December 12 2010 / MV Explorer

Well, I guess here we are.  The end of an awesome, phenomenal journey, filled with more sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings than my body has room for.  It’s going to take months, if not years, to process it all.  I know and can feel it somewhere in my heart that I’ve been changed, but how?  Hopefully for the better, but who knows?  How long will it take before the journey starts to slip away from me as I sink into Privileged American Life, doing Privileged American Things?  Then again, who says the journey has to end here?  My journey is continuing, and it’s going to keep going for much more time to come, I hope. 

As for these magical countries I’ve visited:  Spain, Morocco, Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Japan… all of these places have taught me magical things I’ve never known before.  You see poverty as statistics until you see the widespread shantytowns of Ghana.  Genocides are a thing of the past before Cambodia.  True wildlife, a thing that doesn’t exist until the plains of South Africa.  Quiet refinement mixed with loneliness never has been prominent before Japan.  More than anything I’ve learned, I’ve come to understand so much more about the human spirit in the face of adversary, that no matter what—whether poverty, racism, oppression, or violence—the human spirit can persevere.  Together, we can lift each other up.  The earth is not as large as we tend to think, and we are all connected.  We need to achieve peace, prosperity, and preservation in our world.  With our common humanity, I know we can hold our hands out to each other and to the world and save each other.  We can do this, but we must do it together. 

I am so grateful for my parents for giving me this incredible opportunity, as well as all my friends at home for reading my blog and leaving comments or sending me emails.  You have no idea how much they meant to me.  I’m grateful for all the incredible friends I’ve made here, especially Julie, Jared, Ellie, Martha, and Lorelei.  You guys are the best and I love you and wish you the biggest happiness ever in life.  I won’t say goodbye because I know I’m destined to see you all again, and soon! 

THANKS FOR GIVING ME THE WORLD!  I feel as though I’ve learned, most importantly, how to take care of it.  :)

“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
     -- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

December 10 2010 / MV Explorer

Well, I guess that’s it, then.  Today was our last final in Global Studies.  It was complete and utter pwnage all across the board, from what I heard, though the subject of it was the source of much entertainment for me all morning long (“dude, only squares pass.  Don’t even go!”).  But now I’m all finished!  Exams in WIHC and CSI went okay, about as well as expected but I feel as though I did better on both of those than the midterms, so I guess we’ll have to see.  Anthropology of Tourism was a cinch.  Not sure how my poems went… I’m going to go with Martha to see Cushman tomorrow.  I’m really nervous about it for some reason.  I don’t even want an A for the GPA, I want an A because it means that Cushman thought I was awesome.  Anything less will be pretty disappointing, because I worked intensely for that class.  I hope it shows in my poetry… I guess we’ll see. 

Martha, Lorelei and I got ready for the Ambassador’s Ball tonight together.  We were all sitting at the same table with Jared and Julie.  DINNER WAS DELICIOUS.  Broccoli and cheese soup, caesar salad, bruschetta, filet mignon… om nom nom.  Dean Sue gave a really cute toast (we got champagne in real glasses! :o), and I thoroughly enjoyed eating much of Martha and Jared’s bruschetta, soup, and champagne—gotta love those picky eaters.   I want to eat nothing but bruschetta and caprese when I return home. 

There was then a little dance type deal on deck 7 and in the Union, which we attacked for a little while.  Then I headed back to my room and took a shower—Julie, Lorelei and Martha are going to come over and we’re going to have a sleeeeeepover!  Usually I’m not one for sleepovers but I feel as though this shall be a most epic sleepover.  We are going to watch some sort of romantic comedy movie, which hopefully does not make me depressed because I have not watched a romantic movie of any kind for about two years or so.  :O

For some reason I am more anxious about this coming home business than I was about my finals.  I definitely do this every year, going back home from Chapman or, from here, from… the entire world.  I don’t know why I feel so strange.  REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK LAWL.  I’m sure I will feel so much better when I just give my dad a hug and see all my friends again at Chapman and then come back home… hmm.  I guess I must just feel listless.  There’s nothing that I’m planning for, I suppose.  We’ll see! 

Packing is going to be so intense soon…

December 3 4 2010 / Honolulu, Hawaii

HAWAIIIIII yes indeed, back in the United States of Murica.  I already miss Japan but being on the ship for ten days was a little too much crappy ship food for me, so I was happy when we pulled into Honolulu, Hawaii.  Unfortunately for me,  we’ve been changing time zones so quickly I’d only gotten on hour of sleep the night before until I had to get up to do face to face immigration, and as you guys probably know me, I don’t really function very well when I get no sleep.  The same had happened to Julie, so after breakfast we went back to sleep for a while. 

