SEA OLYMPICS!

October 30^th, 2007. The very first Sea Olympics to be held while traversing the Suez Canal.

This is not a day for the faint of heart. Only the best Sea will win. It all comes down to a battle of brains, brawn, and dancing skills between the Aegean, Adriatic, Baltic, Bering, Caribbean, Dead, Mediterranean, Red, and Yellow Seas.

The day started off bright and early at 7:30am with the crew marching through the hallways of the ship banging pots and pans and blowing whistles to wake everyone up. They also had the cameraman there to film us all stumbling out of bed.

9am was the Opening Ceremonies up on the 7^th deck by the pool. My team was dressed all in orange, and gathered with all the other seas to be judged on our spirit, cheer, and Sea banner. Ours was pretty nice if I do say so myself, but the cheers of some of the other seas really outdid ours.

Then the games began. We had competitions in basketball, soccer, ping pong, flip cup, water pong, trivia, rice eating, toilet paper fashion, synchronized swimming, biggest hair, hairiest chest, board games, limbo, tug-of-war, sock wrestling, lip synching, Simon Says, scavenger hunt, and probably more that I’m forgetting. Pretty much the whole day was devoted to this; we did nothing else all day. I competed in the tug-of-war, where we came in third, Taboo, and trivia. We got first place in the Flip Cup tournament and the Big Hair contest which greatly improved our scores, as well as placing well in many of the other events.

Flip Cup was an intense tournament to watch, because they had to drink cocktail juice which is pretty thick stuff. AND they had a Full Cup Final, which means they had to drink a whole cup full of juice before they could try to flip their cup! Sock Wrestling was probably the most vicious of the sports. One guy got his arm wrenched out of the socket, and a girl got her nose broken in the scuffle! Crazy!

In the end, it all came down to the lip-sync competition at the end of the day. Many teams came up with really great skits and songs, I’m going to try to get a hold of some video of it to bring home. My team did Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now!” It was FANTASTIC! I personally thought we did good enough to place, but the judges though that the Aegean Sea with their “Summer Nights” rendition was the best.

All in all, the Yellow Sea won Sea Olympics Fall 2007. They were amazing! And now they get off the boat first! The Caribbean Sea came in 2^nd!!!!!!!!! Wooohooo! I’m so proud of my team! I think we win an ice cream party, but we’ll see.

But the best part is, we’re in EGYPT!!!!!!!

Everything Changed

One of my favorite quotes. It seems to apply to this voyage I'm on.



Everything changed suddenly – the tone, the moral climate; you didn’t know what to think, whom to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family, nor people whose judgment you respected. At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute- life or truth or beauty – of being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded. You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old, familiar peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good.
Boris Pasernak
Doctor Zhivago

You Were the Song in My Head

I got bored today studying for various things, so I decided to post my travel playlist. It’s a got a lot of songs, but they’re all great songs about traveling or stuff that I’m thinking about. They Probably don’t all make sense, but that’s ok. You should check these out!

Kara’s Travel Playlist 2007:

