~ sea-ville ~

home again home again

2007-05-16T17:24:00.001-04:00

somewhere around midnight, I was home. Leland & Joe were at the airport to meet me (bearing Diet Coke, Snapple, and salt bagels). I am forever indebted. More tears.

It was dark -- obviously -- driving home, but there are a few new buildings around, as Charlottesville continues to creep north, and the shadows felt different. Just more leaf-i-ness in the trees, I imagine. When I left, it was the middle of winter.

Elsa was very happy to see me. Lots of jumping and licking, tail-wagging and butt-shaking. It was a worthy welcome home. Casey didn’t come out of hiding until after Leland & Joe left, but he was there immediately after. He’s not purring at me yet, but he also doesn’t seem too pissed off. I missed my critters.

I was up until after 2 a.m., doing I don’t know what. Mostly starting things without finishing them: looking some through the piles of mail, unpacking some, wandering around the house some (Ashley re-arranged). Watching a little tv. Feeling kind of in a daze.

This morning, I woke up as soon as the sun came up. On the ship, we had room darkening shades because there are lights on the deck. I’ve gotten used to absolute pitch dark. I walked Elsa and took a few photos of my real-life to complete the map. My house & my mountains. A bit too hazy for a good view, but very green all around. 100 days later and welcome to spring.

and my puppy-love:

When we were in Himeji Castle in Japan, I was shooting photos of the view from window to window. At some point, I started to whimper to Robin that I wanted a view. I hadn’t even finished my sentence when I realized what I was saying and she already had this quizzical look on her face. I *do* have a view. I have a beautiful, clear view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from my front porch. I live in one of the prettiest places in America. My real-life is pretty darn impressive, when you get right down to it. It’s just going to take me a little while to settle back in.

Today was Target and Harris Teeter and Panera ... walking the footprints of my real-life. I have a few days of decompression before I return to work on Monday.

I had thought about ending this blog with a list of frequently asked questions, just as I had begun. What was your favorite port? What food did you like best? What did you buy? What’s it like working in a tiny little library? What will you miss most? Is it hard being around all those students all the time? Would you do it again? But, I don’t really have sound-bite answers to any of those questions. They are all swirling continuously in my head. All the ports were interesting in different ways. Malaysia was the most surprising. I had no expectations and loved Malaysia. China was emotionally overwhelming. Tiananmen Square got to me in a way I never would have guessed. Vietnam, I assumed would get to me, and indeed it did. Even the neon. Japan is beautiful and the orderliness made me feel so calm and at peace. South Africa was exquisite in every way -- even the sadness, so close to the surface -- and India was mind-numbing equally in every way. I have particular days that stand out: the day Robin & I took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town, the day Mary & Michael & I went to Hiroshima, the day Phoebe & David & Robin & I went shopping in Ho Chi Minh City and Robin & I negotiated the crazy traffic with Lois & Mark on the walk back to the ship. Pretty much any day that involved the Archbishop will be emblazoned in my mind forever. The birthday party for Erika, our workstudy student, who told us ours was the first "work-card" she ever received. There will be lots of other memories that will come to the fore as I’m sure others will fade away. I learned a lot about myself on this trip and a lot about the kind of work I like to do. I enjoyed my little library, but I’m over any illusions of working in a small, specialized library. And I am reminded that a public service desk is not my very favorite place to be. But, I loved working with the faculty. I loved being able to support them directly and find creative ways to meet their needs. I loved trying to find ways to make the library not-so-hard for the students to use, even as the technological situation made this oh-so difficult. I got to actually *do* cataloging again! I enjoyed working with the workstudy students, even when they didn’t do the things we asked. On the last day, Ericka thanked me for teaching her to be a librarian. I loved that. Would I do it again? I’d go the other direction around the world. Losing all the sleep was really hard. The other direction is definitely the better deal in that regard. But, either way you go, it’s a pretty darn cool experience going ‘round the world on a ship at twenty miles per hour. How does this compare to an immersion program? I spent my junior year in Spain, traveling also, but basically living in one place for the year. In Sevilla, that was my home. I felt like I lived there (I *did* live there) and by the end, it felt like *my* city. Here, at the ports, we were tourists. But what stood out here -- and what is largely overlooked in an immersion program -- is the connections between the countries of the world. This trip definitely makes the world smaller. As we went from place to place, we learned how and why people and culture and art and religion migrated around the globe. The world became smaller. And, somehow, with that, hope seems more possible and peace seems more possible. Human connection seems more possible. During his talk the morning of the Virginia Tech massacre, the Archbishop said (heavily paraphrasing) that you can’t have peace without humanity and you can’t have humanity without people and you must turn towards each other rather than away. I learned that in a big way this voyage. I made good friends and my world got smaller. So, yes, I recommend that you all -- if you get the opportunity -- go around the world at 20 miles per hour with a lot of really smart faculty and staff and insanely energetic students. And a Nobel Peace Laureate, for good measure. It was hard and it was exhausting and it was emotional beyond description or belief. But it was a blast.

flying home

2007-05-15T23:58:00.000-04:00

not that I’m in the business of doing commercials but I recommend the Hampton Inn Sea World/Airport next time you are in San Diego. $129, the room was big and beautiful, the beds were oh-so-comfy and white, the shower was really really hot and with strong water pressure, there’s free high speed internet, hot breakfast and a newspaper are included *and* they have a free shuttle to the airport. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Exactly what I needed.

At the time, I didn’t even know how much …

I boarded an 11:25 flight from San Diego. We weighed too much and so they had to come back and add more fuel to the plane. No doubt it had something to do with all the crap the various Semester at Sea passengers were carrying (myself included). There were a number of us on this flight. Somebody should have warned them. So, we sat for a bit. Then, there were thunderstorms on the east coast and so we got re-routed. We arrived an hour late and about 25 minutes before my connection. I ran ran ran to my connecting flight. When we got off the first flight, the board said my C-Ville flight was on time. In the 15 minutes it took me to run run run from where the big cross-country planes come in and then get the shuttle to the rinky-dink terminal where the rinky-dink small planes leave from, the C-Ville flight managed to post a 45 minute delay. So, here I am blogging. The bad news is a) there is no free wireless in this airport and, since I refuse to pay, I’m not posting this now; and b) there is no outlet to be seen where I can plug in my iPod which is not going to last the flight to C-Ville. The good news is a) I reached Leland & Joe, who are graciously meeting me at the airport even though it means a very late night for them, and I reached Ashley, my dogsitter, who is prepared in case my flight gets cancelled in the end; b) I got food, which was good because all I’ve had all day is a biscuit and orange juice at the hotel (despite the hot breakfast they offered me free), since even cross-country planes don’t serve anything more than nuts any more; and c) my body is still on California-time, so it feels 3 hours earlier than it actually is and I’m not yet totally consumed by exhaustion. I just put my laptop back on Eastern Time GMT-05:00 (US & Canada).

I have now officially traveled all the way around the world and I’d really like to be home.

bienvenidos a los estados unidos

2007-05-14T22:01:00.000-04:00

ok, so wrong language. But here we are in San Diego, where of course there is equally much Spanish as there is English. I spent the afternoon with Dawn and Joel in Old Town, where everything is bilingual. We walked around before Old Town dazed and confused by all the everything on the street: Target, PetSmart, Payless, Home Depot, Chipotle, Chilis, Staples, Big Lots, Olive Garden, Holiday Inn, Hilton, Ross, Marshalls, and on and on and on …

But before all that …

the motto of this morning was "hurry up and wait" -- I got up at 6:45 for breakfast, took a quick shower, and then watched us pull into port.

There were families with banners screaming to us from the dock, but honestly not so many people as I expected. I guess they had already figured out there was no point to hurrying up and waiting. There were students on cell phones saying: I’m here … don’t you see me? … I’m wearing lime green … I’m waving … I’m jumping up & down … I’m here … to parents on the other end of the phone line standing on the dock. They were on the opposite side of the terminal building -- past customs -- so they could see us (and we them) as we pulled in, but not once we had docked.

Then the customs officials came aboard (around 8) and they did whatever they do while we sat and waited for further instructions. We moved aimlessly from place to place. It’s odd not to have something we were supposed to be doing. After taking photos of the city and the people screaming for us, eventually many of us gravitated to the faculty/staff lounge where we sat around and whimpered until they kicked us out to start the Customs process. Then we all processed through to pick up the declaration cards that they mistakenly made us fill out in Hawaii.

