Good morning Vietnam! :-)

Hi from VIETNAM!!!!
We got into Ho Chi Minh city yesterday morning, it was pretty cool actually, we went down the Saigon river in order to get to the pier, so we got a really great view of everything on our way in. We got to the pier around noon. We had an awesome greeting with some women wearing the typical sort of flattened cone-shaped hats made of straw and beautiful Vietnamese dresses and they were standing on the pier with a huge sign that said “SEMESTER AT SEA WELCOME TO VIETNAM”. Oh and of course Bob, the guy who makes announcements over the loudspeaker on the ship woke us up yesterday morning with “Gooooooood morning Vietnam!!!!”haha. Cute. Bob was in a good mood because his wife was coming to visit him in Vietnam, as were the parents of some of the students, so it was an even better welcome to see the parents and other family members of people on the ship waving and cheering and holding signs with their kid’s name on it and whatnot as we came in. I hope it’s like that when we get into Miami at the end!

So once we got off the ship some friends and I immediately looked for food. We ate in a fodcourt of a sort of mall-ish place and I had some really good Thai food. Then we did some wandering around and shopping. The city is really cool! I like it a lot so far! It’s very hot and humid, and it rained really hard late in the afternoon. While it was raining we found a little ice cream shop and sat and ate ice cream and watched the millions of people go by on motor bikes. The traffic in Vietnam is the most shocking part I guess. It’s a lot like India but faster moving. I think the traffic laws are more abided by in Vietnam so there’s less congestion from people ignoring lanes but there are still SO many people that it’s quite exciting trying to cross the street. We figured out that the trick is to either watch the locals and walk when they do or else just start walking, walk at a slow and steady pace, don’t stop and don’t turn back and they just kind of go around you on their bikes, haha!

So we did some shopping, wandering, and crossing streets most of yesterday, and then in the evening I went to a jazz club which is owned by a friend of one of my professors, it was SO cool! Amazing performances, good food and drinks, it was awesome. I had a great time. Then last night I got to use some free internet on the ship to register for my classes and do a little chatting online with friends, which was good :-) sooo yesterday was a great day! Today we are going back out to do a little more shopping/looking around and maybe going out for dinner or something. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day I’ll be going to the war remnants museum here in Ho Chi Minh which should be really interesting! It’s so strange to be here in Vietnam…and think about what it must have been like here around 50 years ago with the war going on, and protests going on at home…crazy. It will be interesting to see the museum and what they have there.

Oh yeah and I got some of my Malaysia photos up on flickr so go check them out!

Bye for now!

Sailing along to Vietnam...

Hi all you lovely people at home!
Just thought I’d send another fun-filled update while I’m sailing along on my way to Vietnam! We’re arriving in Vietnam on Thursday morning (that will be Wednesday night for you). I’m pretty excited! In the meantime I’m just going to a few classes, doing some homework, hanging out…the usual. Tonight we had a really fun time, the crew of the ship had a talent show! This was all the housekeeping staff, kitchen staff, cooks, servers…everyone that works on the ship. It was so fun to watch! They were all very talented too. My floor’s very own housekeeper, Julius was in a hilarious dance to the song “in the navy”with some of the other housekeeping guys and they all wore sailor suits (no that’s not their usual uniforms!) it was hilarious. There was also a really funny dance to the numa numa song! All you camp people would have been proud. It was a little different from our energizer but still awesome! Speaking of camp, someone email me and tell me all about the fall retreat! I wish I could have flown in for the weekend and then returned to the ship, haha. But I hear it was really fun, and I’m bummed I had to miss it.

Soooo let’s see what else is new. I’ve got to register for next semester’s classes, which has led me to also find myself making decisions about when to graduate (possibly as soon as this spring –eek!) and what I want to do with my life?! Scary things to think about. I’m still working all that out. Not that I need to have it all worked out by the time I graduate. Maybe I’ll just let life come at me as a surprise!

Oh yeah, I was able to sneak some free internet time this afternoon so I was able to post a few new photos on flickr from India. They’re from my school visit and homestay. Later I’ll work on the rest of my India pictures and Malaysia! And of course I’ll be taking even more photos in Vietnam which I’ll have to catch up on posting also. Besides catching up on photos, I’m also trying to catch up on homework. Sigh. Not fun.