All at Sea – Jamie Cullum
All My Friends Say- Luke Bryan
Big Time- Big & Rich
The Boys are Back in Town- Thin Lizzy
Brown Eyed Girl- Jimmy Buffet
Burn This City – Cartel
Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes- Jimmy Buffet
City Never Sleeps – Cartel
Cleveland- Jewel
Comin’ Home Baby – Michael Buble
Country Road – James Taylor
Do You Feel – The Rocket Summer
Don’t You Hear Jerusalem Moan – The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Dream Big- Ryan Shupe & the Rubber Band
Drops of Jupiter – Train
Erin Shore – The Corrs
Espacio Sideral – Jesse & Joy
Every Mile a Memory – Dierks Bentley
Everybody’s Free- Baz Luhrman
Famous In a Small Town – Miranda Lambert
Feel Fine – Augustana
Finding My Way Back Home – Lee Ann Womack
Fly – Jars of Clay
Gaia – James Taylor
Georgia – Cartel
Get To Me- Train
Here’s to the Night – Eve 6
Home – Michael Buble
Hotel Roosevelt – Augustana
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) – The Proclaimers
Kill the Messenger – Shawn Colvin
Lage Nom Ai – Jimmy Buffet
London Skies- Jamie Cullum
Los Angeles – Sugarcult
Luckie St.- Cartel
Macdchen lach doch mall- Wise Guys
Mexico – Jimmy Buffet
My Philosophy – Holiday Parade
Never Saw Blue – Hayley Westenra
New Beginning – Tracy Chapman
New Strings – Miranda Lambert
Next 5 Minutes – Steven Curtis Chapman
Next Big Thing – Rockett Queen
No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem – Kenny Chesney
Nothing Left to Lose – Mat Kearney
October Road – James Taylor
On An Evening in Roma – Dean Martin
One Particular Harbor – Jimmy Buffet
The Pascagoula Run – Jimmy Buffet
People Watching – Jack Johnson
The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything – Relient K
Polaroids – Shawn Colvin
Pretty the World – Matt Nathanson
Ramble On – Train
Red Dirt Road – Brooks & Dunn
Represent, Cuba – Orishas featuring Heather Headley
Saying Goodbye – Sugarcult
Sing mal wieder – Wise Guys
Sloop John B – Relient K
Somewhere Only We Know – Keane
Song 6 – Daniel Powter
Speed of Sound – Coldplay
A Thousand Miles – Vanessa Carlton
Tomorrow Morning – Jack Johnson
Twentysomething – Jamie Cullum
Vegas – Sara Bareilles
Vienna- Billy Joel
Vienna- The Fray
Waiting on the World to Change- John Mayer
Wasted – Cartel
The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful – Jimmy Buffet
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego – Rockapella
Why Georgia - John Mayer
The World – Brad Paisley
You Belong to Me – Jason Wade
226 Miles – Cloverleaf
3x5 – John Mayer

Reflections of India

India

The word evokes such different emotions and thoughts. The Hinduism that influences so many peoples lives. The smell of curry and refuse that sinks into your pores. The poor mothers begging on the street with their babies, the rickshaws that try to run you over. The fantasticly glamorous Bollywood films that completely entrance you.

I’m so glad that I’ve been able to experience so many different things while in Chennai for such a short time. On our last day in port, Laura, Brian, Greg, and I went to Spencer’s Plaza to do our shopping, since we really hadn’t had time earlier. Spencer’s is a mall, but it’s not just clothes and shoes, it’s got lots of Indian rugs and tapestries and figurines too. And you can bargain with the shopkeepers there. You have to. They know that we were Americans coming from the boat, and inflated their prices. If you bought on the first price, without knowing what other stores were charging for the same thing, you were being majorly ripped off. We got blankets, and pashminas for the people back home, you’re all going to love them! I bought myself 2 at least, they’re so nice.

That afternoon we went to see a Bollywood film. We weren’t sure how it would be, considering the whole movie is in Hindi and we don’t speak a lick of it. But you really don’t have to understand the words, because the actions take care of most of the interpretation, although there were times when the whole audience was laughing and we didn’t know why. It was funny to see the main characters suddenly break out into song and highly choreographed dance. From what I understand, the main guy was an orphan that got taken in by a family, and then the parents get shot in an armed robbery. The boy gets sent to jail because they think he did it and 20 years later he gets let out. He then gets caught up in a drug underworld trying to find the parents killer. In the meantime, he saves the girl that took him in 20 years ago that he hasn’t seen since then. They fall in love, but it’s complicated because he has other things to do. The whole movie is shot like a 3-hour music video, which is pretty great. I’m going to have to buy the movie on Amazon when it comes out so I can find out what they were actually saying!

When we tried to get back to the ship, we had a heck of a time finding a rickshaw driver who would take us for a reasonable price. They all knew we were leaving that evening and were trying to fleece us one last time. It’s really upsetting to have everyone thing you’re made of money and try to rip you off so much. We were all talking about it that afternoon, how you’d go to buy a bottle of water and it would cost the Indian in front of you 10 rupees and you 30. Or we’d go to a museum and the sign would say “Indians: 10 rupees, Foreigners 250 rupees.” 100 rupees is like US $2.50. We’d get in the rickshaw and our Indian parents would tell us not to go for more than 20 rupees total and the driver would try to get us to pay 200 rupees each! It’s just very exhausting to constantly have to put up with this. I don’t know how foreigners living in the country deal with that every day. Five days was more than I could handle.

