth enough to play into his narcissism as a joke as they oooed and ahhhed over his manly ability to shine a flashlight on a group of giant giraffes standing 3 feet in front of him.

As our plane landed in Hoedspruit, we were greeted by 2 cheetahs on the runway and saw buffalo and elephants en route to the lodge, so the search was on from the get-go to see the "Big 5," which refers to the lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, and leopard. The occasional rain had made it particularly difficult to follow the rhinos, who were acting skiddish, but I was thoroughly impressed with the wildlife we were able to see. And who needs to check-off a list to have a worthwhile experience -- so what if we saw 4 out of 5.

A group of elephants surrounded our jeep, whisking their tusks through the air and creating dirt clouds. Hippos popped their heads in and out of the water, which gave me the urge to want to plunk their heads with a delicate mallet, or fill their mouths with marbles like the game. Baboons ran around like toddlers on a sugar high, making it hard to see their pink butts; though the waterbucks gave us a good, consistent view of their toilet-seat-behinds. Kudus. Impalas. Venomous snakes. Steenboks. It was exciting and even unsettling at times to literally pull up next to these animals -- who tolerate and are used to the green Land Rovers, as long as none of the people in them make noises or stand.

One of the perks of a private reserve is that the jeeps are not limited to the roads, thus we were thrilled when Godfrey pulled up to a pack of three sleeping white lions, which I later learned is a very rare color mutation of the South African lion species that is created by a recessive gene (even the woman that has managed the lodge for 25 years has not seen one). Despite the giant land rovers and photo flashes, they were so beautiful and calm. Their stomachs expanded and fell, gently, with each breath, and even the moment of the mother opening her mouth seemed like more of a yawn than a human-killing growl. When the occasional student would stand up to take a photo or make a ridiculous faux animal sound, Godfrey would immediately pounce -- thank bejesus. That's the last kind of incident report I need to be writing, for it is hard to think that this gorgeous animal, that seems so calm, friendly and pet-able would rip you in two in T-1 should you ever get out of that protective shell of army green metal.

Though we spent at least a cumulative hour tracking a Flip mino and a strap-less safari hat (who wears a hat without a strap on a moving vehicle), the highlight was a group of 3 leopards. The mother sat perched in a tree, her arms and legs hanging down like little floating nubs of fur, while her two cubs played. They batted each other, licked each other, and in a true cat lady moment I couldn't help but think about my little furballs back at home -- who thankfully, have been sending me lots of mail.

We saw a hyena when we stopped to have a glass of wine, and after stopping literally every 20 minutes for one of the girls to urinate, were given a delightful spread of coffee and biscuits while a group-sized porta-pottie was formed behind a lookout shack. I was astonished at how the commentary never stopped. Never. And how it was usually about something very trivial and non-safari related. From the legalization of marijuana, to Lady Gaga and a state of the union address regarding the ridiculousness of Land Rovers having so many useless buttons -- "I just want to like drive my Land Rover. Four wheel drive. Pfff. It's so retarded. Somebody should just like call them and tell them that they need to just like stick to making a car, not all of these stupid buttons that nobody uses (nevermind that we were driving in a 4x4 Land Rover through the African bush during this rant).

"Godfrey's Girls" was the jingle that one of them had started singing on repeat. She was the same one that asked a question at least every 10 minutes, usually prompting a reiteration of what was just said, and always beginning with "Godfrey," as if there were someone else on our little Land Rover who would be fielding questions (except for Little Expert, but he preferred interruption). The constant chatter, albeit annoying at times, was a good reminder that I am traveling around the world with 650 20 year-olds, and am sometimes seeing it through their eyes. I like to joke around, pull pranks on my friends and tell stories. And when it came to having things in common, I was just as game as they were to sit in the infinity pool with a beer (even if I did soon leave to take a bath). However, for these four girls from Vanderbilt, who were sure to make it glaringly obvious that they come from the kind of wealth that enables you to talk on your iphone in the middle of Africa and to talk about the tens of thousands of dollars you have spent on shopping, I have to admit that I was shocked at their lack of generosity. Here they were, coming up with jingles for Godfrey and calling him by a not-very-funny-to-everyone-else nickname ("God"), and spending hundreds of dollars on art and Motswari-wear after having dropped a few thousand on the trip, and at the end of the day when everyone from our group gathered a tip for our lovely, hardworking guides who are trying to support families, they seemed almost offended and each put in the equivalent of $2.

As Godfrey says, upon being asked about happiness, "being true to yourself" is the ultimate high. And since I disagree with all of them that marijuana will soon become legalized in California, I hope they will take a lesson from "God" and find a better high, and a better self to be true to. For if Godfrey is God, he was surely listening.

A Day in the Life ...

2010-03-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

INT/EXT MV EXPLORER --Africa Day.

0600. I wake up 5 minutes before my alarm goes off. With all of the time changes, there's a bit of discretion between my alarm, my two watches, the bridge and the map channel. I reach behind my bed, pull up the curtain by the chain and am surprised to see it still dark out.

0630. No bootcamp today, so time to hit the elliptical and do some abs and weights on Deck 7 Aft. I watch the sunrise over the Indian Ocean as I do a round of jumping jacks and push-ups. I laugh out loud when "Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson comes on my ipod shuffle. Dave Miraglia and I had a huge debacle over that song last year and I am suddenly reminded of my friends at home.

0730. Grind my Duncan Donuts decaf beans, head to the garden lounge with french press, Hawaiian coffee mug, curry sauce, peanut butter, soy milk, and kashi. I'm always prepared though breakfast tends to be my most reliable meal of the day. Over a plate of fruit, pineapple yogurt, cheese, a small slice of veggie omelet and biscuit with strawberry jam, I joke with Nate about his intestinal suicide and compliment Danielle on her department store Ethnic-wear.

0900. Unexpected muster drill, shower ends early after hearing the announcement. I throw on my lifejacket, head to Deck 5 Starboard and watch jumping dolphins in the distance.

1000. After setting up sessions around the ship, I jump into the AIDS Quilt meeting where I close my eyes, hold hands with the strangers sitting next to me and in 20 minutes make a quick collage based on a story about a Nigerian girl who was excited to get a desk after sitting on the floor at school.

1100. Running around again. I sit in on part of Tobie Weist's lecture about her time in a South African village during her Peace Corps stint. I've had it on the mind again and am picturing myself in her photos.

1200. Just when I think I'm going to lunch, a theatrical rehearsal I didn't know about comes to find me. We do some blocking, then they run after me. I come back to deal with the non-existent theatrical lighting. I'm feeling annoyed that neither my new crew member nor my notoriously unreliable workstudy has shown their face.

1245. Lunch with the crew. Almond pastries are my nemesis.

1300. Back to the chaos in the booth. A powerpoint conspiracy around the ship -- nothing is working. I help Edeltraud solve her youtube problem and am reminded of how much I love Germans and how much I hate Ghanaian E-Waste.

1330. Hiding in Classroom #9. I finally get to see Audrey Springer in action. Giving a lecture on "American Cool," we go from the slave trade, to Save the Last Dance, to improvisational jazz, to Jack Kerouac. I'm entranced. It feels good to be academic again. Now I'm thinking about a PhD in sociology.

1400. More chaos in the booth is interrupted when Jenny Finn makes a visit. Her class started late because my student wasn't there on-time, but we quickly transition into an impromptu, intimate conversation in front of the video switcher while she is holding her laptop and I have a pair of pliers in my hand. The message of Jesus is lost in modern Christianity. Even in relationships you need to bring it back to yourself. The most important thing in life is to find a community that works for you and a spiritual path. Will is in near tears discussing his high school girlfriend.

1530. Still no Zakiyah. Working on putting out multiple fires including movies for the night and crew talent show scheduling. Anatoli finally pops his head in for the day. I ask him 6 times to lock down the classrooms. 30 minutes later I do it myself.

1630. Trying to solve an itunes crash.

1700. Summonsed to Union for swing dance rehearsal I didn't know about.

1800. Called to Union again for church service that wasn't on my radar. They are incredibly kind and it takes me back to my conversation with Jenny Finn. Are these people focused on the man of Jesus versus the example he tried to set?

1815. Feeling really overwhelmed as multiple crew members approach me in the hall about the talent show. I still haven't seen a schedule of the event and have no idea how to answer anything.

1830. Twenty minute dinner with Chris on Deck 6 aft. The rain and clouds have cleared and the sun is shining, making the deck a popular dining locale. I eat a rice dish with raisins, vegetable soup and a barley salad.

1845. We watch an incredible sunset from Deck 5 Starboard. I look at the ocean. I need this breath. This reminder.

1900. Theatrical rehearsal with the South African interport lecturer. There's sound cues, blocking all over the stage. With the church service beforehand, there was no time to set up. Now the ship is really rocking and I don't want to get on a ladder to refocus the lighting. I'm having to really wing it -- showtime is in less than an hour and I frankly have no idea what I'm looking at.

1930. Aids Quilt ceremony in Tymitz Square.

2000. Theatre involving "District 6." I'm thankful my best 3 boys are at my side. We wing it, seeing it for the first time having had no tech rehearsal. One of the mics keeps crapping out. Grrrr.

2130. Union strike. Too tired for the "Bitch Slap" screening I had tentatively planned for my cabin. Instead I start to watch "Finding Nemo" by myself while re-synching my ipod to my laptop.

2200. I join the impromptu ipod dance party on Deck 7 aft.

2215. We finally hit play and I am running around the ship with 30 students, dancing, laughing. Cables connect me and 5 other students to a mini-jack octopus found only in Japan. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Jackson 5. We dance all around the ship, invading the dining hall, the FSL, forming conga lines up and down the stairs as confused onlookers look around in near dismay. I turn on the disco lights in the union and am reminded of what it felt like to be a student on Semester at Sea. To feel active. Creative. Slightly mischievous. I miss that me.

2300. We all stand against the rail on Deck 7 aft as we listen in unicen to the last song, "It's a Beautiful Day." Earbuds come out and the sound of the world sneaks back in. Introductions are made ex-post facto and my heart smiles at the camaraderie.

2330. Back in the 5033. Everything is on the floor and I don't care. A beautiful day it was.

END SCENE.

The God of Small Things, Big Smiles and Yummy Food.

2010-03-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

I had already made tentative plans to stay with Asok and Sudha Jacob in Aymanam before realizing that it is the same village where Arundhati Roy grew up and consequently set her Booker Prize winning novel, "The God of Small Things." Mathew had kindly mentioned this connection, not surprising given his impressive array of literature. The first time he had inquired why I wasn't staying more than one night, I had briefly mentioned that I was doing another homestay and that I also had a Keralite friend from the ship that was visiting family in Kottayam whom I might meet up with. I don't know why I felt guilty leaving the Mundax, and why this guilt had led me to remain as vague as possible. It was like I was cheating or something, and I especially felt it when he offered to let me stay for another night free of charge, saying that "I went there for a reason and shouldn't let money get in the way." Finally, when he asked me again as I was leaving I admitted that I didn't know these people, and was literally staying in a family's home, which to me is the true meaning of "homestay." In India, many people use "homestay" in place of "bed and breakfast."

It is true that not paying to stay somewhere for two nights (the Mundax cost around $50/night) had a practical allure, but my main inspiration was to experience the life of a middle-class family in a village on the backwaters. Mr. Jacob described himself as a retired architect, father of two and proud husband of 25 years on his couchsurfing profile. His smile was wide and I figured that if this family was gracious enough to let me in, particularly with only a few days notice, I had an obligation to come through on their generous offer, no matter how much I was entranced in the Mundax.

Going back to this issue of trust, I am continually amazed by the kindness of strangers and the experience of being human that I fear so many miss out on. This family doesn't know me from Bob, yet they were willing to open their lives and their home -- all for nothing more than for the chance to experience new cultures and meet new people. They've hosted over 75 guests (including families) from around the world, and not only have they now made friends to go potentially stay with, they have also never once had a problem including theft, which is a sheer testament in my opinion to the power of karma and goodwill. I wish we lived in a world where this was the norm, and instead of staying in hotels we could all go get to know each other. I know there's a bit of naivete in there, for not everyone and everything in this world is filled with good intention. But I'm telling you, it's also not overwhelmed with negativity. And even if you're not willing to invite a stranger into your home, perhaps the next time you see a tourist visibly lost or out of place, you can simply ask if they need any directions or help. Or hell, even flashing them a friendly smile is likely more than they get fro most these days.

I waited at the Kottayam bus station for about 20 minutes, accidentally using my left hand on one occasion to pay the phone attendant. I blushed as the coins fell out of my hand and I immediately realized my mistake. When I had left the Mundax a few hours earlier, I felt overwhelmed with warmth as three people I barely know, Mathew and the British couple, stood by my side and bid me farewell at the bus stop; waving and even calling Mr. Jacob like concerned parents to ensure that he would pick me up on the other end. I loved that the universe was taking care of me, and there wasn't a doubt in my mind that a kindhearted architect would pick me up, even if I had violated Indian cultural code with the phone man.

Asok looked exactly like his photo, and over a bottle of Kingfisher I soon learned that he lived for 20 years in Saudi Arabia working as an architect and had come home to Kerala to retire at 50. We stopped on the way home to meet up with some of his friends in a nearby alley in front of a Hindu temple. This was one of those moments that I like to call my "photobooth" moments .... where I imagine sending a snapshot to my earlier self, who born and raised in Fresno, California would never have guessed I'd become an international transient. Here I was, standing in an alley filled with feral cats and soiled ice cream wrappers, standing with a group of middle-aged Indian architects, joking about our horrible past with George Bush (Obama fever was running high) and covering for Mr. Jacob by insisting that I made him drink a second beer, causing us to be a wee bit late. And the best part is, he didn't even need to say anything, for I could tell from the nature of their conversations and gestures that my humor and ability to construct his fake alibi on the fly would go over well.

I could tell that he was very proud of his work as he took me on a tour of his marble-floored, 3 bedroom home, describing his design in detail. While he no longer works from an office, he is about as retired as Bill Clinton. He sat at the kitchen table on his laptop for much of my stay, scanning through AutoCAD drawings and meeting with clients. He loves his work, and when I asked him point blank what makes him happy, a question I have been pondering on these travels, he responded with his lifestyle. He loves working from home, being able to spend more time with his family and hosting guests.

On the first morning, after having been woken up by the crying turkey, Sudha and I had a giggly non-verbal conversation as she tried to teach me how to make Muttakuzhalappam, which are essentially coconut pancakes with an Ethiopian breadlike texture. Her eyes stared in amazement as I wasn't able to spread the batter evenly within the pan, a maneuver that I'm assuming most of her female guests have been able to perfect after a few tries. Later that afternoon, I observed as she sat on a rocking chair on the porch for hours, looking out at the front yard full of spices and citrus trees. She spoke limited English, and while she was very kind and friendly, I wondered for a second how much she enjoyed her life of being a housewife and entertaining international guests? Within seconds of Mr. Jacob delivering the coconuts I had watched him pick from his brother's house, she served me fresh coconut juice. And in the morning, just when I would crave coffee she would somehow know and arrive with one on a silver platter. I'm guessing she cooks a lot of the same food over and over each day, and spends a fair amount of time in that, albeit beautiful, house.

As we went on a tour of Aymanam, waving to every person that strolled by, I was impressed with the camaraderie. Catholic churches share the same footprints as Hindu temples, and neighbors of different religions live side by side, in peace and even friendship. The invention of the television, in speaking with many of them, has somewhat changed the social climate as many people now stay home and watch TV versus strolling about the streets at night, though I still witnessed quite a few out and about, walking the narrow paths between the rice fields and purchasing "curry chips" from the corner stand. The sky is also not as dark as it used to be, Asok pointed out as we stayed up one night looking at the stars, thanks to the boob tube, though the warm feeling of home is still incredibly pronounced. Half of the people living near the Jacobs are related, but for those that aren't there still seemed to be a feeling of family. The kind of people that wave as they pass by and join you on the porch for a chat.

When he was born, Asok's mother traveled via canoe to the hospital for there didn't used to be any streets in the village. However, people still bath and wash clothes in the river, oftentimes standing at the bottom of concrete stairs. They don't dump dead bodies and drink from it, like their Northern neighbors, but the water does still seem to be a focal point of village existence. Of course, in addition to "Dancing With the Stars" and the Discovery channel. Though we had discussed my ship and shipboard life for hours, when a special on rogue waves and a clip of the MV Explorer serendipitously appeared on their television after a scrumptious meal of curry and eggs, I decided not to take verbal ownership.

As we flipped through the Sunday matrimonial ads, the question came up once again why I'm not married. I felt completely comfortable with these people, but just wasn't sure how to answer that question honestly without potentially landing in a cultural taboo. Since their daughter has turned 25 and they are now searching for her mate, they've been paying more attention to the ads and have even created an online profile. Set in-between ads for computer monitors and puppies, the ones in English seem to have a classified-ad feel and tone. "Jacobite. B.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Communication Technology." It's hard to imagine your parents being involved in your pants, but since marriage there is largely about the joining of families, there's admittedly something exciting about the whole rigamarole.

When he showed me another photo of some previous house guests, two girls embraced in one portrait shot, my stomach dropped. "They are homos, you know, ka-weer, gay," he explained. My heart pounded as he continued on, clarifying that he didn't realize they were gay until he read through their profile and saw that they are part of a "queer women" group on couchsurfing. I had gleened throughout my stay that he is open-minded and rather liberal -- he is open to his daughter having a love marriage if she finds someone, he is friends with his Hindi neighbors, he is not afraid to criticize his Catholic church even despite the fact that his grandfather literally built it, and to showcase his humor, he joked that Sudha should rob old ladies after having seen a local news story with a smiliar plot. Based on our long-winded conversations about everything from how Americans deal with dividing assets upon death to how food is served on a ship, Mr. Jacob is arguably one of the most inquisitive people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. So though it came as a bit of a surprise, I was relieved when he went on to say that he and Sudha hosted the lesbians because they were curious about their lifestyle and are still in touch with them.

In addition to talking on his cell phone, Mr. Jacob loves to collect coins, so I felt really excited to hand over my baggie of leftover currency as if we were sitting around a Christmas tree before I boarded the local bus en route to Kottayam. As he trolled through my stash of Japanese Yen, Hong Kong Dollars, Chinese Yuan, Vietnamese Dong, Brazilian Reals and the Malaysian Ringgits still sitting in my passport case, he shared the story of a former Mexican guest. At 23, she left home (and Mexico) for the first time, nervously arriving at their doorstep with a giant bag of rare coins, for her parents had misunderstood Jacob's amateur hobby to mean that he expected to be paid in coins. Lost in translation, she arrived with a few hundred dollars worth of rare coins that had been passed down to her father. As we looked through photos of this girl, including one her parents had sent after Sudha had sent her home in a sari, I couldn't help but notice how genuine his bubbly laugh sounded, and how proud and fatherlike he spoke of this young girl's courage to leave home for India of all places, and to now be sending him postcards of all of her travels. Mr. Jacob, perhaps the busiest retiree known to mankind, says that he will one day soon start traveling himself. However, as he sits quite contently at his kitchen table, in a home he built surrounded by international ghosts, I have a feeling he, like Mathew, might continue to sit back and let the world, and its currencies, come to him.

Mundax

2010-03-22T05:38:00.000-07:00

As I pushed through the crowd at the Kottayam train station, a short man stood at the top of the stairs, holding a sign with my name on it. Mathew had made arrangements for a driver to fetch me and I at first had given a deliberate stare to another man holding a sign that read "Vanilla Country." I'm white. Country is kinda like Courtney ... okay, maybe not. Anyhow, I followed Phillip to his beautifully air-conditioned, white mid-size and smiled when MJ soon accompanied us on our drive; "Heal the World" had never sounded so heavenly as we drove past swaying banana trees, smiling villagers with large jugs atop their heads and an occasional cow.

The Mundax home stood on a green mountaintop, surrounded by sprawling tea and rubber plantations and hosted a welcome breeze that gave merit to the Keralite slug "God's Own Country," for it truly sounded like someone or something whispering throughout the trees.

I had been speaking to Mathew Joseph over email for a few days beforehand, and though I could tell from our correspondence that he was a caring and gracious man, I wasn't expecting an Indian man with a moustache to come through the front door when we pulled up to the end of the dirt road. I feel embarrassed by my sociocultural blunder -- I had assumed he was Caucasian given his Biblical name. Euro? Australian? I think I had even asked him where he was from in one of our email exchanges. Had I not been challenged over the previous weeks with an unexpected personnel change aboard the ship, I might've been able to actually listen to Global Studies to learn that Kerala is not only a communist state within India, it is also a primarily Christian one.

One of the psychologists on the ship had made a quip about Indian spiritual travel during his pre-port presentation (which was consequently the longest pre-port in the history of Semester at Sea), joking how people in the 60s and 70s came flocking to India in search of answers, studying with people falsely claiming to be gurus. I heard some of this criticism in my head as I entered the Mundax home. Was I nothing more than a lame, lost American clinging to an age-old cliche?

Maybe I am, but I felt my heart well up in my eyes as Mathew unexpectedly said to me, over a plate of fresh oranges and dahl, "no person is ever going to make you happy," as if he has somehow seen me crying in the shower and knows my lifelong struggle of falling for women that are either straight or uninterested. With eyes as soft as marshmellows and the physical grace of a monk, his words felt like tings of comfort, and in that moment, as we continued to share stories and fears, including his battle with cancer that had resulted in the loss of two ribs, it's as if we knew each other.

As we walked through his spice field and drove around the countryside, we had the kind of two-day conversation that I am used to finding between myself and the pages of a self-help book. He too is the black sheep of his family, not having married and having chosen to build a homestay on his family's land for a living, and the courage and dedication with which he stays true to himself is an inspiration for anyone endeavoring to live a more present and content existence; something that many of us Westerners seem to be grappling with as we sit back and realize that this life of consumption we've been born into is leading us down a path of disappointment and unfulfillment. If things are what we're after, we will simply never have enough.

