Home on the Range

Hello all.

It is with great pleasure that I declare myself a circumnavigatress! 

Most Affectionate Valedictions!

Kelsey 'World Traveler' Westphal

Wrapping it Up

12/11/08

Wow. 3 Days left. Costa Rica was a blast. We rented a 3-house little villa with 20 other people, right by the beach. There was a pool and scarlet macaws and coconut and starfruit trees and very cheap imperial beer and warm air and beautiful emerald hills and we lay in the sun and relished the end of finals and schoolwork and enjoyed each others company for the last port of the trip. We went on a canopy/zipline tour through the rain forest and the tour guides kept calling me Barbie and then we had so much yummy pineapple and watermelon and banana and then got delicious rice and beans in the downtown area of Jaco Beach. I ran on the beach and it was such a nice change after enduring the treadmill on the ship—not running in a closet with mirrors felt soooo good. We really had no time in Costa Rica. Two days were spent mostly in transit, the other laying out and eating and relaxing—but no complaints here. I think the relaxing thing is part of the whole Pura Vida mentality (correct me if I am wrong, Costa Ricans). Everyone there was so nice and welcoming, I definitely must go back.
        Last night was the ambassador’s ball. Everyone got all dolled up and the cafeteria made their first fully edible meal all trip! TOFU with vegetables, dumplings, sweet and sour soup, mandarin salad, and tables and tables of desserts and fruit. Plus one glass of champagne! There was dancing in the big auditorium which I tried but the ship was rocking and there wasn’t enough space for my hippie arm flinging dance moves so I sort of gave up. But I enjoyed myself nonetheless.
        I am really excited to come home. To have a window, a refrigerator, my FAMILY, my friends, grass to lay in, newspapers and non-syrup coffee, animals, trees, books to read…it is almost unreal. Christmas will be so lovely—I am going to be like Santa Claus with all the gifts I bought on this trip! I think this trip has made me a more generous person. I take myself less seriously, and have realized the power of just being nice to people as a rule of thumb. I have made such wonderful memories and friendships on this trip that I am so thankful for, but I realized how truly valuable my family and friends are back home.  Without their emails and love, I think the times when I was lonely or sea crazy or bored would have been unbearable. Time is fleeting and seeing the different ways everyone in the world finds a way to use theirs has made me want to squeeze every last drop of adventure and love out of my time as I can. MOM AND DAD---YOU ARE THE BEST. You have shown me the world and I cannot tell you thank you or I love you enough. ☺

Gahd

I am bored. The ocean is still blue. My work is finished. My lunch was 6 apples. Thank god we are getting an afternoon on land (honolulu) tomorrow...my brain is turning into silly putty! a thanksgiving picnic on the beach is planned, as is a hording of food at some grocery store for the next 9-day stretch (this one including finals! yaaaaay!) between here and Costa Rica. Costa Rica looks like it will be a grand finale, we rented a 3-house villa thing with a pool and waterfall right next to the beach and it is quite inexpensive--plus I bet they have AMAZING food that will slake my thirst for mexican food. It is getting bad---food took up all of my dreams last night! I woke up chewing my hair. Being in America will be a strange sensation tomorrow--not having to speak slowly and with my hands so people will understand me, being able to read the signs...and probably a lot of fat people. Japan i think has 6 fat people in total, and I only saw about 3. I don't know how a country with the most delicious food possible does it, but they do, and I give them a standing ovation (in my mind). Still waiting on those food emails!
-Kelsey

Music

Soundtrack to Travel the World:
Here are some songs I would never have survived being at sea without:

Cecilia by Simon and Garfunkel: this song was always a good one when I was feeling tired of being on the ship, missing land or just wanting to see my friends.

Lake Michigan by Rogue Wave: this song, first of all, is exquisitely crafted. It just gradually gets prettier and prettier and, in my mind, glitters like the sun off the sea on a warm day.

Snail Garden by Black Moth Super Rainbow: this band never fails to tickle the furrows of my brain with multi-colored mastery. Sublime!

Simple Twist of Fate by Bob Dylan: Nothing Bob does ever fails me, but this song seems to capture the beautiful transience of this trip.

Ed is a Portal by Akron/Family: A rollicking good time, one I put on when I feel like celebrating everything!

Asleep for Days by Blitzen Trapper: The title describes what traveling for 3 and a half months makes me want to be.

There is no There by the Books: Makes me feel like someone is cleaning my soul with soft little cotton pads doused in liquid love. The Books are divine providence, I might as well put their entire discography on here.

Robots Got No Cadence or Balance by Prefuse 73: A dreamy little piano groove with electronic blips and ‘oooh’ ‘eeeh’ ‘aahs’ and a really sweet wall of beautiful violin strokes. Awesome.

Trudi by Donovan: This is a foxy jam, not really related lyrically to the trip at all, but Donovan never fails to lift my spirits when my cave—I mean room--- feels too small.

Fall in a River by Badly Drawn Boy: This one sounds like a troop of bohemian musicians dancing out of a mossy green forest at dusk. I miss trees so I listen to this when I want to climb one.

Blue Ridge Mountains by Fleet Foxes: Reminds me of Nicholas and is about traveling. And the band is just plain perfect!

Forever by Working for A Nuclear Free City: I’m using it on my slideshow when I get back—it is perfect for processing a flood of memories and images of wildly different things.  Plus it has a sitar, which is always two points in my book.

Secrets of the Sea by Billy Bragg and Wilco: A happy ditty that strums away the clouds.

Cabin Fever by the Brian Jonestown Massacre: This will probably play a lot in the next few weeks. Being on the sea is tiring (and a bit maddening), especially with only a day in Hawaii and 3 in Costa Rica to break it up until home!

We Sleep in the Ocean by the Cloud Room: Talks about escaping and traveling—connection?

My Yoke is Heavy by Daniel Johnston: my favorite song in the whole world. It was stuck in my head all of Tokyo and I was so glad. It makes me so happy!!! Just find a way to listen to it because it is genius.

Third World Lover by DJ Shadow: An Indian-spiced instrumental piece of ear candy.

Suddenly Everything has Changed by The Flaming Lips: because it has (but maybe not so suddenly)

Bombooji by Gong: I miss hippies, and this is my substitute.

Insects Don’t Eat Bananas by Joan of Arc: Short, badly sung, and about monkeys= fabulous.

Fool That I Am by Kula Shaker: For the more wistful of my days.

Food Fantasies

Breakfast:
3 gallons of coffee (real coffee...not the syrupy poison on the ship)
1 vat of vanilla yogurt
17 bags of craisins & granola
1 omelet with peppers, onions, pepper jack cheese and a whole bottle of salsa
An entire orange tree’s worth of fresh-squeezed orange juice

Lunch:
1 bean and cheese burrito (daschund-sized)
1 cask of horchata
Red Hot Blues chips
Fruit, fruit, fruit until I can eat no more!!!