Then Les McCabe, President of ISE, addressed us on Burma. With the Archbishop in the front row and initiating standing ovations for the students.

Les had sent an ISE response the day before which said that they appreciated the students’ concerns, they were impressed by the student activism, they would form a committee with students from this voyage and alums from previous voyages (students who went to Burma), and they would consult with scholars in the field to make a decision. Les reiterated all of this to a packed audience in the Union and, although I had concerns that forming a committee is pretty much a sign of death, he did convince me otherwise. He seemed genuinely impressed by the students. He said that he’s been involved with ISE for some crazy number of years, students often find a cause they care about over the course of the voyage, and that he has met over 60 voyages at their port of re-entry. But, this was the first time that on re-entry day, the students were not focused on packing and saying goodbye to friends. This was the first time the ship ever arrived with an immediate activist agenda. And then he went on to talk about the committee. The students pushed back during the discussion afterward. They feel a time pressure. On May 27^th, there will be a decision by the military government about whether or not to continue the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi. They wanted ISE to make a statement now (with the Archbishop aboard) that ISE supports the democracy movement in Burma in an ongoing effort to press the U.S. government to press the U.N. to press the military government. They had a big agenda and they thought that with the Archbishop aboard there would be a good press opportunity. Les said ISE understood the time crunch, but they were not prepared to move today. Another student in the discussion spoke to the contrary points -- that going to Burma raises the level of discussion and education, maybe some of our dollars will reach the people who need it, etc., etc. Les said this was a serious counter-argument and exactly why the issue needed to be debated through process. The Archbishop raised his hand to that question and immediately took the podium. Angry. He talked with much anger and passion and, as usual, incredible eloquence and said this answer made him mad. He said that, during apartheid in South Africa, many people were against divestment and sanctions because they felt like economic pressure might hurt the people who most needed their help. His response was: “we don’t need our shackles made more comfortable.” We need to be free. We don’t need our shackles made more comfortable -- that line really got to me …

Les went on to tell the students that they needed to keep the pressure on, they need to stay mobilized, he was very encouraging in all those regards. But, ISE wasn’t prepared to do anything dramatic today nor to take advantage of the Nobel Peace Laureate’s singular access to a microphone. It’ll be interesting to see what happens and whether the students can maintain momentum after they get off the ship.

There were many hands still up in the audience and discussion could have gone on and on and on, but we were interrupted by an announcement that we could begin disembarkation. The Sea that won the Sea Olympics was called to the gangway and the faculty/staff all headed back to our cabins to collect our stuff because we would be next. And, with that, we were in good-bye mode. I met Phoebe in the hall, who was crying-crying. I started crying, I hugged Judyie who started crying, I came down the stairs and there was Miriam. We hugged and she started crying, and then I headed back to my cabin and there was my cabin-steward, Rolando, who hugged me and I was still crying. And then came Robin down the hall and we hugged and there was more crying. And then I collected my stuff and headed back into Purser’s Square where Sherri was crying. And on and on. Except for Giles & Kate who (again, elegant New Yorkers) out-right refused to cry. The disembarkation process turned out to be remarkably orderly. We got off, what’s the opposite of a reception line? a departing line? The administrative team was standing along the gangway every few feet and there was more hugging. Then, we collected luggage, there was UPS, and we were done.

Robin’s partner, David, met her at the ship and he had a truck and they drove me to my hotel. Everyone was pretty much in goal-mode. Collect luggage, find UPS, get a taxi. Robin and I dropped our stuff and David went to the parking lot to retrieve the car.

Since we had a plan, we had the luxury of knowing what we were doing and so I was able to intercept everyone else before they departed. In the end, I did get to see most everyone I wanted to see before we left. Not everyone, but most. Here's my final view of our ship with all her flags:

David and Robin and I had trouble finding the hotel (it has to be around here SOMEWHERE!), but I got a nice tour of San Diego in the process. I was grateful for the ride and it was really most hard to say goodbye to her. The circling around Sea World & the airport at least postponed the trauma a little longer …

Dawn and I had made tentative plans for the afternoon. She and her son, Joel, who was a student on the voyage, were also spending the day in San Diego. We both had random hotels somewhere near Sea World and the airport. Dawn disembarked with the faculty/staff, but her son wasn’t allowed to disembark with her. He had to wait until his student group was called and she had to wait around for him. I had given her my cell number and told her to call when they had a plan. After I dropped my stuff at the hotel, I went in search of lunch. I found some food and just started walking around aimlessly. The hotel is on a very busy road full of all those box stores mentioned above. It was a beautiful San Diego day and so I enjoyed the sunshine and tried to re-enter slowly back into the American universe. And then I heard my name. I looked across the 6-lane road and there were Dawn and Joel. Our hotels, it turns out, were about a 5 minute walk from each other! The three of us decided to take a cab to Old Town and we wandered around there for several hours. I’ve been to San Diego -- and Old Town, actually -- several times in the last couple of years, so it wasn’t so new to me but Joel had never been to California at all. It was a nice afternoon. We found a lovely park and just strolled and decompressed.

Tonight, I’m in the hotel room watching CNN and enjoying free high-speed Internet. It’s been 3 ½ months since the last time I had high-speed Internet. WOW! It’s amazing how fast these photos upload! Other parts of re-entry have already proven difficult, but this one makes me very very very happy!

At the hotel, as Robin and I were saying goodbye, Robin said to the desk clerks that we had traveled ‘round the world together. And they looked totally incredulous as we explained. On the way back with Dawn and Joel in the taxi, the driver asked us where we were from. And we told him we had just come from ‘round the world. He also looked at us incredulous. Actually, his first question was: is that as expensive as it sounds??? Target, PetSmart, Payless, Home Depot, Chipotle, Chilis, Staples, Big Lots, Olive Garden, Holiday Inn, Hilton, Ross, Marshalls ... I’ve been off the ship only seven hours, yet it’s already starting to feel incredulous & un-real.

convocation

2007-05-13T23:13:00.000-04:00

so, first this morning, remember the Archbishop said very nice things about the library at breakfast? Then, tonight there was Convocation to honor the students aboard who are graduating seniors and the shipboard community at large. I processed in with the faculty, which was nice -- I have to say I’ve felt totally part of the faculty and that has worked really well -- and there’s something a bit ego-boosting about standing there with all the students applauding for you. And then the Archbishop spoke and went through a list of things he wondered how we will ever live without: the noontime bridge report (as mentioned by Marvel the other day, how will we ever get our bearings?), Mizraim singing the dining hall, Bob and his ubiquitous guitar … and … excellent library service. “I ask for a book and, at the next port, there is the book I asked for!,” he said with his tell-tale giggle. And then Dean Larry thanked us also during his remarks (he thanked all the staff offices individually) and Sherri & I got a very warm applause. This was a very cool gig.

gmt-8: california time

2007-05-13T18:05:00.000-04:00

we’re all packed, everything has been taken down to deck 2 for holding for tomorrow morning. Both personal bags and 7 boxes of textbooks going off for donation. The library is clean, everything is shelved, in perfect order, and looking beautiful. I have the clean database backed up for UVA plus a video list plus a book list. And Destiny documentation left for the crew IT folks and for Jean. Several crew have stopped me to tell me how happy they are that textbooks are being donated. It must have distressed them in the past also to see them thrown away. This afternoon, I need to work on my end-of-voyage report and then I’m DONE! We’re having a party at 4:00 in the faculty/staff lounge, convocation is tonight, and then I’m sure something celebratory will happen after that. We’re told that tomorrow is nuts and that you don’t get to see anybody you want to see in the chaos and that you should say goodbye to everybody today. That’ll make me nuts. I can only do the goodbye-thing once and I need it to be at the end. But I fear that people will just vanish into the whirlpool of luggage grabbing & UPS shipping & happy families greeting the ship.

I decided to get a hotel room for tomorrow night. Staying on the ship was going to be overly complicated. They won’t let us take luggage off tomorrow if we’re staying tomorrow night. There is no secure location in the warehouse to store our stuff (although this seems hard to believe). Customs won’t let us back on the ship with our stuff once we’ve cleared. So we have to wait until Tuesday morning. When UPS will no longer be there to greet us. Mailing was going to be a headache, disembarkation was going to be a headache, customs was going to be a headache. There’s a big reception onboard tomorrow night for alums -- 1100 people -- and that seemed crazy. I was already having a hard time thinking about watching everybody leave tomorrow morning without me and then the idea of 1100 people I don’t know wandering around *my* ship after all my friends have gone … yuck ... So, I booked a hotel room and I’ll be getting off the ship with everyone else.