Looking back, I can honestly say that I lived all of my twenties "waiting for it," as if something would one day happen in my life to make it feel more real. More full. More happy. But really, when I've tried to break that it down into tangible terms, I'm not even sure what I think it would look like. Nobody says at the end of their life, "I wish I would've had a bigger car, a bigger house, or a bigger career," yet we somehow live each day aspiring to be something more involving the "what" of our existence versus the "who." I feel trapped sometimes when I cannot respond to the simple questions like "what do you do?" or, my favorite, "what are you doing after you get off this ship?" But not only does it not matter, nobody ever really knows. All we have is this breath, this moment. And instead of letting the world pass by while I fret another moment regarding what's next, I'm trying to just enjoy what's in front of me. I could have a corner office with an Aeron Chair or work at a soap factory, either way, I'm still me.

I made a brief visit to the Sahyadri Ayurveda center, which was nestled in the beautiful countryside and offered me a tour of their pharmaceutical division in addition to an oiled-body massage and Lepam treatment. I could feel my pores bursting open as the women slathered a muddy, spicy herbal concoction all over my body. Typically used as an herbal remedy to reduce inflammatory diseases, I'm not sure what my limited consultation with the Doctor might've signaled diagnostic-wise, for I'm not aware of any health problems outside of my hypothyroidism and chronic pink eye, but my skin felt rejuvenated as I watched the mud fall down the drain along with three days of dirt and sweat. India is a country you wear at all times -- she sneaks into your clothes, hides beneath your nails, latches onto your teeth, your shoes, your watch, and just when you think you've bid her farewell she sneaks into the bottom of your purse.

Mathew's idea of meditation is that it doesn't have to be formal. "If you take a cup of coffee and just be present with that cup of coffee," he says, "that's meditation." So on my last afternoon at the Mundax I sat on the porch and drank my coffee, looking out at the trees for hours, trying to focus on nothing more than their existence. Birds flew in and out of their branches like little hellicopters on a joy ride and as the smell of ginger would occasionally hit my nostrils, I further witnessed the leaves occasionally being sucked into the vortex of the whistling wind. I don't stare out the ocean nearly as much as I should, and until that afternoon I can't even begin to think of the last time I starred at a tree and listened to birds.

A British couple soon arrived and while they were incredibly friendly, I felt very aware of their demeanor. They took us down memory lane at the dinner table without stopping for one second to see if we wanted to purchase a ticket. And in between all of the "remember whens," I couldn't help but cringe at the mere thought of probably having been that person on multiple occasions myself. And I also felt like, while they had every right to brag about their impressive array of globetrotting, they were speaking of it in the home and presence of a man who, most likely, will never have the passport or means to see it for himself. Which is why, I would imagine, Mathew has found a way to bring the world to his doorstep.

The Midnight Train to Kerala

2010-03-19T04:11:00.000-07:00

Trust. It's one of those words that feels heavy, like the thick layer of condensed milk that waits at the bottom of a Vietnamese coffee cup. One knows, in taking a single sip of liquid bliss, that the amount of sugar and calories being consumed may or may not be something worth checking into, depending on dietary persuasion. Some would prefer to drink away never knowing the contents, the bliss trumping the potential consequences; some need to read the label, and some, like meth addicts, know that a mere sip would keep them pumping Vietnamese cocoa-crack into their bodies for life.

Not everyone will face a battle with the "Weasel Chon" variety, but how you take your trust is an evolving, universal issue. Do you tend to drink it black, indulge in all of the cream and sugar that life brings your way, or spend your life sticking to water or decaf?

I didn't know what the next 5 days would look like, smell like, or feel like when I boarded the Trivandrum Mail en route from Channai to Kottayam, but I knew in my gut that the universe would take care of me. Whether it is God, myself, or sheer stupidity, I had trust. Despite the warnings against single women traveling alone in India, especially blonde American ones, I took my coffee black with a side of soy. I emailed a few people ahead of time, made some loose arrangements that I forwarded along to Chris in the event of an emergency, and threw on my backpack full of clothes and good will as I set out to explore the Kerala region on a spiritual journey of sorts.

With an unanticipated line of students at the gangway and a 30 minute walk out of the port, I was covered in dirty sweat when I jumped into a rickshaw and bolted to the Central Madras train station. He said 100 rupees and we quickly settled at 70 though I would've paid whatever he wanted to get me there on time. I managed to pick up a Dosa and a coke while running through the station to platform 5 and climbed into my upper side bunk at around 19:55. It was plenty big for a small girl of 5' 2," though I can't imagine where an extra foot of person might fit -- length or width wise.

My vision of sipping on chai tea while staring out at the Southern India landscape didn't quite come to fruition -- I didn't have a window, and was only passed by the coffee man in the morning who, for 10 rupees, would fill a plastic cup of joe from his metal jug. Instead, I spent the night reading Paramhansa Yogananda's autobiography, listening to Indian businessmen's phone calls and shivering beneath the AC fan. As I stared up at the rusty blue ceiling, which was about 10 inches from my head, I tried to envision the manifestation of other people's fears that had surrounded my decision to travel alone. Someone could steal my bag, sexually assault me, or even worse, I suppose the train could roll off the tracks, but I must confess that outside of feeling a little chilly, I felt nothing but safe. Yes, I'm in a foreign land that is filled with dirt, poverty and bouts of male aggression, but there's a slice of that anywhere you go. When I awoke, I was met with dozens of smiles. An Islamic man handed me a pamphlet about God, another offered me his window seat, and yet another explained that our train was running a little late and gave me a personal notification upon reaching Kottayam.

My journey through Kerala was as much a philosophical quest as it was an exploration of India's lone communist state and the people that reside within it. Without trust, I wouldn't have met Matthew, Asok and all of the people I will soon write about. And without faith, in something, I wouldn't be back on the ship, a few days later, drinking my Trung Nguyen and blogging about it.

Oba-Mao

2010-02-25T08:17:00.000-08:00

Next to Hitler, and maybe Che, Mao is perhaps the greatest marketer of all time, clearly putting the prop in propaganda as his face can still be seen on watches, posters, plates, gloves, food ... you name it. For the past two years, there's not a country I've been to that hasn't been covered in Obama bling. Leading up to the election, there were T-shirts and full-on albums of songs about Obama in places as remote as Dominica, and those lovely rhinestone dotted Barack watches are still being sold next to a pile of zippo lighters and gold coins.

In China (and Hong Kong), I'd say that Mao is still leading in Bric-a-Brac design, littering thousands of items in dusty shop windows; however, I was surprised to find so much Obama in a communist country (even if one is just a store with his name in the title) ...

Brainstorm

2010-02-25T01:39:00.000-08:00

We're about six weeks into the voyage and at that time when people start coming out of their shells. The friend groups that were formed during the first few weeks are starting to branch out, partners have come and gone from the ship, and multiple tables of smiling, familiar faces now look inviting at each meal. Thanks to Becca, Chinese Mahjong has become the new craze and much of the staff can now be found up in the FSL in the evenings, tapping the dice made of bone, not bamboo, and shouting words like "pong" and "chur."

I'm sometimes overwhelmed with a feeling of hysteria when I think about how I left my "real life" three years ago, and how I've spent countless hours since staring out at the ocean, hoping for some sort of epiphany to come my way. Should I apply to PhD programs? Should I look for teaching jobs? For any sort of job in say San Fran, Seattle or Portland? Should I try living in another country? Stay freelance? Join the Peace Corps? Ahhhhhhh!! It's so overwhelming sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode, especially when I am met with the following seemingly congenial yet unanswerable questions: "Where do you live; What do you do in real life; What's next?" Truthfully, I don't know. I once again have no idea what the hell I'm doing once this ship docks, where I'll be living a year from now let alone ten. But a beautiful conversation I had with a friend yesterday was a much needed reminder ... nobody does. Ever. Who is to say what is real and what isn't, and as crazy as this shiplife existence is sometimes it's real because it's happening. In the now. The present -- the very idea that seems to be wrapped up, packaged and even sold in a million different forms by varying levels of experts, but at the core is perhaps the universal truth if there is one. It's not about what I did or what I'm doing next, or who I think I am or who I'm supposed to become, it's about what I'm doing at this very moment. Which for me, has been worrying about all of this crap, including the constant fear of ending up partner-less and alone forever instead of focusing on the fact that I'm alive, healthy, surrounded by 100s of interesting people and sailing around the f*ing world.

On a somewhat related note, I've been trying to gage if self-worth is a universal struggle for women around the world, or if it's heightened in Western culture? Part of me would love to shave my head on Neptune Day, just to live that altered experience. To see what my head actually looks like. To have all of my hair grow-in brand new and for once, to not deal with the grooming. But another part of me is scared to be judged. How would I be perceived by the rest of the world? In a job interview? It's so stupid when you really think about it ... it's just hair that will grow back. So why is it such a big deal, especially for women in our culture?

This was on my mind yesterday when I read an email chain about clothing from a group of girlfriends back at home. The discussion began with a friend venting about her current wardrobe and landed in a heated argument about the importance of wardrobe altogether. I lost 25 pounds last year and would be lying if I didn't admit that buying some new duds made me feel attractive and, all-in-all, happy. Part of that has been feeling more attractive, but another part is how we are influenced by clothing, which in a larger context feels ridiculous as I head into third world countries where people are lucky to have shoes on their feet.

In Japan, I had the sense that Masumi and her friends were concerned with their appearance. They wore cute, mostly cool-colored dresses with tights, kept a healthy entourage of beauty products, and as married women, seemed rather conservative in the amount of skin exposed both to the sun and other men. In Shanghai and Hong Kong, malls and shopping is as popular a hobby as eating noodles, and though it is an opposite struggle, I listened to more than one man comment on how he wants his woman to be plump -- a sign of prosperity in Chinese culture, which might explain the need for a seven-patty burger at Burger King (which I was told is in honor of the new year).

Smokin' Clean

2010-02-19T20:47:00.000-08:00

When I began this voyage, I knew that I wanted to find a common thread to write about in each culture, a barometer if you will of the similarities and differences we all share. I put a quick shout out on facebook and was met with about 20 genius ideas. My initial thought was to hunt down the different Scientology centres, for they claim to have offices worldwide and how fascinating would it be to see if the emeters in Japan are written in Japanese characters, or to spend an afternoon nodding my head at the theory of Dianetics explained in Chinese, but since I want to actually finish this voyage I thought it might be wise to stick to something less controversial. Something that might not land me in jail or lead to my mysterious disappearance.

I don't know why I never thought of this before, or at least in tangible terms, but if there's one thing I would love to seek out and explore in every country I visit, it's soaking. To me, there is no greater form of relaxation than a dip in some hot water, and when you strip people of their clothes, their handbags and any tangible piece of personality, any comparisons to be made are based on nothing but culture and ethnicity. Our skin tones may vary, and occasionally we might disagree on acceptable shaving standards for the vajayjay territory, but in these moments I am reminded that beneath it all we're nothing more than mounds of flesh, jumping in and out of pools and washing the dirt from between our toes.

The Japanese Onsen was all I suspected it would be -- floors and floors of fastidious bliss. In China, however, hours and hours of scrubbing and enlightened soaking land in a dark chamber where men puff away on cigarettes and you are half expecting to see a giant keno board, horse race, or better yet, stripping pole.

I wasn't surprised when the women laughed at me instead of offering to help when I didn't know where and how to get a towel. The attendant in the scrubbing room shook her head "no" when I pointed towards the tall stack of white, fluffy towels, that seemed to be off-limits. Everyone else seemed to have one, so when I walked back out to the staging area where you swap rubber slippers for fluffy ones, they laughed and laughed before finally handing me one. When I watched another Chinese woman walk up behind me and immediately receive one before entering, I felt a tinge of frustration even though I laughed it off. If there's one place that won't get a tear, it's China, damnit.

In most situations, I would feel flattered to have 50 sets of female eyes all on me, but while showering, not so much. I couldn't tell which bottle was which in the shower, so after rubbing lotion all through my hair, a mishap that thankfully went unnoticed by the masses, I decided to head back to the scrubbing station to see if I might be able to stumble my way into a professional rub down. The women, dressed in basketball jerseys, were more friendly than the front of house personnel and though I still had no idea what I was ordering, I pointed to something on the menu and agreed to two when I couldn't figure out how to say one.

What came next was a relaxing 40 minutes of scrubbing and pouring milk from plastic packets all over my body. The language of touch is universal, so I only needed to flinch once for her to know that my left shoulder blade is still suffering from a 2008 ship wound. I felt the past 6 weeks of cramped cabin living wash away as she hit my skin with mittens and jabbed her elbows into my back. When I went back to the staging area, I at first put on my standard issues before realizing that they were also issuing panties -- "high waist" seems to be popular in China, for even the jeans at trendy Uniqlo were of the mom variety.

With underwear up to my breasts and pink pajamas, I explored the rest of the facilities. The place is called "Orient Rome," and judging by the massive gold pillars and greek gods that had greeted me upon entrance, I was expecting something garish. A pink explosion, not so much.

Mannequins lined the halls of the ladies floor that looked somewhere between a Victoria's Secret, Roxy Carmichael's room and a Stanley Kubrick set -- I was half expecting the dummies to suddenly open their eyes and attack. The bath hall itself was a pink paradise, complete with two adjoining warm pools (one with aloe, one with jets), shower stalls, sauna, turkish stream room, and greek marble statues that have been re-appropriated to hold such coveted items as plastic razors and toothbrushes. All in all, it was the level of fancy that could pass for a cheaper room at the Madonna Inn, but might not reach the coveted "wagon wheel suite" status of VIP only, though I was told that themed VIP rooms did exist on the top floor.

The large spiral staircase takes you past a full in-wall aquarium, random oil paintings of what look to be British aristocrats and slippery marble steps soon landed me on the "relax" floor. Unlike the arcade in the Japanese Onsen, the Chinese equivalent of R + R was a blackened smoking room. Had I been there at night, I was told that a movie would be screening followed by a stage performance. My afternoon leisure included a personal recliner, where I watched an Olympic curling match and sucked down the orange drink they insisted on serving me (for a small fee). I was secretly rooting for the cute Swiss girls to beat the Chinese, though the roar of the TVs and the dark cloud of smoke invading my clean body helped me make the decision to leave before the match was over. My shoes reappeared down below at the check-in station, and even though they didn't take credit card, I had exactly 160 Yuan to cover my tab.

Japanese Tryptich, Part 3: Homestay.

2010-02-15T08:27:00.000-08:00

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
I go to meet my family at the Kobe Port Terminal and little Yuka is holding a sign with my name on it. Masumi smiles when I say hello, little do I know that she will think my first name is Miller for the next 24 hours until I find a polite way to correct her. After the 20 families are paired, we play a weird game involving a train and roshambo (which is consequently not a Japanese word as I had always suspected), until the woman whose shoulders I am grasping suddenly turns on me and points. The male emcee then shoves a mic in my face. "You must say something!" I hesitate for a second, then he clarifies. "You Losah! You need sing song." There's a pregnant pause as every song that suddenly clouds my brain is 80s soft rock. "Mary Had a Little Lamb," I begin after a student thankfully shouted the suggestion, proving once again that I am only the chosen one in a crowd when it involves losing or being asked to shout songs in foreign countries.

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
I ride the subway to Gakken Toshi on the Shigino line, not sure if I should strike up conversation with my host or continue to observe the unwritten Japanese metro rule of silence. I decide to adhere, which also helps me conjure up some much needed energy after a night of not-sleeping on the Tokyo night bus. We ride for an hour then walk to her two story house in a middle class neighborhood of Osaka, stopping at a Patisserie to pick up lunch. I choose a piece of Japanese sweet bread which looks strikingly similar to Mexican pan, then another almond/chocolate puff as she jokes that I must not be hungry. Do all Japanese middle class eat pastries for lunch? Me like.

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
The doorbell rings and the energy of the house is transformed from semi-formal to gigglefest when the grandmother arrives. Though her petite frame and small, angular face lead me to believe she might be of the delicate nature, the minute she opens her mouth I am relieved to see her bouncing up and down like a chipmunk. We have long conversations in all Japanese over coffee. I once in awhile gesture to see if we are on the same page. She flashes her disproportionately large smile and warmly touches my arm to say, "I don't know what the hell you're saying, but I like talking to you."

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
The women at the bus stop laugh as I sneeze every five seconds beneath my faux fur hood. "She from California," Masumi explains. "Ohhhhhh" they say in high-pitched unison, a sound that I will soon hear many of them make while agreeing or thinking. It must be the Japanese equivalent of the Indian head bop or the California "like." Ryotaro, who just turned four, screams when he sees me but later punches me in the chest with a toy gun. I pretend to shoot him back. All is okay in kiddieland. If only they had wanted to watch the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics instead of an overdubbed Disney cartoon, I'd say it was a grand, even if over-stimulating day.

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
I'm riding grandma's bike through the narrow streets of Osaka. Red lanterns sway in the wind above me and the not so pleasant smell of fish fills my nearly clogged nostrils. We walk the aisles of the market and I am suddenly aware of my own awkward presence. I stare at the foreign vegetables and examine the labels like Jeff Bridges in Starman. My hair is blonde and it takes me a second to figure out how the basket fits in the cart. In my mind, I know the situation is akin to one of them walking down the aisle at a Ralph's. I make my way back to the house without falling, though my hands have turned to icicles and I've been too embarrassed to profess that I need to find a toilet (did I mention that I started my period on the Tokyo night bus that was supposed to come with a toilet).

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
When we arrive at the local Hippo club, instead of finding all of the other SAS students and families I enter the room and am suddenly on stage. They pass around a microphone, each saying to me in strict order "My Name is, My Nickname is, Please Call me, Thank You." I speak multiple times on behalf of the English speaking race then we play an hour of games. My wool socks don't mesh with the slippery wood floor, so I fall on my ass during a game of "Tom and Jerry." The slam felt just like it did back in the roller skating days, but I get up laughing, ready for the next stimulant. When they ask me to share a childhood game, all that comes to mind is "Light as a Feather," followed by the vague notion of "Duck Duck Goose" though I can't remember for the life of me how to play it. I cover by asking to learn one more of theirs, until I later spy a CD with a few lines written in English. I think that I am the Messiah as I interrupt their Arabic session to teach them the hokey pokey. I soon realize that it is the most awkward version of the song ever recorded. With a long interlude between every single verse, I improvise, and with all eyes on me, have now started a new Japanese rumor that the Hokey Pokey involves air guitar, air sax, and a horrible version of the white man shuffle. If you see someone doing this, blame me and my bruised hip.

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
I love that a party is thrown in my honor where I must say hello and goodbye. When Masumi's female friends hear that I stayed in a capsule hotel, they respond with "You so brave!" I avoid the question of why I'm not married and am happy to soon meet Mieko who is a musician and lecturer. Though Masumi has told me over the past 24 hours that she enjoys staying home with her two children, literally riding them around on her bike, I have had the feeling that she is tired. And based on her limited and seemingly sterile interactions with her husband, I am wondering if it is her choice until she quickly responds to an inquiry that she built all of the furniture in her living room. She shines for a moment then quickly crawls back into her homemaker shell, dismissing her work as well as her art school past "as not big deal" and serving another delicious batch of Okonomiyaki. If there's one thing that's universal, it's tension.

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
Mieko and I speak for hours about the power of the right brain and differences in our cultures. She asks me how to pronounce certain words, admitting that most Japanese find the "L" and "R" sounds particularly challenging, and recounts an embarrassing story of how she kept trying to order a coffee on her way to Seattle and realized she was saying "correy." As she spoke more and more about the problems she sees in modern Japanese culture, including the inequalities between women and men, it hit me that in this way, we are all alike. It is so easy for a foreigner to view another world from a gaze of wonderment, but there is so much beneath any surface. For example, I took my onsen experience to mean that Japanese take time out of their busy lives to relax, soak, and take care of each other in a way that we don't. However, according to Mieko, working too hard is a huge problem.

I'm on a Japanese Homestay.
Masumi serves the Hawaiian Macadamia nuts I brought, commenting on how American sweets are too sweet, and I know I've been on the ship for a month when I offer to do the dishes and am overjoyed when my request is granted. I am very sad as the women walk me, along with little Yuka to the train station. For the past 48 hours I was a guest in a complete stranger's home, and now I leave Osaka feeling enlightened and lucky to have made new friends.

Japanese Tryptich, Part 2: Capsule.

2010-02-15T06:52:00.000-08:00

I'm in a Japanese Capsule.
I put my shoes in the locker, step into the green
plastic slippers that are suspiciously too large, and make my way up to the ladies floor, where Danielle and I have keys to both 8011 and 8012. Who will be on top?

I'm in a Japanese Capsule.
The whitish plastic walls of the surprisingly spacious interior are postmodern, the control panel even more mid-century with giant knobs. I flip the switch, turn the lights up and down, then watch a bit of the Winter Olympic trials on my TV. Like dogs in a kennel, Danielle and I poke our heads out, barking hello and rolling our eyes at the surrounding fleet of SAS students.

I'm in a Japanese Capsule.
We drink warm Asahi from the vending machine and play Uno with Chris and Nate on the 9th floor, next to the laundry station. An older Japanese man hands us a pile of seaweed covered peanuts before stepping outside to have a smoke. He is wearing nothing but the standard issued smocks; I shiver at the mere thought. It is so cold out that I have been sneezing uncontrollably and wishing I that had brought even more layers.

I'm in a Japanese Capsule.
The female students take one look at the communal bath and guffaw at the mere thought of sitting on a plastic bench, as if it is any less clean than a public toilet seat. We have the entire bathroom to ourselves as we scrub, rinse, then soak in the delightfully warm water. Thankfully, the onsen police are nowhere in sight to issue a penalty, for Danielle has body art that soon starts itching. Nate remembered the tattoo cream from Hawaii. All is well as we check out and set off to find a Mister Donut.

