Thanksgiving in Hawaii and Death by Wal Mart!

Hi!!!!!
It’s been a while sine I’ve had anything interesting to say! Haha. But the news from the sea is that we spent Thanksgiving in Hawaii! My photos are up on Flickr, so check them out! It was a great day. I’ve never been to Hawaii so I wish that I had more time to explore, but it was still a great way to spend Thanksgiving. I could tell we’d entered America again because of the giant SUVs, Hummers, and huge trucks driving around…haha. And we stopped at a grocery store to get some snacks. Most things were closed since it was Thanksgiving, but we went to Waikiki Beach and it was SOOO crowded! Apparently everyone else also thought it would be fun to go to the beach on Thanksgiving. Some students from my ship even had a Thanksgiving dinner picnic on the beach! Some friends and I rented a surf board and tried surfing! It was very fun, I wasn’t very good at it but we had a great time. One of the best parts about the day was that since we were back in the United States, I could call my family from my cell phone! It was so nice to talk to everyone, especially because it was pretty weird not to be home on Thanksgiving. So it was a great day. A nice relaxing break from writing papers and studying for finals.

Thursday night we had a Hawaii-themed dinner. There was barbeque chicken, fruit, and decorations…haha. It was funny. I’m not sure all the food that night was Hawaiian but it was nice of them to try :-) the soup was labeled “Hawaiian Corn Chowder”! Anyways tonight we’re having our Thanksgiving dinner now that everyone’s back on the ship. So I’m looking forward to that!!

Now I’ve got five more days until finals are over. Today is full of writing papers and finishing things up for the end of classes, then I start studying for finals. Sigh. It’s going to be a crazy 5 days, but soon it will be over and we’ll be in Costa Rica for a few days! I can’t believe I’m coming home in 2 weeks! The last few days when we’re sailing from Costa Rica to Miami will be crazy, trying to fit everything into suitcases and boxes to carry off the ship. I’m planning on giving away/throwing away some of the things I don’t need to bring back like a pair of pants and some shoes that I’ve pretty much thoroughly worn out on this trip. Hopefully I’ll have enough room in my bags for the stuff I’ve bought along the way! Most of which are Christmas presents :-)

Well I’m still working on getting photos of the inside of the ship to post so everyone knows I really AM traveling around the world on a ship, I’m not just mysteriously arriving in each country! That project might have to happen after finals though, which are over on December 4. In the meantime check out my Hawaii photos and keep writing me emails for me to read during study breaks!!

Oh, one last thing…Katie informed me of a ridiculous news story that gives me yet another reason to dislike Wal Mart… go check it out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html?em

sailing...sailing...and two November 22nds?!

Hi everyone!
Today is the first November 22 for me…tomorrow will be the same day, all over again! We’re crossing the international date line, so we get to repeat Nov. 22! Today I don’t have classes, and tomorrow is a no class day for everyone, so it’s kind of like a weekend for me! But unfortunately I’ll be doing homework and writing papers most of the time. Sigh. But I just thought I’d take a little study break to write a short blog about how I’m in the middle of the ocean, on my way to Hawaii, and we’re having two November 22nds! haha…

We have 5 more days at sea, we arrive in Hawaii on Thanksgiving day! We spend the day there, and then we sail away again that night. So I’ll be spending my Thanksgiving on the beach hopefully! And apparently they’re making us a Thanksgiving dinner on the ship, yay! I hope there’s mashed potatos! And pie!! :-) I’ll be missing my family lots, but in just a few weeks now I’ll be home, and I get to spend Christmas with them. Speaking of Christmas, I just walked by the student store on the ship earlier and they were playing Christmas music! Yay Christmas season. I’m hoping there will be snow when I get home!

So not a whole lot is going on right now on the ship, everyone is writing papers and doing lots of homework. The weather outside is really nice! It’s sunny and not too hot. The seas are pretty calm which is good. I don’t remember if I mentioned about the day before we arrived in Kobe we had a crazy bad night where we had to put everything on the floor of our room because it was all falling off anyways. I’m hoping in the next few days to get some pictures of the inside of the ship and the nice ocean view! I guess most everyone at home is almost on their Thanksgiving break, so I hope you all enjoy your time off from work/school and please email me so I can have things to read during my study breaks! :-) I want to hear what’s happening with everyone at home! My email is jmturcios@semesteratsea.net

More photos!