When we did get up, we commandeered Jared and Steven and set out to find lunch (yes, we really did sleep that long) and found this sketchy place called Tiki Café.  I had spaghetti, which for some reason seemed like a good idea at the time, and BOBA TEA!  I love boba tea and it was most delicious.  We then decided to just kind of amble aimlessly around, because we were just happy to be outside in fresh air on beautiful land.  I didn’t really realize how impoverished Hawaii was the first time I visited here with my family.  Everywhere I went there were people sleeping on the ground and in hammocks.  It was pretty bad, especially considering that we hadn’t seen anything like that in Japan. 

Anyway we explored Chinatown and I shot tapioca balls from my boba at pigeons.  It was delightful.  We ate dinner at a restaurant and I had a Benadryl at like eleven oclock at night so that I could sleep well and wake up for TODAY WHICH WAS AMAZING yeah I’m sorry, we didn’t do much in Honolulu the first day.  I was pretty okay with that though, being as that I had been stressed out about school projects for the last week.  I needed the bumming around happily. 

ANYWAY SO TODAY WE WOKE UP BEFORE SEVEN AM TO GO

SKYDIVING

SKYDIVING YOU GUYS IT WAS MAGICAL

Anyways so we got up and went out to the pier around 7:30am, where we were picked up by a van and set off on our adventure.  I am just going to skip right on ahead to the fun part, is that okay guys, I can tell this story well in person but I’m just too exhausted and excited about how epic this is to really rev up and give tons of descriptions

SO ANYWAY I was strapped in with this guy George, a dude who had skydove like 21000 jumps before (he has apparently spent two weeks of his life in freefall. EPIC).  We had a Very Sturdy Harness on that made me feel very safe, and went up in a propeller plane up 14000 feet.  At first we hit some turbulence and I was just like D: until I realized that I have probably never been in a safer situation before.  If anything were to go wrong, I had a parachute for goodness sake.  But we climbed higher and higher for like ten minutes or so, and then they opened the big plastic sheet that was the diving wall kind of thing.  Wind was whipping by with gusto and it was outrageously loud.  Lander and his person were first, and they leapt out and were ripped away like a ragdoll, spinning out in the wind.  That was when I thought, “my god, what have I done?”  I’d been feeling fairly muted until that point, but my diver was already telling me to get up and head over.  I grasped the bar above my head and looked down to the tiny island below, dwarfed in the massive ocean.  Well, if something went wrong, there sure would be a lot of time for error. 

“One!” shouted George, “two! Arch!”  I arched backwards, like he told me, grabbing the straps on my harness, and fell into the sky.

It was.  It was amazing.  It was probably one of the most single amazing experiences I’ve ever had in my life.  I wasn’t prepared for how loud it was.  The wind was literally being torn apart as you fell through it.  And some point I felt George wallop my shoulder—the sign to relax my arms.  I did and just let the wind carry them upwards.  My mouth was pulled open by the rush—going 130mph can do that sometimes.  I didn’t scream, though I might have let out a whoohoo at some point.  It felt so surreal.  I couldn’t stop staring at the ground and wondering at how funny it was that I simply could not wrap my head around the fact that I was falling towards the earth. 

And then the parachute snapped open, and yanked me upwards.  Abruptly the wind roar stopped, and there was silence.  George pointed out Pearl Harbor, sparkling off in the distance on the other side of the island.  I was too utterly shocked and awed to say much of anything.  I just couldn’t stop looking at everything.  aslkfj I know I’m not describing it well, it’s hard to communicate in text form.  Ask me about it and  I will be happy to tell you.  Hitting the ground was not as terrifying as I thought it would be, but then again, I definitely did not land on my feet and sort of fell over onto the ground.  Probably the most terrifying part of this jump was Bryan swooping in behind me and almost landing on me.  :O

The rest of the day I felt, quite literally, high (ho ho ho, what a pun!).  Bryan and I just stared out the window at the clouds on the drive back, and I felt exhausted—adrenaline takes a lot out of you! 

We went and got lunch at yet another sketchy café.  “California Girls” was playing in the café, and being as that I haven’t heard that song in four months I wanted to punch someone in the face.  But the BLT was delicious, so I was okay with that.  Then we went off to the beach.  I saw the hotel I’d stayed at years ago, because we were in the Waikiki area!  Pretty neat stuff.  I tried to teach Lorelei how to surf, mostly unsuccessfully.  She will just have to go to the more glorious beaches in California. 

That’s really pretty much all I did in Hawaii.  I’m sorry this is such a crap blog post after I haven’t written in so long.  I’ve literally been exhausted all the time after doing so much work for prepping for the exams and having time changes happening all the time.  Hilo tomorrow! 