Dinner:
1 baked potato with sour cream, green onions, butter and pepper
1 veggie burger (with 12 patties) with avocado, lettuce, onions and wasabi mayonnaise
Grilled and marinated vegetables (Dad style)
Pink Lemonade
MORE FRUIT!!!!!!!!

The food on the ship has gone beyond redundancy into being just plain revolting. I feel like I am in the great siege of Paris and they have opened up the zoos and started mincing baboons  and filleting zebras for lack of anything appetizing or edible left. The little cubes of cheese that used to trigger at least partial taste bud satisfaction are now nowhere to be seen, and the brief few days where they had varieties of tea other than British Dog Slobber, are long gone. I have resorted to fooling my body into thinking it is full with lettuce and going to bed early to ignore my pleading stomach. Trail mix dances through my brain, taunting me with its salty, crunchy elusiveness, and anyone who dares speak of Mexican or Thai food is risking being mauled. Honolulu’s supermarkets will be empty by the time I am done with them! I will be home so soon (25 days as of today) that I can stand it…at least for now. If anyone wants to send me lengthy emails describing every taste, aroma and texture of their favorite meal, I will nourish my brain at least in that way. I’m not even kidding, getting an email like that would at least provide some sustenance! Keep those emails coming, people! I’m still alive over here on the Pacific and want to know how you are doing!

Japanfatuation

Whoever doesn’t believe in love at first sight needs to go to Tokyo…they will be exposed as the fraudulent non-believers that they are! Japan!! Japan!!!! My toes wiggle and my eyelashes bat coquettishly at the mere mention of the place. Not only did the album ‘The Lemon of Pink’ by the Books (a savagely good cd) synchronize perfectly with my entry into the country, but I finally was able to understand the language (to a degree), and the earth’s rotation graciously volunteered to incarnadine the fingertips of all the trees and send brisk whispers through the streets, with the smell of rice cooking and tea brewing at the fringe of every chilly gust. I can’t get this place out of my head. First of all, they have realized the blatant superiority of green tea as a flavor. Kit kats, ice cream, liquor, you name it and they have it green tea flavored. Also, TOFU! I ate tofu ice cream, a tofu latte, tofu in soup that, all hyperbole aside, kept a dopey grin on my face for 3 hours after its consumption. Even thinking about biting into that heavenly rectangle of wonder gets me salivating. The first day I set foot, in Kobe, the weather was sublime, and a group of about 15 kids and I hopped on the train to Kyoto for a field trip-esque excursion with my global studies teacher. We wandered around some Buddhist and Zen temples, visited a garden and a shrine, and padded through a mossy green forest and marveled silently at the majesty of the changing leaves. Mitzi’s mom, who is living in Tokyo at the moment, came and met us and we went out to dinner---I ate the aforementioned tofu that day, enough said. That night me and my ‘posse’ went out to caper through the streets of Kobe. I drew a very well-rendered inebriated octopus on the wall of this bar called ‘Sonic’, and requested songs from the DJ that were just too obscure, and was mildly disappointed. The subway closes at midnight and I was out past then, so my friend Brian and I had to get a taxi. For some reason, I always forget the word for boat (fune) and mix it up with the word for winter (fuyu), so here I am at 2 in the morning asking a very perplexed and very amused taxi driver to take me to the “big winter”…but I made it back safe and sound, to wake up the next morning and go OSAKA! So much color, so much style, so much noise and youth! Mitzi took us to a Mexican restaurant (one of the many foods I am craving with mounting agony) and we all were in throes of gustatory passion for the 2 hours we sat there and basically licked our plates clean. My group of friends has gotten to the point where we basically just eat each other’s food and just ask out of habit, so arms were crisscrossed and forks colliding like crazy in our dimly lit corner of the El Pancho restaurant. Jim and Rob’s is getting some serious income as soon as I get back into Ojai, that is for sure. I miss Mexican food like CRAZY!! So after El Pancho, we walked around the city for a bit, visiting a very pricey vintage/”thrift” store and taking pictures in this photo booth that was bejeweled and pink and sparkly and just ohhh so me! People watching in Japan is amazing. Everyone here has the coolest outfits, I don’t think I saw one person who didn’t look like they had planned their ensemble the night before. 5 different patterns and a kaleidoscopic color scheme seems to be the general rule for fashion, but they manage to make it work. Meaningless English phrases also seem to be a favorite. I bought a T-shirt that says “Kick Out! STUPID GLORY DAYS!” on it. I plan on wearing it weekly, if not more! Then from Osaka, we went to Kyoto, where we met Mitzi’s mom.
        Kyoto, lamentably, was only viewed at night and on a soggy, gray morning. We walked through the metro station (I won’t even go into the transportation system here…it should make the U.S. pale with embarrassment) and got dinner at a little restaurant where we all sat on the floor and they came out with giant egg omelets and slapped them on the sizzling black surface that took up the center of our table and kept the food piping hot the whole meal! We slept in a ryokan, a tatami-matted, narrow-staircased, paper-walled traditional Japanese inn. They kept green tea constantly at our reach, and boy did I drink a lot of it. I fell asleep really early, to a badly-dubbed Mission Impossible in Japanese. Woken up by the clicks of women’s high heels outside our inn (the tiniest sounds came through those walls), we all got up and fetched breakfast and then boarded the sleek, playpus-headed Shinkansen, or bullet train, to Tokyo!! Soaring through the country side, I mentally ran up every hill and leapt at every low-lying cloud, knowing that I would soon be on the water for almost 20 days, with only a hurried Thanksgiving in tourist-clogged Honolulu to break up the monotony. Arriving in Tokyo, the sun was listless and only let a few rays weakly seep through the grey clouds. This may have been why my visit to the Harajuku district (of which Gwen Stefani so colorfully sings) was mostly fruitless—only a smattering of furry costumes and gothic regalia, but still enough to make it worthwhile. After a tofu burger and some miso soup, we went to Shibuya station, where flashing comic billboards and neon signs lit up the sky like the aurora borealis above the endless herds of humans crossing the streets. The weird thing about Tokyo is that even when it seems like there are two thousand people in one tiny little square, it is still silent. Put the same amount of New Yorkers or Indians or French in the same situation and it would be bedlam! Everywhere I went the Japanese were so polite and self-contained, which was an interesting contrast to their off-the-wall style and adoration of gaudy, self-aggrandizing Western media. That night we went to this club called Gaspanic, where drinks were painfully overpriced, but I got to boogie the night away with a Japanese man in what looked like a plumber’s one-piece suit, and his companion, an arm-swinging black man in striped overalls. We got back (Chris, Scott, Emily and  I) to the subways on the very last run, at midnight, and returned to our hostel. The lightning fast internet was heaven for Chris and I—we stayed up until 3 in the morning talking to friends and uploading pictures and freaking out about how rad Tokyo was.
        The next day was THE BEST DAY OF MY ENTIRE LIFE. I woke up to the sun (oh glorious golden orb of joy!!) at 7 in the morning, and felt it in my every limb that things were going to be perfect. I got a cup of coffee downstairs with the hostel owners, showered (towels cost money so I used my purple bandana instead), and everyone eventually got up and we rented BICYCLES!! Mine was orange and had a basket AND a bell…I was so in love. We had to wait around for Mitzi, Drew and Kristin to get to our side of Tokyo from Mitzi’s mom’s, so we rode around the bicycle rental place ringing our bells and “Top of the morning to you”-ing, probably giving the owner a headache and causing considerable confusion amongst the Japanese businesspeople. Once everyone was together, we flew through the streets of Tokyo, a perfect temperate day with frayed clouds lacing the horizon and the wind making rusty whirlwinds of fall leaves on the sidewalks. A forty-five minute stop at a supermarket with about thirty aisles of everything I love and more gleeful bicycle cruising led us to a gazebo type structure at the edge of a park, where we all parked our bikes, sat down, and unpacked our exploding grocery bags of sushi and chips and mochi and banana chips and enormous (the size of grapefruits) Fuji apples and other delectable snacks and just sat and feasted. First of all, riding bicycles is probably one of my favorite things in the world to do. The fact that I did it in Tokyo, during fall, on a beautiful day, and then got to eat the best sushi and eat real Fuji apples that haven’t been frozen and ruined in a cruise-ship freezer for months…I was in heaven. Every time I hear bicycle bells from now on, my eyes will glaze over and I will probably be in a nostalgic reverie for a few hours. And the day wasn’t even half over! After consuming my weight in sweetened rice and tofu, we pedaled around more, stopping at a really eclectic flea market and a little souvenir boulevard, then went back to the hostel. After a cat nap and some general laying about, we hopped on our bicycles again, and rode, bells-a-jingling, across town to a karaoke bar. We got our own private room and ‘Happy!’ Beers and sang at the top of our lungs for hours. I was really surprised, they had Radiohead and Peter, Bjorn and John, and Bjork and quite a bit of non-mainstream music. We all thought the walls were soundproof, so we just sang as loud and as ear-piercingly as we could, but (this I discovered several days later), you could hear everything in the hallway! So what I thought was a private, one-on-one screaming of ‘Ocean Avenue’ with Chris was heard by all of Tokyo!
So my conclusion is this: I love Japan. I LOVE JAPAN. Marry me, oh land of tofu and chopsticks and hello kitty!!! Why did I ever leave you?!