My Japan photos are posted now!! Woohoo! Go look!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennieturcios/

Japan-tastic!

Hi all!
It’s been a little while sine I’ve had a chance to write a new blog! It’s been a busy few days. We arrived in Kobe, Japan on Friday morning. It was a VERY long process to get off the ship. Normally we just have to wait for an immigration officer to come on board and stamp all 700 of our passports, but Japan has pretty strict rules about entering the country. So we woke up at 7am, had to be dressed and ready to go by 7:45 when they took attendance to make sure we were all ready, then we had to have our temperature taken (to make sure we weren’t bringing any diseases into Japan, I guess!), after everyone’s temperature was taken and we were all deemed healthy enough to visit Japan, they lifted the ship’s “quaranteen”status, then we went back down to our rooms and waited for a while until they were ready to let us off the ship, then we got off the ship, waited in line to go through security and have them check our passports and take our fingerprints! Then finally after all of that which took several hours…we were allowed to run free in Japan! Haha. I had an SAS trip to a temple in Kyoto to participate in a tea ceremony. That was really fun!! It was a 2 hour bus ride to get there, then we got to walk around the are a little bit and got a tour of the temple, then we got a traditional tea ceremony. It was a very interesting process and experience. I didn’t like the tea itself, it was green and foamy and kind of tasted like spinach, haha but I had a great time at the ceremony. So that was my first day in Japan.

Unfortunately I caught some kind of cold and cough which I’m still fighting off so I went to bed early and slept late my second day. Then I walked around downtown Kobe for a while my second day and got to see what Japanese people and culture is like! The younger generation is really “stylish” and modern. I guess that’s the best way to describe them. The guys have hilarious hairstyles that’s basically just messy hair like they just woke up, but the put gel and mousse in it to keep it looking that way. And the girls dress up for everything, all the time. A typical outfit is many layers of shirts reaching almost to their knees, leggings, and boots or heels.

My second evening in Japan a group of 10 friends and I traveled to Tokyo via an overnight bus. It was an uncomfortable night of very little sleep but it was an experience for sure! And it was fun with that many of us. We got to Tokyo at 7am and we spent that entire day at TOKYO DISNEYLAND! It was so much fun!! We all ran around like little kids, riding the rides and taking pictures with the disney characters! We spent a total of 12 hours at Tokyo Disney, which is still hard to believe, haha. It was a great but totally exhausting day, especially since we hadn’t slept much the night before. After Disneyland we got to know the Tokyo subway system quite well. We took several subways and trains to get to our hostel. We checked in, dropped our stuff off and found some dinner. After that we were all too tired and full to do anything so we went back to the hostel and slept. Then today, our second day in Tokyo, we got up and had a McDonald’s breakfast, then we went around the city to see what we could see! We went to a market, and a temple, and up to the top of a tall building to see the view and after walking around most of the day we then took many more subways and trains to get to Yokohama, where our ship traveled to while we were in Tokyo. So we met up with our ship this evening, and from what I’ve seen of Yokohama so far it looks really nice! It seems very pretty, clean, relaxed…so I’m looking forward to looking around here a bit tomorrow. Then tomorrow evening we all leave Yokohama on the ship. We then spend 9 days at sea and on Thanksgiving day we arrive in Hawaii!