Last night we dropped “instruments” into the ocean. There have been a couple different folks from an oceanography institute at UCSD with us for various legs of this voyage. They’ve been dropping things into the ocean along the way to do science. I honestly hadn’t been paying much attention. But, last night, the faculty/staff all signed the last instrument that was being dropped and we stood on deck 4 aft and watched them throw it overboard. It was quite something to watch. I should have paid attention earlier. We actually threw two things overboard. The first was lighter (called a drifter) and it was thrown by hand. The second was heavy and it was strapped to the ship by cables. First it was lowered slowly and then released. Standing in the dark watching these things get sucked in by the wake was really impressive to watch. Swirling and swirling and swirling and swirling before finally sinking into the foam. The plan was for us all to yell something that we wished to throw out into the universe that would help us continue this voyage. These instruments will live in the ocean for a good 10 years or so and we were supposed to send our words and thoughts with it. But there wasn’t a whole lot of yelling. Mostly there were tears and hugging. 'Though Toni did finally yell at the top of her lungs: FACULTY & STAFF, I LOVE YOU! And then more tears and hugging …

I had breakfast today with the Archbishop and Leah. He told me I have a very nice library and that I "did good". Have I mentioned that I am totally in love with the Archbishop??? And we had a Mother’s Day (or Parent’s Day) lunch for Mary and Michael with ice-cream cake and all. It was our last family gathering and we’ve all promised to reunite at Mary & Michael’s cabin in Wisconsin sometime soon.

And, as for the rest of the day … ugh … so many more tears and hugging. This has got to stop …

Wishing happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there, particularly mine.

burma

2007-05-12T23:23:00.000-04:00

keep meaning to blog about Burma. We were supposed to go to Burma. Burma is also called Myanmar, the name given to it by the military regime that controls the country and terrorizes its people. The U.S. refuses to acknowledge the military dictatorship and so continues to call the country by its previous name, Burma. We didn’t go to Burma because the Archbishop refused to sail with us if we did. ISE changed the itinerary to get the Archbishop. Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the democracy movement there, has been imprisoned for her passionate views and she has requested that tourism dollars not be spent in Burma because that money only benefits the military government. She argues that the government has created a façade for tourists that is far from the reality of the people. The Archbishop, in support of Aung San Suu Kyi -- and with a legacy of advocating for divestment in South Africa -- agrees with her strategy of withholding tourism dollars. There are arguments on the other side as well. Previous voyagers who went to Burma talk about how that port really moved them and how going to Burma brings attention and knowledge to the situation there which is not discussed in the U.S. It’s also been noted that egregious human rights violations happen in many of the other counties we visit on this itinerary as well and we have not boycotted those countries. Burma is back on the SAS itinerary for next fall and spring. The students on this voyage have taken it upon themselves in the last few weeks to educate themselves about Burma and they’ve spoken with the Archbishop extensively and they had a teach-in the other night that the Archbishop attended. A group of them is trying to organize a boycott of the Alumni Association Fund Drive to try to get ISE to change the itinerary for those upcoming voyages, they’ve had a petition going around, and they have drafted a very eloquent letter to ISE and to UVA. That letter went out last night with (obviously) support from the Archbishop. Many faculty/staff and life-long-learners have also signed a letter of support and also the petition. Yesterday, we learned that ISE administration will address the community on Monday morning when we arrive in San Diego. I imagine the Archbishop will be in the front row. And it sounds like he also may be prepared to speak. We’ve been talking to students for 3 ½ months about how they are going to go home and change the world. Here they go …

somewhere between hawaii and california

2007-05-11T23:10:00.001-04:00

ugh, not feeling good today. There is definitely stuff going ‘round this ship. My immune system has held up pretty well … until today, but ugh … I slept all morning. Had a little lunch and then Dawn asked me if I’d help proctor an exam. The classroom layout isn’t great on the ship and there are so many students aboard. Many of the rooms are very oddly-shaped and many only have little round bar-tables. With the record number of 702 students, there are 35 students in most classes and that makes the classroom space really really tight. There is no space for folks to spread out. Half of Dawn’s econ class wanted to go to the dining hall where there are big tables and more room. So, I hung out in the classroom with the other half. I was feeling better and proctoring doesn’t require a whole lot of energy, so that was fine. I brought my laptop. I did, though, have to be conscious of typing very quietly. As my staff will tell you, I type very loudly. Annette tells me that’s how she knows whether or not I’m in my office, she can hear me typing. Typing softly was a challenge!

And then I worked the rest of the afternoon. We have a ton of donated textbooks. Thanks much to Barbie at UVA, Jill at ISE, and Ron on the ship, we’ve figured out a way to ship textbooks to Better World Books who will then distribute them to various literacy organizations. In the past, they’ve mostly been incinerated with the ship’s other trash. But, we’ve got mailing labels and we’ve got a way to get them off the ship and taken to UPS. The only remaining challenge is boxes. I put a big box in the Union that overfilled immediately. There are two other boxes in the library. Books are currently stacked on the floor in the Union and tomorrow I need to figure out what to do about that. Today was the final due date for all library books. Many came in, but not anywhere close to all. We’d said we’d bill tomorrow for any unreturned books, so we’ll see how that goes. Billing for all things needs to be closed by midnight tomorrow night. All the reserves are out of the computer. Tomorrow, we’ll peel off labels and reshelve. The students who were working tonight were supposed to shelf-read their areas. Hopefully, they listened … We had volunteers shelving today, so we’re caught up there until tomorrow’s returns and reserve shelving. So, I’m feeling in pretty good shape. Sherri and I will be in the library most of the day tomorrow, likely, but we’re not opening normal hours. There are parties and other events starting at 4:00 and I feel pretty confident we can be more or less done by then. Sunday, I have a handful of things to do, like backing up the cataloging records to bring back to UVA, generating updated video lists and such, deleting patron records. Nothing that should take any real time. Just final things to cross off the to-do list.

Today was B-finals day. Everyone is ecstatic to be done. Faculty are franticly grading. Grades are due tomorrow at 5:00. As for personal packing, I have one bag packed and two boxes packed. We have to have luggage outside our doors by Sunday at 10 a.m. Things are a little confusing for me because I’m staying on the ship Monday night with the administrative team. I was given luggage tags for the faculty/staff group, but I think I need ones for the administrative group. We’re hoping that the administrative team’s luggage will be off-loaded on Monday, we’ll go through Customs with everyone else (yes, it turns out we have to go through Customs again -- the Customs officials made a mistake in Hawaii), and then our luggage will be held somewhere secure until Tuesday. But, that hasn’t been confirmed yet. I’m hoping that for 2 reasons: 1) I don’t want to have to transport my own luggage! and 2) I want to mail my boxes when UPS greets the ship on Monday. But, it may mean that I don’t get to disembark with the faculty/staff in the morning (they are the 2^nd group to disembark after the sea that won the Sea Olympics). The admin team will go last after everyone else gets off. They expect the first students to get off at 11 am and the last students to get off at 4 pm. I’d like to have the afternoon in San Diego, but I’m guessing that won’t happen. Dawn invited me to bum around San Diego with her and her son Joel, which would be nice, but I don’t know whether I’ll be able to catch up with them later in the day or not. My flight home leaves 11-ish on Tuesday morning.

Tonight, we had a mandatory disembarkation meeting. And they did a logistical pre-port event in imitation of the others we have done along the way: kinds of food you should be sure to eat in America, useful phrases in “American”, things you need to know about the culture in America, how their toilets work, etc. It was cute. And then there was a segment on news. Some of the things we’ve missed in the last 3 ½ months. Something about Paris Hilton going to jail, people trying to get Al Gore to reconsider running, the Republican debate last week, and the fact that Boris Yeltsin died. Somehow, we totally missed that. For a group of students and faculty traveling around the world to learn about the world, we are woefully uninformed about current news. Frightening, frankly. And then Marvel, one of the mental health folks on board, talked about re-entry and how to talk about the enormity of this trip when everyone at home really only wants sound-bites and how to stay connected to the experience. She was really good. She has done this trip many times and so she knows wherefrom she speaks.