Japanese Tryptich, Part 1: Onsen.

2010-02-14T23:36:00.001-08:00

I'm in a Japanese Onsen.
I choose Kimono style #2, walk through the pink doors and head out to the women's section in my towel. I soon realize that only the small ones are being used, so I quickly recycle the big one and place the small one on my head, clasping it with a hair clip.

I'm in a Japanese Onsen.
I sit on the plastic bench, scrubbing my legs with a coarse sheet and rinsing with a bucket full of hot water. None of the signage is translated except for one that reads "No tattoo or body drawings." Thankfully, I'm a pseudo-Jew and tatt free. I continue on to the steamroom, where I watch a soap opera on the giant flatscreen TV. Thankfully, there is lots of white padding to separate my butt from the scorching bench.

I'm in a Japanese Onsen.
I grab a handful of salt from the urn and begin scrubbing my toes. I sit up, using the shower hose to rinse the salt from my back and accidentally squirt the woman across from me. I try to play stupid American, gesturing with my hands that I'm sorry, but she shakes her head in disbelief. I gracefully make my way to the shower.

I'm in a Japanese Onsen.
I make my way through a series of outdoor baths, soon landing a spot in front of the mega jets. The pressure is perfect and the mineral water feels soothing on my back. The sun soon pops out from behind the clouds and it suddenly hits me that I am seven stories up, looking out at the MV Explorer in the Yokohama harbor, naked.

I'm in a Japanese Onsen.
I head to the "relaxing room" on the Fifth floor, wearing nothing beneath my kimono, and curl up on one of the hundreds of recliners. I watch an episode of "Bones," with Japanese subtitles until the snoring around me escalates and I suddenly feel like I'm in a sawmill. A giant clock on the giant ferris wheel reminds me that it is 4:20 pm, so I leave in search of the foot bath.

I'm in a Japanese Onsen.
I ride up the elevator, get off on the Eighth floor and unexpectedly find myself in the middle of an arcade, again, with nothing on beneath my kimono. I walk past the rows of video games, stopping for a brief second to poke my head into a Purikura machine, then grab a large puffy yellow jacket from the rack before heading up to the 9th floor lookout. I soak my feet in the large circular rock bath, once again looking out at the ship in the harbor and reading about UC Berkeley in my New Yorker magazine. The puffy keeps me warm but my kimono keeps flapping in the wind. Maybe I was supposed to wear something beneath it? Oh well.

Dance Your Face Off!

2010-02-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

When I walked into the FSL at 2100 on my bday, there were large blue signs taped to the dance floor that said in Times Bold, "DANCE YOUR FACE OFF." Needless to say, Nate's phrase has become a recurring theme that we often utter down the halls or at dinner. Things always seem to happen for a reason, so I suppose in hindsight it was an extra good thing that I had such a wonderful birthday and was still pumped up from that unexpected high when I heard the disappointing news only a few days later that my Fulbright project to Iceland didn't even make it to the finals.

I spent 26 Jan trolling around Hilo with Chris, Nate and Danielle ... not a shabby way to bring in the double threes. Since we were transiting from Hilo to Honolulu that night and US Customs required everybody to be on the ship, I knew that some friends were meeting up in the Union to celebrate with pajamas as the recommended attire, but I had no idea that Becca, Chris and Ali had gone to so much trouble. The theme was three -- there were three different kinds of chips, three types of donuts in lieu of a cake, and Mandy the bartender made a special "Courtney Cocktail" with three ingredients, which I'm guessing were rum, pineapple juice and cranberry.

I had been singing the Snuggie theme song off and on all day, and even did the dance a few times while walking around the Volcano National Park. When I went to open my present from the Field Office and they asked me to guess what it was, I couldn't believe that a piece of blue magic was really about to come out of the box, cleverly wrapped in a Tokyo map. It has the touch and feel of an airplane blanket, not quite the plush I had imagined, but boy oh boy is it comfy for sleeping. And if I were just a few inches taller, even better for dancing.

Rocking + Rolling

2010-02-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

If I were one of those unlucky folks who had a predisposition to seasickness, I might be a little scared at the sight of waves crashing onto Deck 7 forward ... but thankfully, along with my extra thumb, I made out well in that department. We've been traveling eastward bound but south en route to Japan, but as we're supposed to be there in two days, the captain had to turn the wheel today, for to get there we have no other choice but to head north. Straight into the eye of the storm we've been avoiding. There's just no other way.

As the ship breaks through the waves, taking them head-on like a bull, we fly up and down, oftentimes crashing straight into them. This makes you feel like you are on a giant speed boat in an even more giant wake. I don't mind the rolly-polly action either, where we rock from side to side with the swells, but there's something about the excitement of the rumble, I must admit. The wine glasses shake back and forth, creating an almost percussive backdrop to the near sonic boom of 25,000 tons dropping 25 feet. Looking out the window, you see the ocean suddenly suddenly fill the frame, followed by all sky, then BAM! Your stomach jumps up and down along with everything on your table, and if you're extra lucky like me, your might even fall out of your chair. Good thing my coffee had a lid on it.

ShamWow!

2010-02-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

In addition to our students, staff, faculty, family members and crew, the MV Explorer shipboard community has another contingency called the "Lifelong Learners," adding yet another layer of uniqueness to this floating college campus. For not only do students eat and sleep in the same physical space as their professors, and further share the ship with various family members and young children, we also have a group of auditors -- people who are just here to travel, learn, and take classes for non-credit. Typically speaking, they are more of a retired crowd. The ones who spent their entire lives cranking to then hang up their hat one day and sail around the world, putting good use to that lifelong savings. Over the years, there have also been some more non-traditional LLLs. People as young as 24 who for whatever reason were not able to go on Semester at Sea as a student, but can now travel. How they can afford it, who knows, but they are a wonderful addition to our community, and I especially enjoy their daily 1700 happy hours.

The LLLs are a friendly crowd, here to engage and contribute in any way that they can -- with the exception of one woman named Gladys who discovered a few years ago that living on ships full time is more cost effective than convalescent care. If Gladys were a drink, she'd be a Molotov Cocktail -- just when you think you're about to take a sip of something sweet and vintage, she spits fire. She's the kind of woman who offers you a stale cookie then cackles when you take a bite. But along with the makeshift bridge-friendly table top made in her honor, she's a fixture upon the decks of the Explorer, like the wall of rocks, the giant toaster and the Piano Lounge artwork known to most as "Lady Masturbates with a Ladder."

Over the years, two of my favorite people have sailed in the role of Lifelong Learner Coordinator -- Deb Resling and Betty Waldron, two of the kindest people you will ever meet. From planning social events to organizing ship families, they've always been a face in the community. However, Spring 2010 has brought about a newfound zest from the sea oftentimes entered into the Olympics under such nom de plumes as "Dead Sea," "Silver Sea," or my personal favorite, the "CannotSea."

At the orientation, when this woman burst into the AV Booth excitedly asking for a wireless headphone mic, I assumed she was going to talk about fitness or was a professor planning to dedicate both hands to a flipchart. Twenty minutes later, when Kathy took the stage and I cued the lights as requested, a star flew out of the gates like Barbra Streisand singing a Yentl medley. Gone are the days of bridge tourneys and stiff martinis, we've gone motivational and I love it! Suddenly we weren't in the union, we were on the set of QVC, willing to purchase diamonds and blenders. She strutted across the stage like the late Billy Mays, tossing air quotes, raising the roof, and getting us revved up like the Colts taking the field. So what if I work twelve hours a day. I want to adopt 4 children. No wait. Maybe 8, or 12. My god, these poor homesick kids need a hug and someone to play scrabble with. I'll take them all, damnabit!!

Lost + Found

2010-02-02T21:36:00.003-08:00

Sure as the gift certificates for McDonald’s hamburgers I would receive as a kid every week for reading books in elementary school – in pure Fresno fashion, not only were the few of us who actually read rewarded, we were given a stipend of pure fatty goodness that could be sure to kick the chocolate milk of today’s campuses to the diabetic curb – it was rare that I would miss the release of a GoGo’s album or an episode of Facts of Life. I didn’t know at the time that Lisa Welchel would grow up to be a fundamentalist Christian, that Mrs Garrett was nearly a drag queen or that my obsession with Jo was indicative of future epiphanies. In high school it was China Beach, followed by Six Feet Under and a late twenties realization that the greatest sitcom still written to date involves four old ladies, a floral couch and a table full of cheesecake. My undergraduate degree is in cinema and television, but outside of these few obsessions, I’ve never been one to spend much time salivating over a TV Show. That is, until one day a few years ago I entered the living room to find John fixated on the tube. On it, a young toned woman in a sweaty, dirty wifebeater climbed a tree trying to outsmart a plume of angry, black smoke. Followed by a polar bear in the tropics, I didn’t know I was LOST until I found myself immediately mesmerized.

Groundhog Day and the premiere of the final season, which I will be missing, seems like the perfect time to spell out this analogy. Twelve years ago, when “surfing the net” was a relatively new thing, I stumbled upon a page while sitting in my EVK dorm room for a university ship that sails around the world – a chance encounter that seemed almost premeditated by the universe. A high school band trip had taken me to Canada and freshman shenanigans had brought about a few last minute strolls down to la revolución in TJ, but outside of that, the idea of traveling to not one but ten foreign countries seemed so outrageous, so unreal.

When I returned from that voyage in 1998, I remember having a near panic attack at the grocery store. At that time, we weren’t chatting online or blogging everyday – we had been literally disconnected for 4 months, with nothing but a one page AP wire keeping us abreast of world news. Until then, I had never realized how crazy it was to have multiple varieties of produce, mostly out of season. To have aisles and aisles of colorful, pre-priced boxes and no bargaining power. The mall was big, classes seemed pointless, and as I tried to reassimilate back into youthful Los Angeles life, the only place that seemed comfortable and “normal” was my shower.

As an adult working for Semester at Sea, I’ve experienced a similar acculturation challenge upon return with the heaviness that more time on this earth brings you. I’ve had people I’ve known my entire life suddenly accuse me of being elitist, family members unable to engage with me beyond small talk, and a feeling of outsider in a world that was once so comfortable and familiar. Since the beginning of television, there’s always been that throwaway line or mindscape of a discontent character wishing they could up and leave their life and “just travel around the world.” I’ve found, as you suddenly become the manifestation of that otherwise surrealistic fantasy, it’s not only difficult to sometimes fit back in where you came from, it’s hard to move forward. It’s hard to know what to say and when, to know when and where the circumstance is appropriate for reflection, and for those around you that have been feeling stuck in their daily lives and harbor that fantasy of escape, to not take it personally when their inhibitions require distance.

As I sit in the Faculty Staff lounge, wondering what Kate, Sawyer and the others are up to, I am reminded of the connection that ties me to the Dharma initiative in a way that I will hopefully understand even more once the answers are, hopefully, revealed. There are times at sea when you reminisce about all of the things you are missing and count down to the day you can return to your old home (well, for those that have them), life and people. The food, the sounds, the smells, it all seemed so perfect until the day you soon walk back through that door and realize that though not much changed in that time you were away, you changed. The conversations involving multiple countries and regions now sound ridiculous and out of context, driving is not as fun as it used to seem, time is no longer nebulous and negotiable, and as you long for an immediate reconnection to that far away world you just left, you soon realize that you will spend the rest of your life trying to find your way right back to it. Like the island, the ship is never in the same place or the same time, and will never make any sense to those who have not lived it. The people you met there are the only people that will ever really understand that you, and as they haunt your dreams for years to come, you will stop at nothing to get right back to that mysterious world that had sucked you straight out of your old, comfortable reality, and soon catapulted you into an ever-transforming enigma along with a group of people who would soon give new meaning to the idea of extended family. Was it fate calling or mere chance that brought us all together? Time will tell, but for now, as we jump from Feb 2 to Feb 4 in sheer Daniel Faraday fashion, it sure feels good to be home.

Time

2010-02-01T20:16:00.001-08:00

Just to prove how man-made it really is. I'm crossing the antimeridian (International Date Line) as I type, at 1600 on Monday 1 February. We were originally going to lose tomorrow, Feb 2, but have instead decided to keep tomorrow and ditch Feb 3 -- meaning that we'll go from Feb 2 straight to Feb 4. Even more fascinating to me than losing a day is knowing that it, along with when to implement 25 hour days of which we will have many, can be decided by a round table discussion.

One Earth, One Future

2010-02-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

Two weeks in, and I’m delighted to report that our voyage has been off to a very promising start. The students arrived in Ensenada with most if not all of their luggage, no easy feat for ISE to pull off considering that bribes are standard fare for crossing the Mexican border, so I hear. A few students had to go home for medical purposes and we had 5 straight days of 15 – 20 foot waves on our first half of the Pacific crossing (causing a mess of sugarpackets in the FSL and a disaster in my cabin), but overall I feel like we’re settling in to a nice groove. It’s not often that I can say with honesty that I adore 98% of the people. The faculty are savvy, the staff friendly and the deans are clearly the best of the best.

Donny G is at the helm of Global Studies, taking it back to the days of student and faculty involvement. Often dressed in a cherry tart Mr. Rogers-esque V-neck, his self-proclaimed “republican haircut” is not to fool you, nor would he be caught dead in a bowtie though I have offered him a slice of Americana on more than one occasion. When he’s not roaming around NY on his hog, he’s bamboozling the students for two sessions a day, 4 in total with A and B days. With an exaggerated drawl the likes of a character actor, he rings in each day with the greeting “Hello fellow adventur-errrs,” followed by our bearings in relation to the “Priiiiime Meridian.” With classic rock cues and the perfect amount of powerpoint versus talking time, I’d say it’s the gold standard.

In addition to our focus on Sino-US Relations, the voyage is also focused on “sustainability,” hence our voyage slug “One Earth, One Future.” Semester at Sea has worked incredibly hard to make the MV Explorer one of the first ISO Green Certified ships, a pretty major feat considering the floating carbon footprints that litter our ocean, including the newly launched Oasis of the Seas. In addition, we are endeavoring to print less, encourage less energy, water and food waste, and are trying to verse the community on ways to lessen their overall footprint. Considering we all live in 100 square feet (or less) aboard the ship and aren’t driving our cars, I’d say we’re off to an okay start. Now we just need to find a way to start charging for printing services and to maybe turn off the neon tube lights in the Garden Lounge, though I will admit that I love our little splash of Vegas.

Daily Water Consumption as reported:
1/31: 498 ltrs / 132 gallons per person
1/30: 404 ltrs / 106 gallons per person
1/29: 390 ltrs / 103 gallons per person

Here is even more information regarding our sustainability efforts if you're interested. I find it quite fascinating myself.

Mariachi Blowout

2010-02-01T18:33:00.000-08:00

One of the things I have found particularly unique about working for Semester at Sea over the past few years, in addition to the whole living on a ship thing, are the friendships I have forged with colleagues that I only see on frequent occasion. We meet-up at the beginning and end of each semester, sometimes travel together for a few weeks on the Enrichment Voyages or reunions, but at the end of the day, none of us know each other in “real life.” We’ve never seen each others’ homes, cars, animals, family, land friends, and our wardrobes are limited to the clothes we pack in our suitcases, which suspiciously, always tend to be the same ones. I could easily let on that I am extremely religious, own my own home in Orange County, drive a hummer and keep a cage full of hamsters in my living room. Hell, I could probably even pretend that I have a husband and kids. Nobody has anyway of knowing, which is kinda freaky and fun at the same time.

As we approach groundhog day, literally passing over the international date line as I type (we’re deciding to ditch 3 Feb instead), I am reminded of the peculiar history Britta and I share. We both were on Tybee Island at the same time 6 years ago; we more often than not show up wearing the exact same clothes, mine from LA, hers from Charlottesville or Germany; and we often relive the same night(s) over and over again either in Nassau, San Diego or Miami. In each episode, something gets in the way of our perfect night straight out of a sitcom. In Nassau, nothing is ever open. In San Diego, my 33 years of living in California always seem to fail me navigation-wise. In Florida, we can never make it back to the ship in time no matter how hard we try, and in Ensenada two weeks ago, in an effort to find a quiet place, I somehow chose a “more local restaurant” that was soon invaded by the largest and loudest mariachi band this side of Herb Alpert. Coincidentally, they also had crappy guacamole. Adios mio!

Helado

2010-02-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

I feel like Mexico oftentimes gets a bad wrap. The drug lords who roam the streets of Tijuana, ripping the eyes out of innocent tourists' sockets straight out of a Cohen Brothers film, horrible heat waves, enclaves of American tourists looking to "git their culture on with some mar-ger-itas," and oh yeah, that swine flu thing. It probably doesn't help that they are also geologically positioned as America's bottom. But hey, they still have Thrifty ice cream with the proper logo. Combined with mouth-watering food and beer without preservatives, I say, sabroso!

Thirty. Something.

2010-01-26T03:03:00.000-08:00

One of the cool things about being an Aquarian, in addition to our futuristic genius and severe allergy to patience, is that each new calendar year also marks the beginning of a new age. Which I guess is also true of Capricorns with January birthdays, but I’m venturing to guess that Aquarians probably spend more time dwelling.

As I look out over the now-calm Pacific, about to ring in my 33rd year, I am reminded of a conversation I had on this very ship with Missy Mott over a year ago. In sharing stories about feeling lost at times, and finding the balance between wanderlust and security, she expressed the query she had pondered over regarding her own daughter, Jill, my near doppelganger. “I wonder what her life would be like if she had never gone on this ship?”

Her point, which was subtle, was that perhaps she, or I, would be more content if I had never ventured outside of the box and had stayed the more traditional course. House. Marriage. 401k and health insurance … in both cases, the path of our younger siblings. Sometimes I think about it ... where would I be right now had I never heard the calling to join this ship?

I’d probably still be working in the entertainment industry. I’d perhaps own my own place, have a newish car. Nicer clothes and enough discretionary money to pay for my own cell phone. But as I re-enter this floating academical village, I cannot help but to immediately feel reminded of the visions that were forever imprinted on my callow brain the day I traded a semester of USC film school for a mind-blowing peephole into the actual world where "reality" could never and probably will never end: more than half of the world lives on less than $2 a day, and even more than that do not have access to clean water. I know this here and I know this now, but what about that future moment when I temporarily forget that whether or not my hair should have high or low lights is really not important?

Yoga

2010-01-24T01:02:00.000-08:00

The funny thing about doing Yoga on a ship is that even savasana is a core workout. The tilt sometimes works to your advantage, like the extra umph coming into a chaturanga. Tree. Warrior III … not so much. It was a rare occasion for me to have been outside of the AV Booth in the afternoon, but the sun and smoother waters were too much to resist, especially since last night marked the beginning of a much-needed sleep catch-up-athon. Tonight will be part two. The kids are doing a “coffee house” up in the Piano Bar but I just don’t have a round of acoustachill in me. I overheard one girl say to another on day one “How will we, like, ever find each other again without cell phones?” Hopefully the open mic night has reunited them.

Five is the new Four ...

2010-01-22T16:52:00.000-08:00

One cannot live on a ship with 1000 other people without designating a favorite spot. Some choose their cabins, their workspace or a cozy corner table in the Garden Lounge. Mine has always been Deck 4 aft. Starboard, in between the rail and the stairs. It's a hidden little gem. Free from faculty asking questions, or at least limited to the few who can find me. Speaking of camouflaged endeavors, one would think that lying naked in the sauna grants immunity from all questions involving microphones and powerpoint, or really just all questions for that matter, but there once was a time mid-sweat when I literally got the tap on the shoulder. "Um, Courtney. I'm sorry to bother you. I need some help setting up my computer." Which really means that you're not sorry to bother me or you wouldn't be checking the sauna. I don’t personally harbor a lot of inhibitions surrounding nudity, but if there’s one thing I don’t want to think about while naked, it’s an elderly woman’s thumb drive. You can take that to mean whatever you like.

So now that Deck 4 has been designated a crew-only area on semesters, which is a long overdue solution to providing them with a private outdoor space, I’ve migrated to Deck 5. More people can spy from the Main Dining room and Deck 6 has an occasional assortment of overhang gawkers, but I have to admit I’ve been finding it rather cozy. Since my POV shot seemed to go over on facebook, here is the first edition of my S10 foot cam. On A2, live from my new spot during the storm. Which I'll get to next ...

Rough Seas on Day 2

2010-01-20T17:36:00.001-08:00

The sea is swelling ever so tall but gently. With the grace of a painter, we lean a little, okay maybe 20 feet, towards starboard, taking potted plants, silverware, wine bottles, and anything not secured along with us. Though before we can reach out to grab the table full of plates coming our way, we suddenly shift portside, as if Bob Ross is behind the canvas, illustrating how a tree blows in gale force winds. It leans from side to side, then forward, back. And before you can curse mother nature for the plate of food now on your lap, the sun shoots tubes of light down through the clouds in a picture so saturated and perfect that it is literally God shouting “Suck it up, kid. You’re sailing across the Pacific and then around the world. Remember?”

Shark Blood

2010-01-19T19:23:00.000-08:00

To order such a concoction would usually mean one of two things, a 21-year-old on Spring Break or an adult American tourist in Cabo. I’m going to profess that while I fall into the second category – I was in Cabo, and yes, I couldn’t resist ordering a drink as obnoxious as a “Shark Blood Margarita” from a marina-side patio with English-translated menus, I think my moment of misjudgement had more to do with the subconscious than with a sudden desire to act like the kind of girl who could strut around in a cowboy hat/bikini combo when not ordering cheap tequila with food coloring.

After a long week of work, Kristi, Britta and I sat on the Cabo beach all day in front of a bar called “The Office,” surrounded by barefoot Mexicans in flowy white things and staring out at the various watersports in-between vendor avoidance naps. If there’s one thing that makes you think of Shark Blood, my friends, it’s young girls on Banana boats. So really, I couldn’t order another Pacifico (delightfully sans preservatives) when something emulating Jaws was available, and consequently one of the most disgusting drinks I have tried this side of a Harvey Wallbanger.