November 28 2010 / MV Explorer

Check it out guys, I registered for classes today! 

Interterm:
SOC 410 - Victimless Crimes
I've never been more excited for a class that fills both my major and my minor requirements!

Spring:
POSC 110 02 - Intro to American Politics - MWF 11-11:50
SOC 210 01 - Social Research Design - MWF 12-12:50
SOC 305 01 - Social Theory - TTh 1-2:15
SOC 320 01 - Sociology of Death - T 4-6:50
SOC 332 01 - Crime, Justice and Globalization - W 7-9:50

Starting up my politics minor with Intro to American Politics (it also fills a random GE I don't have covered!), Social Research Design and Social Theory are both required classes for my major, so I'm finally getting some work done for that, Sociology of Death is taught by McGrane, who was AWESOME when I took him for social psych, and Crime, Justice and Globalization goes into subjects that I've both learned about on SAS and are subjects I want to focus on for my career! 

So that's that.  Anyone going to be hangin out with me at school at these times?  :)  I can't believe I'm starting classes so late in the day! :O

Also, the ship threw a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Only me and one other girl were loud in knowing a diversity of the callbacks!  But I had a lovely time wearing far too much makeup.  Things shall be good. 

November 20 2010 / Kyoto, Japan

So I got up in the morning, all packed and ready to go out and adventure into Japan with Julie for the next couple of days.  The big trick was that she had a SAS trip that she was going on that would take her into Kyoto to see some of the temples and gardens there, and I was going to try to hop onto the trip as well in order to not have to take a train by myself from Kobe to Kyoto.  After breakfast we went out into the terminal and I signed up and was able to snag a ticket inside—they had two buses instead of just one, and they must have correctly anticipated the rush because there were about twenty people or so who hopped onto the trip with me. 

Our trip guide was named Hiroko, which is kind of the most adorable name I’ve ever heard.  I kind of love Japanese names—they mean such beautiful things, like Hiroko means broad-minded.  Also, how cute would it be to call a little girl Hiro for short?  Anyway, she talked a little bit about Kyoto while I napped on the bus—Kyoto was about an hour away by bus.

When I woke up we were driving through the streets of Kyoto.  I was initially pretty shocked by the city, because it seemed so huge and modern, while I was expected a quiet, small city that was very old fashioned with the wooden Japanese-style buildings with sweeping roofs and temples sprouted up everywhere.  I guess that was silly to think that Kyoto would have never changed for hundreds of years.  Still, when we got to our first temple, we were excited to get inside.  This temple was Sanjusangen-do, and the unique thing about it is that it’s main hall is filled with 1,001 Senju Kannon-zo, which are golden statues of “thousand-handed” goddesses of mercy.  Standing in front of these statues were these absolutely incredible statues of 28 guardians, which included the wind god, the thunder god, and things like that.  They were done in the greatest art style—almost cartoon, but all were very fearsome.  They were great.  In the center of the hall was Senju Kannon-zazo, a giant seated version of Kannon.  I wish we could have taken more pictures, but we weren’t allowed to—still, it was a magical and almost eerie experience, and made me want to write about gods and dragons and all sorts of things!  At the gift shop I bought a tiny fortune that had a little god charm inside, and the one I pulled at random was the god of fishing and good travels—sounds like a Semester at Sea god if I ever heard one!

Next we were off to Nijo Castle, which is a castle protected by a moat that includes the Ninomaru Palace and also the ruins of the Honmaru Palace, which we got to see.  Here Julie and I didn’t really stick with our tour group and prowled around the Ninomaru castle by ourselves, having a grand adventure with the beautiful walls that were painted.  I especially loved the “nightingale floors” which we designed to be squeaky so that no one could assassinate the shogun successfully by nightfall.  We ate our most terrible box lunch in one of the rooms outside of the castle that was an indoor picnic-souvenir shop room.  Then we went out and explored Honmaru and looked at the gardens that were around, as well as climbing up to one of the corner turrets to see out into Kyoto.  It was pretty neat—we also saw the most horrifying gigantic bee that ever could exist.  It was a good thick three inches long with red sparkly eyes.  D:  Julie and I have discovered that it was a Japanese Giant Hornet, nicknamed the Sparrow Hornet in Japanese, and are the most venomous bee on earth per sting.  D: D: D:

Off we went then to Ryoan-Ji, which was built in 1450.  It is a famous dry zen garden, with a large area of small rocks/sand, and fifteen rocks in this garden.  There are lots of interpretations you can take to view it—some people think that that the sand is an ocean and the rocks are islands, others think it is a river with tigers swimming in it.  My favorite interpretation is that the sand are clouds and the rocks are the mountain peaks that are poking out of the clouds.  We sat and looked at the garden for a while, but to be completely honest I found that kind of boring.  I walked over to the other side of the temple and instead looked at this little shrine under some maple trees, where the ground was covered in moss.  It was a lot more pretty to me.  :D

Lastly on our list was Kinkaku-ji, which of course contains the famous Golden Pavilion through a strolling garden.  I practically had to beat people out of the way in order to get a good picture, it was so crowded, but it was incredibly beautiful to see—the sun was going down at that point and it was glinting off the pavilion, which was really cool.  We threw coins to the roofs of little shrines for good luck and did a little bit of meditation.