We lose an hour tonight and another hour tomorrow night and then we’re on California time. Today at the noontime bridge report we learned we were half-way between Hawaii and California. One of the things Marvel said tonight was, without the noontime bridge report, how will I ever know where I am? Or where I am going? Indeed.

to my blog readership

2007-05-10T23:09:00.000-04:00

I’ve been getting a number of very nice emails these past few days from folks telling me that they have enjoyed this blog. I have really loved doing it. I wasn’t sure at the start what I would think of providing running commentary on my life, but it’s been a blast. I’ve never journaled before. I find that I spend a lot of my day thinking about what I’m going to tell you all. You people out there in cyberspace. It has made me take much more notice of where I stand in relation to what’s going on around me. And to pay attention to what I’m thinking about. I’ve enjoyed this opportunity that you have all given me.

Thank you for reading. I don’t know how many of you are out there in total, but I do know that you people in the blogosphere are friends and family and colleagues. Knowing you have been there reading has been really wonderful. I also know that there is a group of you that I don’t know at all. I’ve been told that this blog’s been out there on the MSN message board and I know that Semester at Sea parents are reading (I know that RD Erika’s mom is out there somewhere, hi Erika’s mom! …) and I know that bits and pieces have been picked up by others at UVA and at the Institute for Shipboard Education. I hope I’ve given you all a taste of what this experience was like. And I ask that you remember that this same voyage is very different for each one of us. I’ve linked to the other blogs at left so that you can read some of the same experiences from other perspectives. I’m looking forward to actually going back after this voyage and reading those other blogs more closely.

At the very beginning of this voyage, Gloria gave me some journaling tips. She journals on all her field research trips to Panama and she sends them in emails back home to a list of about 70 people -- friends, colleagues. I had mentioned that I was having a hard time with having such a disperse audience (this was before it even occurred to me that people who I didn’t even know would be reading this). Gloria said she writes for the people dearest to her heart and then she reads it over VERY carefully once more before she hits "send" … to make sure it’s really ok for everybody else! So, this is what I’ve done. I hope I’ve made a connection with the people who know me best and I imagine those who don’t have found something interesting in my experience to have kept on reading.

David teaches writing and he’s been telling me this whole voyage that I should go back and re-read the blog from the start. I haven’t done that yet, but I imagine I will do so when I get home. To remember where I was in my head back over 100 days ago. And to see if these musings really did capture what this experience was like for me. These three months have felt like a lifetime and no time at all. Thanks to you all in cyberspace for traveling with me around the world. You’ve been great company.

happy birthday to me

2007-05-09T23:14:00.000-04:00

last night at open mike, one of the students, Ryan, told a story about Hawaii that I had also experienced. Everywhere else we’ve been, when you get off the ship and you run into a group of American students, they belong to us. Likely half of them are wearing Semester at Sea attire, but even without that, they are highly recognizable as being one of us. As we were walking around Hawaii and I’d see clusters of students, I kept thinking them to be from SAS until it struck me as odd that I didn’t really recognize a single one of them. And then I remembered/realized there are many other groups of American students here! They are not all us …

After open mike, the deans threw an end-of-voyage-party. I told Miriam that she was the life-long-learner I was going to miss most. And she got all teary, I nearly made her cry! I’m not sure that I’ve blogged about Miriam. I like her a lot. She has biting humor. She is very sarcastic and she makes me laugh. She’s another one who always says exactly what everyone else is thinking. During our first conversation, we were on a small boat back to the ship from Itaparica Island in Brazil and I asked her about her family. She said very calmly and sweetly that she had four children and a myriad of grandchildren and that, after this voyage, she would be having a birthday-of-note and that they had better all show up, goddamnit. She says everything so conversationally all in the same tone of voice, so you don’t see it coming. I enjoy Miriam.

This morning was crazy in the library. Yesterday was study-day A and, although I was there to open at 8:00, I don’t think there was a single user until about 11:00. Everyone slept in. Judyie said that she felt like she kept saying hello to the same six people over and over, that only 6 people must be awake on this whole ship. But, today (exam-day A), the dining hall was packed at 7:45, there was business looking for me at breakfast at 7:59 and it never stopped. Faculty in last minute panic about printing out exams, students grumbling over the fact our stapler is broken *again*, our printer was out of toner and then replaced but still not working, and lots of books being returned and lots of books still being checked out. And things coming off reserve. And I’m trying to get rid of those last videos that still need attention ... and still working on documentation … We got a few volunteers in the library this afternoon, since we’ve cut back on workstudy hours so that the students can study. The students are mostly working evenings. Kate and Shannon helped us shelve and (un)process reserves and that was very helpful. When I told Erika that we had volunteers, her response was "but how will they know what to do?" ... it made me smile that the workstudy students have clearly taken responsibility for the library!

And then tonight our extended family had a pizza party. I took some family photos:

Victor, Katie, Mary:

Erika, Ryan:

Andrea, Amanda:

Jennifer, in her beautiful midnight blue saree, which she modeled for me:

My whole family, back row: Jennifer, Victor, Ryan, Michael, Mary, Andrea; front row: Erika, Katie, Amanda.

At the end, we played Apples to Apples, which thanks to Rich & Laura has traveled all the way around the world. And then there was a birthday cake! Before I became part of Mary & Michael's extended family, they had scheduled everybody’s birthdays and “invented” birthdays for the students whose real birthdays didn’t occur during the voyage. I missed the original scheduling and my birthday is in November, so it would have had to have been invented anyway, but tonight after the party a cake arrived! And Mary gave me a little bag she made. Andrea made me a card -- Aunt Erin. It was very sweet and I was very surprised. And it made me teary and almost made me cry. Everybody is pretty much on the verge of tears around here. At the party tonight, Katie said that she’s never felt such conflicting strong emotions before: so sad to be leaving the ship and, simultaneously, very happy to be going home. We’re all in that space right now. 4 days left.

ice cream & thank-you’s

2007-05-08T20:37:00.000-04:00

Ron, our Assistant Dean, hosted an ice-cream party this evening for all the workstudy students on the voyage. It was also barbecue night, it was one of those nights where I’ve eaten so much I feel like I will never need to eat again … I’ve been polling my workstudy students the last couple of days on a few different questions:

Ericka

Notable fact: She throws all spelling-assumptions to the wind. No, I didn't misspell her name, it has both a "c" and a "k" -- Ericka.
What will you miss most? Friends.
What are you looking most forward to about going home? My other friends. [Actually, the other day, she told me it was Taco Bell, but when I asked her formally, she said this instead ...]
When we were sitting in the piano bar at the beginning of the voyage -- workstudy students getting assignments and meeting their supervisors -- and you learned that you would be working in the library, what was the first thing that crossed your mind? That’s the job I wanted.
What was the best part of working about the library? Getting to meet people.
Would you recommend Semester at Sea? Definitely!

Lindsay

Notable fact: Lindsay shaved her head for Neptune Day but didn’t tell any of her friends or family until her parents came to Vietnam for the Parent Trip. They found out when they watched her come off the gangway. Lindsay had a long post on her blog after Neptune Day talking about all the people who shaved their heads, but neglected to mention that she had done so also. Before Neptune Day, she had long-long blond hair all the way down her back.
What will you miss most? The change and sense of adventure and chaos.
What are you looking most forward to about going home? Good food. What I want and when I want.
When we were sitting in the piano bar ... and you learned that you would be working in the library, what was the first thing that crossed your mind? hmmm, I wanted to work in the Administrative office.
What was the best part about working in the library? Meeting people I wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Would you recommend Semester at Sea? Yes, but I’d encourage people to consider other similar programs also.