Until the selfish conservatives one day decide that I also have the right to live and enjoy my life, I will most likely never know this from experience, but Kristi appropriately compared the Reunion Voyage to a wedding reception. Hordes of people from all different factions and years of your life come pummeling at you, and while you would love nothing more than to spend hours, even days catching up with every single one of them, the nature of the beast permits you to do nothing more than relegate the intimacies of lifelong friendship to a quick, small-talkish catch-up over a bowl of nemos and a Tiger if you’re lucky. Thankfully, since it was the wonderment of being open that brought us all together in the first place, the MV Explorer is one of the few places I have found where people are understanding and impressively flexible. “Always working in that AV booth,” they all said with a smile. Whether you’ve sailed with me for 10 days around the Caribbean or 100 around the world, it’s my home away from home. Err. Actually, it’s now my only home.

I heart mail

2010-01-02T18:28:00.000-08:00

If you send me a postcard, I'll send you one back. Click here for port addresses.

Don't be Demure

2009-01-07T18:24:00.000-08:00

I was checking out this old magazine in my Aunt's house and ran across this ad. It's in the Woman's Day Dec. 1967 issue. This blew my mind.

Coming Out American

2008-11-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

I have always subscribed to the belief that you are not truly out-of-the-closet until you have been the only gay person amongst a crowd of heterosexuals; it’s one thing to be gay with your gay friends – it’s a whole other shebang to be the gay. The gay has to decide whether to bring a partner or a friend of the opposite sex to a work event, has to field a plethora of logistical questions about sex, and is even sometimes metamorphosed into the face of universal gayness via boosterish friends and family members.

I have grown to embrace my level of authority when it comes to representing the entire gay population on occasion, but my stance on being an American is not quite as solid. It may sound somewhat preposterous, but I believe that one cannot truly understand what it means to be an American until they have been the lone emissary. It’s one thing to be an American in America, it’s another to carry that passport abroad.

I was in the Panama Canal when I first heard the news that California had legalized gay marriage. It seemed an appropriate setting – a controversial test of American strength and conviction. I spent eight months traveling around the world with Semester at Sea, living on a ship and helping students enhance their studies within a global context. I had already traveled to a majority of the countries we were exploring, but this was the first time I felt my identity come into serious question -- not whether or not I would chose to be out as gay, but whether or not I was comfortable being out as an American.

Annie was a 31 year-old Indian chemist I met while held up in a train station outside of Delhi. She spoke 6 languages, was raising 3 children, and had worked her own way through college despite the setbacks of having been born into a lower caste, yet her ultimate dream was to move to the USA in search of greater prosperity – which had already begun with the adoption of a new first name. As we sat for 4 hours beneath a blinking fluorescent light, I felt the inherent awkwardness of being the physical manifestation of her presumed greener grass -- I hold the privilege of having conversations with people all around the world despite my inexcusable monolingualism, I can choose to apply for and obtain a visa to almost anywhere, anytime (with the unfortunate exception of Cuba), and I was the one who eventually boarded a first class train while she and her crying children waited behind for second.

To her, it was no surprise that my ideal of the greener grass had a lot more to do with India than a fondness of hot dogs or the Pledge of Allegiance. Her country had recently launched a branded campaign in lure of the spiritual tourist, and my thirst for all things communal and non-materialistic seemed to fit that mold. We were at a place of mutual and somewhat idealistic envy until she finally asked why I wasn’t married, she herself having been the happy product of an arranged, 10-year relationship. I hesitated a moment, then simply responded that my country did not allow me to. Never had I seen a look of hope diminish so swiftly.

A few months later as I sailed up the Atlantic, I was just about to take a bite of my blueberry bagel when Archbishop Desmond Tutu politely asked if he could join me. Curious to hear about my overall experience, I told him about the Brazilian luck ribbons I had been handing out to friends like Annie, and how I had even given one to a man I met in Cape Town. “It’s funny,” I reminisced, “here I was passing these three wishes on to an African man who had just seen the beach we were sitting on only a few years before (post-Apartheid), and when I eluded to one of my wishes being the ability for gays in the US to have equal rights, he was completely dumbfounded.” Water, power, and food are not always stable in South Africa, but whether or not gays should be allowed to marry is off the table -- it’s legal.

When I arrived back home and learned of Proposition 8, I felt a cold shiver of humility run up my spine. I desperately want to believe that there is something beyond consumerism that unites us in this giant melting pot we call the United States. We may not all be into World Soccer nor share a belief that Showgirls is the greatest movie of all time, but if there’s common ground we all share as Americans, please let it be our ability to live our lives as free individuals. Let us be responsible for ourselves. Let us take that leap of “till death do us part” if we so choose, and let us be financially and legally obligated to it. And while we say “I do,” let us further pump more money back into the fledgling economy – for if there is one more inappropriate generalization I can make – gay weddings have a penchant for extravagance.

The archbishop had wisely responded at the conclusion of our breakfast, “God is crying to see people wasting even more time and resources on hate and discrimination.” Coming from the man who ended Apartheid, I see this as hope. Please vote no on Proposition 8. Not because you’re gay, straight, liberal or conservative. Because you’re an American, and so am I.

From The SF Gate

2008-09-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

"Fresno County authorities have arrested a man they say broke into the home of two farmworkers, rubbed one with spices and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing. Fresno County sheriff's Lt. Ian Burrimond says the suspect, 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez of Fresno, was found hiding in a nearby field wearing only a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks. The victims told deputies they awoke Saturday morning to the stranger applying spices to one of them and striking the other with an 8-inch sausage. Burrimond said money allegedly stolen in the burglary was recovered. The sausage was tossed away by the fleeing suspect and eaten by a dog."

Call me crazy, but doesn't this smell a little like Anne Heche?

Spiders, Oh My

2008-08-31T13:25:00.001-07:00

So I'm walking out of my apartment yesterday, headed for Ikea with Brian when we spy my postman standing in the front yard, holding a large matchbox. He starts rambling nonchalantly, as if it is an everyday occurrence for him to be hanging out against a palm tree versus delivering mail. He's a nice man, and before I left months ago, I offered him my consultation on which metal outgoing mail box to place in our entryway -- but the word spider immediately caused me to twitch and scuffle. Not taking the hint that the mere thought of an eight legged beast causes hives to raise from my white girl skin, he went on and on about the special spiders that evidently live in my tree, and how he collects them -- bringing them home to an arachnid condiminium. "Brian!" I shouted, trying to indicate that I really wanted to get into the car versus analyzing the supposed "hundreds" that reside in the juniper tree outside of my windows. The postman finally got the hint, but before we could pull away he opened the matchbox, revealing a reddish monster that crawled out onto his arm. WTF is with these civil servants?

Fashionista

2008-08-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Liz claimed it fashionista status, but I felt more like a Vietnamese vagabond getting off of the plane at LAX. I managed to get my two bags down to 50 lbs each by wearing as many layers as humanly possible -- thrusting them on and off of the scale until the woman finally gave me unenthusiastic clearance at 50.6 lbs. Just a little over, but still not bad for having been gone for so long in my humble opinion. This is the first time I have flown since the baggage crisis began, so I tried to pack according to my friend Virginia's suggestion of learning the "bundle method,"and though I had to pay fifty damn dollars to check a second bag, I feel pretty good knowing that my flight from Richmond, VA to LAX was somehow only $130.

I was surprised last night by a gaggle of friends and Elton John's Mexican doppelganger. I could not have planned a better re-entry myself -- good friends, big smiles, and even bigger vats of guacamole and refried beans. I love my amigos!

Into the Great Wide Open

2008-08-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

8 months. 51,113 nautical miles (58,819 miles). 25 countries later.

Watching my last sunset as we make our way into Norfolk, Virginia. Spending a few days in Charlottesville then back to Los Angeles. I want to thank each and every one of you (which equals maybe five) for reading this and for giving me a sense of feeling anchored to home when needed. I made the decision as we pulled out of Croatia to spend this last ocean transit thinking, relaxing, and offending my fellow passengers one last time. I might have abandoned this blog for most of the summer, but the true purpose was to take notes along the way for the writing I intend to do back on land. So stay tuned for more shenanigans. And for what it is worth, I imagine the segue back into life sans a porthole will be even more entertaining.

Signing off from Deck 2.

The Final Crossing ...

2008-08-11T01:35:00.000-07:00

The sky was bubblegum pink as we smoothly sailed out of the Dubrovnik harbor last night around 2100, floating past the walls of the ancient city and into the Adriatic Sea. After withstanding an attack by the Yugoslav People's Army in 1991 that left the majestic city in shambles, the refurbished rampart stood as perhaps the perfect backdrop to the end of a prodigious journey. I sat on deck 6 aft with my feet propped up against the railings, chatting with my friend Missy and venturing to nearly tap the surface of all that I, and we as a collective, have experienced. A reflection that is beginning to materialize but I imagine will take quite a bit of time to truly unfold.

(photo credit: Randy Lewis)

Shipfaced

2008-08-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

This girl was sporting a T-shirt this morning that says "Let's get Shipfaced." You know what I call that kind of student, a SAS-hole.

Off to Croatia tomorrow, which will be my last port of I don't even know how many now. Thankfully, after that I'll have a 12 day Atlantic crossing to catch up on chores.

Over half the ship is sick with some sort of intestinal bug. I unfortunately have an ongoing battle with it, but have managed to stay close to a WC, even in Athens where multiple taxi and metro rides made it a close call on more than one occasion.

Live from the Acropolis ...

2008-08-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

Watch out, Yanni.

Walk like an Egyptian ...

2008-07-28T10:14:00.001-07:00

We're re-routing to Alexandria, Egypt.

Istanbul

2008-07-27T22:04:00.001-07:00

We just learned of the bombings in Istanbul. We hadn't docked there
yet -- we were scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning. I'll keep you all
posted with what is decided. Thanks for your concern.

Something Wicked, That Way I Went

2008-07-12T02:30:00.000-07:00

To explain the 2 headed doll. I believe we all have moments where we reflect back on shopping. There are of course the "why did I buy that?" moments, which I have lived recently with my odd decision to buy yet another Vietnamese straw hat that will probably never even make it off the ship, and there are also the "why didn't I buy that!" occurrences, which for me are few and far between.

Three years ago, while at this little local circus in St. Petersburg, I saw it sitting in a glass case next to some kazoos and a popcorn pagoda. With arms made of faded cloth and orange yarn hair, it stared back at me, despondently, with four eyes and two noses. The clowns had asphyxiated some of the patrons during the show and housecats were made to jump through rings of fire to near conflagration, which indicated to me that Russians have their own curious way of providing entertainment, but even the bizarreness of the circus itself has never explained to me why there was a disfigured doll for sale. I stared at its neck, wondering how, why, and when the creative decision to replicate mutilation was made, and walked out of the Circus Abtobo without purchasing it. Why I didn't go to an ATM to get more rubles at the time, I will never know.

Cut to this past week. I dragged Abby and Carl all the way there only to find it disappointingly closed. There were posters all over town and even their website announcing shows every night at 7pm, but it was complete deadsville when we arrived with the exception of the woman who sat at the empty ticket stand. Why she was there when the circus was closed, i didn't ask, but we were finally able to convince her to let us into the tent. From the mounds of dust, I'm guessing it had been a really long time since commerce actually took place. There were no shopping stands, so there was no doll, and I didn't quite know how to act out having two heads to see if she knew where it ended up. However, we did get a complete tour of the facilities -- onto the stage beneath the big tent, and out back where the performers and livestock lived in trailers that were sadly similar.

Camera is off!

2008-07-12T02:15:00.001-07:00

I was finally able to mail the camera from Copenhagen, yay! Again, this is a disposable camera addressed to Kim Richey in LA. The experiment is to track the voyage of the camera and to post photos of the people who come into contact with it online. We'll see if any of the postal workers actually follow the instructions, and whether or not it actually makes it to California. Either way, at least we have one photo of me taking a photo with it.

In the Kiel Canal ....

2008-07-12T01:03:00.000-07:00

At 0800 this morning, we entered the Kiel Canal, which is the European version of the Panama canal and is equally as integral to their economy. It bridges the Baltic Sea with the North Sea, and since the late 1880s has connected Eastern Germany with the Baltic region. We saved around 280 nautical miles in gas and time. Though it cost around $12,000 for us to transit it would've cost around the same in gas had we gone around the Jutland peninsula instead.

This is all a rather joyous backdrop for the current sentiment on the ship. It was rather disconcerting to come back from Denmark, the land of the mirthful --- where their version of public pay parking works on the honor system without fail -- to an obvious lack of personal virtue amongst many of our students. Global Studies (formerly CORE) is the one large class on the ship that everyone attends and is the academic backbone of our society. We've been trying new ground this semester by splitting it into two sessions, having four TAs and assigning papers versus scantron tests. In addition to the sheer lack of smartness in these papers -- to the point of near mental retardation which I hope to soon share with some anonymous highlights -- the amount of plagiarism is astounding. As it stands, with only half of the papers graded, there are over 50 serious honor code violations including the literal cutting and pasting of irrelevant passages straight from wikipedia (of all things) without a single edit or source cited. We have two of the most prominent figures on board from UVA right now --- professor Allen Lynch and academic dean Karen Ryan. The students have the option of making a personal confession of guilt before action is taken. We'll see how many do the honorable thing, ex post facto, that is.

On the Hunt for the 2 Headed Doll ... Part II

2008-07-07T12:58:00.001-07:00

On the Hunt for the 2 Headed Doll ...

2008-07-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

My Own Private Banya

2008-07-07T02:37:00.000-07:00

For anyone that doesn't know this about me, I am obsessed with saunas, hot springs, and pretty much anything having to do with heat that I can soak in. When Krish and I tried to experience a Russian banya three years ago, I had apparently dragged us into a men's only institution. All of the naked men had been shouting something, which I thought at first to be "follow our pointing fingers, which will take you to the women's only section." After an unsuccessful search of finding the women's section, it apparently meant something more like "get the f* out of here; exit through that door!"

This time I was determined. I scrolled through articles and reviews in the St. Petersburg times, and chose one of the "fancier" ones that, according to the article, allowed walk-ins. Finding the entrance to a restaurant in Russia is difficult enough -- I wasn't going to dare mess with trying to make a phone call. I slept in till about 0900, then gradually strolled through the island where our ship was docked towards the metro stop. The weather was so perfect I felt like I was walking through a Care Bears cartoon. The sky was clear, the sun bright, and the clouds hung like little puffy cotton balls. To celebrate the serenity, I stopped to get a coffee. Unlike the more common approach to customer service in Russia, which is basically -- there isn't any-- the waitress was quite friendly. I managed to order a coffee and what I thought was going to be a cheese croissant. I suppose in homage to the gray loaf of bread the russian bakery down the street sold me at home, whatever it was, involved stale bread and was filled with cheese so moldy that webs of fur hung from both ends when I opened it. Some people are into that sort of thing, I suppose, but I'm really not. I tried to eat a few bites, just so the nice waitress didn't think she did something wrong, but all was lost when the top of the sugar container came flying off when I tried to add some sugar to the dark brown sludge. She laughed. I laughed. Whatever.

I got off at the pushkinsaya exit, followed the directions right to the street where the "kazachy bani" was supposed to be. I saw a sign that looked like, maybe, it could say something close to it. And it had the numbers "24" which I thought probably meant 24 hours. I entered expecting to find some sort of reception desk but instead found a big, dingy, empty hall with dirty cement floors. I walked along it, taking notice of the offshoots -- a room with a non operational bar with some old beer taps, a room with an old pool table and a lot of mirrors, finally taking notice of an old, faded black and white photo on the wall of old naked men bathing. Ah-ha, I thought. It must be around here somewhere.

I finally approached an indoor guard tower; with it's bullet proof glass and solider carrying a large weapon, I would expect it to be more on the entrance to the gaza strip versus a day spa, but I figured I'd ask him anyhow. My hand gestures simulated bathing with soap, which I knew wasn't what you really do in banyas, but he finally got it. I wasn't going to pull out my little cheat sheet of russian words after the train station experience. "Three" he said. "Third floor?" I asked, pointing up. "Three" he kept saying repeatedly until he finally dragged me, albeit gently, to the base of some stairs that would've been the perfect location for a horror film back in the film school days.

I wasn't sure if he meant to climb three stories or to go to level 3 (ground level appeared to be 1 and not zero), but all of the doors looked the same anyhow -- closed and unmarked. I tried ringing the buzzer next to the door on what appeared to be "level 3." Nothing. Also no people running around in towels anywhere or any other potential patrons. I tried a door on the next level, which actually had a sign on it, and a man in slippers actually answered the door.

We had a five minute convo with a lot of gestures and broken english. I gathered this much -- there was a banya. He took me on a tour where I took note of the interior wallpaper, which was salmon with a gold pattern, and looked kinda like a whorehouse. It was dim, and although he wasn't smoking I had the sense that a lot of smoking had taken place. There was a large room with a fireplace and couches, then the banya, which had 4 shower stalls, a large step-up cold dunking tank which reminded me of a smaller doughboy pool, and the wooden steam room which was actually heated by a small furnace. I have no idea how or what our transaction was about, but I somehow ended up renting this entire place to myself for an hour, for around $45. I had come that far, so even if the banya didn't involve lots of naked russians beating each other with wet birch sticks, I was going to sweat even if it meant doing it in a complete stranger's house --- which brings me to my final point. I'm not sure if this was a personal banya or one that was supposed to involve the public. When I finished changing back into my clothes in my own personal fireplace room, I walked back out to pay him and found him eating lunch with a woman that looked to be his wife. At this point, I really didn't care. It was a done deal.

Clown Alert

2008-07-07T00:30:00.000-07:00

Barry Lubin, better known as the clown "grandma" is sailing with us until Copenhagen. He's a member of the Clown Hall of Fame and entertained us last night with episodes of whoopee cushions and eating popcorn off of a bald man's head. I'm not one of those adults that says "I know it's irrational, but would you mind staying clear of my space," when I see one, but clowns do admittedly raise a fair amount of curiosity in my mind each time I am in their presence. Which isn't often. He answered a bevy of questions after his performance, which got me thinking of clowns outside of the Bonkers, Shakes, and Tim Curry in "IT" variety. He talked about some of the work they do with sick children -- how they are sometimes the only people throughout the day that ask children their permission to enter their hospital room, and how the kids sometimes say no. He gave us an overview of going to college at Barnum and Bailey, which appropriately includes classes on elephant riding, and some insights as to how he created his main character "grandma" -- he was working at a big ring circus in VENICE, FLORIDA and was inspired by the audience. Of course there's a Venice in Florida.

Norway or the Highway

2008-07-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

When I was in Bergen three years ago with Caterina and Krish, we embarked on this 20 mile hike around Mt. Fløyen for a day, unbeknownst of the commitment we were about to make when we set out that morning. On this go around, after my futile attempt to set up a dog sledding trip, my friend Abby told me of a hike she was planning and swooned me with photos into joining her. She spent a summer in Stavanger, Norway 10 years ago, and there was one infamous hike that she never made it on, but always wanted to come back for it.

We spent a full day reading through blogs and emailing hostels before we left -- to not much avail. From what we had read, the hike is not always possible due to weather, and to get all the way to the trail head from Bergen was a plot ripe for my brother's show (Amazing Race). Of the trillions of travel websites for Norway, not a single one had the ferry schedule translated into English, so we got off the ship in the morning crossing our fingers and immersing ourselves in sanguine thoughts. I know from my own personal history of adventures, that sometimes the best ones come from plans that go awry. We knew we were setting out for a near impossible trek, but I will admit out loud that I've been trying to practice that "positive thinking" hooplah. Not so much that I've been sold on the idea, but more because I promised an unnamed friend that I would work on it.

As soon as the ship was cleared, we ran into Bergen to the ferry station. We had missed the first one to Stavanger by 10 minutes, but after speaking with the woman at the counter, Abby spied a pamphlet for fjord tours and found this listing for an organized hike to the infamous Kjerag. We were able to use a payphone to call the company and make two reservations for the hike, which solved our problem of not knowing how to get from the end of the ferry in Lysebotn to the trailhead, then we booked tickets for the afternoon ferry. I'm used to people usually mistaking me for an undergrad, but I have to say in this instance it was equally as disheartening to be initially denied a student discount for being over thirty. I charmed her though and saved the fifty bucks.

It should be said that while Norway has the highest standard of living in the world -- their government pays for everything from their birth till death, including childcare -- it is also one of the most expensive. With a coke ringing in at $5, we stocked up at the local market before heading out. Pretty much the exact same meal that I had three years ago in Norway from the exact same market: local cheese, salami, chocolate, apples and a giant loaf of wheat bread. It still cost almost $40, but in true backpacking style, got us through three days.

After 4.5 hours on the tourist ferry to Stavanger, we arrived into town and after following up with the hostel we had been trying to contact via email, figured out why there was no availability in the entire town for that night -- a beach volleyball tournament. It was a little chilly for a night of sleeping at the ferry terminal, so we were delighted when the HI hostel offered us a room for $160. They joked that it was the only room available in town and that we were lucky that someone canceled; after calling around we learned they were right. We walked right down the street, where the last number 4 bus immediately pulled up, and we made it to the HI Stavanger Vanderhjem right as they were closing at 2200. The room was nothing more than a dingy dorm room with twin beds, dirty white walls, florescent overheads, a bulletin board just in case we felt like making it home and tons of screaming children. I had set my alarm on my ipod to ensure that we would awake early enough to get back down to the ferry station, so I spent the whole night trying to figure out how to sleep without the ear buds falling out.