Then it was time for Julie and I to head out on our adventure!  The bus was so kind as to drive us out as close as we could get to the Kyoto train station and then we, as well as a couple other people who were also going to be traveling independently.  We passed through a sleepy neighborhood filled with gardens until we finally got to the train station, where the Kyoto tower loomed above us.  Julie and I encountered then some problems when we went up to the Welcome Inn, a hotel reservation service—every room in Kyoto was full!  Julie said that there was no way—there was one room available and it was for us.  We were looking at internet cafes nearby—many internet cafes allow you to sleep inside the café for the night for only twenty dollars or so—when another woman came running up to tell us that ONE ROOM had just opened up in a ryokan—a minimalistic hotel that was only about a two minutes walk away!  Needless to say, we jumped on the opportunity.  We also booked a capsule hotel for our time in Tokyo and were very excited that we were all going to have everything all arranged!

We walked over to our hotel, the Ryokan White Hotel, which was kind of down a shady alley.  We went inside and it was a small little building.  We slipped off our shoes, checked in, and went up to our room on the fourth floor.  It was a small little room with a little desk, a TV, a little stand, and two beds that were mats on the floor, Japanese-style.   We were really excited and flopped all over the place on our mat beds.  The bathroom was even tinier than the SAS bathrooms—just a toilet, sink, and shower that was hooked up to the sink.  I banged my elbows several times. 

Then we decided to head out again!  We went into the Kyoto train station because we were starved at this point and wanted to eat some food, and we found a Chinese place that had lots of vegetarian options.  I got delicious fried noodles and pot stickers, as well as a beer, and had a fun time just people-watching for a little while.  After a while we hopped on bus 206 to go to the Gion district, which is the old district of Kyoto where the Geisha are said to frequent.  We got off the bus at Kiyomizu-Dera, which was a temple that was lit up at night for the autumn festivals.  We followed a HUGE crowd of Japanese people walking up a hill until we saw it—a beam of light jutting out of the sky, a pavilion towering over Kyoto on the top of the hill.  We walked all the way up and began to explore all of the different temple buildings.  There was a sacred water well that we drank from, and another thing that was like a very sword-in-the-stone esque thing where you picked up these metal bars from the ground and then settled them down again.  It was pretty funny because these tiny Japanese girls would struggle to pick them up while me and Julie just dominated—some guy was even like WHAAAAO!  It was pretty silly.  :)  There was also a nighttime viewing of the maple leaves, which was a BIG DEAL for all the Japanese people.  I love those maples but I’d already seen about twenty thousand of them already, so I didn’t need to see them too much. 

So that was pretty neat and it felt pretty authentic to be part of this festival with all the locals, even though we didn’t know a lot of what was going on.  :)  After that we decided to walk down the road because the Gion district was bound to be around there somewhere.  We walked for what seemed like forever, but had a pretty good time just looking around us (we found a menu that said “English menu avairable” and I laughed for ten thousand years).  We went down a sketch alleyway that looked potentially Gion-y, and we saw all these fancy bar areas that had a lot of Japanese business men around and also these beautiful women in long ballgowns.  We were considering the fact that maybe the look of the Geisha has changed, but then again, it might have just been in the area that we were in.  We did see lots of wooden houses that were really old-fashioned and looked very Meiji, so we felt pretty successful even though we didn’t see a traditional Geisha. 

By the time we hopped back on the bus, we were exhausted and because it was the end of the bus line we had to go aaaaall the way around again before we got back to our ryokan.  So that was like an hour but we ended up getting back to the train station not long after midnight, and we went back to our ryokan and just totally crashed out, sleeping very well.  Hilarious story of the night was when we went back and asked for a wake up call at 7:30.  “7:20,” the hotel desk guy responded.  “…Sure,” we said.