I’d love to come back here; I’m just going to need to sleep for a long time before then!

I wish my life was a Bollywood movie

India is a study in contrasts. My homestay family was upper middle class, with a driver, 2 story apartment, 3 cars, cleaning lady, and laundry woman. A block away, there were people sitting out on the street begging for dinner. It’s hard to hold it all together in your head.

For starters, we were in Chennai India, which is not really north or south India, so there’s a lot of both in the culture and customs of the area. It’s hot though, over 90 degrees every day that we’ve been here. And it’s dirty. Much more polluted than Beijing, and a lot dirtier. My lungs have been hurting from walking around in the city all day. There are rickshaws everywhere, which will take you to anywhere you want to go, you have to make sure you bargain down to a reasonable price. We had to watch though, because the drivers would make these unexpected stops at little shops of their friends in the hope that we would patron there, in exchange for a shirt or something from the owner. We had to be very vocal in our opposition to these stops.

I decided for India, I’d go on a homestay with SAS, because it was highly recommended by all. We stayed with Rotary Club members in the Chennai area; I stayed with the Bhatts, a wonderful family. The parents work in PR, and their 2 daughters are my age, both were SAS interport students. Their apartment is beautiful! Mary and I had so much fun there, eating really spicy Indian food, teaching Beatrice and Pooja to French braid, and trying to stay cool in the evening.

We had to attend several Rotarian functions, including a luncheon and a Rotary meeting. They were interesting; I learned a lot about what the Rotarians do, which is all centered on service. In the Chennai area, they have assisted in tsunami relief by building new homes and community buildings, as well as running a boys town center for poor local boys to get a leg up.

The first night, our family took Mary and I shopping, and then out to the Nine Days Festival. Its this big festival celebrating a victory way back in the day. Every night of the festival, this big hall is opened up for dancing until 3 in the morning. We got all dressed up and went dancing! Dancing with Indians is a lot of fun; dances are circle dances, where everyone does the same move. It took us a while to catch on, but once we did, it was fantastic! The 10 of so or us who were there even got recognized by the judges for coming, one girl got a special prize!

Our second day was spent site seeing around Chennai with all the SAS kids. We went out to Mallapuman, which is this area of 8^th century temples, which were carved from a single stone. They are huge! I don’t know how people that early were able to make carvings so magnificent. While we were at the sites, we were surrounded by street urchins trying to sell us souvenirs. It was so hard to turn away from them, especially the little kids. They told us that most of the kids worked for someone else, and don’t get most of the money. I did buy a few postcards though.

Our next stop was one of the Rotarians beach houses for lunch. We could see the ocean! And the cows on the beach! That was weird. The food was delicious, although EXTREMELY spicy. Our last stop was a rural village that had been rehabilitated by the Rotarians after the tsunamis. We talked a lot to our family about the tsunami and its effects on the people here. They said many people now avoid the beach since the tsunami. They'd never had one before in India, at least not in recent memory. The tide went out first near Chennai, and the phenomenon drew a ton of people to see what was going on, which was one of the reasons why the wave was so devastating to the area. Everyone was just standing at the waters edge when the wave came.

This morning was much more low key than the day before. We got to sleep in and then head to the office with Mrs. Bhatt. Then she sent us with the driver to the Chennai Museum of Art. It was pretty cool. Afterwards, Mary and I went over to Spencers Plaza for lunch a PIZZA HUT! It was amazing! Pepperoni Pizza! We were so happy, we could have cried. Then we did a little shopping for the folks back home before heading back to the office and then the ship.

India has been amazing. I want to come back and see so much more of it. Hopefully I’ll get to do that in the near future. I can’t wait to breathe easily though; this coughing thing is getting annoying.

A Lovely Night

Last night was a good night. It was our Sea Social. Each Sea (about 100 people) is invited for one night on the ship to come up and have a party in the faculty/staff lounge with the faculty and staff. The lounge is gorgeous. It’s up on the 7^th deck in the front of the ship and the whole front side of it is all windows looking out into the water. We call if the fishbowl sometimes. Our dance theme was A Hollywood Affair.