Hmm well I guess Halloween is coming up soon! I’ll be in Vietnam on Halloween. I think there’s a “masquerade ball”tomorrow night as a little Halloween party/dance thing for everyone on the ship before we all scatter all over Vietnam and Cambodia (I’ll be in Vietnam, not Cambodia). I’m not sure if I’ll do anything Halloween-ish on Halloween but I’ve heard rumors that they’re doing trick or treat candy handing out for the kids on the ship (yeah there’s a few kids of professors on the ship, what a cool way to spend a semester as a kid eh??). I’m jealous of the kids on the ship. They do have to go to school for a little while each day like us, but man, what a cool experience. The kids are all the children of professors, and there are actually several of them aged from 3-16 I think. The 3-year old is Micah, and he’s adorable! All the kids are really fun. And I guess they get to go trick or treating on the ship for Halloween!!

Hm ok I guess that’s all the news for now. I hope everyone’s doing great and has an awesome Halloween!!!

Love you all and miss you tons!
*peace*

No new photos yet, sorry :-(

Ok I'm having trouble loading my photos today and the video was taking too long so I gave up. But I'll try to work on those things in the next week or so. Sorry! In the meantime send me emails!
jmturcios@semesteratsea.net

I <3 Malaysia!

Hello again everyone!
Today is my last day in Malaysia...it's about 10am on Sunday. For all of you it's still Saturday night!

Thursday was a really fun day, I went to a chocolate factory here in Penang and then to the botanical gardens. The gardens were beautiful! So many pretty flowers, trees, actually it felt like we were walking through a jungle...and we saw monkeys! In fact, one of them tried to steal my bag, haha! They're very tricky little guys, there were some babies in a tree and I was distracted taking a video of them and while I was paying attention to the ones in the tree another monkey came right up and started looking through my bag looking for food. I actually got a video of him looking through it so maybe I can figure out how to post the video. Thursday was also a cool day for meeting locals here. We came across an older guy who offered to be our walking guide for the day at no charge! He took us around and helped us find the chocolate factory and everything, and he really knew a lot about the area too so we got to know about some of the places we were walking by. We also had a really cool cab driver on the way back from the botanical gardens who took us to a few temples along the way! So overall, a very fun and successful day!

So last night I got back from Langkawi, a little beach town near Panang. I was there since Friday morning. We spent one night there in a cute little motel right on the beach! The motel only cost me about 5 US dollars. It was awesome. So it's a 3 hour ferry ride over to Langkawi from Penang so I took the ferry over with about 15 other people from SAS and we also ran into Rahini, our Malaysian interport student. He and a couple of his friends from Penang were also going over to Langkawi for the night so we got to hang out with them for most of the time which was cool because they helped us out with the language barrier and knew how to get around and stuff. Actually, the 3 guys from Malaysia decided to rent a car so we could drive around which made it all a lot easier. None of us from SAS wanted to rent the car mostly because we weren't so sure about this whole driving on the left side of the road thing!