Hello Panda!

Me on the Ship Deck 5

Looks like a pottery barn ad....*Hong Kong*

The Water Cube!

Me coming out of a flower pot i guess..

Halloween

Me as Beatrice Kiddo from Kill Bill!

The Great Wall

The Birds Nest!

Nihao Ma!

China---the fun part. Here we go. First of all, Hong Kong is way too expensive to even write about, ad the reason  why I ate chili pepper flakes and a coke for my only meal there. I went up to Victoria’s peak and got an enchanting view of the city with Scott, then we went to a stupid market where they sold the same thing in every stall, but I bought a T-shirt and fulfilled my T-shirt-from-every-country quota The view of Hong Kong at night from our boat was really really beautiful though, and they had this crazy laser light show on the skyscrapers which I watched from the ship. The next day I woke up and pilfered the nearby mall’s free internet for two hours, then hopped in a taxi to the bus station with Vin and his friends (soon to be mine too) Alissa, Kasie and Nina. The bus people freaked us out and told us we were going to miss our flight so we were all on edge during the bus and taxi ride to the airport, and we climbed onto the plane 5 minutes before the gates closed—one of many close calls I have experienced on this trip. The plane ride was amusing. They played a hilarious silent film with cross-dressing Chinese men and women with big long magical braids, and I almost laughed until coconut milk spewed out of my nose. When we got to Beijing, getting a taxi was exasperating. They spoke little to no English to our complete ignorance of any Chinese, and our request to stuff 5 people in one taxi was rudely denied. We got to our hostel, the 1 Hai Inn, after awkwardly wandering down the wrong dark, deserted street with wispy bearded Chinese men on bicycles and white cats curled up on street corners. I LOVE HOSTELS. I could have lived in this one, the people were so nice, the fruit plate was so delicious, and they had free internet! We had our own little 6 person dorm with a bathroom and big comforters and a TV (which we didn’t watch except for a 5 minute clip of a chubby Chinese boy battling a group of middle-aged women). We spent a majority of the night watching our favorite Youtube videos (Look up “The Tree” “Mother’s Day”, “My Son is Gay”, “Jackie and Debra”, or “The Phone Call” to see how we were talking the ENTIRE trip) and cackling gleefully, to the utter befuddlement of our kind hosts. At 2 in the morning, Vin and I went out to find an ATM and ended up in a noisy little restaurant where we ordered tea (using a ridiculous form of sign language) and stifled our amusement at being the only English-speaking people in the entire establishment. This one debonair-looking Chinese man sat at the table next to us, an amused gaze fixed askance at us, with his plate of food untouched in front of his folded hands for the entire time we were there. We felt like quite a spectacle.
 The next day we woke up early and were greeted by the lovely Rita, our tour guide for the next two days. She packed us in a big white van and we drove to the Olympic monuments, where we took the greatest group photographs in the history of group photographs (I will try and put it up soon). Even though all I watched of the Olympic games was synchronized diving, seeing the water cube and bird’s nest still set my heart all a-flutter! After that we visited the 13 Ming tombs, an impressive display of imperial extravagance and architecture. Vin and  I crawled all over the elephant statues and the girls and I fawned over adorable panda-hat wearing toddlers and Rita wowed us with her unending historical wisdom. We proceeded to a Chinese restaurant, where the menu provided enough laughs for the entire week (‘Spiced Jews Ear’ was a favorite of mine).. I really have taken a shine to the use of lazy Susans in this country, they were in every restaurant I ate at and made everything so streamlined---no “Pass the Salt” or “Gimme the chicken” to interrupt the delicious taste of my ‘Hemp-Exploded the Bean Curd’! After gorging myself on awfully-translated Chinese food, Tito (the name we affectionately gave our van driver) took us to the Great Wall. What  a structure! My art history teacher says the Chinese find it to be pure qi, life force,. I see what they mean. It is magnificent, striking, an endless crackle of stone lightning on the mountainside. Climbing onto it I felt through my heels the ripple of history, and even though it was practically vertical, I climbed it with vigor and exhilaration. We managed to catch the sunset over the misty mountains, then climbed down to have dumplings and vegetables and bottle upon bottle of Tsingtao beer with the tour guide and a Chinese family. Lord knows how I managed to climb up the tiny little stairs of the wall, but being up there at night was magical. The stars were made even more sharp and bright with the freezing cold, and the moon dusted the sides of the wall with silvery light.
Waking up the next morning, I was as chipper as a robin, and I scampered all over our guard tower taking photos of my meusli and bananas and the sunrise and the crazy tour guides jogging. It was absolutely arctic out, I am surprised I didn’t get frostbitten. Eight kilometers and about 7,000 burnt calories later, I had seen quite a bit of the Great Wall. That thing is STEEP. My legs are still sore 4 days later. It is really really amazing though, my favorite thing I have seen all semester. I could have walked it for weeks and not gotten tired of it. We got lunch at a little café with Tito and Rita, then headed back to the airport and got on our flight to Shanghai. The last day in Shanghai we went to the zoo and saw a giant panda!! The most adorable animal on Earth. They are only active 2% of the day, and we were lucky enough to see one gallop around his cage. The rest of the zoo was pretty depressing, people throwing cigarettes at hippos and feeding monkeys potato chips…no fun. But that night we saw the Shanghai acrobatics show, an impressive performance of agility, flexibility and card-flicking.
Now I am on the boat, and it is rocking like crazy. My drawers are opening and slamming shut, my alarm clock is falling all over the floor, and my stomach is sloshing and gurgling in disapproval. We arrive in Kobe, Japan tomorrow, sadly the last port that really counts. My plans so far are a Ryokan (traditional Japanese Bed and Breakfast sort of thing) in Kyoto the second night, then 2 nights in a hostel in Tokyo, and we will meet the ship in Yokohama on the last day. My friend Mitzi has family in Tokyo, so I look forward to meeting them and cavorting through the streets of the city. I send everyone my love and affection from the turbulent seas!