Notable fact: An calls both Sherri and me “boss”. Hey boss. At first, it felt really uncomfortable, but I’ve grown to like it. I'm really going to miss hearing An's voice around the corner: Hey boss.
What will you miss most? The ports.
What are you looking most forward to about going home? My car, my sofa, my television, my food, friends. Mostly my car.
When we were sitting in the piano bar ... and you learned that you would be working in the library, what was the first thing that crossed your mind? what the … ?
What was the best part about working in the library? The whole educational experience (... BS … says Sherri, before he even finishes his sentence…)
Would you recommend Semester at Sea? Hell, yes … I mean, yes, of course …

Erika

Notable fact: Erika’s boyfriend is Ryan who is one of my nephews in my extended family. So, Erika is my niece-in-law in addition to being my workstudy student. Erika & Ryan were together before they came on this trip. They both go to San Diego State and they are one of a handful of couples who came on this voyage together. I told them the other day that I wanted to be invited to their wedding. They both looked at me fairly horrified!
What will you miss most? Going around the world.
What are you looking most forward to about going home? Seeing my baby cousins.
When we were sitting in the piano bar ... and you learned that you would be working in the library, what was the first thing that crossed your mind? I’m working with the person who is from my home town [that would be Sherri].
What was the best part about working in the library? Ice-cream cake birthdays.
Would you recommend Semester at Sea? Of course, my sister is doing it.

Roxy

Notable fact: Roxy is from King of Prussia, so like Sherri/Erika, Roxy and I are also from the same general area. There was mall-talk the other day, in fact …
What will you miss most? Fun activities, like the Sea Olympics and talent show. And waking up in a new country every few days.
What are you looking most forward to about going home? Seeing my family and friends.
When we were sitting in the piano bar ... and you learned that you would be working in the library, what was the first thing that crossed your mind? I thought it’d be good because I’d get to meet a lot of people.
What was the best part about working in the library? All the people, it's the most social place to work.
Would you recommend Semester at Sea? Of course!

Clearly, I've got a very social crew! They've been great and they've given super customer service (never mind the part that they don't always give out the right information! ...). But they've been really reliable and they jump at anything we ask and, all in all, they've been really good to work with. And they all tolerated the fact that when they showed up on day 3, Sherri and I had absolutely no idea what we were doing yet, so it was difficult to train them and figure out what we needed for them to do. I've enjoyed working with all of them. At the end of the ice-cream party, Erika got up and thanked Ron for the workstudy program and said that many of them would not have been able to do this voyage without that support. We were glad to provide it and the library couldn't have run successfully without them!

aloha

2007-05-07T22:21:00.000-04:00

a very pleasant day in Hawaii. There was much confusion in the morning. As mentioned yesterday, we thought we were doing only immigration & not customs. But then, last minute, we were asked to fill out customs declaration forms also. Which none of us were really prepared to do. And that, of course, meant we could mail things after-all, but I wasn’t prepared for that either … we were awakened, though, as promised -- that part happened without delay -- at 6 am. The Deans sang to us at 6 am over the very-loud-speaker.

I spent the morning at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. After just being in Hiroshima, this was very different. The Hiroshima Peace Park seemed to me to be about healing. It was a place for people to come and pray and pay witness to the horror of what happened there. The Arizona Memorial seemed to be a historical account of what happened there. It was about war. You see a 20-minute movie that starts with Japanese aggression in 1931 and ends with Midway. “The tide of the war turned with Midway” and then the movie ends. Then you take a shuttle-boat out to the memorial itself which is the sunken USS Arizona with still 1000 people buried within. It’s a tomb. It is very beautifully done and there is a really impressive marble wall with the names of the dead, but they are marching tourists through on a 15-minute schedule. It’s a graveyard, but it’s hard to have time to stop and really reflect. At Hiroshima, you walked around the museum and the park at your own pace, doing whatever you needed to do absorb the enormity of the event. At Pearl Harbor, we were told a lot about the enormity of the event, but you are not given enough time to take it in. The memorials were also similar in interesting ways. As mentioned in my Japan post, the Hiroshima museum significantly tones down the issues of Japanese aggression. At Pearl Harbor, not once are we told that the U.S. ended the war by dropping nuclear bombs on Japan. The movie ends with Midway. I found that kind of astounding. It’s all about who tells the story.

The Arizona memorial is quite moving, I don’t mean to imply otherwise. It just feels primarily more like a tourist attraction than did Hiroshima, although Hiroshima is quite so also. The Hiroshima memorial (much like the Vietnam Vet memorial in D.C.) allows the visitor more time and space.

We did a little bit of a city tour after, seeing the National Cemetery:

And the statue of Kamehameha I, who established the kingdom of Hawaii in 1810:

We learned that Honolulu has the only state capitol building in the U.S. without a dome. And we learned that, despite customary practice, Hawaii does not fly the U.S. flag along with the Hawaii flag on it's public buildings. They are very happy to be a state (we were told), but like to hold on to that bit of independent resistance.

We got back to the ship late (we left late after all the customs confusion) and I was supposed to meet Kate & Robin for the afternoon, but they had already left. I ran into Dawn and we caught up with the others at a restaurant on the waterfront. I had a burger and endless refills of Diet Coke, which made me unbelievably happy after 3 ½ months. We walked around Honolulu in search of a post office and a pharmacy to run a few errands and then Dawn and I walked to the beach. We had three goals: post office, pharmacy, beach. In most places, if we went out with three goals and achieved just one of them we felt proud! It was always a cultural experience, but initial goals were quite often hard to meet. Here, we set out with three goals and accomplished three goals. It was very exciting! It definitely helps when you can speak the language and read the signs. The beach was small but lovely. Not Waikiki or any of the other famous, beautiful beaches … it seemed like a beach for normal people, but that was just lovely. We watched kids swim in the ocean. The water was colder than I expected.

And then we met back up with Robin and with Joyce and Bob and had a lovely dinner again on the waterfront. I had scallops and salad and endless refills of Diet Coke.

This scene struck me as funny. It was this morning as we waited in the Union for the trips to depart. Students back in U.S. cell-phone-contact:

Flickr photos for Hawaii are up at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/-erin/sets/72157600191044520/
Aloha and welcome home to the United States.

02:03:04 05/06/07

2007-05-06T21:34:00.000-04:00

today at four seconds past three minutes past two a.m., the time/date was 02:03:04 05/06/07. I didn’t wake up to experience this once in a century event, but it definitely is worth taking note of.

It was sort of an odd day today. The library was unusually quiet. It’s the day before port and the last day of classes. The Global Studies exam was this morning. Normally the day before port, there is heavy traffic in travel guides, but not so this time. Either folks already know what they are doing in Hawaii or they are not doing much. We’re only there for the day, anyway. Mostly what I’ve heard is that the students who were jealous of their friends’ sky-diving adventures in South Africa are planning to sky-dive in Hawaii. And lots of people are counting the hours to the return to U.S. cell phone service so that can talk to friends/family at the cost of normal minutes. And then there’s the beach. I have a morning trip planned to Pearl Harbor (I’m a trip leader) and my afternoon is free. I’d like to walk along the beach also. My original plan was to mail some packages home, but they are not letting us take anything off the ship. We’ll be going through immigration in Hawaii, but not Customs. So, we’re not allowed to take any more off the ship than we need for our one day stop in Hawaii. No boxes and no large backpacks. And no food, except for sealed bottled water. That news put a damper in a lot of people’s plans. I would like to find a UPS store, or even a CVS, for a few packing supplies. I have tape, but no markers. Robin has bubble wrap. I currently have 2 boxes and was going to pack them tonight so that I had a sense of whether I needed to buy more, but it’s a busy night. Don’t know that I’ll get that done. Plus, I’m really hoping I don’t need more than 2 boxes …

We’re told immigration is going to start at 6:00 am tomorrow. They’ll wake us up for face-to-face meetings with the immigration officers and we’ll get our passports back and our immunization cards back and then we hold on to them for the duration. We’ll officially be back in the United States. I’d like to get up early to watch us dock, but that’ll be REALLY early tomorrow and we lose another hour of sleep tonight. I don’t know that I can make that happen. I’ll get up for San Diego.