So I have enjoyed Japan SO much so far. I love it here. Here’s a list of things I’ve discovered about Japan so far:
1.      They like Christmas for the lights and music and whatnot, so they’ve got the cities all decked out with Christmas trees and lights and reigndeer and everything
2.      They have very complicated toilets that have remote controls with buttons to do things like warm the seat, rinse and dry your butt, flush the toilet, make the flushing sound (that’s separate from actually flushing, haha!!!) and several other features which I can’t remember now. But let’s just say it’s not an easy thing to use the bathroom in Japan and just figuring out which button flushes the toilet is a task. Fortunately though, there’s also a button you can push to call for help. Hah!
3.      They’re stylin’! (Even the babies are better dressed than I am)
4.      Japanese men like to wear bags that pretty much look like purses
5.      Things in Japan are EXPENSIVE!
6.      Really entertaining snacks in the convenience stores
7.      They have vending machines for everything from hot coffee to hamburgers!
8.      Starbucks everywhere…
9.      They like Obama :-)
10.     They do the peace sign with their fingers in all their photos…even the little kids do it!

And much, much more. That’s about all I’ve got for this blog entry. Pretty much it seems like Japan is more like America than most of the countries I’ve visited, but in many ways it’s also way different. Same…but different. That sums it up. Hahaha.

I hope you’re all doing well! I’ll post new pictures as soon as I can!

Shanghai adventures

I had such an adventure today in Shanghai! A group of 8 of us set out from the ship as soon as it was cleared around 2pm. We started walking, found an ATM to get money, then decided to see if we could find some markets to shop in and then five of us wanted to see an acrobat show because we were told that Shanghai has amazing shows that are definitely worth seeing. So we looked at a couple maps and started trying to find our way around. Turns out a lot of the directions in English on street signs are wrong so that was confusing. We stopped at a Starbucks so we could get change and ask for directions (as lame as it is, Starbucks never fails for things like that so I now secretly hold a special place in my heart for Starbucks even if it is taking over the world) so the Starbucks employees helped us out a lot by writing where we wanted to go as well as directions back to the ship in Chinese, so that we could show it to taxi drivers because none of the them seemed to speak English. So far Shanghai has been the most difficult place to get around in. So after Starbucks we started walking again, and we stopped in a hotel to ask for more directions and it turned out that that hotel sold tickets to one of the acrobat shows, so we bought tickets and figured we’d just walk around and shop for a little while and then head to the show.

So we walked around more and found a little market but we got there just a little bit before it was closing so didn’t get too much time to shop there. Then we decided we should just take a taxi to the show and find somewhere to eat nearby the theater. Getting a taxi was the trickiest part of the day! We stood outside a hotel and had the hardest time flagging one down (it’s a different hand motion than it is in the US, it’s kind of a “bouncing a basketball”hand motion to get a taxi) so eventually we gave up and decided instead to brave the Shanghai subway system! So there were 8 of us and we all stood outside the subway station preparing ourselves. I’m sure it was such a funny thing to watch us all. We put our bags in front of us, linked arms, made a plan of where to meet when we got off in case we got separated, and went for it. It was SO crowded! My first subway experience was in New York City but this was way more crowded. We had to shove our way into the subway while staying linked to one another so we basically shoved in sideways and didn’t let go until we got out. Hahaha just thinking about it now is so funny. But we made it! And it wasn’t too bad really. The subways are pretty nice and not too hard to figure out. There were signs in English and we had maps so we did well. So after the subway we eventually found the theater. We had to stop for snacks along the way in a convenience store because we didn’t have time to get dinner before the show. We got to the theater only 5 minutes late.

The show was absolutely amazing! There were amazing acrobatics, magic, hoop jumping and everything in between! They put all American circus shows to shame, haha. And the final act was the giant ball with FIVE guys driving motorcycles around the inside! It was insane!! So after that we decided to find some dinner, we were walking along a major street and stopped by a little booth with a woman selling tea. Some people bought tea and while we were there we got into a conversation with a guy who told us a good place to eat and we went to this cute little restaurant with balcony seating, had a great dinner and took a taxi back! It was such an adventurous day full of fun spontaneous experiences! I was also very glad that after more than a month of hot, sticky, humid weather we finally got to a port that was cold! It wasn’t too cold but chilly enough to need a couple layers and a scarf. So even though it’s pretty tricky getting around and most people don’t speak English, it ended up being a great experience in Shanghai. We’re here tomorrow too although I may need to spend most of my day catching up on homework which I didn’t finish while we were at sea. Sigh. But I’d say I got a pretty good taste of Shanghai anyways. And I’m getting excited for Japan! Our two ports there are Kobe and Yokohama, and I’m going with a group of friends to Tokyo which should be really exciting! I’ve heard it’s the most populated city in the world.