China pt. 1

China…was a very challenging port. Not only was the language barrier significantly difficult, but I also had to hike an extremely steep great wall after a night of scorpion wine, go 3 days without a shower or change of socks, and confront mortality. The first two were really not bad, but the last was awful and sad. My friend Vin’s roommate was killed by a drunk driver the first night in Hong Kong. It was a real blow to my group in Beijing, because Vin was with us and we had to deal with that on top of trying to navigate our way through an often-frustrating, largely confusing country. I almost don’t want to go into details about Kurt, because it is just so heartbreaking. Someone so young, with friends and family back home who were so eagerly waiting for his return have to settle for one too early and too shocking than I can even fathom. I keep denying to myself that I won’t ever run into him in the hallway or joke around in Vin’s room at 3 in the morning, but the reality keeps piercing through my shield of avoidance and it is like a freezing waterfall on my heart. I wish there was some way I could fly back in time and push him out of the way, delay him leaving the ship by a few seconds, anything. Things like this just make me think the world is completely unfair—why did the driver live and Kurt not? Who deserves such heartache? I have to throw my hands up at the end of the day because to even try to put this incident within a moral framework is wholly futile. The existentialists and I have something in common at the moment in finding this all just absurd. I have to write about the fun China stuff later because to put it right after this would just be peculiar.

Nam Nam Nam Nam Nam

11/4/08

HELLO! Wow, Vietnam has already come and gone. Time is sure accelerating as we scud across the sea back home. Ho Chi Minh city was positively dreamy. The streets were streaming with motorbikes and women in triangle hats and smartly dressed young professionals, there were scrumptious whiffs of noodles and Vietnamese coffee and tropical fruits off every street corner, and everything was so very inexpensive (although confusing, with a dollar at 16,000 Vietnamese Dong). The first day, I woke up early and got in my neon running shorts and slung my camera around my neck and sat on a deck chair and watched as we sluggishly moved up the Saigon river. The water was the color of celadon glaze—a light olive green that reflected the clouds so beautifully! It is very humid there, but not the same knee-buckling heavy heat of India. Thanks to the most wonderful JOEY BUI (who I hope reads this to see how appreciative I am), I had been in correspondence with Chau Tran, a friend of his from the city who he had known from when he lived there before coming to Villanova (wow, it is so strange to even think of Villanova…so little time has passed since I graduated but such monumental change has occurred!) and I met her the first day. She took Vin and I around, getting Vin an ear-piercing suit (a jacket, vest, bow tie, and pants…all plaid) tailored and ordering lotus root salad and juice made from a magical fruit (not beans) that I forget the name of and being an all-around champion! After that, I went back to the ship and met up with Chris and Kristin and we went to Chris’mom’s hotel and I was exposed to American television for the first time in 2 months and I do not miss it AT ALL. I didn’t think I was going to miss it and now I am even more firmly convinced that I don’t ever need to watch it again. 
Then it was off to Apocalypse Now, an over-loud bar where I abandoned the dance floor after 3 minutes of toe-tapping to go and shimmy with a moustachioed octogenarian over by the pool tables while everyone else bumped and ground. The next day I woke up early and set out for a day on my own in Saigon. I visited the modern art museum, bought presents for people, found 12 dollar diesel jeans (which I am wearing now after 3 laundry-less weeks), and chomped on enormous purple grapes I bought from a crouching old woman on the street corner (with no intestinal repercussions!). That night was Halloween, so I donned my Uma Thurman garb and was picked up with my friend Justin by Chau’s friend in his BMW and taken to an ultra-sophisticated lounge, Xu for mojitos and scintillating cultural conversation. I felt like a celebrity or something, the place was definitely cooler than me…its bathroom was cooler than me! It had these trendy little chains hanging in the doorway and saucy music spritzing out of the speakers and mirrors everywhere! It looked like all the expatriate’s teenage children were regulars there, because music I actually knew was playing and someone was in the sweetest Rubik’s cube costume I’ve ever seen! We went to a bar, appropriately called Lush, where Chau was lovely enough to order me not one, but TWO plates of Vietnamese fruits…which I am pretty sure I ate all of, including the garnishes and napkins. It was so good. I got home around 3 or 4 and went right to bed. I met up with Chris and Kristin the next morning to go to the Cu Chi tunnels about an hour and a half away from the city center. Chris’s mom came with us (a big group of parents came to Vietnam on SAS Parents Trips or independently to meet up halfway with their kids…I kept hoping I would see my mom and dad on the docks when we pulled in!) and we crawled around in the tunnels (a bat almost flew in my mouth, it was really great!) and scurried through the hot, green forest and were absolutely exhausted after about an hour. Those holes are SMALL. Maybe I just need to steer clear of the breakfast buffet, but I commend the Vietnamese people for their compactness! The next day I went around the city on my own again, and visited the War Remnants museum. There were the most horrendous photos of war victims and tiger cages, next to awful testimony from journalists and Vietnamese townspeople, and being alone made me feel it even more strongly. Seeing the war from the other side, without an American textbook filter, was very profound. I felt sick to my stomach after leaving, knowing that people can inflict such horrible suffering on other people for so long, regardless of whatever seemingly valiant ideals they were fighting for.
       I bought a phone card to call my parents and was happy to talk to my dad, but a bit dismayed to miss my mom, who had left for the bay area. I also talked to Nick for like 3 and a half minutes, until my phone card was depleted of Dong. It was so nice to hear familiar voices after such an exhausting morning. I went to a tailor and got a crazy dress made out of this purple cotton fabric with off-white piping and it looks like an airline steward’s retro outfit mated with a thrift store housewife’s dress and I dig it. That night I met up with Chau again, and went to a hookah bar with her friend, then got this stuff called sweet soup at a mall. It was so very delicious…like creamed corn but with coconut milk and tapioca balls, all seasoned with…delight!!!!! My stomach was doing cartwheels and blushing all night long. I went to Chau’s the next day and had Pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup that I doused in chili sauce, kiwi bubble tea, and Vietnamese coffee, which made the back of her motorbike sag a little bit when I got on again! We hung out at her house, jumping in the pool and nibbling on another magical mystery fruit, and then came back to the city and picked up Vin. He mailed an enormous package back home, I bought a screamingly orange duffel bag and some big DVD collections for people, and then Chau took me to her mom’s friend’s salon where I got a manicure for 3 bucks that makes my fingernails look like the sky! I have clouds on all my fingers and suns on my thumbs and it is just grand. We had to say goodbye to that wonderful wonderful city that night, and I was so sad to leave Chau after 3 days. She was so gracious and fun and welcoming, and I can’t wait to see her again!
Hong Kong is in 1 day, and we find out via CNN radio broadcasts who the new president is. WOWEE!!!