November 19 2010 / Kobe, Japan

ASKJKDSF JAPAN!  We watched Spirited Away in my room last night in a cuddle pile with Ellie, Jared and Julie and I, which was awesome to get in the mood for JAPAAAAN!  I woke up early and was able to spring out of bed right away, to my surprise.  For some reason I woke up with extremely intense free-floating axiety that I just couldn’t shake—I wasn’t sure why it had hit me and why it wasn’t going away, because I wasn’t too worried about getting through Japan, even though I’m doing it independently with minimal plans.  But anyway I went to breakfast and sat with Julie and Jared and talked a little bit.  There was a band outside serenading us.  People at ports who greet us are so adorable!  Aegean Sea was called up first for once, which was kind of nice but is not so nice considering we’re getting off the boat second to last in San Diego.  :| 

But anyway we went up and I realized belatedly that I’d forgotten my quarantine card, so I had to hustle downstairs to grab it.  Japan is super overprotective over who it allows to go into Japan, so you have to get shot with a thermal-evaluation-laser-thing in order to be sure you’re not feverish.  As I got up back up there, this guy I was next to started walking really jerkily.  At first I thought he was going to be seasick, because he kneeled down.  I asked if he was okay, and he said yes, but he was shaking so violently.  All of a sudden he straight up fell over, blacked out cold.  It scared the hell out of me.  I was just frozen as people were calling for the medical team.  He wasn’t out long, but it was so incredibly strange and I just felt so freaked out.  I’m really not over the Andre thing.  So I started sweating and trembling because this didn’t help my nerves at all.  I passed the thermal test anyway and then went down and had me a nap, because I was ready to restart the day—felt far too stressed out. 

I woke up when the ship was cleared, which was around 10am.  Julie and I were going to go out exploring together, so we headed out together.  We had to wait in this HUGE line to go through immigration and customs, which didn’t bother me too much because I was too excited to be in Japan, and was skimming through my travel guide.  :B  When we finally got through there was a hospitality desk, and one of the ladies there directed me as to how I would get to the Miyazaki Museum in Tokyo, as well as how to buy tickets in advance—we would have to find a drugstore called Lawson’s that would sell the tickets.  Also, nothing is more hilarious than a Japanese woman looking at you in confusion when you say “Miyazki,” and then shouting “TOTORO!” with a look of triumph spread across her face.  I’m pretty sure the hospitality desk thought we were the most hilariously geeky Americans ever. 

SO ANYWAY.  Out we went to adventure into Kobe!  Kobe is a rockin’ port city that’s about a mile from the southern ocean to the northern mountains, but stretches a huge distance from west to east.  Julie and I walked towards the city, which actually was razed by a huge earthquake in 1990.  It’s incredible how fast everything was built back again.  One of the first signs that had a picture of food on it, we latched onto, going downstairs into this little… not really a business food court, nor a mall, but a little underground area that had lots of small restaurants inside it.  Julie and I wandered around, a bit confused—there were bento boxes sitting outside, but did we just take one?  What was the nicety for that?  So eventually we steeled ourselves to sit down inside one of the little areas at a table.  It was a tiny room, with maybe ten small tables inside, and a kitchen against the wall.  Was it just me, or did everyone go quiet when we came inside?  Everyone was A Japanese Business Man.  When the waitress came over, she looked at us strangely and pointed to the little stand-up menu on the table—all Japanese, no pictures.  Julie ran outside, took pictures of the little display lunch sets, and I shuffled through them until I found one I wanted and pointed at it.  She kind of laughed but I thought it was pretty ingenious. 

Lunch for me was a bowl of soup with yakisoba noodles and a piece of shrimp tempura floating around in it, with a side of this truly incredible glutinous rice, that had a little bit of soy sauce and egg and it was just amazing.  Oh gosh it was an incredible meal, even if it was simple.  On the side were these orange slices I didn’t recognize until Julie said it was pickled mango—it was SO GOOD, but we kind of laughed at how shy we were.  It’s funny how we’ve been traveling so long but we still get embarrassed at not knowing how to do the right things. 

We went inside a big building to look around at things people buy, and I was SO EXCITED to find a row of cheap pokemon action figures!  If you’ve been in my room at college I have a little collection, so I was so glad to get another little guy to add to the group of friends.  :D 

Then we went off to find a Lawson’s and the Shinto-Kobe station, since I would have to catch a train from there to Kyoto if I couldn’t get onto Julie’s SAS trip, which I’m really hoping for.  We found it and the information desk directed us to a Lawson’s, which is a kind of 7-11esque convenience store.  We had no idea what to do.  So we stumbled through broken Japanese and singing the Totoro theme song to infer what we wanted to a very kind confused woman, who took us to the vending machine for the tickets and pushed the buttons for us, as she didn’t speak any English.  Ultimately, we got two tickets for the Tokyo museum at 10am on the 23rd (or so we hope… I don’t read Japanese)!  Energized by our success, we charged away for our next destination, which was a picturesque waterfall called Nunobiki Falls.  We walked north until we reached the mountains, and then I saw the cable cars that I wanted to go up on to the Peak of Mouth Rokko, which gives an incredible view of the Kobe skyline.  Upon buying tickets in the building, I happened to look out the window and what do I see but two huge hairy boars wandering leisurely back to their forest!  It was the strangest thing and it cracked me up. 