So we got to Langkawi and it was pouring down rain, and before we rented the car we took a taxi into the middle of the city were more stuff was and started looking for food and a hotel. We ate lunch at a thai food restaurant and it was delicious. Then it was raining even harder but we still needed a hotel so we ventured out into the rain with our raincoats and umbrellas and walked along the side of the road looking for a place to stay. It felt like such an epic adventure, I was having a great time! I had a raincoat, and a waterproof backpack and my chacos on and my pants rolled up and I was ready to trek through the torrential rain! So we found a cute little motel right on the beach, like I said and it was super cheap and fairly nice too! Except for the bathroom, which seems like a trick thing in Malaysia, just like in India. They don't use toilet paper much here either except for in pretty fancy places. Luckily we were prepared and brought our own roll of TP! So we got our hotel rooms, at that point there were 8 of us, so we got 2 rooms and 4 of us slept in each room. We put our stuff down, settled in and decided it was time to go down to the beach! So we ran through the rain to the beach and jumped into the ocean, which was WARM! I've never been in an ocean that was as warm as here. I've only been to oceans in Maine and California which aren't very warm. Sooo that was awesome. It was actually warmer in the ocean than standing in the rain, so we stayed in the water for probably 2 hours. It was so fun, and we kept finding (sometimes by stepping on them) little crabs inside their shells. So after we finally got out of the ocean we kind of rinsed off in the rain because the shower in the hotel wasn't that great and then we all went out for a snack at this really nice restaurant, and then wandered around for a little while in the rental car and then went for an amazing Malay dinner! Then we met up with a couple other people and went to a Malaysian club! So that was a fun night, and then yesterday we got up and went to the beach again because it had finally stopped raining, and then headed back to the area where the ferry is and got our tickets and then just hung out around there for a few hours and then caught the 5pm ferry back to Penang. The ferry back was really crowded, lots of SAS people were coming back at the same time and the bathrooms on the ferry were definitely the nastiest thing I've ever seen, haha. I was glad I brought my own toilet paper and well no need to go into details. We'll just say worst bathroom ever. Haha. But anyways overall a really fun little trip! And today I am using some free internet in the Starbucks here in Penang (yeah, they have a couple Starbucks' here, haha ridiculous...) and later on this afternoon I'm visiting an orphanage with SAS. Then tonight at 8pm we leave Malaysia, and head to Vietnam! The days are going by really fast now especially since we only have a few days between each port.

Well I guess that's all for now. I'm working on loading some photos from India and Malaysia onto my flickr page, so definitely go check those out!! :-) there are some good ones! In case you forgot, that site is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennieturcios/

Oh yeah, forgot to say...I had a conversation with the Malaysian students about Obama. Seems like they mostly support him here too. Very interesting. The only country so far I haven't heard anything about him in was India. But it sounds like Vietnam largely supports McCain. So it will be interesting to get to Vietnam and see! Anyways, I hope everyone's doing well. All of you who are at the Sonlight fall retreat right now please email me and tell me all about it when you get back. I wish I could have been there with you guys!

I miss you all and love you!

*peace*

Hello from Malaysia!

Hi all,
It’s been a little while since last time I wrote something, but life’s busy when you’re traveling the world I guess, haha. So let’s see…we left India on the 18th, spent 3 days at sea, and we arrived in Malaysia this morning! I got to explore Penang today and so far I love it!! Even getting off the ship here is an adventure. For whatever reason, we are not able to dock the ship right in the port here so we have to have little “shuttle”boats take us from the ship to the shore. They call them tender boats. Actually, the little boats they use to get us to shore are our life boats! So, I get to ride in the lifeboats! (they’re pretty nice actually! They’ve come a long way in lifeboats since the Titanic, haha) The lifeboats carry 150 people at a time, although it would be very cramped if there were actually 150 of us in one, say if there were a real emergency or something, but anyways indeed they’re fairly big and completely enclosed so if we were floating along in the middle of the ocean and it was very cold outside we wouldn’t freeze to death, hehe. Anyways so they “tender”us to shore, and then we’re right there in the city!

Today I had a trip for one of my classes about the ethnic communities in Malaysia, we visited “little India”and a Chinese community and a Malay village in the mountains. It was pouring down rain when we got to little India (Thank you SO much for your raincoat, Nick!!) but when it cleared up by the time we got to the village in the mountains it was nice out and the village was BEAUTIFUL! There were palm trees and exotic flowers everywhere and cute little houses and everyone was so friendly! It wasn’t like the villages in India or the townships in South Africa, the people who lived there were probably a bit wealthier but still lived modestly. The houses were pretty small and not fancy at all but they were well kept and the location was absolutely amazing. I would totally live there! Then I got back from that trip and went out for a snack with some friends, we found a fun little restaurant with great food. Malaysian food is pretty delicious! But there are so many Chinese and Indian people here also that there are a lot of those types of food everywhere too and I think that each of the cooking styles and flavors have kind of influenced each other and combined a little bit. But anyways the food is great.