We wandered through town by foot and made it to the ferry station in plenty of time to pick up some OJ and pastries from the Spar and some cappuccino from the terminal vending machine; at 7 NOK ($1.40) it is the cheapest thing in all of Norway, and quite delicious. The "tour" to Kjerag, which included no tour guide and was nothing more than pre-arranged transportation, had only started June 21st, and with bad weather for the first part of the week, we were the first group of people to actually go on this thing. We were told to jump on a bus outside of the terminal at 0800. Which we did, but after 40 minutes of driving on a coach bus up a mountain, picking up a busload of spanish tourists who were not dressed for hiking and listening to a pre-recorded announcement track that kept highlighting points of interest for the "Norway in a Nutshell" we were worried that we somehow got on a tour. After having made fun of this ridiculous "nutshell" tour last time I was here, it seemed kinda appropriate and funny to end up stuck on massive coach all day after all of the time and effort put into this adventure. Positive thinking. Positive thinking. An hour later our bus drove onto a ferry en route to Lysebotn, and 2.5 hours later, we were picked up by another smaller bus (along with 12 others) and dropped off at the trailhead Øygardsstøl.

This tour-but-not reminded me of the time I showed up in Tel Aviv via Birthright Israel with no instructions on where to go once I got off the plane. The man driving the bus said there would be a taxi waiting for us at 1700 (it was 1200), and that was it. We expressed concern since we had read it was a 2.5 - 3 hour hike each way, but he chortled with a mysterious grin that we would have no problem." A woman just the other day made it back in no time wearing sandals." We knew he was lying since we knew this was the first day the tour had actually happened, but on the first part of the climb when we spotted a woman in her fifties wearing heels, the thought did cross my mind that maybe the guy hadn't been all that shifty.

The first mountain is about 200 meters above the trailhead and feels like a ninety degree angle. Within thirty minutes, I had sweat pouring off of my body like a sprinkler in 48 degree weather and had been using my hands as much as my feet. When we made it to the top of the first peak, I had a brief moment of asking myself whether or not I could make it through five more hours. Thankfully, the hike is a continuous series of ups and downs, and while it continued to kick my ass, the first part is indeed one of the most challenging. We saw goats along the way, crossed over rivers via planks of wood, trekked through snow, and tried our best to follow the pseudo trail that was marked with cairns and red "T's." I spent the last 45 minutes in complete solitude, with the sun shining down on my face and sparkling off the patches of snow.

I caught up with some British girls, and was worried that I would have to climb up to another peek when they yelled "there it is!" Just on the side of another snow patch, was the infamous kjerbolten. Abby had been waiting with some canadians when I made it there. They kindly offered to take photos for us so we could do a double shot. I was the first to climb out there. After the big climb, i was somewhat still in that zone of "it's just another rock," but I have to say, though I am not particularly afraid of heights, my legs were literally shaking when I stood up on that thing. When I had looked up at it from the fjord ferry, I figured what looked like a little speck would be massive at the top. But it is really only five feet wide, and rounded. So I decided to opt for a single, which Abby simultaneously agreed to as well as she hovered against the sidelines, waiting to inch her own way out there. Unfortunately, I did make the mistake of looking down, which made my hike off of it a little scary, but the photo really was worth it. And again, to reiterate, it is a small boulder lodged between two mountains, 3,228 feet above the lysefjorden with NOTHING below it!!

We had lunch at the top for about twenty minutes, then had to start heading back. I was nervous, that it would take just as long to get down due to the intensity. While I didn't miss the sensation of my heart pounding like a drug addict, I have to say the way down was arguably more intense. It is nearly impossible to catch a grip at times on those giant rock faces when going down. And with nothing to hold on to, for the most part, there were times when I had to slowly inch my way down on my ass. Which sadly, gave way to my favorite traveling pants which had seen me through three voyages. Rest in peace dear cargos, who were deposited in a trash can.

With my pants ripped and mud covering my feet, we finally made it to the parking lot at 5:10 pm. And much to our surprise, the tour operators really weren't kidding about the turnaround. The taxi was there and getting ready to leave. Had it taken us even 15 more minutes to get down, we would've been left behind. We had a few minutes to spare at the ferry terminal once the taxi dropped us off, so we had some beers with these base jumpers that own a pub there. Apparently, kjerag is one of the most popular sites in the world for BASE jumping. They showed us a video they shot a few years ago, where many of them were wearing these superhero outfits with wings that allow them to fly more like birds than skydivers. If you're reading this and curious, scan youtube to check out some footage.

Our little hut back at camping mosvangen was delightful, and for half the price was much nicer than our "suite" at the adjacent hostel. Yay for positive thinking. We stayed up playing uno, and eating apples that tasted like the shampoo on my camping towel that I had used to clean them with. I sure have a thing for ingesting soap lately. Maybe it is God warning me to pay more attention to what is coming out of my mouth.

My friend Britta has aptly pointed out that I seem to have a magnificent knack for missing things that happen right in front of my face -- I always seem to be looking the other direction at the exact same second. So it only seems appropriate that out of the five thousand days I have spent on this ship, the one time our sister ship was not only on the same side of the world but parked next to us (in Bergen), I managed to miss her! Thank god I actually got to see Halley's comet when my dad took me up to the mountains to see it as a child.

From the Only in Russia department ...

2008-07-02T10:47:00.001-07:00

I just came across this in trying to figure out which banya I'm going to try to hit tomorrow. "The tall bronze sculpture, held up by three cherubs and surrounded by suitably attractive and non-threatening Russian nurses, was uveiled yesterday in the Southern Russian city of Zheleznovodsk. The monument is accompanied by a delightful plaque, posted on a nearby wall - that reads Let’s beat constipation and sloppiness with enemas." I can't believe I'm missing out on Moscow AND a giant enema sculpture. That two headed doll better be there!

Trying to blend in ...

2008-07-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

My mom discovered recently, in looking through family trees on both sides, that my brother and I are actually, percentage-wise, mostly Russian. It's something like 40%, but still the largest piece of our ethnic pie chart. So, I'm wondering why it is that I don't have this natural, can't-get-it-out-of-my-blood urge to wear stilettos every second of every day. I know every time I'm in Russia, which okay has only been twice, I can't seem to stop rambling about these damn shoes, but it is really awe-inspiring. There are almost as many shoe stores in Russia as there are dry cleaners in west hollywood -- now that's scary!

I allowed myself to sleep in this morning, which was the first time in I don't even know how long. Then I decided to have a day on the town, getting lost and mixing in; that is actually my favorite thing to do when I travel. For the most part, people keep assuming I'm local. They speak to me in Russian, and stare me right in the face, the way they do each other. When they stare down at obvious foreigners, which I've also seem them do, it tends to be more of a look that says "get out of here," versus the "who do you think you are?" facial chatter, which I think can be attributed to the fierce body image competition. No wonder west hollywood, which is essentially the apex of LA glitz and glam, used to be, and kinda still is, the Russian burrough.

I had decided to investigate the two pillars of Russian cultural existence today ... shoes and makeup. As I walked down Nevsky Prospekt, the main drag, I had a pseudo Pretty Woman moment when i entered a fancy shoe store. The store attendant, with her hair tightly pulled back in a pony tail, first greeted me with a smile and about two sentences of welcome. From the waist up, I think I am completely passable. I even dried my hair today, ha ha. But she took one look at my flip flops, and IMMEDIATELY stopped talking to me, as her face turned to the "get out of here look," maybe second in popularity only to Zoolander's blue steel. What can I say. I may be forty percent, but I just can't seem to put my midriff on display or decide that it's a good idea to walk around cobblestone streets all day in four inch heels. No wonder I'm an American mutt. There are some things lost through centuries of mixing bloodlines.

Florida sucks

2008-07-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

I just need to get this off of my chest for a second. In addition to pretty much ruining the entire world for screwing up the past two presidential elections, they have also made travel research incredibly challenging with their lack of inventiveness. Why the hell do they have to replicate city names, particularly big, well-known ones? When we think of Hollywood, we don't think of f*ing Florida. And when we are searching for information on St. Petersburg, it is particularly annoying when shit keeps popping up outside of Russia. Damn them. Other than the golden girls, there's just no point.

From SF

2008-07-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

Sue Fan, not San Francisco. Funny how those two initials represent two of my favorite things. Thankfully I'll be in Denmark next week, which is apparently the land o' the jolly.

Russian Attack

2008-07-01T09:25:00.001-07:00

I'm not a fan of the big fuzzy hats, per say, but I do love a girl in stilettos. Which is why I didn't mind waiting for an hour this morning to clear customs. I had it all planned. I had a hostel in Moscow, even an agenda. All I needed was a train ticket. Looking out at the "Baltik" beer stand that is shaped like a boat, seeing the iron fence along the waterfront that casts doyley-like shadows along the sidewalk and men taking photos of sexually posed women as if it is an activity as normal as talking on a cell phone, I was suddenly back in 2005, expecting to turn around and see Caterina or Krish. It has been rather odd to follow the same itinerary, but today was the first day it really hit me with such harsh nostalgia. I think also because the July 4th BBQ is around the corner, which marks the three year anniversary of Captain Kritikos's death.

I remembered from last time where the closest metro station was, so as I made my way down there I passed a sign that said "Santander," and also remembered that it was a bank. I had cash in my pockets, made it to the Moscow train station with no problems, so my positive vision of the day unfolding in my favor was working out rather well. I found the ticket counter rather easily, but once I entered the room the smoke and mirrors of the day slowly faded away. I waited in line, the first line, for an hour. Literally, from 1205 - 1300. I had nothing else to do but check the time, and observe the amount of hair product on the mullet of the gentleman in front of me, who was making out with his girlfriend of the exact same hair style. In my hour, I had learned how to say "pri-vyet. ga-va-rit pa an-gli-ski," which according the experts in my Lonely Planet was supposed to equal, "Hi. Does anyone here speak English?"

That phrase was about as useful as the note I had someone write in my journal that was supposed to say "3rd class train to Moscow" in Cyrillic. The older women behind me first pushed me, then laughed when the woman at the ticket window didn't know what to do with me. Pointing at the lonely planet did no good, since nothing in that entire book is in cyrillic. Spelling out Russian words in roman characters is the equivalent of writing down English ones in Japanese. She finally got something when I said "Moskovsky," which I had figured had to mean Moscow. She came back 10 minutes later -- which was the other odd thing about this train station. The ticket counter attendants, all women under 35, would just get up and leave periodically for five minutes at a time, then come back with a wad of cash? Instead of handing me a wad, she wrote down the number 8 on a piece of paper.

After about 10 minutes in line 8, a short, stubby woman with drag queen makeup started a conversation with me. I couldn't tell if it was to me or somehow about me, but I indicated with a nod of the head and arms flailing that I had no clue what she was talking about. Pfff, she said, as she had another conversation with the people behind her, I'm pretty sure that one was about me. 50 minutes later, exactly, I was in the hands of another blonde with a lot of lipstick. She spoke a little English, and after typing something in the computer said "no." Before I could ask her if "no" meant no trains tonight, or no sleeper cars, or no third class, my drag queen friend said "no" repeatedly and shoved my arm, I'm sure thinking that "No" somehow hadn't been translated. I asked about trains for the next day, or the week, but the answer was apparently "no" on all fronts. It's peak season, and it's white nights, so I'm not completely surprised, but I'm still suspicious.

I am only admitting this out loud because it is somewhere between sad and hilarious. I was literally so famished by the time I left the train station and got off the metro, I actually had a moment where I thought I was going to faint, and wondered what they would do with my unconscious body. Anyhow, when I managed to get out of the station (the subway is like 20,000 leagues below sea level, mind you), I saw something resembling the golden arches just steps in front of me. I waited in another crazy line, of course, taking note of the fancy decor and coffee bar. When I got to the cash register, the 35ish blonde woman kept saying god knows what while I figured out how to order. Everything was in cyrillic, and with the pictures above their heads there was nothing for me to point to. I ended up with a cheeseburger, a hamburger, thick fries and coke. At least it wasn't a filet o fish. I think I would donate my body to Russian science over trying to get one of those down.

So I sadly let my hostel reservation go and have surrendered to St. Petersburg. However, I think it might be a sign that I am supposed to go back to the circus and purchase the two headed doll that I passed up last time. Maybe I can even find a smiling Hello Kitty. Which reminds me, Japan TBC ...

The Bright Side of the Moon ....

2008-06-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

I just took this photo in the 2056 shortly before midnight.

Bean, Cheese & Rice Burrito

2008-06-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

I quite literally had a dream about Chano's last night. It also involved me working at a car rental agency and that big Burbank house that Erin, Kate and Kim once lived in. I don't find that embarrassing, but speaking of. I usually have at least one incident a day that makes me look like an ass.

At the end of the spring voyage, people dropped off all of their discarded goods and supplies to the grotto. Word had spread that I never locked my door, so by the end it was filled to the brim like a food bank with everything from honey packets to snorkel gear. I wanted to make sure that nothing was thrown away nor wasted, so I passed most of it along to the crew members on the ship. I did, however, pilfer and grab some beauty supplies. One of which was a small bottle of Redken hair repair, which I've been using over this past week. Per the instructions, I lather a smidge through my fading green hair each night before I go to bed. I've figured that the aqueous texture was do the "extreme" element of repair, but the smell has been striking me as peculiar. So today, with the extreme sunshine in my cabin, I noticed in the light some faded written words on the back of the bottle. Someone had written "dishsoap" in sharpie. Oops. Sure that's good for getting out the green.

Oregon is for ... people?

2008-06-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

This really just happened.

INT. GARDEN LOUNGE

Abby Denuyl is sitting at a formica table, eating a plate of salad. She is approached by two girls from the east coast, both wearing oversized hoodies.

GIRL #1: Can we sit here?

ABBY: Sure, of course.

GIRL #1: Where are you from?

ABBY: Oregon.

GIRL #1: (inquisitively) People actually live in that state?

GIRL #2: (equally as stunned) Yeah, I thought all that was there was trees.

END SCENE

The ship of opportunity ....

2008-06-23T02:37:00.000-07:00

I don't think we stand a chance in going down as "the ship of dreams" since that title has clearly been taken. However, the MV Explorer has joined the ranks of the opportunity ships who work directly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in conjunction with the U.S. Dept. of Commerce. In 2005, we deployed six surface drifters that measure currents. When I came back to the ship earlier this year, I was pissed to find this gigantic machine taking up our limited desk space in the AV booth. But now that I have learned more about the work we are doing and what the thermosalinograph readings mean, I am cool with giving up some space. Check it out.

Now if we could just work on using less energy. As much as I love the bubble columns in the garden lounge, I'm thinking that maybe they don't really need to be on 24/7.

Land Ho!

2008-06-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

As I write we are passing the Orkney islands on the starboard side (if you look very closely you'll see a protrusion), which is an archipelago in northern Scotland. Hopefully we will also see the Shetland islands later today portside. Considering the percentage of humans who circumnavigate the globe are less than one percent, I feel a sense of undeserved entitlement to have joined the ranks of people like Sir Francis Drake. Even if I'm not at the helm of the bridge, I am still traveling from point to point. And when I really think about it, one of the most nonpareil attributes of traveling around the world by ship and not having to steer is getting to see parts of the world that hardly anyone will ever see from this vantage point: traveling through the panama canal and the Suez. Cruising by the Rock of Gibraltar. Trudging through the Bermuda triangle. Seeing the statue of liberty from the water. Witnessing the green flash as the sun sets over the northern horizon and staring out at islands that most never make it to. Even if my book never gets published, I think I can still say I've been pretty damn lucky.

No Choice for Sophie

2008-06-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

I was somewhere between guilty and excited to meet my new ship family tonight. I had an image of Caitlin crying and Jill spraying them with war paint etched in my head as I sat down to dinner with them in the Aquamarine lounge. Thankfully, Aiwei, Allison, and Marine are equally as cool as the rest of my clan. I let out a huge sigh of relief when all of them scoffed at the nearby sorority and fraternity get together -- I was scared that I might have ended up with greek kids and accidentally planned our dinner at the same time. We laughed over plates of vegetable medley while Aiwei brilliantly shared her metaphor of "life is a sushi conveyor belt," and I walked away feeling less guilty since the new structure doesn't really allow for cheating. We are now aunts and uncles, not mom and dads, which means they are all cousins!

Where the hell am I?

2008-06-21T16:23:00.001-07:00

Thanks to the awesome map feature that Lauren and her team launched on our new website, you can actually get an answer to that question in pseudo real time. We had our first talent show of the voyage tonight. No jugglers but an interesting take on our voyage theme song "Ubuntu" that curiously found a way to incorporate the lyric "cover your dicks," and a really great stand up comedy routine from a guy who talked a lot about being a fat kid.

The sun actually peeked out today and the water was smooth as glass. I couldn't help but think as I looked out how crazy it is that students (only 3, I think) have actually gone overboard. It makes since that it would happen at least once over the past 45 years, but to really look out into the vast wide open and imagine what it must be like to suddenly be in the center of the ocean. It takes something like 30 minutes for the ship to turn around. Can you imagine floating by yourself for that long? It's really quite something that none of them have drowned. I'm rambling. I should go to bed. It's just so hard when the sun is still shining at midnight.

Shady Pines afloat

2008-06-20T02:42:00.000-07:00

Back to the enrichment voyage. Raegen was set on an adventure line-up, much like paragliding in Hawaii last year. Ziplining and rafting were on the list for Costa Rica; to go there and not partake in any outdoor activities would be the equivalent of heading to Arizona sans a stare down at the canyon.

On the second day of the cruise, when I had run into the garden lounge to fill up my nalgene before heading out with John, Sue Fan, and Raegen to a Mexican dive shop I felt a tug on my backpack. "Grab 'er. She must know," the raspy voice said. "Ex-cuse me, I'm tawking to her," it continued, tugging on my scuba fins and awkwardly speaking about me in third person to my face. "Where ya goin' with those flippers," the inquisition started at a volume level high enough to create a gaggle of onlookers with hearing aides. The more I explained that I was just getting off the ship and heading to one of the thousands of dive shops in Cozumel, the more suspicious she became and ironically convinced that I was withholding some sort of information that would send her and her man friend on the perfect snorkel.

So it came as no surprise that Barbara was our raft buddy on our adventure day in Costa Rica, and consequently became one of my favorite people on the Enrichment Voyage. Her hair was as coarse as a porcupine but her mouth came in first as her most dangerous weapon. She meant business. That was for damn sure.

The description in the field office guide listed class II and III rapids. Not the IIIs and IVs we would like, but fun enough for a leisurely day in Central America. My friend Christine had mentioned that her meal on the rafting trip the year before was the highlight of her voyage, so my stomach growled in anticipation as we loaded the, gasp, coach bus en route to the river.

I knew something was amiss when we stopped after only 45 minutes in an area that was flat. The river we had read about was over two hours away and was of course attached to those things called mountains. When the tour guide went over our schedule, explaining the class I rapids (is there even such a thing?) we were about to embark on, it was clear that when they had loaded the bus earlier that morning and taken inventory of the clientele (there were 5 of us under 60) they decided to amend the itinerary.

Considering the turbulence was on par with the jungle cruise at Disneyland, it was amazing to see how many times we spun out and hit the embankment. "Row! Row!" I would occasionally yell like the self-appointed coxswain, somewhere between frustrated and bemused at the secret decision of our entire boat to stop rowing every time we'd run into the face of a "rapid." "One, Two!" Raegen and I shouted in harmony with our poor guide, who had been berated by Barbara (who despite her inability to use a paddle was apparently a raft master in her former day) on just about every account and was having a challenging time getting our raft forward -- a task I would imagine is unique to class I.

The savory thought of plantains and coconut rice that had been living on my tastebuds throughout the morning was soon washed away like the mud on Barbara's tevas when we flipped over the rafts and made lunch from the food products that came with us in giant blue containers. Not a bad sandwich spread, but far from the restaurant up in the mountains I had had my heart set on.

I thought I had seen it all when one of the passengers on another boat, fully clothed beneath his lifejacket, decided to jump out of his boat and into the water. I mean, why not? I was at first concerned that it was the 91 year-old who had just undergone back surgery and was not able to sit -- why that person would voluntarily sign up for a rafting trip, we will never know. The good news was that it was a man who had only suffered from overheating, and the calm waters made it possible to actually jump out of a raft during a rafting trip without any possibility of drowning or drifting.

When my second favorite person on our boat, a man I will call Ed, joked that he peed his pants, it wasn't until his constant reiteration of the "warm yellow water" and the slackjawed look on Raegen's face (who was sitting next to him) that I was forced to consider the possibility that he wasn't joking. I suppose if I would've looked more closely I would've seen the puddle for myself, but since he was sitting across from me and had decided to wear Richards Simmons shorts with nothing on beneath them, it was very difficult for me to look in his direction. I know we suddenly have California, but hear me out on this. I think it's only fair that if lesbians have to deal with darts and other gay atrocities, life should really spare us the eighty year-old full montys. Is there no justice in this world?

Loving Deck 2 ....

2008-06-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

I feel like I now live in a mansion after four months in the 3300 club. There's nothing like watching the sun set over the high Atlantic from your bed. Check out this ridiculous view:

Gray Skies ...

2008-06-19T10:12:00.001-07:00

Summer has been off to a rather great start if I can say so myself. Global studies is not only back to resembling an actual class -- it is quite good! And for the first time, we're holding it in two different class sessions, which so far seems to be working very well, and consequently means that we don't have to deal with broadcasting to satellite classrooms anymore.

The skies are rather gray and the air is brisk, which I have come to enjoy as we head up into the high seas. I fall asleep each night to the drone of our foghorn, and wake up with the muted sunshine. Again, a massive upgrade from my dungeon days in the grotto. There are a lot of motion sickness victims as you can see from the barf bags lining the halls. I haven't had the heart to tell any of them that it will get much worse if we actually hit a storm. Dozens of passengers are still missing their luggage that didn't make it to Halifax on time, so I'm playing nice for the time being.

Enhancements ...