Well I think that’s all for now. I’m pretty much exhausted so I’m off to bed now. It’s afternoon for everyone at home! Haha. So I hope everyone is having a lovely Monday, and please send me more emails!! :-)

Peace and Love!

Hong Kong went by fast and I'm back at sea...

Hi all!
Wow what a busy few days it’s been! First I should mention that we had a pretty sad thing happen Friday morning. One of the students on my ship was hit by a car in Hong Kong and he was killed. His name was Kurt. I didn’t know him well, but I’d seen him around the ship and I hear from everyone who knew him well that he was a really great guy. It was tough to hear about that this morning, they woke us all up with an announcement that we had an emergency meeting we had to go to, so we all went and our executive dean Jack told us all what happened. Sigh. Very sad.

But aside from the tough time this morning hearing about that, I had a great time in Hong Kong. I posted some pictures on flickr of my 2 days there! We got to Hong Kong on Thursday morning, it took a while for the ship to be cleared for us to have permission to get off, but once we did we got to explore the very large city with it’s huge buildings and all! I got to go up to the 55th floor of the tallest building in Hong Kong! The building is actually 88 floors high but we were only allowed up to 55. Even that was higher up in a building than I’ve ever been! Haha. Coming from Boulder where there are rules about how tall buildings can be so that we can still see the mountains from anywhere in the city! So that was really cool to see the whole city from that high up. I also got to just do some walking around the city seeing what there is to see. And on Thursday night a group of friends and I took a double decker bus around the city and then the bus took us up to the top of Victoria’s Peak, above the city! It was so cool to do that at night time, we could see all the city lights and on top of the peak there were a bunch of shops and restaurants and stuff so we hung out there for a couple hours. In fact, one of the coolest parts was that there was a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant with Forrest Gump’s bench outside it! Hehe. That made my day, because if you didn’t already know, Forrest Gump is my favorite movie! I got to go to a Bubba Gump’s in New York last winter also, so now I can say I’ve been to one in New York and Hong Kong! Pretty cool :-) So I bought a couple little Bubba Gump souveniers and got some great pictures of me and my friends on the bench. Then we took a little bus back down the mountain.

Friday I woke up early and went on an SAS trip for a breakfast of dim sum, a tai chi lesson, and tea sampling! All very Chinese and very fun. We went to a restaurant for dim sum first which was awesome, then we went to the Hong Kong art museum where we got to learn tai chi and watch a demonstration outside on a balcony and that was really fun, I really enjoyed tai chi. It’s very relaxing but also definitely a workout. I felt great afterward. I can definitely see how it can help you feel ‘centered’ and calm and just happier in general, espeically if you do it daily. And something that always makes me happy is tea! We got to visit a tea house where this guy taught us all about making tea and showed us how and we got to sample lots of different kinds. He also emphasized the quality of making you happy and healthy that tea has. I totally agree with him. And the tea was really good! Then the rest of Friday I spent getting things done around the ship. I used the free wifi in the mall near the ship which was nice. I got to talk to some friends at home online for a little while and then I came back to the ship and hung out until it was time to go.