Tomorrow I’ve got another class trip, and I’ll probably do some wandering around and shopping and such, and then Friday morning I am going with 2 friends to an island near here to spend two days and one night there, and I’m really excited! I can’t remember the name of the island now…haha. It starts with L. I’ll have to get back to you on that one, oops! But anyways whatever it’s called, it looks like a lot of fun. Lots of fun things to do outdoors (hopefully it won’t rain!) and Malaysia has gorgeous mountains! Well, they call them mountains, but since I’m from Colorado to me they look more like hills, haha. Sooo we’re leaving early Friday morning to catch a ferry over to the island and we’ll come back to Penang Saturday night. Then I’ll spend Sunday here and we leave Sunday night for Vietnam!

So far I’m totally loving Malaysia. It’s gorgeous here. And it’s far less stressful than India although of course I had an awesome time in India too! Anyways well I’m hoping to write at least one more update while I’m here and hopefully I can get some photos posted here or Vietnam. Sorry I’ve been slacking on the photo updates! It’s hard to find internet in some of these countries.

Well it’s been a pretty exhausting day so I’m just relaxing on the ship tonight, I’ll probably watch a movie, do some reading, and head to bed. I hope you all are doing well!
Miss you all!
*peace*

looks, smells, feels, tastes, and sounds like INDIA!

Hi all!
Before I forget to say this at the end, my mailing address in Costa Rica has changed. So if by any chance you were planning on sending me mail in Costa Rica, you now have to send it to:

SCAN S.A. / ILG LOGISTICS
Edificio ILG Logistics   
200 Mts Norte de Rotonda de Paso Ancho
POBox 1242-1007
Centro Colon, San Jose, COSTA RICA

The mailing and arrival dates are all the same, just a different address. Who knows why.

Anyways…I must tell you all about my amazing and unexpected adventures that I have had so far in India!! So we got here on Tuesday morning. Tuesday during the day I went on a trip to a school here in Chennai. This was an SAS trip and I went as part of my language and society class, because the school has a focus on multilingualism. We went there by bus, and when we got off the bus we were greeted by all the kids in the school, grades pre-school through 12th. The school band played music, and the little tiny kids gave us each a rose! Then we got to talk to the principle of the school for a little while, she told us about it and about the kids. Then we got to play with the little kids and visit the classes of the older kids! Apparently the first language of most kids is Tamil, which is the main language of Chennai, but everything in school was done in English. I thought this was very interesting and quite surprising. The school then is in fact NOT a bilingual or multilingual school. The kids are encouraged to speak English all the time, even when they are at recess. If they are overheard speaking English they are reminded (the principal stressed that they are not punished) that they should be using English and ask them to repeat what they said in English. The younger kids knew very little English, but the olders kids were mostly fluent. One of the most interesting things was that the kids and teachers both often couldn’t understand us, this was because of “our accent”as Americans. Although we all spoke English, the Indians have different pronunciations of words and so especially the younger kids could not understand what we were saying until a teacher repeated it using the Indian pronunciation of the words. Living in the United States, I never really thought about having an accent!

Then, Tuesday evening I went to the “welcome reception”where we got an amazing Indian dinner, henna tattoos, dance performances, and we could buy jewelry and scarves and things. While we were there we got to meet a lot of students from India who all went to universities in Chennai. A couple of my friends and I met a girl named Priyanka who is 17 and goes to one of the colleges in Chennai. She offered to take us shopping the next day, Wednesday, and then invited us to her house!! She said her mom would cook us food and that we could spend the night there if we wanted to. So, we agreed…and it was SUCH a cool experience!

We met up with Priyanka yesterday morning. She and her “driver”picked us up. Her family seems fairly wealthy, they have 2 cars, a driver, a maid, and a cook. But their house is fairly small, in relation to American houses at least and definitely not fancy by American standards. She took us to her house and her mom cooked us lunch, then we spent most of the day shopping at markets and local shops in the city. Then we went to a local hookah bar where I got a huge cup of Indian Chai!!!! It was so good. We spent a while there talking and then went back to her house, where her mom made us another amazing meal. Then we met the rest of her family, her younger sister made us each cards with drawings, and we met her father, her grandmother, and her cousin. All SUCH nice people welcoming us into their home! We spent the evening visiting with them and watching TV (her little sister loves the Disney channel so we watched some Zach and Cody and Hannah Montana, haha) we spent the night there, then in the morning got our third homecooked Indian meal and then Priyanka and her mother took us shopping again, we ate lunch at a mall food court, and then they took us back to the ship this afternoon. It was such an amazing experience getting to spend time in their home, be cared for and have homemade food and talk to her family!

