My New Family

I have a new family on the ship! I signed up to be a part of the Extended Family program on the ship, so that I’d have some contact with the professors and the Life Long Learners as well as students here. I got assigned to a couple, Dr. Ruth and her husband, Jake. Today we met at lunch!

They are such cool people! Dr. Ruth is a cultural anthropologist and a professor on the ship. She’s lived in Singapore and Indonesia and lots of other places studying the people there. Jake used to work for the State Department in various departments and traveled all over the world, including Brazil, Thailand, and Latin America. This is their 3rd trip on Semester at Sea!

I’m so excited to get to know them better. They clearly love to travel, and have done a lot of it. Just from eating lunch with them today, they told me some great stories about getting visas and the Singapore village justice system. Hopefully I’ll see them again soon!

On To Japan

While nothing spectacular has happened since leaving Hawaii, I feel it is my obligation to update you all on how the state of things.

According to our handy tv, I can tell you that the MV Explorer is cruising at 17 knots towards Yokohama, Japan. The seas have been surprisingly flat the past few days, although it did rain briefly this morning. Not a big deal though. It’s pretty warm outside. Probably close to 85 or 90 maybe? We are pretty close to the equator. But in contrast to that, it’s super cold inside, closer to 60, so everyone carries around sweatshirts of long sleeved shirts when going to class.

Classes have been going very well. I really like my professors and the information they’ve been teaching us is really interesting. Today in Terrorism we covered the history of some notable terrorist organizations such as the Sacari-Zealots in Israel and the Assassins from Syria. It’s funny to think that no one really was concerned about terrorism in the U.S. until September 11^th, and it was such a shock to people that there were terrorists out there. But there have been terrorists since Roman times at least.

Astronomy is really great too. The class work is interesting, we’ve been talking about the different models of the solar system people have come up with through the ages and now they were disproved. But my favorite part is when we go stargazing. We got out every B night at 10pm up on the 7^th deck and look at the stars. Dr. Elliot points out constellations we’re supposed to know and important stars like Polaris and Vega. I can now identify the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Draco, the Summer Triangle, the Northern Cross, Cassiopia, Cepheus, Pegasus, Andromita, and Perseus! Pretty amazing! It’s weird looking at the stars here, because we’re so close to the equator. At home the Big Dipper is so high in the sky. Here it sits on the horizon and most nights we can’t even see the dipper part, only the handle. Usually when we go out, Dr. Elliot also tells us a myth using the constellations we’ve learned that night as well. Last night the captain turned off all the lights on the boat for us and you could see so MANY stars! It was beautiful!

In answer to your questions about food, Aunt Patti and Mrs. Lorenz, it’s very good here. The chef is a really great guy, and we have different stuff all the time. Almost every day there’s a choice between meat, fish, as well as pasta and vegetarian dishes. There is also dessert at lunch and dinner, which can always be counted on to be amazing! 10pm every night is snack time too in the cafeteria where they put out brownies and pastries and little sandwiches. My only complaint is that there are really no burgers or chicken sandwich and such choices. We can get burgers and pizza up on the 7^th deck, but we have to pay separately for those, so I haven’t had one yet. The chef usually includes an international dish to the menu at dinner, and those are interesting to try, so long as it doesn’t have fish. I’m told it’s great fish, but I just can’t eat it. Oh well.

Maybe they’ll have chicken sandwiches in Japan?

Hawaii

E Komo Mai!

It means welcome.

Hawaii is sooo pretty! It’s got palm trees and warm weather and lots and lots of sunshine! I could stay here for a few more days if we could.

This morning we got into Honolulu around 5:30am. Immigration and Customs people came on board around 7am, and we had to go through Immigration. It wasn’t a big deal, just showing up in person with our passports to be checked off the big list. It took about 2 hours to get everyone through though.

Once we got through customs, I went on a trip to Pearl Harbor for my history class. It was very nice, not quite what I expected I think though. For one thing, it’s almost all out of doors, not like the museums back in PA. For another, it’s a lot more solemn then many other places, even Gettysburg I think. It’s one thing to know a big battle was fought on the ground you’re standing on, its another to know that there are over 500 men still buried in the ship underneath your feet. The memorial itself is beautiful. It’s a very peaceful place for all the drama and the trauma they show in the little video you watch before going out to the memorial. I like it though.

After we went to the memorial, a few girls and I went to eat. There’s a little shopping district right next to the pier, Aloha Towers. It’s got a lot of high end shops, but also some really good eating places. So after I had a wonderful barbeque burger ( my last for a long time I think), I met up with Mrs. Lorenz’s sister to get my credit card. Thanks Jacque for getting it for me! And thanks for the Lei! And then I went back to the ship to get my computer. So now I’m sitting in the shopping district typing this up and there’s a Hawaiian music coming from the shop next to me and there are palm trees above me and the birds are singing. It’s just so peaceful. I just wish the wireless would work. I got it to work for about 10 minutes earlier here, but now I’m having difficulty. Ok, it seems to be working now.

I just wish we had more time here before we spent 9 days at sea. It's soo pretty.