The cable car ride up the mountain was incredible.  The trees below us were changing color, so most were green but there were also yellow and red and brown.  It was so beautiful.  We passed right over the waterfall, and attempted to take many pictures—unfortunately for us, it was that kind of day where the light just sucks for picture taking.  When we got to the top, we decided to walk down, so went through the Nunobiki Herb Garden, which also had us pass through a spice room, a greenhouse, and flower gardens—it was pretty fun and oh so Japan!  The city before us started turning on its lights, which was dazzling and I loved how the city just stretched to the left and right but was foiled by the ocean.  :)  As we walked down the mountain, it grew darker and darker and a lump settled in my stomach as I realized I would never walk down a strange mountain in the twilight at home.  We walked right beneath the crashing of the waterfall, and Julie scared the hell out of me by screaming when a mouse or something ran by her.  It was not as well lit as we would have hoped.  Fear not, this adventure is not a sign of things to come—we will not decide to get some exercise when it starts getting dark outside when we’re traveling! 

After our Nunobiki adventures, we were hungry yet again!  So we set about trying to find a restaurant on the way back to the ship.  One of the restaurants we went in didn’t speak English and actually told us that the entire restaurant was reserved so that we would leave.  I believed them until Julie mentioned how weird that was—now it’s kind of just hilarious.  But it was a good thing we waited!  We came across this tiny restaurant on the main street with red lanterns out front and walked inside.  There was a kitchen with a bar wrapped around right there, where six Japanese Businessmen were getting their drink on.  The bar had a cook behind it who was cooking KABOBS!  So we sat down at a table and did our best to avoid the wood and cigarette smoke.  :D  IT WAS GREAT!  They had an English menu and our waitress did her best.  I got a beer and two chicken thighs with curry sauce, a baked potato, and grilled onions!  My mouth waters just thinking about those onions.  Afterwards I looked at the menu again and saw that they had fried rice balls with melted cheese on top, which seemed necessary—best decision of my life.  It was covered in a sweet-sour sauce and was just delicious.  Julie and I had a great time just eating, drinking, and people watching.  The businessmen were getting pretty red-faced by the end, but everyone was having a good time and it almost seemed like a Usual Crowd dynamic.  Pretty cool stuff!

Julie and I walked off our massively delicious meal back to the ship, stopping on the way in this AWESOME HAT STORE, which was great because we’d just been talking about how we wanted to buy hats.  I found the most lovely gray-gold knit hat with a flower on the side that is going to be so important in keeping my head warm in my travels!  I’m pretty excited.  Julie got a beret  I think, haha.

We got to the ship soon after—a wonderful first day in Kobe, and hopefully a good sign of many more great times in Japan to come!  My plans are pretty simple:  Tomorrow I want to hitch onto Julie’s SAS group that explores Kyoto’s zen gardens and some of its temples, and then break off and stay there the night.  The next late morning we will take a train to Tokyo where we will visit the Harajuku District and hopefully a cat café, as well as the Pokemon Center!   Yes I’m aware that I am a child.  No I do not care.  We also want to hit up the electronics/anime/manga district.  On the night of the 22nd we’re going to do a great tour called the Full Moon Aoyama Graveyard tour, which I’m SO EXCITED FOR and is like the one thing we’ve reserved.  It’s a two hour night tour of the most haunted graveyard in Tokyo where they talk about these old ghost tales and things that have happened.  Somewhere in there, there will be karaoke, and the Miyazaki Museum is the morning of the 23rd before we go to Yokohama! 

So obviously I’ll be out of contact for the next couple of days while Julie and I go off to explore Japan!  If you email me do it to my stephaniemech comcast account, as it’s the only one I’ll be able to check.  :) 

Love you guys! 

November 14th 2010 / Beijing, China

I didn't go out last night but ended up staying up late talking to my roommate and her friend anyway.  We talked about Andre and that whole thing, which was great because I hadn't really talked about it with anyone yet and I have lots of feelings.  So that was therapeutic, if a little depressing.

