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!

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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!