Anyways, Maria and I weren’t sure if we would go, but finally decided that we could put off studying for an hour or so to go and dance. So we got dressed up, me in my brand new dress from Vietnam, and Maria in her brand new dress from Japan. And we looked cute!

So we went up to the dance and it was a lot of fun. Lots of dancing and lots of really pretty dresses. The only problem was that most of the music was rap and it’s hard to dance to that and just let go. The last few songs were much better, they turned on Def Leppord and some other fun stuff.

After the dance, Cole and Shawn came over and we all hung out and made up songs on the guitar. Some of them were pretty interesting, I won’t say any more than that. But it was a nice way to cut loose from the midterm studying. So congratulations everyone, you finally wore me down and I’m posting pictures of me in my dress!

P.S. I think I’m coming down with a cold. I sure hope it goes away before we get to India.

An Elephant Never Forgets

Elephants!

I got to ride an elephant! And it was fantastic! If we had to end our trip tomorrow, I would go home happy to tell everyone that I had ridden a real Asian elephant and it was the best thing I’ve ever done.

We went to the Pattaya Elephant Village in Pattaya, about a 30-minute bus ride from the ship. When we got there, we were given the chance to look around first. A few of us wandered down to where the elephants were picketed and just watched them for a while. They’re huge, in case none of you have gotten to close. The smaller ones there were about 10 feet tall, with maybe 5-foot trunks. They were eating at the time, which was cool to watch. They practically inhale their food, they eat so much and very quickly. We were a little nervous to touch them at first, but we got up the nerve eventually and took turns petting them and getting our pictures taken for our disbelieving audiences back home.

When the show started, the announcer encouraged us to come down and feed and get to know the elephants better. I think I had 3 trunks on me at one time, they were very curious. I think that might have had more to do with my friend holding bananas than to me, but I’ll take what I can get. Elephants have very rough, dry, and hard skin, a bit of a shock at first. Kind of like when you first hold a snake, it’s not quite what you expect. They’re also pretty hairy, something I’d never noticed before.

The elephants there were retired work elephants that used to be in the timber industry. They’re used there to haul and roll massive logs. Usually they use females, because the guys go into Musk for 3 months of the year and are pretty useless then for work. As part of the demonstration, they had the elephants haul huge logs and roll them around the demonstration ring. It was crazy how effortlessly they made it seem. And they’re very coordinated with those trunks rolling the big logs. They are really good at working together too. I was impressed.

But the best part had to have been when the let us ride them. A few people got to volunteer to ride the elephants into the pond to take a bath with them, which was hilarious to watch as people tried to stay dry as their steed submerged herself. I chose to stay dry. Later, they invited us all to climb on and ride an elephant bareback. It’s weird at first, to pull yourself up by stepping on their legs and grabbing them, but we were assured they couldn’t feel it, they’re skin’s so thick. When you ride bareback on an elephant, you sit up on their shoulder blades, close to their neck, so it’s a very different ride than from a horse. I constantly felt off balance, and had to put my weight forward onto my hands resting on her head. But I stayed on, and it was soooo amazing to be up so high and on such a large animal! Later, they put baskets on the backs of the elephants and 2 of us rode at the same time. Ashley and I had such a good time, snapping pictures and just being amazed that we were in Thailand on the back of an elephant!

This is why I travel, to do the things no one else will do and have memories for the rest of my life.

"We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open." -- Jawaharlal Nehru

Bangkok

I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine. – Caskie Stinnett

On the 5^th, I left the ship at 7:30 in the morning to Bangkok with SAS. 2.5 hours on a bus later, we got into the heart of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand.

Our first stop was to take a canal ride through the city. Bangkok is known as the Venice of the East, so much of it is only accessible by waterways, including most of the houses. It’s beautiful going through the city this way, with little boats going by and temples all alone the larger canals. On the smaller ones, are the houses. There are beautiful new houses sitting right next to ramshackle houses barely standing on their stilts. It’s so cool to see them all though. Our tour guide said that while many people have the money to fix up their houses, it was their ancestral home and they don’t’ want to. Many of the houses also have little houses outside their homes for their ancestor’s spirits. These houses are really pretty, very ornate. Also, the king of Thailand is beloved by the people and is honored throughout the country. Along with the Thailand flag, many people also fly the king’s flag- a yellow flag with the king’s seal. It’s yellow because he was born on a Monday, each day of the week has a color associated with it. The queen’s flag, also flown throughout the city, is blue.