 

So today we got our wakeup call, which was much appreciated, and I got a nice surprise when I went downstairs for breakfast and saw that Martha was down there!  The Xi'an trip had finally come to Beijing and were staying at our Holiday Inn.  Apparently the Terra Cotta warriors were super cool, but I didn't feel too bad—I had a great time in that first day in Hong Kong and on this trip, too.  So after we finished a breakfast of pancakes covered in syrup and chocolate and pot stickers (BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS) we headed out to the Beijing International Kung Fu school, which is actually where they shot some of the new Karate Kid movie (at the rival school).  So this was awesome.  We headed into the same hall as in the movie and sat down in these rows of chairs, facing the stage. 

 

Music began playing.  There were I think nine men on the stage, all in silky red, yellow, or blue uniforms.  And then they did CRAZY MAGICAL THINGS.  The first "act" was just showing off their physical prowess—one by one they would toss themselves through the air like rag dolls, spinning and flipping, doing backflips and summersaults and cartwheels.  They also did the worm and lots of backbends.  It was the coolest thing EVER.  I couldn't even believe that they were human!  I definitely leaned over at one point and was like "Is this real life?"

 

The second act was done with WEAPONS.  There were swords (single and double), scimitars, chains, and my favorite, a BROOM.  The swords and metal things were too bendy to do real harm, but they were whipping them around so quickly it looked just… absolutely crazy.  Kind of like those movies with the villain extras that are going really quick and crazy (but who also tend to be cut down by the hero really quickly, because they just look so uncontrollable).  I wasn't sure how controlled they were and would have maybe liked to see something slowed down to prove how controlled they were, but I was too busy basically jaw-dropping to think too much of it. 

 

The third and final act was the most epic.  Basically, one or two guys would come out and start to do poses very slowly.  You could see their muscles trembling as they slowly moved from position to position as they "charged up."  Then another person would come around with something—a piece of metal, a wooden pole, etc.  And they would do different things to break them!  Two guys smashed metal sheets with their head, another broke a bowl with just two fingers.  One man held out his arms and leaned over to show his back while another broke wooden poles on it.  Another stabbed a needle through a pane of glass to pop a balloon—way whack.  My favorite one was this older guy who came out—he was not wearing the same uniforms.  I couldn't tell what his rank was.  But there was this long, curvy hook.  Four men were holding one end of it and he held the other end.  He twisted the metal all the way around his neck as they held the other end, showed us, and then bent it back.  It was horrifically cool, because I was freaking out the entire time because he bent a metal bar around his neck arghasdhfgh.  There were a couple more dance moves and then they finished and bowed, and we were able to go up and get a couple pictures.  I was in my kung-fu panda hat! 

 

A couple of the guys then wanted to teach us a routine, so we were pretty excited about that.  I was terribly bad at it, because I have a hard enough time after weeks of learning choreography during the musicals in high school for dances, I couldn't learn a full routine in the span of twenty minutes.  But I still learned a great couple of poses, which was pretty awesome.  :D

 

After that we went off to lunch, driving a ways away to the "Friendship Store."  It was half restaurant, half gigantic tourist store, and it was toooootally a commission store, which kind of made me grumpy, but I guess you have to make money where you can so I tried to make the best of it.  The lunch was kind of eh, but shopping afterwards was really fun.  The Christmas ornaments I looked at were waaaay too expensive (the only difference between the ones that were there (180 yuan) and the ones on the street (50 yuan) was that these weren't dusty), but I found the medicine bell balls that were beautiful and the same price that you  could get them on the street.  I've always wanted some, so I got them and have been using them on the bus.  I like little stress toys.  I also caved—I've been wanting a stamp to do seals for forever, and I saw a couple of people getting it done, so I too got my name (just my last name, oh so professional) phonetically translated into Chinese characters and carved into the bottom of the stamp.  I didn't buy the ink because it was outrageous, but I love my little stamp.  It's stone and has a horse carved into the top, and is like blondish white rock. 

 

When we went back outside we had the best surprise EVER.  It was SNOWING!  I caught a few snowflakes on my tongue and was far too excited for everyone else to handle.  I love snow when it can't last long enough to be a sludgy mess, and the snows of China are just so exciting.  :)  Then we were off again—we drove another hour through the countryside to finally get to our big name destination of the day—the Great Wall of China.  We were going to the Mutianyu part of the wall, which is far away from the center of Beijing but is also far less crowded and only Chinese locals really go there.  The trees were all brown and soon we were driving up into the mountains.  Finally, we pulled into a parking lot, where we all bundled up against the cold and got out.  We could see the wall at the top of the mountains, far away, and began to start our climb up.  We walked through a narrow street lined with TONS of shops—I definitely got a I <3 Beijing shirt.  I love haggling.  I also found a lovely bracelet.  But anyway, we walked up until we got to a cable car.  Me and a four other people got into the orange cable car #1, and we began to climb up the hill.  It was so cool.  I wish I could explain how the foliage looked, because we don't really have anything like it in California (mostly because we don't have seasons).  Just scarce and brown and yellow grass.  I loved it.  