2008-06-16T18:47:00.000-07:00

Not of the breast kind. We now have wireless in the cabins and shipboard intranet email. How cool is that? On our way to wasting less paper!! Go green.

Summer Ahoy!

2008-06-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

I had no idea when I left last December that I'd be headed back to Europe this summer. Glad I bought a jacket in Chicago. I don't think I'd want to attempt dog sledding in a v-neck sweater. The cream cheese is gone. The peanut butter is back out. The bars are back to selling ginger ale and movies can only run at night as not to disrupt the academic schedule. Which all means -- summer is suddenly in full swing. Guess I should try to make some new friends before the newbies mistake me for a complete hermit. Having friends constantly come and go has been one of the most difficult challenges of this past year. Good thing I have that little thing called Europe to cheer me up.

We're headed to Norway. Someone said today that we are very near where the Titanic sank. Could be a rumor, who knows, but an interesting thought nonetheless. And speaking of rumors. There was this drunken woman who infiltrated the AV Booth during the New York event and came so close to spilling on the mixing board that I had to diplomatically request her removal. Turns out, she -might- not be who she says she is -- which is an i banker with a gold card. I thought her Ross attire looked suspiciously out of character. I will keep you all posted with the latest developments. My friends Adam and Britta are on it, "Hunter" style.

Smack That

2008-06-13T13:09:00.001-07:00

I hit downtown Halifax with some of my ISE friends last night -- Adam, Jason, and Britta (who consequently doesn't like it when I equate her name to the water filtration system). I figured, when in the 'fax, we should do as the locals do: drink cheep beer and bowl.

The parklane bowl was appropriately next to a Sears, and had poles covered in carpet with neon splashes, the kind that almost certainly once lined the floors of a roller rink. In addition to the 80s decor, the logistics were equally delightful. You had to keep your own score with pen and paper, and the mini version (called "duck bowling") with mini pins and mini balls was something more like skee ball.

The neon was flashing from floor to ceiling as disco balls spun and painted slinkies lit up the alleyways . Handmade banners for a local dry cleaning service hung above lanes 13 and 14. But for all that the joint might have been missing in terms of digital enhancements, Larry the DJ made up for it with spunk. He may not have had many teeth, but he sure knew how to cut some rug and was the master of the pregnant pause. Now if we could just figure out why there were plaques with bronzed toilet equipment lining the walls of the bar?

Missing the kids ...

2008-06-11T09:28:00.000-07:00

Henry was a 6ft tall giraffe that Caitlin picked up in Africa. As our family pet, he often came to dinner and made appearances at game night -- where our family strategy was to show up in war paint in addition to carrying large wooden animals. We never won a single game, but at least we always looked good.

Thus I was shocked and honored to have a note from Henry on my door the first day of the NY event. Jillian, Nathan, and Caitlin planned a surprise visit. I would imagine this is how most moms feel when their kids come home. Naturally, I wanted to look through pictures and talk about old times, even if it only ended weeks before.

On our last week of the voyage as we crossed the pacific, we had family time each day at 1500 on deck 4 aft. We would lay on my massive green blanket called "the turf" while listening to an ipod on shuffle. Caitlin would read the economist. Jillian and Nathan would giggle while Little K would sit oblivious to all of her drooling boys and Joss and I would stare at photos of vases for hours on end. I never thought we'd finish that damn Photo Hunt book, but Joss finally found the missing piece of tool belt. It's going to be so weird to soon have another family. I hope this is the closest I ever come to feeling like a cheating parent.

New York

2008-06-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

It is not everyday that we walk right off the gangway onto 12th Avenue! We were in New York over the weekend for a huge development event that raised a lot of much needed moolah. There was live music all over the ship, including a band named Milo-Z. Micah Diamond (yes, son of Neil) had photos from his Spring 07 voyage hanging from the Union. A life ring from the S.S. Universe sold for $8000 and get this -- people not only agreed to go to a screening of an un-signed MTV reality show, they paid thousands of dollars for it!!

At around 0700, we slowly pushed our way towards Ellis Island where a helicopter crew took aerial footage of us in front of the Statue of Liberty. I've been to New York many times and have seen the statue from multiple angles, but there is something about seeing that large icon from the waterfront. The thought of anything having to do with America and freedom tends to make me grimace these days. But as I leaned against the railing and imagined the moment that an immigrant might feel -- having fled god knows what only to see that large icon of liberty welcoming them to a new land of prosperity. That's what it is supposed to be about. I felt a little odd broadcasting Neil Diamond's "America" over the loudspeakers given our guest. But tradition is tradition.

Speaking of stardom. A few weeks ago, when the Spring 08 voyage ended in Florida, our disembarkation from the ship took 7 hours versus the normal 2. Why? One ironic and unpredictable answer -- Michael Bolton. His daughter sailed on our voyage, and thanks to his ass I got stranded in the terminal for eight hours -- hungry, tired, and umbrella-less beneath a pouring sky. I think that's why I find it particularly funny that someone would pay thousands of dollars in our auction to sit through a reality show, but an evening with Michael Bolton only sold for $600. He really should've kept the mullet.

Soylent Green ...

2008-06-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

I did just overcome a short and unexpected date with food poisoning, but it is our water on the ship that has become mysteriously green. All of the blondes are now sporting a shade of emerald. I think it's kinda fun, but not all of the victims remain so jolly.

Kickin' it with the Archbishop

2008-06-05T08:54:00.000-07:00

I finish doing a set of crunches on Deck 7 aft. It's a little after 0600. The sun has burst through the horizon straight out in front of me and a light orange glow is cast over the Atlantic. My ipod shuffles from Death Cab for Cutie to Tom Petty, a phenomenon that has started to suspiciously occur ever since I met Jocilyn. I look up, only to find the Archbishop Desmond Tutu walking by in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. "Good Morning" I say to him as if we are both regulars at the YMCA. That radiant smile glares back at me -- the kind of smile that is hard for most to find at daybreak. "I know, I'm going to do another set" I joke, as I lay there on my thick yoga mat. Only on Semester at Sea.

Cut to this afternoon in the Faculty Staff lounge where I had the pleasure of chatting with him, sans my face covered in sweat.
I got back on the ship a few days ago in Nassau and am now headed for New York. The ship hasn't docked in New York since the 70s, so it's a rather large deal that we're pulling right in to the New York harbor, past the statue of liberty. Why the French didn't take it back when we went obnoxiously gangbusters over fries is beyond me, but I'm glad it's still there for photo ops.

Slutbucks

2008-05-28T08:19:00.001-07:00

Upon re-entry yesterday, I got a soy latte at the merchandise mart starbucks while waiting for the fed ex to open so I could drop my notorious russian visa package in the mail. Hopefully, my passport gets back to me as promised or I'll be spending a lot more time here. Anyhow. I at first did a double take when they handed me a beautiful brown cup with a logo somewhat resembling what I remembered, sans the green. Then I received a five dollar bill with a large, monolopy-looking purple 5 on the back? Where am I, I thought. Having just watched a bunch of LOST episodes and having seen three serious Lost character doppelgangers on the enrichment voyage (Rousseau, Dr. Christian Shepard, and scary Ethan) ... the thought crossed my mind that I have perhaps entered some parallel, weird version of the US. I picked up a newspaper a la Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. 2008. Check. Gas costs well over $4.00 and the race for the democratic nominee is still in the works. But my suspicions were soon evaded when I read that a Christian group in San Diego is boycotting Starbucks for celebratory usage of the mythological, original logo. Now that's the America I know and remember. Thank God.

On Break in Chicagoland ...

2008-05-26T20:23:00.001-07:00

What better way to celebrate the red, white and blue than to fly back into the land o' the free on Memorial Day. I started off the morning with some Dunkin Donuts coffee -- which I haven't had since Britta and I had our soft rock shenanigans in a Ft. Lauderdale store back in january. I was then blessed with an earlier flight on AMERICAN Airlines (wtf with new baggage rule), picked up some Kashi and soy milk at a massive grocery store, then had a lovely BBQ on Sarah's porch that included organic burgers, avocado, hummus, sweet potatoes, and edamame. There's wireless in the house and TVs filling every orifice. I can catch up on LOST, watch that HBO film "Recount" that I read about in a New Yorker on the way here, fix my itunes library for the thousandth time, and finally catch up on this thing, once and for all. And if that's not good enough for a week of vegging out ... I've got a kitty to sleep on my head and rummage through my suitcase.

Slothfully Yours ...

2008-05-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

Sue Fan could barely contain her excitement when she heard back from Judy at the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica. Not only did they have rooms for us to stay in, they would throw in a free tour and let her hold Buttercup -- their infamous, poster sloth. After our two days in Costa Rica last week turned up sloth free, we decided to make this past weekend a sloth mission. Accomplished? Sort of.

When the owner, Luis, in a silk Hawaiian spooner told us stories of his hustling days over our mango and banana breakfast, that should've been our cue. Never trust a man who is immortalized in a self-commissioned, pre-mortem oil painting. He's spent his life bludgeoning oil buddies in Alaska with his chess wizardry and making supposed millions off of driving a taxi. Why would our status as Semester at Sea staff members make us any different? We only send patrons there by the busload multiple times a year, and make less than fifty cents an hour (or something like that if you do the math). Who cares if we are visiting the sloth rescue center in the name of good virtue ... if there's a dollar to be had, good ole' Luis is gonna find it. Yes siree. He's a self proclaimed mini-Trump. The next apprentice.

Raegen and I spent the day on the rapids (I'll get to that soon) -- so we met John and Sue at the Sanctuary on Saturday night. After a thirty minute cab ride from Puerto Limon -- with Salsa music blasting, a Jean Claude movie playing from Juan's flip down DVD screen and the mostly unsuccessful swirves around the thousands of crabs that take to the streets at night, we were humiliated when he pulled up around 9:30 pm honking the horn and blaring the salsa. "People are sleeping," we warned him, just as he handed us multiple business cards then sped off. Little did we know that the security guard who greeted us would soon be as disrespectful. After Raegen and I checked into our room, which was large enough for the entire Von Trapp family (and consequently could've easily accommodated all four of us plus a fleet of children) he led us around the property, speaking Spanish at a rate I could barely understand. He took us to the edge of the river that flows through their 250 acres, and though I couldn't gather most of what he was rambling, one word completely sunk in -- "cocodrilo." As he shined his massive flood light over the water, we could literally see hundreds of red eyes glaring back at us. Like that scene in Pee Wee's Big Adventure after he's thrown out of the car in the desert. Except for these ones didn't look animated.

Later that night, around 1:30 AM, there was a knock on the door. Half asleep, I slowly opened it. Met by the security guard, a visibly exhausted John and Sue and the pungent smell of tequila, all four of us were completely confused as to why the drunken guard decided to knock on our doors and wake us all up in the middle of the night. The next morning, we decided that maybe his story of the alligators in the river was influenced by his apparent relationship with the bottle. Maybe they were frogs, I thought. They take people on tours down that river, there's no way it could be filled with man-eating creatures.

Nope. Liability apparently isn't on the list of concerns at the sloth sanctuary. Just as they charge people to tour down alligator filled rivers in small wooden canoes, they also don't care about drunken guards roaming around their property with guns and handcuffs.

Luis charged us an inflated exchange rate from US dollars to colones (charging us 515 versus the standard 500 in the rest of the country) in his gift shop, after we spent $100 per room to stay there. The tour that was included with our room and pitched via email was not the tour that was described on their website -- it involved less than twenty physical steps and was nothing more than a popped in marketing video and a description of sloth skeletons from a 24 year-old with no scientific credentials (though Luis was willing to let us take the real tour for an extra twenty bucks a piece, what a steal). After we turned down the canoe adventure and the $10 magnets, we thought he was being facetious when he quoted us a price of $5 to drive us around the corner to a restaurant he recommended until he literally held out his hand in the driveway.

Once a hustler, always a hustler. Of course. We get it, so why should we be surprised nor care? It's because all of this racket is done in the name of these poor, adorable animals. They are not nearly as rare nor extinct as they make them out to be, probably for the sake of allure, but sloths deserve a sanctuary nonetheless. His wife Judy and many of the people that worked there seemed concerned and legitimately tender; thus we can only hope that the emphasis is soon shifted from tourism dollars to the incorporation of scientists. Ones that will be able to tell them how many animals are estimated to live on their property (they couldn't answer when asked), and whether or not it is scientifically appropriate for them to have changed the name of the "three-toed sloth" to "three-fingered sloth." As long as they're making money, I guess it doesn't really matter, now does it. And even though we didn't get to pet Buttercup as promised, she appears to be living the high life, even if it is behind a giant red chain.

It's raining, It's pouring ...

2008-05-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

And there are lots of old men snoring. We're about halfway through our enrichment voyage ... which is the new name for seminar at sea. I thought my friends in the office were kidding when they said that the median age on the ship was going from 18 to 80, but they weren't. In less than a 24 hour turnaround, the ship went from an episode of Dawson's Creek to the movie Cocoon. My morning commute has quadrupled and the elevators are action packed -- but the good news is, all the bars are back to serving beverages of the alcoholic kind (not that I'm going near the sauce after my last embarrassing debacle), there is a surplus of prunes for breakfast, and the gym is pretty much available at all hours. Oh, and did I mention we now have cream cheese and soy milk? Boo-ya.

It's raining and foggy outside in panama, so I decided to declare today a Sunday. I have no idea what day of the week it really is, but since I haven't had a weekend since I got on here last Christmas I'm making today a rest day -- nothing like taking the power of God into your own hands. If the televangelists can do it, why can't I?

I've still got loads of stories to tell from the spring voyage and this past week of central american adventures to spill, but I thought I should begin this catch-up by explaining how it is that I am still writing from the decks of the Explorer and not back in Los Angeles as originally planned. It's no J.T Leroy hoax. My contract has been extended through the end of August, so I'm back in Central America as I write, off to Chicago next week for a break then NY and Europe for the summer. Rough life, I know. It's as if Ed McMahon showed up at my door, and instead of handing me a giant check gave me the gift of four more months to not think about my future. I'm loving it. Not in the McDonald's way ... more like karma for my years of Thornton slavery kinda way. As if the day that two different faculty members stole my seat has been metamorphosed into a European summer. Funny how that works.

I'm too lazy to redesign my mailing sheets, so here they are again, updated with my new addresses. As one of the people who received near-obscene amounts of mail on this past voyage -- I beg and plead. Please keep sending it. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Not to mention how it gives me an excuse to send lots of kitschy postcards in return and to cover my walls with inappropriate cards and photos. Did I mention that I have a porthole again?

(click to enlarge)

Alright ...

2008-05-16T13:06:00.001-07:00

Who's gonna marry me??

I've traveled around the world only to remind myself that California just might be the greatest place on Earth, minus the Governator. Finally some good news :)

It's Mother's Day ...

2008-05-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

And the ship is empty.
No more children to lay on the turf with,
To play Scattergories with,
To laugh over a golden card with,
Or to stare at a half dozen vases with,
Side by side.

My faux tramp stamp is slowly fading,
The grotto is near empty,
And I am overwhelmed with left behind bottles
of sunscreen and bug spray.
So much so that even the thought of another jar of Nutella
is slightly intimidating.
(Now that's scary)

Thank god Sue Fan and I are here together,
listening to Journey,
walking on sunshine,
and reminding each other in our moments of doubt:
"You're Simply the Best."

Missing all of you ...

Sniffle. Sniffle.

As Van Halen Would Say ...

2008-05-05T21:22:00.001-07:00

PANAMA!!

We're transiting the panama canal tomorrow (5/6).

There is a live web cam if you would like to see our ship (MV Explorer) pass through.

Here are the deets:

(Times are same as Central Zone in USA. For PST, subtract two hours; for EST, add one)

Mira Flores Locks: Arriving 0740, Departing 0850

Pedro Miguel: Arriving 1000, Departing 1040

Passing by Gamboa 1330

Gatun locks: Arriving 1450, Departing 1710

ETD Cristobal 1840

http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html

I'll be singing Van Halen all the way ....

Traipsing Around Tokyo ...

2008-05-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

To say that Michiko is generous is a complete understatement. Like Shel Silverstein's 'Giving Tree,' I am convinced that the woman would give away her limbs if she could. What a host! Joss and I managed to get on three wrong (but labeled otherwise) trains on the way back from Puroland, so we decided to meet Michiko at a Mexican restaurant more nearby our hotel versus heading to her flat to drop off our bags. While I'm thinking about trains, the other funny thing about the Japan rail system is that it is owned by multiple companies. The rail pass, claiming that it works on city transportation, sounds great until you realize that it is only the trains that are owned and operated by a company called "japan rail," which by the looks of it, only has a few, worthless city lines.

I realize that Mexican food has quickly become a recurring theme -- a true testament to the California palate, and what happens when you put two Cali girls on a ship for 4 months and deprive them of anything resembling rice and beans. We've spent (and still spend) hours in the AV Booth talking about burritos, almost to the extent that Charlie talked about peanut butter on "Lost." Of all the places for Michiko to tell us, we were overjoyed to be meeting her and some friends at a Mexican joint. Even if the food did suspiciously taste like seafood. The entire table was soon enamored when Joss and I downed our tequila shots and chased it with lime. The girls giggled, as if we had just undressed ourselves at the dinner table. What else are you supposed to do with a shot glass of tequila. Sip it? Jesus. Someone please explain.

The dinner was really a prelude to a screening of a feature film by a Mexican filmmaker. One of the producers was there, who also works for the media department of the UN. I should get on that. The film, of course, was in spanish with Japanese subtitles, so it was a challenge to my spanish skills to understand the plot. I wouldn't write a paper on it but I could probably traverse a minor pop quiz. Before the film, he showed this incredible, avant-garde video for a project called Latinsizer. Somewhere between "A Clockwork Orange," Dali and the Lumiere Bros, this bizarre video involved their experimental electronica music and a curious visual mix of produce and stereo equipment. I'll try to upload once I'm on land with a real internet signal.

Michiko set us up in her tatami room ... which is aroom with straw flooring and sleeping mats. She placed herself on her living room couch, then woke up early to cook us a lovely meal of fritatta and salad from complete scratch, including the bread. Ah, the guilt. We had a visit to (what we thought to be) the "World's Largest Ferris Wheel" on our agenda, so Michiko generously and patiently boarded the trains with us en route to an amusement area. The Ferris wheel, though grandeur in size, was best marked by its inclusion of all-glass cages. I suppose you could compare it to a hamster ball, but we felt more like strippers as we were thrust up and into the tokyo skyline in a clear corral -- that was as steamy hot as it was invaded by the Japanese version of Lite FM.

Next to the ferris wheel was this giant arcade, which in Japan means much more than plastic darts and ski-ball. There were all sorts of virtual machines that take you through 3d adventures, and our favorite invention -- the roving panda bears. You straddle these furry beasts, drop a Japanese equivalent of a quarter in (which is comparatively something like $5 USD compared to the yen), and ride around the store. Mine unfortunately stopped in the middle of a three point turn. After passing by the electronic palm reading pagoda, Joss and I then ventured into this extremely odd situation of riding an electric car around a track. It went in and out of buildings, was somehow connected to either Honda or Toyota, and drove itself. We're still not really sure what the deal was, but we went along for the ride anyhow.

Michiko then took us to this park where hundreds of Japanese "rockabillies" meet every weekend to recreate

the fifties and show their appreciation of Americana. Poodle skirts. Leather jackets a la T-Bird style and hair gelled so high it should involve a permit. The park was also littered with kids dressed as animae characters. So weird! A nearby toy store, that was 5 stories tall and had everything from Care Bears to wacko knick-knacks of the Japanese kind, was a prelude to our glamorous lunch at Shakey's pizza. I know, I know, I don't even go there in LA, but we were starving and they had a pizza buffet. Many of them involved unidentifiable seafood toppings, but the desert pizza with bananas and chocolate was something to write home about.

Here Kitty Kitty

2008-05-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

We woke up just in time to eat our free breakfast at the Hotel Sakura ... which was literally two end pieces of white bread and margarine. There was sign on the front desk (it literally says "front" above it in English) that warned the guests to arrive early to breakfast to not miss the bread. They weren't kidding.

Joss was on a mad hunt for cream cheese, which led us to multiple bakeries inside the train stations. Believe me, the Japanese are serious about their sweet stands. There were more vendors selling sundries of the sweet kind than there were ticket machines and news stands combined. We literally spent over half of our time inside trains and train stations, so it is no surprise that we finally found "Bagel & Bagel" at one of the stations along the giant circle that only existed on SOME maps. There were no signs of lox nor black and white cookies, but it promoted itself as a new york style bagel house. When we went up to the register with two bagels and a carton of cream cheese, there was, once again, complete confusion on behalf of the cash register attendant. Why we couldn't purchase the items we grabbed from the counter was completely beyond us -- so we followed the instructions we half understood and ordered bagels individually smeared with cream cheese. They appropriately came un-toasted.

The ride to Sanrio Puroland was long and filled with anxiety. What if the train didn't stop there? What if it was somehow closed? We kept worrying that our beloved train would somehow fail to get us there, until Joss spotted this massive, white building with giant minarets that looked like a cross between TBN's Crystal Cathedral, the mormon temple in San Diego and Cinderella's castle. Bam!

I'm making Joss out to be much more needy than she really is, but her desire for a Frosty led us astray into a Wendy's, where the brown dairy product in a cup was similar to a frosty but not really. I'm telling you, Japan should be used for rehab from those trying to recover from hallucinogenics -- you can be completely sober yet still experience everything being just a little off.

To say that Sanrio Puroland is inspired by Disneyland is an understatement -- if they weren't flying so high under their post-Eisner management, I'd say there's a lawsuit to be had. The storefronts leading up to the entrance doors are similar to Downtown Disney. There is a theatre that used the same production designer as Star Tours. Another chimera makes an attempt at recreating the look and feel of Captain EO. The interior of the circus-tent type building, complete with fake trees, is designed to look and feel like you're outside at nighttime (Pirate's anyone), and the boat ride takes you through a melange of singing and twirling Sanrio characters. It is so analogous to "It's a Small World," the theme song is even in the same key.