While on our canal ride, we stopped at the Temple of the Dawn. A temple in Thai is called a wat. It’s a really pretty temple. Much of it is in the Cambodian style, with the conical shaped towers. The whole temple is covered in ceramic pottery and it’s very intricate. It was such a mish-mash of cultural styles. With the Thai, Cambodian, and even some Chinese thrown in with statues all around that were used as ballast for ships coming to Thailand.

We then checked into our FIVE STAR hotel. It was beautiful. Our room was on the 20^th floor, really really high! Afterwards, we went shopping! We started off at a jewelry store. The largest jewelry store in the world, to be exact. It was fabulous! Everything was so sparkly and so shiny! I bought a sapphire ring, it being my birthstone and Thailand’s largest gem market. After that, we went to this big mall. It was huge and complicated. We got lost on the 5^th floor, where it was all cell phone booths and copied dvds. Luckily, we made our way out.

That night, we had dinner with a show. We got soooo much food! It was wonderful! And then they danced for us, beautiful dances that told old folktales. The girls bend their hands back when the dance, it’s completely impossible for me to do. They start when they’re really little, practicing bending their fingers backwards so they can dance. It’s lovely to watch, but slightly painful to think about.

Then some girls and I went down to the Night Market down the street from the hotel. It was HUGE. Probably as big as the day market in Ho Chi Minh City, only out on the street. You can find just about anything there, and if you haggle enough, you can get anything for you a good price too. But they jack up the price for foreigners, so you have to really bargain hard. We also had to watch where we were going, because the streets were lined with go-go bars, and guys would wave papers in our faces about “sex shows” and try to get us to come in. I got some nice little presents for some people though, so it was good.

The next day, we started off by going to see the Golden Buddha. He’s this incredible Buddha statue that’s solid gold. He was hidden under plaster for hundreds of years, but it got chipped away and everyone discovered that he was solid gold. As per the tradition, we offered up a lotus flower, 3 sticks of incense, and a yellow candle to the Buddha. We also were each given a piece of gold leaf to stick on the Buddha. By sticking the gold leaf onto the Buddha in the right places, you are asking for guidance or help. Putting it on the head is for wisdom, the heart for long life, the hand for wealth.

Our next stop was the Reclining Buddha temple. He’s the largest Buddha in Thailand and the 3^rd largest in the world. 46 meters long. The Buddha is always portrayed in one of 4 different poses. Meditating, Stop Demon Meditating, Reclining, and Walking. Reclining, as I was told by many a Thai, is not the same as sleeping. Buddha did not sleep. Reclining Buddha is a picture of Buddha in the moments before his death, when he lay down for the final time.

Then we went to the Grand Palace. It was beautiful! All of Thailand is beautiful. It’s all gold and sparkle and mosaics. I loved it. We walked around the outer palace and saw the Emerald Buddha, which is the national Buddha.

Our last stop on our tour of Bangkok was the Prasart Museum. It’s a privately owned museum to show off the treasures of Thailand that Prasart Vognsakul has collected over the years. He built miniatures of many of the architectural splendors of Thailand. It was really pretty to see all of those different things in one small park. We also got to meet Mr. Prasart, which was really cool. He’s a very learned man, and very talkative. We got discuss all types of issues with him, which was interesting.

Bangkok is the City of the Angels, a beautiful city worth putting on anyone’s travel itinerary.

Banking on Thailand

So Thailand’s been fun so far.

We got in around 8 o’clock this morning. Took us till 2:30pm to get the ship cleared. A ridiculously long time, I might add. Since it takes at least half an hour to get to the closest town from here, I decided it was too far to try to get anywhere useful, so I stuck around the boat and worked on homework.

Well… not just homework. I watched a few episodes of the West Wing too. And luckily, checked my email and such.

Turns out, somewhere in Hong Kong, someone stole my account information and has drained my checking account.