While we are in China we are doing Hong Kong and Shanghai, and the two days at sea between the two ports (where I am right now…currently experiencing some very rough water!) we don’t have classes, so people had the option of flying to Beijing from Hong Kong to see the Great Wall, and then flying from Beijing to meet the ship in Shanghai. Most of the people on the ship ended up doing this, so there are only about 100 of us left on the ship right now! It’s so weird having that few people on board while we’re at sea. There are usually about 700 of us not including the crew! I would have loved to see Beijing and the Great Wall but just couldn’t afford the plane tickets and everything. Plus I get 2 days at sea with no classes and no obligations other than the homework looming over my head. But it’s nice to cath up on sleep, watch movies, hang out, and maybe catch up on homework too. A few of my friends are still on the ship too so it’s nice. I’m not bored! Another benefit of staying on the ship instead of going to Beijing is that when there are this few of us we get a FANCY sit-down dinner! It’s like fancy restaurant-style. Normally on the ship when there are 700 of us to feed, they make it buffet style and while the food isn’t gross, it isn’t exactly amazing either. It’s usually about the same every day. But tonight we had our first fancy dinner and the ship’s chef proved that he really can make some amazing food! It was a 5 course meal and it was all delicious. After dinner the chef came out and everyone applauded! Great fun :-) I’m excited for our second fancy dinner tomorrow night! My friends on the Beijing trip are missing out. Haha.

So we arrive in Shanghai Monday morning and we’ll spend 2 days there. Tonight the sea got pretty rough and currently the ship is rocking a lot! It’s pretty crazy. But hopefully it will calm down a bit by tomorrow or at least by the time we get to Shanghai. The weather is changing also from the hot, humid weather we’ve been having since India. I’m glad to have some cooler weather because I’m really getting tired of being all hot and sticky all the time! I’ll be glad to have some cold weather when I get home I think. Japan is supposed to be pretty cold too so I’m looking forward to that.

Well that’s all for this blog entry. I hope all’s well with everyone!

Peace and love

Almost in China!!

One more entry before I get to China…
The general feeling on the ship is still lots of happiness and excitement about our new president! It’s been a good day.

Just thought I’d mention a few more things. Yesterday we had a pretty cool opportunity to hear a panel of professors and other “old people”on the ship talk about their experiences and/or involvement in the Vietnam war. It was VERY interesting to hear all the stories, especially after just visiting Vietnam and seeing the war museum and everything. Most people had not served in the war although one professor had. He only spoke for a few minutes, it was pretty difficult for him to talk about, I could tell, but I was glad he did speak even for a couple minutes only. He encouraged us students to really just talk to everyone we know, especially our parents, about what they thought and what their experiences were during that time. (if any of you have stories I’d love to hear them! Email me!!) It all really sparked my interest. I feel like I don’t really know THAT much about the war and people’s personal experiences for those who were around my age during that time. Most of the professors and others who spoke last night had been consciencious objectors or avoided serving in the war by one way or another. Some were women who couldn’t be drafted, one professor avoided the draft by joining the peace corps in Africa. Overall a very interesting and somewhat emotional night.

Today was, of course, a big day as well. The election definitely interrupted our usual routine of classes and such, but it was great to watch history happening! Tonight during our “pre-port”about China they showed a short clip of a sort of news story that had been done in 1965 about the Semester at Sea program! It was so funny to see what it was like 50 years ago. The biggest shock was the nearly $20,000 increase in tuition to be in the SAS program from 1965 to now. Haha. Sigh.

Now I’m getting excited for China! We arrive in Hong Kong tomorrow morning (tonight, for you all) we spend 2 days there, then 2 days at sea and then we spend 2 days in Shanghai. After that we head to Japan. It’s crazy to see how fast this trip is going. I’ve got about 5 weeks left here. After 2 ports in Japan we head down to Hawaii (during that time we have two November 22nds because of crossing the international date line! Haha) and we spend Thanksgiving day in Hawaii, then move along to Costa Rica, and then Miami, where the trip ends. Wow. I’ll be sad to have this trip end but I’m also getting excited to go home. I miss my friends and family and Boulder! I miss cooler weather, haha. I miss clean clothes (our laundry schedule is madness!), I miss my car too! I’m excited to be home for Christmas.

Well, I think I’d better go to bed now so I’m ready and awake when we pull into China! Yay!

Send me emails: jmturcios@semesteratsea.net

*peace, love, and YES WE CAN!*

Never been more proud of my country!