The bakery and ice-cream making station mentioned in the brochure were only to allure you into paying $45 for an all-day passport -- those attractions are nothing more than a plastic diversion behind bullet-proof glass. The shows, however, lived up to our expectations. We went to one called "Cinnamon's Secret Door" which was a delightful homage to Showgirls. Bedazzled women with bare midriffs twizzled along the bright stage, alongside gay men in spandex and large, coffee-themed character animals that had a peculiar direction to shake their nubs and gyrate. I'm not sure what exactly they were getting at with the secret door reference, but for those of us mature audience members, there was definitely a double entendre of the Pee Wee's Playhouse kind. And to intensify the copyright pirouette, the songs were a "tribute" to Sondheim and the great American musical genre. Did I mention that Hello Kitty herself also performs the Nutcracker?

Kitty's house was filled with as many kitty-themed props and furniture items as it was children. Too bad there was still no sign of a mouth. I would say that our day couldn't have been any more complete, but that was before Joss had a major run-in with a bidet. She comes out twenty minutes later, covered in water. Apparently, after hitting the button, she jumped up and away from the squirting throne. Not only did she have to figure out how to turn it off, but she then had to clean up the lake that had formed on the bathroom floor. Too bad the hand dryers that have enough power to rip the skin off of one's palm didn't reach into the mini stalls.

Completely Lost in Translation ...

2008-04-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

I love Bill Murray almost as much as I love the opening shots of "Lost in Translation," but I have to say, Sofia Coppola was really spot-on with her interpretations of an American traveling in Japan. It's as endearing as it is completely and utterly outre. Perhaps as funky and vivid as a Kandinsky but still immersed in this proper culture of consideration and selflessness.

We wanted to visit the New York Bar in the Park Hyatt -- not really because of the movie, more of a desire for the view. As we headed further and further into a dark abyss of, what seemed to be, closed office buildings and industrial parks; despite the clear indications on our map my mind kept telling me that we must be heading in the wrong direction. The Park Hyatt Tokyo is one of the most well-known and exclusive hotels in all of Tokyo, so it would have to be in a populated area. Right?

We walk up to this abandoned looking high-rise, that has no lights, no people, and no sign of life. Okay. We walk around and around, looking for some sort of indication that a giant hotel and bar might be hiding away. I say this, only knowing how the Japanese roll. I'd been before, and I've also experienced the "Palm Restaurant" in LA, which is the most unsuspecting party in the middle of Wilshire. We finally run into a security guard, who takes one look at us and pulls out a translated map that literally reads "How to find the Park Hyatt." I must say, what a good and absolute necessary usage of a map. By god, it is needed.

We follow his directions, walk around the block to the front of the building, though it admittedly is as sparse and unassuming as the back end. Of course the hotel lobby is on the 41st floor. Why wouldn't it be? The elevator spills us out into this mid-century shrine that had more teak than Frank Lloyd Wright would know what to do with. We walk around curiously, hoping to find another living soul. It's as if the hotel, though donning lights and traces of human kind, is also abandoned. We find another elevator, and cruise up to the viewing platform where we spill out into this quaint lounge that sits beneath a glass pyramid, a la Louvre. I know from what I have read that there is a bar that exists called "the new york bar," so we find another elevator, head to the top floor. When the elevator opens, its as if we're young charlie exiting the glass elevator and entering Wonka's backyard. There's live jazz, oodles of intoxicated socialites, and wall to ceiling glass windows that offer the most spectacular view of the city you could ask for. Why the buildings are all covered in hundreds of red lights, I didn't ask, for I know cities with taller buildings and just as many planes.

We knew going into it that it would be a one drink affair. At $20 a drink, we had thankfully already put ourselves into the mindset of attacking Japan at face value, for a constant conversion to US dollars would only dampen the fun (a nice segue i suppose into my upcoming summer in europe). We chatted with a nice British man, who was about to head out to the middle-of-the-night fish market, and were pleasantly, but I suppose only appropriately surprised when our bar tab came back with an entrance fee that was twice as much as our drinks. "For relaxing times -- make it Santori times," as Bill would say. Though we American girls still preferred the Malt's.

Slot Girls and Gutter Balls

2008-04-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

Most people go to Japan in search of cherry blossoms, shinto shrines, remnants of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima or those infamous street vending machines with used little girls' underwear (okay, not most people, but I've heard of those molester types in search of a different sanctum). Sure, we wanted to see the pretty trees and maybe eat some udon, but Jocilyn and I were on another mission altogether -- to find Hello Kitty's mouth.

A few days before we left, we had decided that we were traveling together but didn't have a plan in mind. Then one night in the DJ Booth, as we punched numbers into the karaoke machine, it suddenly became clear -- there must be a factory where they make Sanrio products! Our mutual love of Mexican food and shared disgust of all things sour apple flavored was now trumped with our realized joint-obsession with Hello Kitty. Though the internet was at a record slow, we soon discovered that Sanrio had an entire amusement park in Tokyo. And as the page downloaded at the speed of a peddled rickshaw, we slowly uncovered the much anticipated highlights -- dancers, unicorns, boat rides, and photo ops.

Our introduction to Japan (well, sorta, it was my second time) was appropriately chaotic and repetitious, both themes that would follow us throughout our incredible journey. We jumped on the port liner in Kobe, got off at the local rail station, then high-tailed it into Shin-Kobe, the major train station only to discover that the Japan Rail Pass can only be validated at a few stations, the major one with routes to Tokyo NOT being one of them. So, we headed back to the station we came from, waited in a massive line, then after all that, got on the one super-express train our $285 pass didn't work on. Not to worry, we moved from car to car until we finally got in trouble, though there was no follow-up.

I had spent my foggy day in Shanghai - ADJ making reservations for Japan, but lo and behold, the Trojan family came through in unexpected ways. Hanzie's friend and fellow alum, Michiko, sent me an email with the incredible offer of staying with her in Tokyo, so we obliged for one night since we couldn't get out of our first night's reservations. Why wouldn't a trojan invite a complete stranger to stay with them in Japan?

Getting to the Hotel Sakura was an adventure on the trains, for if there is one thing I can say about Japan, it is this -- their train system gives new meaning to the word "clusterfuck." Never in my life have I been so utterly confused by a map, nor I have I jumped on and off of a train three times only to still not get to the right stop. Local. Express. It apparently doesn't matter if you're trying to get to Hatagaya on the New Keio line. The mere thought of the Tokyo rail map can bring tears to my eyes, but moving on to our first night in the city.

Our room: small and filled with oddities; the perfect microcosm. The lights were controlled by a switch in a nightstand on the opposite side of the room, the bathtub was fit for an oompa loompa, and the fridge could hold about a single forty. So it was off to find some food shortly after checking in. We were equipped with a xeroxed map of the hood, though we couldn't find a noodle stand nor food operation capable of handling our lack of japanese characters until we finally stumbled upon, what appeared to be, a Japanese diner. The menu had lots of suspicious looking items and concoctions involving fish parts, but we were able to communicate enough to order a pizza looking thing, a salad, and something involving avocado. When we ordered "Malt's Beer" on draft, and the animated waitress asked if we wanted small, medium, or large, we both agreed on large, thinking that the mugs were probably fit to japanese sizing. However, our gallon-sized mugs soon came out. And all throughout our scrumptious meal, we noticed that nobody else was drinking large beers. Not even the men in suits with loosened ties. Oops.

I'll get to the level of hospitality that Michiko truly provided in my next post, but upon our arrival at the Hotel, we were greeted by faxes, telling us where to bowl, how to get to Puroland, and she even called us. So cute! We had serious intentions of bowling, so she directed us to an alley that was only a few subway stops away. After another hour on the train, we walked aimlessly around the block, finally stopping in this gross burger joint called "Lotteria" to ask for directions. We simulated the motion with our hands, and they indicated for us to go around the corner, next to a porn shop called Slot Girls. Of course when we walked up to the place, it was not only written in English, but had two GIANT bowling pins protruding from the building.

The lanes were a little shorter, the shoes were measured in centimeters (so we had no idea what to order) and came out of a coin-operated machine that swiveled, thus we had to take our best guess. At a size 10, Joci is a little larger than most Japanese, but I was glad to see such small finger holes in the bowling balls. I suck at bowling, so much so that my little muslim sisters in Malaysia accused me of being un american. Somehow. Someway. The gods decided to swoop in and make me look like a liar. I kept bowling spares. Kind of like my Uno curse, no matter what I did, the ball hit the pins. I honestly don't know how. And I mysteriously bowled a 126, which is my birthdate and kinda freaky. Joci had a date with the gutter, which was kinda fun since the screen would explode with "gutter" written in english and animated donkey figures. She seems to think I keep a bowling bag in my jeep back at home. I keep trying to convince her -- only croquet mallets.

Viet Bri

2008-04-24T00:26:00.001-07:00

Did I mention that Brian is in a Vietnamese calendar ...

Can You Say Burrrrito?

2008-04-23T02:55:00.000-07:00

Aloha! After salivating at the lips for four months and having
countless in-depth conversations with Jocilyn about burritos, I am
overjoyed to have finally bitten into a mass of beans, cheese and rice
this afternoon in Oahu. Surfing, hiking, Pearl Harbor, pfff. It was my
one and only agenda item, and boy was it accomplished at Cholo's
Mexican Bar and Grill on the North Shore. Guacamole included.

I spent a lovely day with Anne traveling through the Wahiawa valley
where she lived in the early 80s, stopping at her old bakery, shaved
ice stand, etc. Then we took a brilliant dip in the Waiema Bay. I
know lying on the beach and eating a burrito might sound kinda trite
in comparison to some of the things I have been writing about lately,
but let me put this in context. I've gone four months without mexican
food (well, i had a pseudo dish in japan, i'll get to that soon), so
something as simple as a half-assed refried bean burrito from a
restaurant that also sells wooden lizards was almost as great as
having a chance to lay down and relax in the sun. I know it *seems*
like when you're floating around the world on the ship you would most
likely spend an ample amount of time outside, by the water, soaking up
the rays. But it's not always the case. I spend a lot of time in an AV
Booth and running around the ship. And lately, the ship has been going
through this weird sleepwalkers trance that I had heard of in regards
to the spring semester, but i had to live it to believe it.

I'm lucky for the good fortune of never getting seasick and never
really being affected by jet lag in my travels -- but this whole she-
bang is something to be reckoned with it. When you circumnavigate the
globe, needless to say, you go through a complete vortex of time. We
lived two April 15ths, which I think I already mentioned, but we've
also been consistently losing an hour a day for awhile now. Thus,
night slowly becomes day, day becomes night, almost like shooting a
Jerry Bruckheimer film in downtown LA, though a little less fucked.
Needless to say, I haven't been able to sleep at night, and i want to
do nothing but stay in my coma all day. Sounds pathetic until you
realize that's what all 1000 of us are going through at the same exact
time, so it's created this nocturnal environment of faux crackheads. I
admit, I've taken to the Tylenol PMs over the past few days, but I'm
still not adjusted. I woke up with drool coming out of my mouth the
other morning at 10:00 am, which inherently meant that I missed global
studies for the first time in my semester at sea history. It was so
bad, I even woke up thinking that I was in my room in West Hollywood.
This wasn't as bad, however, as last week when I took my malaria pill
without eating and (literally) foamed at the mouth.

So with that pretty thought, before I pop my dolls for the night, I'll
just say that I truly am planning to use these next 10 days at sea to
catch up. I have lots of ramen to get me through it, after having had
to purchase two cartons of it at an Asian supermarket today just to
use the bathroom!! Oh, and I had a lovely dinner with some of my
daughter's at Duke's in Waikiki, where they afterwards tried to rescue
a drunk girl in a plushy white sarong, who was so inebriated her
breasts were fully exposed. She and her boyfriend tried to ransack a
cab before falling on the curb. I think it's a testament to my
parenting skills.

Straight From G ...

2008-04-16T22:16:00.001-07:00

Okay, I have a really random Amish sighting to report. I was leaving
campus the other day, and I was in a hurry to get home. I turned a
corner and almost hit an Amish buggy head-on. There was a man
"driving" and a woman wearing a bonnet sitting next to him. They
looked really authentic, but I'm not sure where they came from, as
there aren't any Amish colonies nearby. It looked like they were
heading toward campus. I really wanted to follow them because I was
so curious as to where they would park the horse, but I had to get
home. Hopefully, I will see them again.

I'm going to write tomorrow, I promise. I've been obsessed with trying
to fix my itunes library. Remember, I've been without music for 2
months!

Groundhog Day

2008-04-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

In the movie, Bill Murray keeps living the same day over and over. On the MV Explorer, we are living Tuesday, April 15th, twice. Yesterday when I woke up, 26 hours ago at 0700, it was Tuesday April 15, 2008. When I woke up this morning, 3 hours ago at 0645, it was also Tuesday April 15, 2008. What a trip, right? That's what happens when you cross the international dateline. Last time I crossed it, September 19, 1998 never happened. Too bad I can't take advantage of this one for tax purposes, given the April 15th and all.

The past few weeks have been such a complete whirlwind. We had only 2-3 days between each country, so I'm hoping to take this Pacific crossing as a time to really catch up on blogging, emails, letters, and cleaning my cabin, which now looks like it was hit by Katrina. In the meantime, I have to give a shout out to My Uncle Terry, for the most amazing greeting card I have ever seen (it sings "You're Simply the Best" and is made of gold foil) and to Ish, for sending me LOST, Marty and Elaine, and some portable Photo Hunt. Also to the Fresno Duerksens for some Casa de Fruta taffy and lots of other goodies. And last but not least, Smallface for cloning my drive and sending it to me. Ahhhh, to have music again!!!! Love to you all. We're in really rocky waters right now, so I'm gonna stop trying to type.

Foggy Day Schedule

2008-04-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

There is usually nothing better than a built-in excuse to miss a day of school. Depending on where you live, some kids might get snowed in, or have a tornado around the corner. In Fresno, where I grew up, the fog was a teenager's best friend. Situated in the California Central Valley at the base of the Sierra Nevadas, "the no" is notorious for zero-visibility fog, in addition to the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation and a city hall shaped like Darth Vader's helmet.

I remember what it was like to wake up to fog like it was yesterday. I'd turn over in my very uncomfortable, very brass day bed, turn on channel 18, and watch the stripe on the bottom of the screen. If it said "Clovis School District," I was golden. We would soon be eating at Bob's Big Boy, or stealing road signs to construct fake detours. In any case, Mr. Fog used to be my friend. However, when you're 31, sitting on a ship, and hoping to head into Shanghai, he's not quite the BFF he used to be. We were supposed to dock this morning, but we're now sitting 66 miles outside of China, completely fogged in. I've got a japan rail pass to buy and postcards to mail. Grr. Go away, Mr. Fog. Oh yeah, and I still don't like what you do to my hair.

En Route to Shanghai ...

2008-04-05T20:12:00.001-07:00

There are less than a hundred of us on the ship right now, and I'm loving it! Almost everyone is traveling in Beijing and meeting back up with us in Shanghai. I have Classroom #1 all to myself. It's foggy outside, which is a nice change from the constant sunshine. I'm catching up on this blog, cleaning up my computer, watching pirated episodes of the L Word, and still smiling from the fact that I got to take a bath last night.

The oceans and seas of the world, believe it or not, do vary significantly. Not even in terms of just calmness, but also in look and color. Some are bright, cobalt blue, others are more green. This part of the East China Sea, however, is a blackish green, and is surprisingly full of trash. We might even be in the Formosa Straight still, I'm not sure, but I can't figure out where all of this floating waste came from? There are also random buoys in the middle of nowhere, which I always find fascinating. I used to think it was so unjustifiable to look out and half-think that I could be seeing a dead body, until Sue Fan told me this morning that she saw one on her last semester. Also somewhere around China. What are those people doing? My god, I'm scared.

India Revisited

2008-04-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

I took the time to reflect on my overall sense of India --- which is again, filled with extreme highs and lows, to the stereotypical point of being near indescribable. However, I just realized that I failed to speak about my actual time there. I was able to spend those five days with a dear friend of mine, Elizabeth Davenport, whom I've known since I was eighteen. Her partner, Anne Benvenuti, who is equally prized, is sailing on the ship right now as faculty. She and I flew directly to Delhi, where we met up with Elizabeth and their friend Belle from Brasil.

The last time I was in India, I was 21 years old and alone for a good chunk of the time. Juxtaposed with that, and also my experiences on the rest of this current voyage, India was also the apogee in terms of dynamics. I didn't think about it until we were already in the midst of our journey, but a group of 4, strong willed and independent women inevitably means that a natural battle for alpha will take place. We all felt this struggle in the beginning, as we tried to figure ourselves out and I naturally defaulted as the youngest member of the clan. However, after a stress-induced deal with a shady cab driver was made immediately after exiting a train (a cm cardinal rule is to never negotiate inside of a train station; always exit first), the case was made for me to negotiate all transportation from there on out. Which was a perfect challenge for me, and also good because I then got to follow their lead for everything else.

Elizabeth has a good friend from the LA Times who is stationed in Delhi, so we had the luxury of staying in a rather affluent area (Defense Colony) and having help with logistics and transportation. In a shopping center nearby, we came across one of our soon-to-be fave stores, Fabindia where we purchased some ethnic wear for our temple and taj visits.

Our day at the Taj in Agra was more memorable than I imagined it would be. To be honest, all I remember about the first time I went there in 1998 is that a riot took place outside of the main gate. I was admittedly not very excited to be going back there yet again, but traveling with wise and wordly academics changed my perspective on that. Elizabeth made me understand the prodigiousness in a new way. It's grandiose and arguably rococo, but sui generis in its approach. Most large, obnoxious buildings are built by men, for men, as a sign of a power and a tribute to themselves. I never thought about this until Elizabeth mentioned it, but how wonderful to have such a behemoth of a building constructed in honor of a woman. And as a tribute to loving her in addition.

I kept joking to our shady cab driver that he was going to take us on a "magic carpet ride." He tried to push a tour on us, and in all reality probably ended up close to fired after I absolutely refused to let him take us to a single carpet or marble factory. I sat shotgun, and it was my duty to keep him contained and on track -- a duty I, for the most part loved, though he did take a liking to putting his hand on my leg. Which annoyed me. His eyes were large and bulged like a fly, and his head was disproportionately large for his scrawny body -- which made his head bobbing extra comedic. How and why do all Indians do that, btw? Is it an extra gene they carry? Are they taken into special meetings as children to learn it? Someone chime in if you have any thoughts.

We visited a moseleum in Agra that was overflowing with monkeys and deer. One of them scratched Annie on the face but we still managed to have a long, peaceful afternoon. In hindsight, there is no reason to spend more than a half day in Agra if you're on a tight schedule, but at least this place was worth riding out the afternoon. I had a wonderful time chatting with Belle, and gawking at the Indian women dressed in varying degrees of primary colors.

That was the night that we ended up in the Agra train station for 4 hours, and had a wild ride back to Delhi. We were so delirious that I ate raw ramen noodles from a bag while Annie laughed out like we were at a pajama party. It was a local train, so it was freezing and long ... but we made it back to our B + B in Delhi in time for our next train to Rishikesh.

Far from the dirty, dense streets of Delhi were the spiritual alleyways of Rishikesh, which sits at the base of the Himalayas and is consequently where the Beatles wrote the White album. It is filled with ashrams, meditation centres, massage, and claims to be the yoga capital of the world. Chiggers, if you are reading, this would be a perfect retreat town for you! It has this beautiful bridge that crosses the Ganges, connecting both sides. In a spiritual sense, it reminded me of Tzfat in israel, which is the kaballah centre.

We ate lots of healthy, hearty vegetarian indian food, strolled the streets in search of cheap handbags, and indulged in some massage, where i tried a shirodhara treatment. In a nutshell, they hook you up to this machine (in this case, it looked like a prop in the Never Ending Story), and hot oil drips continuously on your third eye. What an out of body experience! At one point, it felt like hands were rubbing my head. I'm pretty sure it was part of the hallucination. Even if it wasn't, I'm going to keep it that way.

Tablas

2008-04-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

I finally bought myself a set of tablas, which is something I've been wanting for awhile. What's even more cool, is that I bought them directly from the man who made them. His little shop in Rishikesh was not much larger than my cabin, and was filled with grime and spider webs.

Good Times with Hanzie

2008-04-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a day off, I'm taking the time to FINALLY catch up on this thing. So, back to South Africa, where I spent five glorious days with one of my best friends from college, Hans (who now also goes by his middle name, Yurie). To make a long story short, Hans was working on "The Gilmore Girls" at the WB. He was in-between some of his paperwork, when our lovely government officials decided to invade his Silverlake home in the middle of the night (a la Terry Gilliam's 1985 Orwellian-noir "Brazil"), throwing him into a detention center without warning or recourse. Cut to the present, where he is back in South Africa, accepting his fate with a smile. He is not nearly as upset about the way he was treated as many of us are. We always joked about marrying so that he could stay in the States. Who knows. Maybe now we'll marry so that I can move to S. Africa.

He was living in a suburb outside of the main citybowl area called "pinelands" when I stayed with him, though I just got word that he has since moved into a flat at the base of Table Mountain. For only having spent 5 days there, I feel that I got to experience and see quite a bit. I already mentioned the underlying social dynamic and the socioeconomic divide -- so here is a recap of some of the fun stuff we did.

We took a drive up the coast to this quaint little fishing village on the first day. On the way back, we ran into some drunk german soliders, one of which was L Ron Hubbard's doppelganger. We also stopped at this beach that was covered in penguins. It would be even better if the penguins were an unanticipated feature ... but there were penguin signs leading us there. On day two, we drove around this gorgeous national park, stopping at the Cape of Good Hope -- which is the southern most tip of the African continent. The high winds make the water rather choppy in this area, so the "good hope" goes back to the days of sailors needing some luck on their side to actually land there. Too bad you have to dive with a dry suit around those parts, since there are an abundance of shipwrecks to explore.