 

Anyway, we got to the top.  I got a pack of Oreos and a green tea (others were getting beer) and finally,  finally, set foot on the Great Wall of China.

 

It was everything I wanted it to be and more.  There weren't very many people around because it was near the end of the day and the setting sun was lighting everything up orange, so my pictures all came out amazing.  The wall stretched up and down mountains, turning this way and that with little turrets in between.  In the turrets were little stone pathways with windows.  I didn't envy the people who were doing the Hiking on the Great Wall trip, because it was freezing up there, but I was having such an amazing time running up and down the 3 inch to 3 foot stairs that I forgot all about being cold.  I looked out and wanted to fall off the wall into Mongolia, but I think the country border is further back now.  :(  Rats.

 

All of a sudden it was over all too fast, and we had walked along the wall to the second cable cars.  We were up there for a good hour, admiring the way the sun glazed over the Chinese countryside and reflecting off the towns below.  And finally, we had our very last adventure—we were going to toboggan down the mountain.  There was a steel track that snaked around trees and over valleys all the way back down to the bottom. 

 

The group ahead of me took all the sleds, so I waited a while for one to come up.  And then I had the ride of a lifetime.  I raced to the bottom, with tears leaking out of my eyes due to the wind and cold and laughing hysterically.  One man shouted something at me in Chinese, undoubtedly to slow down, but there was just no way.  It was one of the most joyous moments of my entire trip.  At the bottom, slowing to a stop with tears streaming down my face and a huge grin, I must have looked like quite a sight. 

 

After doing a little more bargaining with the shop owners, we took off to go back to central Beijing.  An hour and a half later we got to our destination—the Flying Acrobats Show, which was in this little theater.  I bought some popcorn that said "American' Popcorn" on it and an apple juice.  THE POPCORN TASTED LIKE FRUIT LOOPS.  Everyone I gave it to said the same, so I ended up putting it down and getting an ice cream bar to get the taste out of my mouth—I know, I'm a fatty.  But the weirdest part was that other people with the same bag of popcorn had a different tasting popcorn!  Chinese foods are strange.

 

Anyway, the acrobatics show.  Basically, all of today has taught me that Chinese people are superhuman immortals who can do crazy amazing things, from the awesome kung fu to the acrobatics.  It was an INCREDIBLE show.  First of all I wish all my theater tech friends had been there to see how epic the lights were—there were lasers and it was set to music and it was just put together in such a dramatic, epic way.  There was no storyline, not really, but just were all these awesome scenes.  There were warlords spring boarding off a plank and doing flips in the air, women dressed like swans who could balance on one hand after having climbed to the top of two other people, a woman who created a very Jenga-like stack of chairs that she then balanced on—it was pretty nuts.  Eight people fit onto this bicycle and did tricks on it with fans, so it looked like a flaming phoenix at the end.  My favorite was this hug contraption that came down from the ceiling that almost looked like a zipper ride—two man-sized hamster wheels on a spinning circuit, and they would do tricks while making it spin, like jump rope or walk outside the wheels onto the actual contraption.  It was so incredibly amazing.  During this entire performance I would gasp and then start laughing.  I'm sure I must be a real joy to sit next to.  ALSO THERE WERE CHINESE YOYO TRICKS. 

 

I can't even describe all the great acts there were.  I didn't get the DVD at the store, but I did get the CD because it was pretty cheap and I loved every song they had up there—it was some epic power music to write too!  We definitely had a lot to talk about when we went to dinner later. 

 

Dinner was a few blocks away and was the most amazing Chinese food we've had on this trip so far—I'm not gonna lie, we haven't had the best Chinese food of my life on this trip, which kind of surprises me.  But still, everything about this place was awesome.  Egg drop soup, garlic eggplant, kung-pao chicken, white rice, fried beef, beef and cucumber—it was all just amazing.  We talked a little about what had been going on the past few days, as I'm kind of freaking out over the fact that my partner for my paper and debate in CSI just left the ship to go back home, so I don't know what I'm going to do.  We also talked about how much we've changed over our time on SAS—how we'd scoffed at the idea of the ship being our "beacon of hope" and how true it was now!

 

Now we're just back in our Holiday Inn.  I just killed a gigantic spiky cockroach, which is now belly-up under a coffee mug near the TV.  Hopefully there are none in my bag.  Aside from that, epic times today.  I will never forget my Great Wall experience!