Me in Kuala Lumpur

Flotsam/Jetsam

Malaysia was a land of lush green jungle mountains and brightly colored temples, and seemed almost dead after the sheer madness of India. People obeying the speed limit and staying in one lane felt very odd, and left me a tad underwhelmed in all honesty. Kuala Lumpur was loud and had lots of street vendors selling American knock offs or heckling you to go to one of the 30 different reflexology foot massage parlors within a 10-foot radius. I bought my Halloween costume (yellow track jacket and jeans + frequent hair flips + sweeping kung fu arm movements = Uma Thurman in Kill Bill!) in Kuala Lumpur, went to a bar with a pool in the middle of it, and enjoyed the free internet in my hotel as much as possible. After India, I think I just needed time to chiiiiiiill out. The first day in Penang I went to dinner with the inter-port student, Rahimi (they bring kids from all the ports we are visiting onto the ship in the port before so we can ask them questions and get to know a resident of the city—very cool) and had the most delectable sticky rice and chili sauce and ice cream toast!! Yum yum yum. The last day, after my stay in Kuala Lumpur, my friend Mitzi and I went to the botanical gardens and were harassed by hungry monkeys and bought jackfruit and I drank from a coconut and lay in the grass and soaked in the beauty of it all. We got Chinese food at a restaurant where the only words they knew were “vegetables”and “rice”which was perfectly fine because it was the best meal I had the entire week! Back on the ship until Tuesday (2 days from writing this), and very tired from running four and a half miles and watching the crew talent show and writing excessive quantities of papers for all of my classes. The talent show was so funny, seeing all the stewards and cleaning crew prancing around on the stage in wigs and tight clothes doing the Sister Act dance and juggling and gyrating suggestively was quite a hoot. It was the equivalent of seeing your high school principal breakdancing to ‘Bootylicious’by Destiny’s Child. My writing is terrible at the moment so I will cease from torturing all my faithful readers and get to bed. The date line between here and Vietnam is crooked so we have the great fortune to finally GAIN an hour tonight—like a mini daylight savings time. Goody goody gumdrops! Yippeeee! SLEEEP.

Pachyderm Blessings

India!