As of this morning, I had -$33 in my account.

So I freaked out.

As we all know, I freak out before I even think straight, so the fact that I sent a note to my parents immediately is a feat in itself.

Luckily, my “grandparents” saw me all upset and took over. They had me sit down with the dean and call my real parents to start the ball rolling with the bank back home. I was still freaking out on the phone, so the dean called in his wife, who is the mental health lady on the phone.

She’s fantastic, we just talked for a while, so that I could calm down and think clearly again. We looked at my bank account again and realized that all of the withdrawals were coming from South Africa. It’s been making it easier to try to get my money back, because the bank knows that I’ve been nowhere near South Africa. Then I went to the gym and tried to run off all my excess emotions.

The dean and I called my mom back about 3 hours after the first call to see how things were going with the bank. The bank is being helpful, which is really nice of them, and with my card being cancelled, and a little bit of money back already, I’m feeling better already.

I’m just so mad though that someone would take my money. I worked hard for that. I worked 2 jobs this summer, and one of them wasn’t even paying me. I worked all summer and they just hacked it and took it. A lot of that was my birthday money from wonderful friends and family that wanted to help me with my trip, and they just took that. It’s not right, and there has to be a better way to prevent that sort of thing. It’s just one of those things where I still can’t believe it happened to me.

So Thailand’s been really fun. I can’t wait till tomorrow morning when I go to Bangkok. Then when I come back I can deal with figuring out scheduling while abroad! Woohoo!

Goodnight Siagon

Gosh I love Vietnam; it’s just so pretty here, even when it rains. Everyone is really nice, and it’s so easy to get around in the city. There was this one coconut seller that recognized us every time we passed and made a point to say hi to us and try to sell us a coconut. The one time we went by, he saw I was holding my camera and insisted I take his picture!

Yesterday morning, Laura and I went to the market in the morning, because she hadn’t been there yet. Then we walked over to the Notre Dame cathedral, which is beautiful I might add. It started to rain as we tried to find the U.S. consulate in Saigon. We found it, and tried to take pictures to prove it, but the security guard gave us the “no pictures’ and wave, so we didn’t. Then it started to downpour on us so we went back in for lunch.

After lunch, we went back out into the wet to try to find the art museum. But, it was far away, so we walked through the market again and I picked up all the seasons of the West Wing. Sorry Dad, I’m keeping it until Miami! We came back to the ship for dinner, and then went out again afterwards to see the water puppet show with Leah and Julie! We got a little lost, so we ended up 20 minutes late, but I’m so glad we got there. It’s so cool! The stage is the surface of the water, and the puppets are controlled under the water via poles back behind a screen. We couldn’t really understand the story line, but the music and the puppetry was great!

We left from the puppet show to then go get our dresses! And they’re soo pretty!!! I love mine, it’s beautiful. Fits me like a glove. Laura’s needed taken in, but other than that, hers is gorgeous too.

As for today, our last day in this wonderful country, there was a lot to do. I started off the day by heading down town to pick up Jordyn’s dress because she was on a trip all day. After lunch, I went on a field trip to the War Remnants Museum.

The war museum was rough. Most of it was pictures, of napalm victims, agent orange victims, torture and massacre victims. Those pictures were hard to look at. I couldn’t bear to take pictures of anything there. It’s one thing to study the Vietnam war in class, and hear that there were horrible things going on during the war, but it’s another thing completely to see the hard evidence of what happened.

There were easier parts to look at were those of just general war happenings. I took a few pictures of those for this blog. The nicest part was the pictures drawn by children. There were some about the atrocities, and lots about a hope for peace. Very pretty pictures.

Post museum, I went out with Laura and Leah, and Landon to Pho 24! It was good. It’s a broth base with noodles and beef (or chicken) and you can put greens and sauces into it to flavor it more. I’m glad I tried it. The chopsticks were a little hard at first, but I got the hang of it again. We took a motor bike ride back to the port, a $1 ride back for each of us! It was sooo cool, a little scary around some of the bends, but sooo cool!!

We leave at 6am tomorrow. I'm sad to leave, but I'm really looking forward to Thailand. I"m going on an overnight trip there to see the temples, and I can't wait!