Hi everyone!
What an exciting day :-) for me it’s Wednesday afternoon, but for everyone at home it’s Tuesday night, a pretty historical night I’d say! We were lucky enough to get live coverage of the election updates and speeches by McCain and Obama on the ship! We all had to stop using the internet for a few hours so that they could get the video feed to work. So everyone on the ship stopped using the internet and we all crowded into the union where they had screens up showing the live video and it was SO exciting! In a way I wish I could have been at home to experience all the excitement going on there but it was pretty cool to be here also, with everyone else on the ship watching history happen from the middle of the ocean! Obama even mentioned “Americans overseas and in forgotten corners of the world”who were watching, and everyone on the ship cheered. We were glad to hear that! It will be interesting to get to China tomorrow and see if it’s made big news there. I think I’ll see if I can pick up any Chinese newspapers that might talk about the election tomorrow!

Well I’ll write more in the next couple days, I just thought I’d write a little thing about the day’s excitements!

I’m excited to come home now :-)

Goodbye Vietnam...

Well my adventures in Vietnam are coming to an end. We all have to be on the ship tonight, as we are leaving Vietnam tomorrow morning at 6am, which is actually tonight for all of you…oh yeah, that reminds me, Happy Election Day! :-) Make good choices! Hehe. I’ve heard that we’re going to get some kind of live coverage or updates of the election while we’re at sea, but it will take a few days anyways for the final decision to be made so by the time we get to China (on Thursday) maybe we’ll know who our new president is!

So I visited the war museum here a few days ago, it was very intense, interesting, depressing, inspiring…everything. There were some really good photos as part of the displays that I thought was the best part. There was a section dedicated to victims of Agent Orange, which was very sad. And I found out that in fact there are still many people affected by it because for one thing it stays in the soil and when it’s turned for crops and stuff there’s still Agent Orange properties released and children are still being born with pretty horrible birth defects. In fact I saw a few people on the streets begging who I think must have been victims of Agent Orange poison. It’s very sad to see. And awful to think that something bad like that is STILL causing pain and suffering for a lot of people years after the war is over. Anyways there was also an interesting section of the museum that was dedicated to photographers during that time who were killed. Their photographs were displayed and there were little biographies about each photographer. I also really enjoyed seeing the section dedicated to the protests and resistance to the war that was going on all over the world. It wasn’t just Vietnam and the United States either, my friend from Bangladesh recognized a poster written in Bangla, which was promoting peace that was hanging in the museum. There were photos and posters and flags from lots of different countries! Another cool part of the museum was a room filled with artwork of Vietnamese children portraying war, peace, and their views on how war affects the world. It was very cool.

The same day I visited the war museum, I also went to the Notre Dame cathedral downtown, which is a smaller replica of the one in France! It was pretty cool. Then I spent a day on the ship, catching up on homework…it wasn’t the most fun day but it was good to get stuff done. I still have a lot to do but hopefully I can get more done in the next few days. This morning I visited an elementary school as part of an SAS trip, and that was pretty fun! It was a pretty nice school actually. It was the nicest one I’ve visited in any of the countries so far. The kids seemed to get a lot of good resources and materials. They had a computer lab with maybe 60 or 70 computers, where they were learning typing and also working on English. The kids learn English and French for about 30 minutes every day and the rest of the day they are taught in Vietnamese. We got to play with the kids for a little while and then we sat in on a couple classes, just kind of observing from the back of the room. The kids kept asking us to sign their notebooks, like we were celebrities! After the school visit I came back to the ship, ate lunch, took a nap, and then went back out for a few hours to use internet in the food court of a nearby mall. I haven’t been able to post my Vietnam photos yet but hopefully soon! Then I went out for some “Fo”(pronounced something like “Fah”) which is a great Vietnamese dish. It’s kind of like chicken noodle soup but with more exciting things added to it, and you eat it with chopsticks. You can get it with chicken or beef, and it’s very good! After that we returned to the ship, because we are all supposed to be back by 9pm. So tonight I’m just working on some homework, emailing, and writing this blog. I’ve got 2 days at sea and then we arrive in Hong Kong Thursday. We spend 2 days there and then move on to Shanghai.

I guess that’s about it for now…I hope everyone at home is doing well! Keep those emails coming :-)