South Africa Township

Greetings from India! Sensory overload times ten thousand…horn honks, jingling nose rings, whiffs of spices, gusts of sewage, trotting mutts, muddy puddles reflecting the bulbous monsoon clouds, bicycles whirring, its hard to keep your focus on one thing. My first day I visited a school and the kids went bonkers over some bubbles I brought, screaming and jumping and lining up out the door just to get one little puff at the bubble wand. At the end of our visit, a girl performed a traditional Indian dance all decked out in purple and gold and little bells. She was fourteen years old and had been trained since she was three, dancing at least three hours a day, and she will do it for the rest of her life. The dance was really beautiful, and every gesture and facial expression corresponded to a word in ancient Hindu scriptures, making the entire dance a long and complex story—so cool!! Later that day I set off for my homestay. The overnight train was definitely not Darjeeling Limited status, but not filthy or over-crowded at all. The beds were small blue plastic rectangles set up against the walls by twos and in other compartments by fours. I was on the top bunk and slept either in the fetal position or with my feet on top of my backpack and camera bag, because there was nowhere to put my stuff! I woke up completely disoriented to the word “ERODE”coming from a moustachioed Indian man’s face about 5 inches from mine. We left around 10:30 the night before and arrived in the town, Erode at 6 am. Then we drove to our homestay place about 35 minutes away. Our hosts were a doctor (who had a surgery that morning and didn’t come until much later that night), and his daughter and her aunt and husband. They had a very nice, spacious, clean house and beds for all of us. They served us a breakfast that my mouth starts watering just reflecting on, with the most divine coffee ever served, doughy little sponges that we used to soak up the yummy turmeric-spiced sauces, pomegranate nodules, cashew meringue, tiny bananas, mmmmmmmm…then we went to a school next door and listened to them do a morning prayer which lasted about 20 minutes and took place in a building the size of an airplane hangar, and when they said the final ‘OM’, the whole place reverberated, I felt like the air was electric. Then we drove out to a farm on the outskirts of the town, where the owner made all of his own pesticides with herbs and other plants. We did see people climb coconut trees, and they made it look SO easy because I tried and failed miserably!! But they gave us fresh cut guava and gooseberries (nasty!) and we got to drink from the coconuts and play with little puppies so it was ok. Lunch goes without description---captivatingly flavorful, and even though I was still full from breakfast I stuffed myself like a Thanksgiving turkey. It’s not every day you get a home cooked Indian meal! After a sweaty (the humidity in India is like nothing I have ever felt…close to suffocating!) but much needed nap, we had some more coffee and tea, and a few boys from the school came over to talk to us. They mostly just asked for our ‘autographs’and we asked them what they wanted to be, the answers invariably ‘doctor’, ‘computer technician’, ‘teacher’and ‘engineer’. School is really taken seriously here, Thomas Friedman would be leaping with self congratulation! I bought a sari at a local market that night too, for only 190 rupees (at 49 rupees to the dollar). The next day we woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:30, had some more coffee, then went to a school a bit farther away and had breakfast at a huge school for about 5000 kids. We talked to some of the kids and then visited a carpet weaving factory, where I bought a really beautiful shawl for my grandma and a sweet multicolored bedspread to replace the Motel 7-esque one in my cabin. It looks spectacular, Margo will be seething with envy when she gets back from her Taj Mahal trip. We visited a school for handicapped kids and they performed this crazy dance with face paint and a kid in a big metal bucket and then we had to perform and all we knew was “I’m a Little Teapot”and “The Star Spangled Banner”, both of which we butchered while demonstrating the U.S’s utter lack of culture. We gave them a check and then (which seemed pretty rude because we weren’t there for very long) went back to the other school for lunch. I was still full but managed to enjoy it just as much. I really like eating with my hands. They say your hands emit positive energy and your feet negative, so eating with your hands eliminates any wasted energy that would go into a fork, and puts it right in your body. After lunch, the school funnily enough provided beds for us, and I took another sweltering but lovely curry-induced nap. Then the kids at that school performed for us and we did an excruciating medley of the “Chacha Slide”and the Macarena. Then it was back to the over night train to Chennai, and we all piled onto the boat, clamoring for the showers, around 5 in the morning. I went and bought souvenirs for everyone that day, rode rickshaws all over and probably brushed elbows with death more times than I can imagine---it was GREAT! We got an apple and mocha hookah and ate dinner out underneath the Indian sky and now I am in my room, quite exhausted and listening to “Wishing”by the Electric Light Orchestra. We leave tomorrow, and I am feeling displeased with the idea. Malaysia is next, and I don’t have any idea what to expect! An addendum to my observations of India may soon come, but until then I send cardamom-infused love from the MV Explorer to everyone reading this!

FW: Communications Sheet F08

There are new addresses and dates and everything for mailing things to me. Don't send anything before checking it!
Love,
Kelsey

India approaches across the horizon..........one day until we anchor in the port at Chennai. Anticipation roils within my belly and sparks from the corners of my eyes and launches me through the hallways with electrical elasticity! The homestay I am going on is in rural India, and I really don’t know what to expect other than what the itinerary says. All I remember is something about coconut tree climbing and riding a bullock cart. My mouth is salivating just thinking of all the spices and crunches and zings of flavor I will get from the people and the music and the art and the FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!! I am just so happy today I can’t say why. Midterms being over might be a factor, but I really don’t think its that. I laid out and watched the clouds rolling overhead and drew my stream of consciousness after lunch and everything just feels right. I am seeing more and more how beautiful the world is, even in its dirt and stench and wild irregularities, there is something there that if you search hard enough, is full of color and light and brilliant strength. Sunlight is such an exquisite thing, people really don’t appreciate it enough. The more I am outside and with people, the more I never want to see walls or ceilings ever again. Give me a sleeping bag and some good music and they will keep me safe from whatever mother nature dishes out! I just want to give this planet a big bear hug. I don’t care if my shirt gets wet from the ocean or muddy from the land, it will be a souvenir of the enormous splendor of it all!

Brog

Howdy! Back on the ship, about 6 days sailin’. Sooo ready to be back on land, what with midterms and papers looming and the sea stretching out in infinite blue vastness. Two  addendums to the South Africa entry:  the second to last day, Desmond Tutu came on the ship and gave a speech not 30 feet from me! It was so cool, he is filled with so much energy and love it is unbelievable. The last day I did a thing called Operation Hunger and bought tons of snacks and food for kids in a township called Capricorn. We also had to go to a kindergarten and measure arm circumference and weight and height of all these kids and a bunch of them were undernourished, very sad. It made me regret ever griping about the redundancy of salad on the ship, because at least I have salad to gripe about. Tomorrow is the Sea Olympics, and I signed up for the spelling competition, which I’m nervous/excited about. We stopped in Mauritius today to refuel, and it’s a straight trajectory until India. We are losing hours like crazy, so I think I am 11 hours ahead of California time. My friend Mitzi and I were up until 1:00 last night slaving away at the giant banner for the entire Sea Olympics, and I think I’m getting sick so lack of sleep isn’t helping! I’m getting in the swing of things now, feelin’ mostly groovy except for the occasional moment of boredom or cabin fever. I really really liked Cape Town and wish I was dancing through its streets at this moment!! I also bought plane tickets for my trip in China. I’m sleeping on the Great Wall and going to Beijing and its all super cheap, I’m really excited! My friend Chris and I are also in the midst of planning for a trip around Japan, hoping to take the bullet train to Kyoto and Nara and of course.... TOKYO!! We want to go to a baseball game and a big dance club, but so far the plans for that are pretty nebulous. Missing everyone dearly and really appreciating emails that tell me about your life in the world! I really really like hearing how everyone is doing, I am so disconnected (which is good most of the time-less distraction) from everything that it is nice to have even the tiniest portal into American life! But shipboard life can be pretty fun. Everyone is so near each other all day long that sometimes you just go crazy and scream and run through the hallways in your pajamas and go to snack time and eat like 20 little PB&J’s and play Cranium and start singing the Thong Song at the top of your lungs! Everyone is going to be clinically insane by the time we get to India. 12 days at sea....doesn’t sound like a lot but oh boy, 6 days feels like a year! Plus we have to conserve water because the pier water isn’t sanitary in Chennai so everyone has to take military showers/shower no so often so everyone is shiny and a little bit stinky (not me of course...)You gotta love it all though or else the good just doesn’t feel as great! Time for sleep! Great feats of spelling cannot be achieved on a pittance of shut-eye! Warmest affection to all!!!