I’ve gotta say, I’m kind of looking forward to understanding the money without having to do math, I’m looking forward to easily finding an ATM, and I’m looking forward to being able to read the signage. I’m also looking forward to -- in principle -- finding toilet paper in the ladies room. And, even though it was very interesting to read other countries’ impressions of the U.S., I’d like to get my hands on an American newspaper. It should be a nice day.

welcome back to the tropics

2007-05-05T23:33:00.000-04:00

it’s rainy & warm & humid outside again. When did that happen?? I was inside for lunch today because I sat down at a table with inside-sitting-folks, but I didn’t really pay attention. When I went up for a mid-afternoon snack of Diet 7-Up and popcorn, the pool-deck was flooded-wet. Water, water, everywhere. Somehow, it’s possible to be on a boat and not even notice it’s pouring …

Today, we spent a lot of the day watching the crew fix the fire door that slammed the other afternoon when the ship lurched. A whole bunch of crew climbing on ladders, taking apart the ceiling, the mechanical apparatus that operates the door, etc. etc. It was a very big operation. After it was all reassembled and the ceiling panels were put back together and the lights were all turned on again, a higher-ranking crew member walked through (the rest were already gone) and he was clearly not satisfied. I dunno, it all looked pretty perfect to me. (But, then again I hadn't noticed it was raining either ...) As I was leaving the library, he was back with the other crew looking again at the ceiling and the lights. You can’t imagine how meticulously the crew cares for this ship. Everything is immaculate always. If a piece of paper or a tissue drops to the floor, there’s a crew member appearing out of nowhere to pick it up. There are crew who are -- everyday -- polishing the hand-rails. A lot of it is for health concern (disinfecting), because they don’t want anything contagious going around the ship, but the general level of cleanliness & shine far out-ranks any 5-star hotel. They are big into perfection!

Aside from watching the crew fix the fire-door … I did quite a bit of catalog data-cleanup today. Felt good, I accomplished a lot and (aside from the very un-ergonomic desk conditions), it functions a bit for me as mindfulness meditation! I hope, when I bring these records back to my staff at UVA, that they are kind. We did a lot of work this voyage, but there is still much to be done. There are still a bunch of brief records here-and-there for books and I still have a last stack of original VHS cataloging that I haven’t had time to get through. The only VCRs are in the classrooms, which are hard to come-by. I could try to finish them off during finals week. Or, I’m trying to decide whether they are worth shipping back to UVA or whether we should just leave the brief records in there …

David & Phoebe hosted a “clean-up” party tonight. To finish up the snacks (both crunchy & liquid) that we have all accumulated over the course of this voyage. Every time we found a supermarket, it was so exciting that we bought all we could. I contributed bagel chips & granola bars that I bought I-can’t-even-remember-now-when-or-where. Phoebe & David have a cabin that is much nicer than many, but still much too small to comfortably seat the 18 people that were there tonight. We were on the sofa and on the bed and on the floor and standing all over the place. I wanted my photos to give you the perspective of all those people in a very small space, but I’m not sure I succeeded. Here are a few photos from the evening:

Joyce, Kate, Dawn, Bob:

Vladdy, Gene, Arnie:

Phoebe & Gloria (I love this photo!):

Bob, Monty, Michael:

Robin, Mary, Joyce, Kate, Dawn:

Here are a few scrunched photos. Standing are David, Giles, Phoebe, and Gloria. In front of the sliding glass door is Joyce. What you can’t see is that Robin is seated to the left next to Joyce, Mary in between them on the floor, and Kate, Dawn, and Bob are on the sofa. Pretend that last photo was behind this photo. What you see at the front of this photo is the bed. There were A LOT of us in that space between the bed and the sliding glass door. And again, Phoebe & David have a VERY nice cabin. To give you some perspective of living quarters on the ship …

In this one, standing are Giles, Gene, Arnie, Phoebe and Gloria, and behind them blocked by Gloria and Phoebe are Robin, Mary, Joyce, Kate, Dawn, and Bob. Between Phoebe and the door. Crazy, but fun.

The night ended with a performance by more of Judyie’s theatre classes. For their finals, the students in the directing class directed a play, Stop-Kiss, with each student responsible for directing a scene. The scenes were then voted on by the class and the winning scenes were performed publicly. One of my nieces, Jen, was directing a scene and one of the faculty spouses was one of her actors (the actors were taken from all over the community). But, unfortunately their scene didn’t make the cut. The playwriting class also did readings tonight. They were all fabulous and it was very fun to watch.

Today was the last A-class-day and tomorrow is the last B-class-day. Monday, we'll be in Honolulu. We're all a bit sappy and sickeningly overly-reflective.

do you know that you are beautiful?

2007-05-05T17:58:00.000-04:00

... asked the Archbishop as he went from table to table and laid his hands on our shoulders last night at the Ambassador’s Ball. I’m glad I went, if just for that one moment. The Ball was nice. Dinner definitely beat out the normal ship fare. Everyone was dressed up fancy and all of our favorite dining hall crew pulled out the stops for us. There was unscheduled lag time between dinner and dancing/dessert, which was sort of confusing and unexpected and so many faculty/staff detoured back to the faculty/staff lounge for wine and pleasant conversation. My photos didn’t come out great because of the yellow-ish ship lighting which was darkened, of course, for ambiance, but here are a few pictures of the evening.

Desmond & Leah Tutu:

Erika (one of our workstudy students) and her boyfriend, Ryan (my nephew, from my extended family):

Lindsay (another of our workstudy students) and her boyfriend, Ivan:

Andrea (left, my niece) with a friend:

Watching the students congregating in Purser’s Square, from above:

Giles and Kate (they are New Yorkers, can’t you tell???):

Crazy sculpted eagle-dessert:

I’m sure this trip will feel like a dream six months from now. Not least, the part about traveling the world with a Nobel Peace Laureate. This morning he called us "scrumptious" ... I’m trying to soak it in while I can …

mostly horizontal

2007-05-03T23:57:00.000-04:00

i spent most of the day today horizontal. We're moving much too much in my opinion and I’m not even nearly as ill as others. I can’t keep my eyes open, which they do say is low-grade sea-sickness. I actually think it’s a combination of things -- the movement plus the time changes plus end-of-voyage emotion and stress. It’s knocking me out. I slept and slept -- fortunately Sherri & I haven’t been sea-sick simultaneously, so we’ve conveniently alternated coverage as needed. There is a fire door that separates the library from the stairwell & the Union and this afternoon it slammed shut crazy-fast and crazy-loudly as the ship lurched far to the right (starboard). There were immediately 6 crew standing there chatting about the door. That probably was not supposed to happen …

I did come in for a bit (saw the fire door slam) and I am here again now, 8:00-9:00, to cover one of our students who wanted to go to a show tonight. The acting classes are putting on a show -- last night and tonight. I went last night and it was very fun. It was called “The 13^th Port” and was totally written, directed, sung, acted by the class. They were great and it was really enjoyable to see them do their thing.

This morning was the last discussion group for Global Studies. Some went ok, some went not-so-ok, it was an interesting experiment. Consensus mainly was that we should have done this from the beginning. Tomorrow, the Archbishop is speaking.

Lots of studying happening in the library, but even more than that are group projects. The library has some of the only large-ish tables on the ship, so groups are spread out there and along the bar. We have to climb over folks to move around the library. The show is taking place in the Union and someone just came out of there into the library to tell students they shouldn’t be doing papers, they should go see some theatre instead. That’s definitely one of the challenges here on the ship, many, many extracurricular options … although the students in the library all looked up at him and then went back right on studying. The music is pretty loud, so I will likely get to hear the show all over again.

Another time change tonight -- we’ll be 7 hours behind the East Coast and closing in …

may second the second

2007-05-02T21:11:00.000-04:00

may 2nd is Sage's birthday. Toni teaches psychology and women's studies and Sage is her 11-year old daughter. Here's how cool it is to be a kid on a ship going around the world: first, if your birthday is may 2nd, 2007, you get to have your birthday twice. And, if that weren't cool enough, you get to have the Archbishop and Leah Tutu come to your birthday party. AND, they coming bearing gifts. For my part, it seemed kind of mind-boggling (forget even the whole part about traveling round the world at the age of 11!). For Sage's part, she was just running around happy as can be cutting cake (the most giant round birthday cake you've ever seen) for the Desmond & Leah Tutu and for all of us and for all the dining-hall crew.

here’s what wikipedia says about the international dateline:

The International Date Line (IDL), also known as just the Date Line, is an imaginary line on the surface of the Earth opposite the Prime Meridian which offsets the date as one travels east or west across it. Roughly along 180° longitude, with diversions to pass around some territories and island groups, it corresponds to the time zone boundary separating +12 and −12 hours GMT (UT1). Crossing the IDL travelling east results in a day or 24 hours being subtracted, and crossing west results in a day being added.