In addition to the awesome experience of meeting Priyanka and her family and spending time in their home, I’ve also gotten quite a new experience and a bit of culture shock for sure! India is so unbelievably different from anywhere I’ve been, especially from the United States. There are just SO many people…everywhere…all the time. Traffic basically has no laws. They drive on the left side of the road, but lanes are optional and there’s no speed limit. You can’t drive very fast anyways though because the streets are so unbelievably crowded. Most people get around on motor bike/vespa-type vehicles, or else taking an auto-rickshaw which is a small 3-wheeled vehicle that serves as a taxi. Many people ride bicycles also, and some drive cars. There are also buses, which are very crowded and more than a little sketchy, at least it would be for us as tourists and as females. Then again, it’s very cheap so I guess it’s a great option for locals. Besides all the vehicles, there were cows, horses, and chickens sharing the road as well and more pedestrians than I could have imagined. I was surprised at how few accients there were with all these machines and creatures sharing the road with not much order to the chaos.

Toilet paper is nowhere to be found in the bathrooms here, which is probably one of the most difficult things for me and my friends to get used to. A lot of us (girls) took rolls of toilet paper from the ship around with us, not yet quite willing to give up that little American habit we’d taken for granted until now.

I also had the opportunity to visit a hindu temple which was a very cool experience. We had to leave our shoes outside and were asked not to take pictures. The women’s clothing is beautiful here. Most women wear a sari and then men wear western-style clothing. It seemed like no matter how poor the people were, their clothing was bright, colorful, clean, and neatly pressed. And people who had beautiful clothing sometimes had no shoes.

Tomorrow I’m spending most of the day visiting a village through an SAS trip. It should be a very interesting experience also. We leave Saturday night. And I’m hoping for a few more adventures before we leave!

Oh yeah and one more thing, almost everyone I've met here so far has told me I look Indian, and they're not sure I'm telling the truth when I say I'm from America, haha! Cool...among the many ethnicities I can pass for, Indian is one of them!

I hope all is well at home. I miss you all!

*peace*

Where's the land?!

Hi from the middle of the ocean!!!!!
I’ve been at sea for 10 days and I’m ready for LAND! Specifically, the land of India! We arrive in Chennai on Tuesday morning (for most of you that will be Monday evening, haha). I’ll be ready to stand on ground that’s not rocking...the seas were pretty rough around Africa, but it’s getting better as we get closer to India. The weather is also changing a lot as we get closer to India. It’s very warm and humid outside, as opposed to Africa which was colder than I ever figured Africa would be!

So it’s been a while since I’ve written a blog, partially because well hey I’m a little lazy sometimes, but mostly because we’ve been having midterms (yeah, really, I’m going to class every once in a while amidst all these adventures!). I just had my last midterm this afternoon and I’m SO glad to be done with all that studying madness until finals! I’ve still got a couple papers to write and tonsof reading to do as always, but I’m also ready to enjoy India!

Life on this ship for the past 10 days has been fairly boring actually. Well maybe not boring but confining, haha. It’s tough to be stuck on a ship with 800 other people and not get a little tired of it all. But after India the trip really starts going by quickly I think, because we will only have a day or two between most ports from now on. Malaysia is next, then Vietnam and then China and Japan. After Japan is Hawaii, then Costa Rica, then home! Crazy to think my trip is half over.

Oh, I thoght I’d mention something pretty cool that SAS has been doing on the trip so far. Between each country we have one or two “interport students” and sometimes also an “interport professor”. These students and professors are from the countries we are on our way to at the time and sometimes give guest lectures in classes and help with the “pre port” presentation about each country like giving tips on places to go and things to see, food to eat, food not to eat...etc. We’ve got two guys right now on board from Chennai, they’re fun to talk to and it’s been cool getting to know them as well as our interport professor who is a tiny, sweet Indian woman who tells us to call her “Anu” which she says means small! Anyways, it’s pretty cool to have that opportunity to meet some students and professors from the countries we visit. I know that one year recently Archbishop Desmond Tutu sailed the entire voyage, I’m so jealous! BUT, I was lucky enough to hear him speak while we were in Cape Town, which was so cool.