South Africa

Hallo and greetings from Cape Town! Wondrous things abound in the city crouching at Table Mountain’s ankles! What a beautiful, energizing place. Even when it is cloudy (which it has been for a large part of our stay), the clouds are massive and righteous, not simpering gloom-clouds like in some cities. When the sun comes out, everything gleams and the air is like clean new sheets. The first day I visited the language committee of South Africa to discuss multilingualism (quite a pertinent subject in a city with 11 official languages!), then got back, napped, and went out to dinner with some friends at the waterfront. We had to turn in early because the majority of us had safaris the next morning, so I got a teensy bit of sleep before waking up at 5 for my all day transit to KwaZulu Natal, a region of South Africa, where me and around 40 SAS kids camped for 2 nights at the Sontuli camp. The first night it was rainy and freezing and the absolutely zany safari leader, Qobus, told us oddball stories about him “in the bush”, being charged by lions and having his shower water pilfered by elephants and so on. The culinary goddess, Mama Cook, made some spectacular lasagna and salad, which made me realize how much I miss home-cooked food, living on restaurant and mass-produced cruise food for the past month. The next day we woke up at the sinfully early hour of 5 (AGAIN!) and went for a fruitless drive through the wilderness, seeing only rhino dung and a buffalo carcass. We returned to camp, ate unbelievable French toast, then had SHOWER HOUR, lunch, a wildlife discussion, and then went for a 3 hour safari drive all over. We saw several rhinos (including two adorable rhino babies!!), armies of impala, kudu, zebra, some warthogs, 3 or 4 buffalo, one very relaxed giraffe, and some very creepy vultures. Back at camp we had a traditional African stew, sweet potatos and rice and sat around the fire, played some hare-brained game Qobus came up with involving rotten eggs, playing cards, and impala droppings. We had to put the impala droppings in our mouths and spit them across the fire, draw on, name, and eventually crack our eggs, and act out animals based on the cards. It was hilarious and utterly devoid of sense, so I loved it. Then we ate marshmallows and went to sleep. The next day we drove back and saw more impala and other related animals on our way back. That night my friends and I went to sushi at the waterfront, the went to a teeny little bar called The Dubliner and danced and watched this hysterically lame musician play over-popular American rock songs to the sheer joy of drunk girls. This morning I visited the Khayelitsha township, which was so so so cool. It gave me a glimpse into the other side of Cape Town, which I needed. The people were so friendly and open and hard-working, and the kids were totally nuts, they practically swarmed us everywhere we went and wouldn’t stop playing with my hair and climbing all over me. It was so gladdening to see these people even in the midst of poverty and government distraction as to their plight, they remain purely optimistic and empathetic to those around them, which makes one seriously re-evaluate any negative or self-pitying emotions that existed beforehand. This trip is really making me a better person, or at least it feels like it. There is not enough time in the world to waste it on unhappiness or lethargy or self-absorption. I know it sounds stupid on a blog all about me, but I mean it! Wishing everyone back home the very best and sending allllll of my adoration!

Nammiiiiiibia!

Namibia was a hooooot! The first night I went to this bar called the Raft, and drank some delicious Namibian lager and talked to the beautifully-accented South Africans. Everything is sooooo cheap there, a cab ride to another city was 3 bucks, and a whole personal pizza about 4! The next day I went with SAS to a place called the Moon Landscape, where I camped and stargazed under these towering sandy mountains. Our tents were really, reeeeally nice, with framed beds and electric lights, and at around 2 am I lugged my huge bed out and bundled up and slept under the sparkling starry sky and listened to Andrew Bird and was really really happy to be on Earth. After that, I came back to the ship and went to a really delicious restaurant called Crazy Mama’s and then went to a place called El Rio and danced the night away to Namibian music.The next day I went with my friends Drew, Jen, Mitzi, Scott, Chris, and Kristin to this town Swakopmund about 30 minutes away. We had some German home cooking with the first sauerkraut I have ever enjoyed, plus we all shared (just for the novelty of it) a huuuuumungous 3 liter thing of beer. When I have free internet again I will upload a picture of the vessel…it dwarfed me! The next day, Chris, Drew, Jen, Scott and I went ATV’ing in the sand dunes of Swakopmund. Good god! The colors of it would kill a person! It was absolutely dazzling, the peach colored sand and searing blue sky with the ocean behind it, added to the pure delight of flying down the side of a warm soft mountain…like something out of a dream! We got on the boat yesterday and I had 3 classes today on about 5 hours of sleep. I might call it a night early tonight so I can get tons of things done tomorrow before I arrive in Cape Town, South Africa! Love and miss you all!

Me in Namibia

The first night, I enjoyed some draught Windhoek beer...as you can see!!

Me in Lençois

Namibia approaches

Feeling tremendous, listening to Dr. Dog, just ate some Namibian black-eyed peas and plump green grapes. The sun is out after two days of moping behind the chubby gray clouds, and with the ridiculous quantity of datelines we have crossed, the sun is setting really late (or at least feels like it is). We lost 5 hours this week, and that is no good with an 8 o’clock class on A days (classes are on an A-day/B-day schedule). So my internal clock is wonky, I go to sleep at like 4 in the morning on A-day nights because I don’t have class on B days until 3:45, and then stay up till one before A days and wake up for my 8 o’clock linguistics class, catatonic beyond comprehension. Nothing very exciting has happened on the ship since Brazil. I realized how small the ship is last night when I ran across the entire “campus” in 3 minutes flat. So I am READY TO GET OFF!! I have been hanging out with two kids, Drew and Vin a lot. Drew and I like climbing on things and being wacky in public, crawling through the hallways and pretending like we’re marionettes. Vin and I….sort of do the same thing now that I think about it. I always end up sprawled out somewhere at the bottom of a stairwell laughing or acting like I’m a dog. Boredom can do crazy things to you. By the end of the trip I will have come up with thousands of ways to entertain myself. I have already found a way to get to observe the hall patroller man’s gigantic, fascinating mole by having him get me in trouble for leaving my door open—a fire code violation for which I was reported. That took up a good 5 minutes of my day yesterday. So does signing up for the gym and then feeling sick and walking all the way back to the 7th floor and crossing my name out. I’ve done that three days in a row…such a small space leaves one perpetually on the verge of a full-blown cold. We arrive in Namibia tomorrow and I am quite excited. Things are purportedly dirt-cheap everywhere, which will be a welcome alternative to the 4 dollar beer they sell on this ship, which I never bought anyway but was still incensed by. I am missing everyone back home dearly, and hope they are reading this so they know! I think I am going to go out on the 7th deck to look for whales, sharks or some other kind of sea life, unless I am apprehended in the hallway by someone and whisked away to another activity! I will update this either in Namibia or upon my return to the MV Explorer! Lots of love to everyone!

Brazil!