The first date-line problem occurred in association with the circumnavigation of the globe by Magellan's expedition (1519–1522). The surviving crew returned to a Spanish stopover sure of the day of the week, as attested by various carefully maintained sailing logs. Nevertheless, those on land insisted the day was different. Although now readily understandable, this phenomenon caused great excitement at the time, to the extent that a special delegation was sent to the Pope to explain this temporal oddity to him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Date_Line

After today, instead of being ahead of the East Coast, we are now behind the East Coast. Yesterday, we were 15 hours ahead and now we are magically 9 hours behind. Too much math for me … I don’t get it.

Nor does my computer for that matter, which keeps reverting to May 3^rd, even though I keep changing the setting to May 2^nd. The desk computer is having a very hard time calculating due-dates as well.

I went to bed at 6:30 last night. I went to dinner about 6:15 and it was totally un-inspirational, so I went back to my cabin and laid down instead. I slept until 8:45 (pm) when I got up to change my clothes and get ready for real-sleep. And I slept until my alarm went off at 8:00 am this morning. Yipes. I was pretty drained.

Japan photos are up at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/-erin/sets/72157600170121524/ so I believe I'm all caught up now.

The weather outside is windy and cool, and so the seas are a bit rough again today. We've learned that the advantage of having the reserve shelves full is that the books stay much more secure. Despite the bookends, they've been sliding back and forth along the glass shelves today as the ship rocks. I'm going to miss my little library. I was talking about my real-job with some folks the other day and, when I said that UVA adds more than 60,000 books each year, I realized that is 6 times the number of books in the collection here. Each year at UVA, we add the size of this library more than 6 times over. That's kinda crazy, when you think about it. Don't anyone shoot me for asking this, but do we really need all those books????

may second the first

2007-05-02T00:18:00.000-04:00

today is the first May 2^nd. It’s a quieter day than others for which I am very grateful. And it was taco-day for lunch, for which I am also very grateful. I made a little headway getting photos up. The China flicker set is up at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/-erin/sets/72157600166556242/ Japan still to come.

Library business was moderately busy, but people seem mostly drained and sleepy from all the time changes. The seas are rougher today than normal. When we opened the library this morning, we noticed the crew had put barf-bags on the desk. I had some small things fall to the floor overnight. I’m doing ok, although I did put the sea-sickness bracelets back on. Moral support, if nothing else.

Joe emailed today to ask about picking me up at the airport. I guess it’s that soon, I need to start making those sorts of arrangements …

who needs corptime?

2007-05-01T08:34:00.000-04:00

when I was working on my annual report for UVA, I opened up CorpTime for the first time since January. CorpTime is our electronic calendaring system. There was a whole mess of meetings in my inbox. Not sure how I can be scheduled for so many meetings when I'm not even there?? Might anybody care to explain?

No CorpTime here, but still much too much going on all at once. Last night, as mentioned, was the crew talent show. Tonight was a charity auction. Every moment is planned. At first, I was enjoying the meeting-less culture (so different from UVA), but it’s just a different kind of perpetual scheduling here. After working all day, tonight at 5:00 we had a life-boat drill, at 6:00 we had a faculty-dinner-meeting where a group of faculty are discussing the various challenges of teaching in this kind of environment and where I was to address some research issues, at 6:30 (for which I was 1/2 hour late), was a birthday party for one of Mary & Michael’s adopted kids (my nephew, as we’re calling these weird extended relationships), at 8:00 was Community College where Robin was presenting on Japonisme & Impressionism, at 9:00 was the charity auction. I left about 10:30 and should have just gone to sleep, but decided to check email … and then blog … first. I’m not sure precisely when students get any studying done … Although, of course, they are also willing to stay up all night long …

I left the auction just after Dr. Matt paid $175 to throw a pie in the face of Dean Mike. I bid on navigational maps earlier in the silent auction -- the printed maps the crew use to mark our route and position, signed by the crew. I stopped at $160, which already seemed frighteningly high, and they finally went for $300. All sorts of things were getting auctioned off, folks who have vacation homes and condos put weekends up for people to bid on, folks with season sports tickets put up various sets, there were handmade necklaces and such, and purchases that people have made along the way but have decided they no longer want to lug home. I imagine they’ll tell us the final tally tomorrow. Students were paying *a lot* of money for all sorts of things. It was a little bit astonishing.

We lose another hour of sleep tonight. Tomorrow, we are at GMT +11 and then the following day, we cross the international date line. We’re going to get back the 24 hours that we’re losing on the course of this voyage. May 2^nd will happen twice. Tomorrow will be Wednesday, May 2^nd and the following day will also be Wednesday, May 2^nd. Isn’t that the weirdest thing? Hard to wrap my brain around. Everybody has been complaining that it is unfair that we have lost all the time in sleep and we are gaining it back as a regular work/class day … it is indeed most unfortunate ...

thinking about thinking about winding down

2007-04-30T23:23:00.000-04:00

our free-sites issue with the UVA databases got fixed this evening. There were many other sites also that were on the “free” list (meaning students don’t need to pay for minutes) that weren’t working properly either. Not just UVA. I’m glad it’s fixed and I’d really like this to be the end of our technology woes.

Today, we started pulling materials off reserve. I asked all the faculty to let us know what they no longer need on reserve, so that we can start to move materials back into the general collection. I’m fine with keeping everything that’s needed on reserve, but if some materials can come off now, I’d prefer not to have to do it all at the end. We had stacks and stacks and stacks of books piled high (and falling off) the desk today. By, the end of the day when they were all taken off reserve and reshelved in the stacks, and I looked back at the reserve shelves, there are still a ton of books up there. Nothing compared to UVA, of course, but still many for us. Sherri and I were taking stabs at what percentage of the reserve materials actually ever circulated … but I won’t post our guesses in the blog … More will come off in the next few days, though I imagine there will still be a lot until the end. It was a pretty productive day. Sherri made collection development decisions on all the textbook-like things. We got everything taken care of that we could. My goal in the next 8 days before Hawaii is mainly system documentation. We’ve got the software figured out pretty well now and we just need to write it all up for the future voyages.

Global Studies -- the class that the whole shipboard community attends -- is taking a new turn for the next 5 days. We are having short introductory remarks and then breaking into small group discussions for the duration of the class (30-40 minutes). I am co-facilitating a small group and we have 15 students -- the same students everyday for the next 5 days. (Usually students attend Global Studies (or don’t) in whatever classroom they choose.) Attendance will count as points towards the final exam. The second to last day before Hawaii will be the Archbishop, the last day will be a group of students talking about impact and activism, and then the final exam. We’re trying to use these small group discussions to move from information overload to a time for processing and reflecting on everywhere we’ve been and how we can use what we have learned to guide the world forward. It’s not an inconsequential goal for the very short amount of time we have left …

And then there was the crew talent show. They were great. There were a whole number of crew we’ve never seen before (folks who work in the engine room, the laundry, etc.) and then there were our favorite people from the dining hall and the purser’s desk and our cabin stewards … They sang and danced and played music and did stand-up and carved ice sculptures while the crew in the background all sang We Are the World (there goes another scary high-school flashback …)

Clocks go forward tonight an hour. We lose an hour every night for very many nights from here to Hawaii. Ugh …

meet george jetson

2007-04-29T18:23:00.000-04:00

i took 6 months of Japanese long long ago. Here’s the sum total of what I remember: konnichiwa (hello), ohayo gozaimas (good morning), arigato (thank you) and I can count to five: ichi, ni, san, shi, go. Actually, in a game the other night with some students, I realized I can count to five in about a dozen different languages. Higher, only in Spanish. Hello & thank you has gotten me pretty far in all the other countries and so far so good here. Knowing how to count would have made other transactions easier, I asked for a ticket at the castle in Himeji, saying “ichi”, and it made me very proud!

Day 1. I woke up early for another port entry that turned out to be foggy and gray. It was raining. But, there were was a lot of welcoming hoopla in Kobe nonetheless. We were met by a fireboat spraying water around us, but it was really too rainy and windy and cold outside to enjoy. We also had a welcoming ceremony where some pretty immense drums were played. It was lovely. Then a group of us took the train to Himeji Castle. The train was very cool, starting with a monorail-like-thing from the port terminal. Very George Jetson-y.

Himeji Castle looks very unlike European castles. There was a fort on the site built in 1333 and the castle was built in 1580. It has a heavily fortified main tower (and we climbed to the top on steep narrow stairs). And a moat and lovely grounds around. And many many fewer tourists than the attractions in China.