I think that’s all I’ve got for now. I hope everyone is well back home! I miss you all, and keep sending me emails!

*peace*

My time to vote...is NOW!

I just got my absentee ballot via fax on the ship! I'm pretty excited for my first presidential election! I realized though, that being on the ship I'm missing out on a lot of news. I don't know anything about any of the issues on my ballot. If any of you from the Boulder area know anything about any of the amendments and things on my ballot, let me know! I have no idea. haha. But fortunately we have been able to get recordings of the debates, so we get to watch those here on the ship! They're showing the first presidential debate tomorrow, I'm hoping to find time to go watch that if homework doesn't take over my day...or my life. Grr. Anyways, Yay voting! haha. Since I'm totally out of it as far as news and updates from America in general, I'd love any updates or opinions or anything...just send me emails! Even just to say HI :-)

jmturcios@semesteratsea.net

Waving goodbye to Africa!

Hello!!
Well I just waved good-bye to South Africa...I’m sad to leave! It was definitely my favorite port so far. It was also the one I was most looking forward to. But now we’re on our way to India, and that’s pretty exciting! We’ll be at sea for 11 days before we get there...I’m not looking forward to that.

So I had a pretty exciting day yesterday (Wednesday). I went to the Amy Biehl Foundation’s headquarters, then visited a township school where students who are part of the foundation’s programs for kids performed music and dance. Then we had the VERY exciting opportunity to have archbishop Desmond Tutu come onto the ship and speak! Afterward, two of the men granted amnesty during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings for the murder of Amy Biehl came onto the ship to speak about their experiences.

So Amy Biehl was a student who was killed in 1993 in a township in Cape Town. She was a white American studying in South Africa and she was driving a black friend home to the Guguletu township and as soon as she entered the township her car was attacked by a group of  local youth. She was stabbed to death. Four young men from the township were sent to jail for her murder. Then two of them, Ntombeko Peni and Easy Nofemela, applied for amnesty through South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission. Amy Biehl’s parents came to Africa, met the two men, and in the end chose to grant them both amnesty. They both currently work for the Amy Biehl Foundation. A great example of forgiveness and reconciliation. So yesterday I got to see the headquarters of the foundation, then we visited a township where the foundation does a lot of its work with children, giving them after-school activities and opportunities. The kids performed music and dance, and it was very fun to see!! We also went through the Guguletu township where Amy Biehl was killed. Then later yesterday Ntombeko and Easy came to the ship to speak about their experiences. They talked about each of their experiences growing up in a township, their involvement with Amy’s death, and appllying for amnesty from the commission. Easy also talked a lot about forgiveness. The fact that Amy Biehl’s parents not only forgave them and granted them amnesty, but also hired them to work for their daughter’s memorial foudation shows a lot about the goodness in people and importance of forgiveness. If they had not granted them amnesty and hired them, Ntombeko and Easy would have spent years in prison and then faced a very difficult life of starting over once released. It was really cool to hear them talk about all of this, especially because I had studied the Amy Biehl case in a couple different classes at CU last year. We had looked at it in my criminal justice class as well as my peace and conflict studies class.

Then, as I mentioned before, as a last minute kind of surprise Desmond Tutu came to the ship to speak as well! I was SO excited to hear he was coming! He actually sailed on a recent SAS voyage and I was so jealous that SAS students got to see him daily on their voyage and get to know him personally. But I wasn’t expecting to get to meet him on my voyage, so it was a very cool surprise! Desmond Tutu is a South African icon of anti-apartheid and received the Nobel Peace Prize for his activism. He was a great speaker, very funny, and inspiring!

I posted a lot of new pictures from my adventures in Cape Town, so go check them out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennieturcios/

We are sailing along now...and the water is pretty rough already. Grrr I’m feeling a bit seasick. I hope it gets better soon, I don’t want to feel this way for 11 days straight!

Anyways, I hope everyone is well. Stay in touch!

*peace*