We spent the third day wine tasting ... with this gay, Wizard of Oz themed tour company run by bears. It was just us and these two boys from the midwest -- who no joke, had met at a Renaissance faire (I believe an added "e" is appropriate when describing a fair of the renaissance kind). They kept telling us about the upcoming gay pride event, and how the gay village would soon shut down their streets for a parade. So when Hans and I arrived on Saturday night and pulled right up to the bar, we quickly put our weho expectations in check. Though Cape Town totes itself as the "pink city," gay pride was nothing more than a single tent and barricade.

Another highlight was sunning on his favorite nude beach -- which is usually something I quite enjoy, except for this time, I had a gawker of the male kind that was annoying me (to say the least).

On a final note, I was particularly enamored with the human parking meters that South Africa seems to employ. You never know how much to give them, and whether or not they're going to steal your car or protect it. As Hans would say, that's the "Africa" in South Africa.

Where in the Hell is Mauritius?

2008-03-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

The people that design schwag for Belize should really expand their
market to the little island of Mauritius.

They say that god created mauritius, and then he created heaven. I
wasn't really around at that time so I can't vouch, but after spending
a few days there, I can comment on it's uniqueness. I'll be honest ...
when I first saw the itinerary I had to look at a map to see that
where it is -- east of Madagascar. Aside from it's picturesque beaches
-- and by picturesque, I literally mean the ones that are turned into
the photos you stare up while getting a root canal -- it is also quite
notable in terms of its culture. In fact, I was surprised to suddenly
be tapped into such a hodgepodge. On the surface, the idea of so many
cultures fusing together seems as novel as the food it creates, indian
dishes with malay spices, for example. But when you throw Hindus,
Muslims, Christians, Catholics, and even Jews onto an island in the
African continent that isn't really a part of the African continent,
the question of identity comes into full fruition.

I spent the first two days in an area called Trou Aux Biches, mainly
because I read it is one of the two best areas for diving. The other
is a place further down the shore called Flic-en-flac, which I knew
would be littered with inebriated students. I traveled with my friends
John Becker and Sue Fan, and our youngest professor who clocks in at
29. I was at first given warning that he was accidentally invited --
since my first (and Sue's) impression of him was an annoying ex-frat
boy who would probably be assumed as my bedmate. To my surprise, and
I'll admit it --- there are many more layers beneath the "I went to
Duke law school" image he for some reason had thrown on at the
beginning of the voyage like a pair of leopard slippers. It's all an
ersatz, for he's delightfully complicated, and nothing short of smart
--- though I suspect his hands would indeed shake if we came into
contact with a foosball table.

I was able to visit various women's shelters and microlending
facilities via Semester at Sea --- which was fascinating, but the real
highlight of Mauritius was the Maha Shivarati festival.

We just so happened to be there during this festival, which is the largest Hindu festival of its kind outside of India. Pilgrims all across the island leave their homes via foot and make their way to Grand-Bassin, a sacred lake on the southern end -- and according to its devotees, was created when God accidentally spilled a drip on his way to creating the Ganges.

In town, we saw hundreds of pilgrims that were covered in body sacrifice -- most of them had metallic leaves hanging from their skin and spears through their lips. Then on the morning of our last day there, at 0430 AM, we hired a driver and headed out across the island to the lake itself. There was a foggy mist spilling off of the water like a block of dry ice, which made for an even more ethereal experience. We spent the first hour gawking and not sure whether or not it was appropriate to take photos of the praying pilgrims -- until I randomly made friends with a man who soon vouched to become my husband, then we were set. He took us through the entire ritual process, from offering food sacrifice to receiving face paint. Now I can go to bed at night knowing that I am saved. And potentially married.

As I write this blog, we are floating down the Saigon River next to
small boats carrying sand ...

Instant Karma

2008-03-24T22:43:00.000-07:00

So, I'm with a small group of friends. We're walking in the middle of
Penang, Malaysia, joking about the two people that our friend Avi
absolutely won't travel with -- when lo and behold, one of them
parachutes in from out of nowhere and utters the phrase "mind if I
join you?" I'd like to pretend that I'm the kind of person who could
answer that question with an honest "yes," but who am I kidding, my
silence was just as rhetorical.

She follows us around, awkwardly, for over an hour, then just as we
sit down to eat dinner, utters yet another misdemeanor -- "I feel a
little out of place. This is awkward." What's even more awkward than
her pointing out the awkwardness she created by invading others'
plans, is the fact that she then didn't leave after saying that and
stuck around for another hour. What do you do in these moments? Like
it or not, I've come to realize that Semester at Sea is sometimes a
breeding ground for thorny social situations. I remember a 32 year old
ship colleague once telling me on the streets of St. Petersberg that
she had never seen a penis before, intercut with her quest to find
fast food and postage stamps.

We're stopped in Singapore right now, bunkering. I had aimed to
finally write about Mauritius and South Africa today, but Sue Fan came
through with the first three episodes of LOST, so now I need to
quickly finish watching season 3. Hallelujah!

Bowling for Concubines

2008-03-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

My Malaysian friend Azlina isn't quite a concubine since she is her husband's first and only wife, but Malaysian men are allowed to have up to 4 wives. On the average, most of them have 2. I spent the first few days in malaysia in a kampung homestay on the south part of penang island. This was my one semester at sea trip, and also my sole experience as a trip leader, so with it came the responsibility of 38 students in addition to representing America.

A third of the students decided that they wanted to leave the trip early, so I made it look like they all had to head to "KL" so as not to offend the entire village. I loved these kids -- I did, but wow did I get a taste of what we've been hearing as the "entitlement" generation. They need to be entertained at all times. Three days in a village is a long time ... I get it, but I'm wondering what it is they thought they were signing up for? They don't speak English. They're MALAYSIAN, why would they? And they do things like sitting around, taking an hour to prepare a meal, and playing with rocks.

As for me, it was quite interesting to spend so much time with a muslim. On the first day, Azlina bathed and said her prayers while I read. She explained the process to me in great detail, then suddenly zoned off into this veiled world right in front of my eyes. She and I stayed for two nights in the chief's house, which was arguably the best possible homestay experience you can have in a village. His home was rather large -- 3 bedrooms, had blue rubber roofing, and laminate over the cement floors that looked like faux wood. I had such a great time staying with this family. They cooked for me, dressed me. The little girls even took me (and my SAS little sister Nicole) on a night on the town ... that included bowling!

We visited an ostrich farm, goats, an herb garden, and a shop where they make batik crafts. My weekend in Langkawi was such a stark contrast to the Malaysian life I experienced in the village. John, Sue, Avi, Stephanie and I stayed in the "gecko guesthouse" where Avi found his blessed air conditioning. An unesco site, the island of langkawi is much more chichi than penang. There was even a starbucks and a gift shoppes that sold yanni wear. We spent the evening eating chinese noodles, lounging around the gorgeous beach, and befriending a boy from seattle who had hours of ghost stories to share. What was even more frightening was this winning streak I encountered in playing uno. I had randomly been told the day before, if you might recall, that my necklace "with the black eyes" was a sign of good luck. Lo and behold, the following day, after having been schooled again on how to play it --- i couldn't lose a game of uno no matter how hard i tried. I suppose it's better than my other reputation of having had a fatality on each of my previous voyages. But why can't I win the lotto or something worth it. Who cares about uno. I mean, really.

I also need to mention, before I forget, that on TWO separate occasions, I was summonsed to the stage to make an impromptu speech in front of all of the students and the entire village. Imagine. You're half asleep after having just made yourself eat from a fish head, in the middle of a cultural show involving little children in ethnic wear, and then they suddenly say "And now speech from Mssss. Miller." One of the students bumped my shoulder, and then I had to go up to the podium. It happened again on the last day. At least that time, my father, the chief, was next to me.

Malaysian Mall

2008-03-21T05:08:00.001-07:00

I just came back from this massive mall in Penang. It was literally
six stories tall and probably has more than one zip code. I was
supposed to meet my little Malaysian sister there from the homestay I
just came back from (more on that soon), but I realized quickly that
thousands of muslim women wearing head scarfs can be difficult to pick
out in a crowd. I couldn't find her anywhere, so I decided to roam the
floors, taking notice of the shift in retail etiquette I experienced.
As soon as you enter a store, the clerk follows you around -- and I
mean every move. I don't usually feel at all uncomfortable when my
personal space is invaded in other cultures -- I'm usually quite
willing to go with the flow. But I have to say that it made me want to
exit each store rather quickly, and not even try anything on.

I did have one guy give me an interesting half hour explanation of
this stone necklace I purchased last month in Brasil. Apparently, some
of the stones have eyes, and when they turn black -- you have good
luck. I currently have 4 black eyes. According to the Malaysians, this
is a good sign. Off to Langkawi ...

Cultural Tourism?

2008-03-17T21:05:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking today about this idea of cultural tourism, and why it is that so many Westerners travel to poverty stricken countries in search of something? What is that something, and why do so many of us do it? Someone last night was talking about Americans' obsession with seeing the poor. I'm not quite sure what that is about, but I've been trying to take the responsible approach of asking myself why I am drawn to seeing things that are so different from the life I was given and continue to lead. I'm sure there is an inherent level of narcissism and the selfish act of "giving back" in there somewhere, but I think for me, I can honestly say that it is first and foremost a lure to have a greater context with which to understand and juxtapose my life -- the something perhaps serving as a search to fulfill the nothing I sometimes allow myself to feel. It's not as much about trying to change and save the world around me as it is trying to change and save myself. And by doing that, I hope to in turn influence those around me. Arguably, selfishness on a whole new level.

I had one of those contextual moments last week in the Agra train station when our ride back to Delhi was delayed four hours, which is to be expected when traveling via a local train in India. During that window of practiced flexibility, I met this family from the South who were also on our train. Both chemists, they are struggling to find work and recently moved to Delhi in search of more opportunity. However, their big dream is to move to Canada or the US. I know some of you have been in these situations before, but this was certainly one of those existential moments where on a human level you have to stop and ask yourself what it all means and how we get to where we are. This woman spoke 6 languages, raised three children, had a charming and intelligent husband, and here I was sitting next to her, representing the very dream she might not ever see because she was born into a different set of rules and opportunities. And it was only the happenstance of a delayed train that brought us together.

We shared stories and compared notes about our lives. She can't imagine not having an arranged marriage and being childless and single at 31 as much as I can't understand finding love in a forced relationship and keeping my entire body covered in clothing in a climate that is as hot as I would imagine the devil's office to be, but despite these divides we were able to laugh and share our common ground -- the desire to grow and learn. The hopes to create a better world for the generation behind us and a mutual craving for naan, which was sadly not a possibility at that hour. So when the train finally came, I felt overwhelmed with awkwardness when I was soon whisked away to the first class section while they stood waiting for second. Here we were, getting on the same train, going to same place, but unable to connect given the literal and physical boundaries of class.

I usually try to bring things with me to share or give away on my travels, so on this journey, it has become those ribbons from the Bahia in Brazil. It took me a while to convince the husband that tying a blue ribbon on his wrist was no threat to his masculinity. So my last memory of this beautiful family was seeing them all wave goodbye to me as I walked down the plank of prosperity towards first and privileged class, with their blue Bahia ribbons fluttering in the hot, sticky air around them.

(Unfortunately, we don't have the bandwith on the ship for me to be posting photos to this blog, so I'm sorry it's not as pretty as I would like for it to be. If you want to see more of what I'm talking about, visually, I am doing my best to post photos to my flickr acct. Hopefully we'll gain more strength as we head towards Asia)

Incredible India

2008-03-16T02:48:00.001-07:00

It is said that whatever you say about India, the exact opposite is
also true. My last experience there, while filled with some of the
most compassionate and human exchanges I have ever encountered, was
also somewhat mired by the tragic death of the ship librarian. I
haven't always equated my thoughts of India with her passing, but it
has admittedly always been a piece of it. Really, how could it not be?

Ten years later, I would be lying if I didn't say that I had a small
amount of anxiety leading up to this section of the trip, but I am
quite thankful to have gone back there. It is a place I knew that I
would revisit, and I think it was only appropriate to give it an ample
amount of time and distance. Thankfully, I'm at a place in my life
where I can handle potency without letting it take over, both in the
literal and spiritual sense. Seeing and living this difference has
been a great internal barometer of realizing how much I have grown,
for India is intense in a way that can't be described by only one
medium. Some books and movies have come close, but one must experience
it on every sensory level to come even close. The smell, which I would
call a salmagundi of sweat, spice, and urine, coupled with the
sensation of being visually raped and mystically stimulated at the
exact same time are all part of the wild Indian ride which require one
to be uber present.

The Indian government is now selling "incredible india" as a tourist
destination. If I were working for the Indian tourism department, I
would add "ironic" to the list of alliterated adjectives. Doncha
think? When I was working at Oxygen in my early twenties, I remember
the shock of entering Alanis Morrisette's Malibu beach house, only to
find more white plushy items than in a Pampers commercial and a
melange of Indian bling. I never understood how the woman who wrote
"Jagged Little Pill" lived like an edgeless Martha Stewart in
actuality, but now that I look back, I'd like to think that her visit
to India inspired her to write an entire song about the idea of irony.
Whether you float on the surface or dig deep, there really is no where
else like it, for where else can you be spit on and blessed at the
same time, and experience a culture where the men are comfortable
holding hands with each other in public yet push and shove women on
the street as if they are hogs. I would say cattle, but lord knows
they are treated in their own special way.

I'm Back ...

2008-03-16T02:44:00.000-07:00

We've hit that whirlwind portion of the voyage, where we only have a few days in-between each port and can't tell the difference between 2 am and 2 pm, or at least I have that problem. I just got back from India yesterday, and we have no classes today, so as soon as I get Gandhi up and rolling in the union, I plan to use the rest of this evening to catch up! I've been receiving a lot of mail, and for that I am so grateful to all of you. I can't even tell you how exciting it is to get back on the ship to find a pile of stories and laughs. I was laughing out loud last night in the piano bar while reading letters (loved the bull dyke story, kate) that people around me started laughing as well. I love it!

I also want to send a shout out to my friend Vicki, who has somehow managed to still serve as my jewish grandma even from the other side of the world. She sent me a cute tank top just in time for India, and a slue of DVDs right as I approach the end of my Lost Season 3 discs. Which reminds me, if anyone can find out a way to send me some of the new Lost episodes, I will send you sundries from around the globe. It is the only thing I crave that I am missing!!! :) Someone has got to be up on the Tivo burning or bit torrent? Pleeeeeease.

Fun Site

2008-03-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Blogger hasn't been loading lately, so I apologize if this doesn't appear as a link. I also apologize that I can't blog about Mauritius. Technology will hopefully be on my side soon! In the meantime, I just heard about this site through the grapevine. Kimmie passed it on to me from An Tran. I love it!

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

South Pass, WTF?

2008-03-06T07:13:00.000-08:00

The news can be an extra scary thing when you only get bits and pieces
of it here and there. I just read that South Pasadena has outlawed
profanity?? Can someone please explain what the (*&^%$# is going on?
Is the LA River flowing with water? Are there protected lefts on
Crescent Heights and no further pledge drives on KCRW? Shit. I feel
like home has turned into an alternate universe ...

Crocodile Rocks!

2008-03-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

Since you couldn't really have an "European" meal or an "Asian" meal, I'm not quite sure what they mean by "African," but Hanzie and I had one at a place called Mama Afrika on Long Street in Cape Town while I was there. Long Street is the equivalent of their Melrose and is lined with restaurants, backpacker hotels, and boutique shops -- my favorite being a little artistic enclave called "Loud on Long" where I purchased a contemporary photo print and some handmade items by a local artist.

I don't know how to explain the ridiculous wince on my face, but the crocodile was indeed a delight. I've had Hostess Chocodile before, but this was my first time tasting the real thing. We actually ordered an assemblage of African game meats that were all quite good. Maybe Hans will chime in with a better explanation for I had never heard of most of them. Perhaps that is what truly makes it an African plate, and how they can get away with using a "k" instead of a "c" in their title.

I know it's tough for the vegetarians when you travel, but for all of you meat devotees, my motto is to always just try it.

Carrie Means Business

2008-03-05T04:56:00.000-08:00

There are two kinds of people in this world ... the ones that make you happy when they enter the room, and the ones that make you happy when they exit the room. Carrie can make me smile without even being present. She's one of our resident directors, and though I don't have the pleasure of seeing her very often, each time I do my stomach hurts from laughter. It would be an understatement to say she puts the Jersey in Jersey Girl.She would stand a serious chance if she were to battle it out with Joan Jett or Tonya Harding, maybe even with some Lita Ford thrown into the mix.

96 percent of the students on this voyage are brilliant, engaged, and people I would invite home to visit ... so don't get the wrong idea here when I tell you that she made a drunk, obnoxious girl clean up her own barf!!When someone roams around the hall scantily clad, with enough alcohol in their system to projectile their dinner but enough sense to laugh and joke about doing it BEFORE the fact, I agree with Carrie. Let her clean up after herself and see if she goes as gangbusters in the next port. That is not the crew's job.

As I write, one of the lifelong learners is giving a demonstration on how to tie a Sari. I can't wait for India!

The "South" in South Africa

2008-03-05T03:37:00.000-08:00

To write about South Africa without mention of oppression would be the equivalent of describing West Hollywood sans commentary on the abundance of donut shops, dry cleaners, and women who have taken an affinity to wearing ugg boots with tank tops. Simply put, there's just no way to talk about Cape Town without going there, at least without doing it any justice, thus I wanted to let my thoughts marinate before attempting to share. Especially since I just read about this.

I first want to take you back to post 9/11 Manhattan -- for a brief moment. It was early 2002. I was walking around the Ground Zero area, taking note of the still ashen building fronts, the dead flowers that hung from the fences like decayed stockings, and the smell of charred catastrophe that would linger in the back of my nose for years to come. I had stopped at a Mr. Frosty truck, hoping to drown my sadness in a Choco Taco when I noticed a street vendor with a selection of 9/11 neck ties that depicted various artistic replications of the burning towers (one even showed people jumping). There were a mass of vendors surrounding the WTC footprint, which sadly came as no surprise after having seen Celine Dion's face all up and down the Via Dolorosa on my first trip to Jerusalem in 1998 (if the path Jesus took with his cross can be filled with watercolor posters and Titanic replicas, I suppose the international line of decency had already been blurred). But these ties said it all -- capitalism at its apex. Ironically, the very essence of our ethnocentric culture the terrorists were attacking.

I felt a similar tremor when I saw this magnet hanging next to a porcelain replica of the South African flag in a tourist shop on the waterfront.

The abhorrence might not be as apparent as the burning bodies on the 9/11-wear, but the idea of a township magnet is equally as distasteful. At least in my opinion. I'm all about the kitschy bric-a-brac when I travel but I certainly wouldn't want the barbed wire of Auschwitz holding up my grocery list, or in this case, a colorful representation of racism and poverty at its worst.

I'm taking the liberty of assuming that most of you know a fair amount about apartheid, so I won't delve into too much of a description. In a nutshell, it was a government passed form of segregation that, beginning in 1948, forced millions of South African non-whites out of their homes and into sections of undesirable land termed "homelands" or "townships." These poor, rural territories were/are home to 70 percent of the population, yet combined only account for less than 13 percent of South Africa's land mass. The townships mostly consist of tin shacks, yes some of them multi colored, and only a portion have such luxuries as running water and power.

You could argue that they are HIV infested shanty-towns where people use buckets for toilets as much as you can argue that they are rich cultural centres that produce some of the world's greatest jazz, and even at their worst provide more shelter for the poor than other parts of the African continent. Either way, sixty years and the rainbow coalition later, whether or not these people want to be forced out of their homes AGAIN into new government housing (which is part of the current government's solution) after having raised families in their current locale is not as important as the question of why they are still living such separate existences? Why are there virtually still no blacks in the prominent areas? Why do hardly any non-whites own cars? Why are there tour companies that drive buses through the townships as if the residents are zoo animals to be gawked at?And more importantly, why is it that so many whites have still never visited nor met their black neighbors, when they drive past them every day? Even if the rest of Africa is statistically worse off, South Africa is exponentially rich in juxtaposition. So compared to other countries with class extremes that I have visited (like India), I was astounded to leave a posh cafe only to drive by a township seconds later. Quite literally, this township was across the highway from a beautiful, sprawling winery that looked like a mini Tara.

To be fair, I think the experience of traveling to the American South around the civil rights era might have been a somewhat similar experience, perhaps minus the sophistication. I had the luxury of experiencing my time in S. Africa through the eyes of my good friend Hans, who recently moved back after living in LA for 13 years. As we traveled around together in his used Toyota Tazz, speaking with his friends and meeting new ones, we both came to the subtle realization that nothing has really changed. Change takes time, of course, so on one hand it is to be expected. But for the colors of the flag that are to symbolize unity, the freeing of Nelson Mandela and the diplomatic words of their national anthem, the social climate is still, to my astonishment, very much "us versus them" -- lock your doors, never pull all the way up to a stoplight, get them off of our freeways. For me, as an American white, it is somewhat simple to detach from a short and rather voyeuristic view, but for Hans, it is a complicated existence. One that he didn't choose, but like it or not, will have to negotiate as he develops his new life there.

The good news is, there is hope -- and lots of it. Desmond Tutu sailed on a recent voyage and has a very close relationship with our program and our students. The older generation, much like ours in America, has battlescars that might not be repaired in this lifetime, but the youth are ready and open to acceptance. I heard a black man comment while on this beautiful beach that though he had lived in S. Africa his entire life, he had only recently seen the coast that was only miles away from where he was born. Even if it took him 50 years, the fact is, he still got there.