View As Web Page

Hey hey hey! Back from Brazil. Life has significantly improved since my last entry (and sorry for the lag…lots of things are always jostling for my attention, mainly schoolwork and other people). My trip was out of this world, INCREDIBLE! Lençois is just this little town about 5 hours from Brazil that has a bunch of natural waterfalls and slides and lush greenery and almost no bugs anywhere, and I went with SAS for about three days. We get there, and I am expecting to be holed up in a little shanty hotel with like 4 other people in a room, but it is the most beautiful, airy, rustic hotel I’ve ever stayed in. I felt so safe, even though there weren’t really any walls in the reception area and dining room. I slept on a hammock 2 of the three nights, outside curled up in a little ball listening to the running stream about 15 feet away from the pool right outside my first story balcony/veranda thing. The food at this place was beyond delicious…my friend Vin described one dish as being made of “cinnamon and angels”. Fresh cut papaya and guava juice and 4-cheese soufflée and brazilian grain salad I could go on for days but I was very well nourished and in a food coma most evenings. The first day in Lençois we went on a pretty strenuous hike up to some beautiful waterfalls and everyone was cliff-jumping and diving and flipping and we ate banana bread and the 70-year old tour guide who came with us, Mr. Rosencranz (affectionately called Papa Rosy), made everyone’s day by jumping off a cliff at least 35-feet up into the icy, amber water with considerable aplomb. Then me, my friend Vin from Connecticut and Kress from Tahoe somehow got stranded on our way back but triumphantly bush-whacked our way to the rest of the group, who were all slipping and sliding down these really smooth, salmon-colored rock slides about 50 feet long. Then me and some other SAS’ers bought a giant jug of sangria and sipped it by the poolside, joking about Papa Rosy and old video games and cobra blood shots. The second day we climbed up a mountain called Pai Inacio where a slave, in local lore, once jumped off using an umbrella to fly, in order to escape his slave-driver’s jilted-lover’s wrath. I did no such jumping, but the wind was really strong and I could have been blown away had it not been for the 30 pounds of granola, yogurt and pineapple I ate that morning. Then we went to some more waterfalls and people zip-lined for an exorbitant price, but I just enjoyed the water and jumped around and stood underneath a really strong waterfall and probably mooned some mermaids playing behind the waterfall. That night we went to a local bar where there was live music, played by some dreadlocked jolly Brazilians at the table next to us. The bar was so beautiful, it had a tree in the middle and smelled truly like heaven, and the temperature was perfect and a great time was had by all. I also ate an açai bowl with granola and banana slices the next morning and my stomach was in ecstasy for several hours. Now I’m back on the boat and about to go to lunch, but will try to update this before and after Namibia with any new and exciting cultural/social/intellectual revelations I happen to have. I miss everyone a lot and would love to hear what is going on in your world! My email is kqwestphal@semesteratsea.net and it is freeeeeeeeeee, unlike the internet! Love!

First Few Days

Aug. 30th, 2008
First full day on the ship is just setting off. Had a lackluster breakfast with some very preppy people (the only people awake at the horrible time I roused myself), now I’m back in my room hoping the grumblings in my stomach won’t develop into anything serious…I hope drinking the water doesn’t screw me over already! So classes start tomorrow, which I’m excited/nervous about. I have never seen so many girls in one space other than a maternity ward. Guys have like little crews of girls to pick from, it should prove interesting. My roommate is fine, we both like Weeds, but conversation sort of deflates after a minute or two. More reason for me to get out and make friends! I think I will finally be proficient at small talk by the end of this trip, since the questions are always the same, and the reactions too, for the most part. Not being negative, just noticing. Once you get past the formalities and have placed the other person geographically and societally, conversation is free to bloom and morph into something interesting. The girl that lives next door and her roommate seem really funny and nice, I think I will make a point of getting to know them better. Oh lordy, Margo better get out of there soon, icky icky tummy!!
The rest of my day was good, I got over the little bit of boredom/sadness I was feeling and talked to some people. I overslept because my room is SO FRICKIN DARK, but my teacher understood. My classes have been good so far, and the reading is interesting. I am trying to start all my work right off the bat and not procrastinate so that I can enjoy the ports. I miss my family and Nick and Joe and everyone, but I know I will see them soon enough. I can't wait for Brazil, and won't let the first unsteady steps of this adventure ruin the rest of it!
all of my love!!! kisses kisses kisses!
-Kelsey

Embarkation Day!

Oh lordy lordy, i have gotten myself into more than i expected and that elicits no complaints whatsoever! Everyone I have met so far I have really liked getting to know, my hotel is super nice and my roommates nicer, the weather spectacular, the water warm though extremely high in salinity, the bahamians intelligent and friendly, the plantains DELICIOUS!!!!!!!, everything is  absolutely wonderful. My bags were 'short-checked' and left in Miami, and it took until around 7 pm last night for them to get here, but just having them relieves a lot of stress I was feeling, however minor it was, seeing as i have been riding on a wave of elation since i stepped on the hotel floor 2 days ago. Everything is so exciting and new and in transition that all you can do is actively enjoy everything around  you, without worrying about things staying the same or going the way you want. It is so refreshing to be part of a group of very smart people. I got to just sit and listen and argue about free will and god and determinism for about 2 hours last night while watching Obama's speech. The bahamas is mostly a tourist town so i haven't done much adventuring, other than going to this place called Senor Frogs, which sounds as goofy as it is! More to come after boarding! Love love love,

Kelsey

How to reach me and to see where I am:

For a position report, go to:

www.semesteratsea.org/voyages/current-voyage/position-report.php

And to find out mailing dates, go to:

www.semesteratsea.org/voyages/current-voyage/fall-2008-staying-in-touch.php

I leave at 6 a.m. on Wednesday the 27th. That is 4 days from now and I am consumed with anticipation and trepidation. Mostly the former--to be scared of this trip would really be a felony!

Wobbly Legs

Unfortunately, my ineptitude at blog writing is not due to land or sea sickness, since I have not yet departed on this trip that has taken up about 78% of my running thoughts. This will be my first blog since the survey-clogged, self-pitying livejournal I foolishly created in 8th grade, so it will most likely start out pretty rusty (again, not an ocean reference, regrettably...i wish it were rusty from sea salt). I am still frightfully low on supplies, but will hopefully be purchasing them on Saturday this week (so interesting, right?). I want to bring a giant, initially inconvenient thing like a waffle maker with me on this trip.That way, all the curses and hateful remarks I direct at it while I lug it through Bahama's customs will be replaced with cooing, honeyed praise when it makes me a legion of steadfast friends as soon as the Great Waffle Shortage sets in. The fact that I hate waffles is immaterial, I'll thank myself in the end! Ok, this was mostly just to fill up space until I start having interesting, culturally illuminating things to say, so I will stop here.