Here’s a group photo of some of my favorite ship-people from that day:

Vladdy, Sue & Bianca, David & Phoebe, Robin, Mary & Michael, and (behind Mary and Michael) Giles & Kate.

For dinner we went to a restaurant where we had to take off our shoes and sit on not-quite-the-floor, but wooden benches that were pretty low with square cushions marking each seat. We ordered from a display window and did our best to communicate our desires to the waitstaff. It was a relaxed and enjoyable first day in Japan. I’m going to miss my traveling partners when we get off this boat.

Day 2 was a trip to Kyoto to visit various shrines and historical sites around the city. We started at the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji) constructed in the 1390’s by the 3d Shogun of Ashikaga. It was his retirement villa before his son converted it into a Zen Buddhist Temple. The three story pavilion is topped by a bronze phoenix and beautiful gardens with some very old trees surrounding it.

Next, we visited the Nijo Castle, built in 1603 as the official Kyoto residence of the first Shogun. Kyoto served as the capital of Japan up until the late 1800s when it moved to Tokyo. The main castle structure is only one floor, because it never served as a fort, and it is built in a zig-zag pattern like this:

. L
.. L
... L
.... L
........

so that every room had a view of the gardens at the bottom. There were beautiful murals (no photos allowed). We took off our shoes to enter, as we have in most places in Asia. The wooden floor is called a Nightingale Floor and it squeaks as you walk -- to announce intruders. There’s a contraption underneath that controls the noise. It is a much nicer musical noise than my hard-wood floor which also squeaks …

Then we lunched (ship boxed lunch, yuck) in a beautiful, lovely, peaceful park. The incorporation of nature everywhere (and feng shui) is in clear evidence in Kyoto. We are in Japan just a little bit too late for full cherry blossom blooming, but there were still some flowers around. Children playing in the park:

After lunch we went to see a Shinto Shrine. Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan and there is no human founder (wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto). The Heian Shrine was very orange and we walked around there and learned how Shintos pray. On entry to the shrine, we passed through a gate which ritually purified us and then we purified ourselves further by washing our hands in mineral water. People then purchase little wood placards and they write wishes on them that are offered up to the gods, along with other offerings like sake and cigarettes.

Our last stop was the Kiyomizu Temple (Buddhist) which had beautiful sweeping views of the city.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, if we could do something about the tourists, I could totally be a monk. It was beautiful up there and peaceful and lovely. Most of the tourists on this trip were Japanese school children. Almost all in uniform, laughing and learning and saying “hello” to us as we passed. I remembered (almost) always to respond with “konnichiwa”. They would smile and laugh. We also got a Japanese lesson from our tour guide on the bus from Kobe and now I can count to 10 again. We’ll see how long it sticks.

Japan is so different than the places we’ve been to thus far. It’s all very orderly and planned. None of the madness of China or India. The train station has writing on the station floor so that you know where the doors will open and you can queue up appropriately before the train arrives. And the train arrived exactly the moment it said it would. There are vending machines everywhere that sell everything from soda to snacks to ice cream to coffee.

They are banks and banks of vending machines all over the place. Even the packaging is different. Part can, part bottle. Keeps the soda cold, like a can (yup, it’s aluminum), but twist-cap open and re-sealable like a bottle. I started calling them "canolottles". Why don’t we have these???

Everything is crystal-clean. On the highway today, we noticed the barriers that are on the sides of the road to contain the noise curve in at the top, instead of ours that are straight up. Does a much better job (or so they say) of preventing noise and exhaust pollution. Taxi cabs have doors that open and close automatically. The bus parking lots are in long numbered lanes. One bus pulls forward in behind the next. You remember your lane’s number. The buses can advance in the lane (the first bus pulling out and the rest advancing), but it can’t change lanes. With this, they don’t have to back in/out of parking spaces and it is easier for you to remember where to find your bus. The escalators stop when no one is on them. To conserve electricity. When you step just before the first step, they start moving again. Some of them are bidirectional. If you step at the bottom, it goes up. If you step at the top, it goes down. In some of the public toilets, you wash your hands into the back of the toilet tank rather than having a separate sink. When you flush, a spigot turns on and water flows for you to wash your hands into the tank which is then used to fill the toilet. Good for water conservation, also a good use of space -- you don’t need a separate sink. People queue up for the elevator. No jaywalking allowed. The traffic lights make bird-sounds when it’s time to cross. Public restrooms (though many of them are still squat) have noise-making machines in the stalls so that you don’t have to listen to everyone do their thing and many public restrooms (or many of the western ones) have toilet-seats that heat up because their buildings don’t have central heat. Some toilet stalls also have other buttons that do other things too … The whole place sets this tone of “we’ve got it figured out”. No worry, no stress, we know what to do, we’ve thought of everything. Meet George Jetson …

Many of the cars here have the side-view mirrors out on the hood instead of by the front windows.

I wonder if that’s something we’ll get too soon, on all those cars that are Japanese? … Looks kind of odd to us-Americans, but it also makes a lot of sense. Keeps you looking forward.

Our guide today was excellent, one of the best I’ve had on this voyage. She taught us a ton. The last thing she taught us as we arrived back into Kobe was: ichigo, ichi-e … once chance, once meeting. Every encounter occurs only once. No matter how many repeated meetings or events or occurrences. Each individual moment occurs only once. Several people on this voyage have sailed more than once. Someone said the other day though nonetheless: even if you get the opportunity to do it again, you go around the world the first time only once.

Day 3 was a trip to Nara for more temple-viewing. By the end of the day, I had to confess that I think I’m done with all the temple-viewing. They are beautiful and lovely and peaceful, but we’ve seen an absurd number of them all told on this voyage. The Buddhist temples here, though, are much different than elsewhere. The Shinto influence is clearly present. We went to two Buddhist Temples and one Shinto Shrine in Nara. The Shinto shrines are all about purification. There are gates (tori-i) as you enter to purify yourself and then you further purify yourself before entering by pouring water over your hands with a ladle. First you pour the water on your left hand, then on your right hand, then again on your left hand from which you can drink to clean your mouth and then you tip the ladle and pour out the excess water over the handle to purify the ladle itself for the next person. The Buddhist Temple we visited also began with this Shinto purification ritual. The Buddhist Temples in India and Malaysia and China were all about color. Beautiful painted color. Here, in Japan, they were much more natural wood-color, although the Shinto shrines in both Kyoto and Nara were bright orange. The Buddhist Temples here also incorporate nature in more substantial ways than those in any of the other countries. They are planned with nature in mind and the grounds are all meticulously manicured. We started at the oldest surviving wooden structure in the world (Horyu-ji), built in 607:

And moved to the next temple, Todai-ji, which is the largest wooden structure in the world.

It was built in 743 but destroyed by fire several times and the current building dates from 1706. It is considered the world’s largest wooden structure, but the original building was actually considerably larger. The park surrounding the Temple is called Nara Deer Park, because there are deer everywhere. They are perfectly tame and people feed them from their hands. As with previous days, there were groups of schoolchildren everywhere:

The big wooden structure contains a very big Buddha – a bronze statue of the Cosmic Buddha. It was immense. We ended the day in Nara with a visit to the nearby Kasuga Taisha Shinto Shrine. The pillars are bright orange and the building is surrounded by stone lanterns in a lovely forest:

Deer are considered messengers to the Gods in Shinto. The story goes that a white deer arrived at the Kasuga Shrine in Nara as its divine messenger. And so deer are considered sacred and free to roam. Mary, our trip leader today who teaches spirit possession, warned us to be careful that we don’t get possessed along the way in travels through the forest. Shintos believe that you can become possessed by the Kami spirits (go look it up on wikipedia). We were very careful! Although, on our meanderings back to the bus, Joyce talked about how she was going to miss our wanderings throughout the world. When we get back to real-life. So, we have all definitely been possessed by the Spirit of Meandering & Travel & Wanderlust. And the Spirit of Short-Attention-Spans. I’m a little worried that it will be hard to work a complete five-day week after this voyage …

Day 4. Saturday in Hiroshima. Mary & Michael & I took the monorail in Kobe … to the subway … to the bullet train … to the street car … to the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. Afterwards we took a ferry to Miyajima. And from Miyajima, we took a ferry … to the Hiroshima subway … to the bullet train … to the Kobe subway … to the monorail … back to our ship. The transportation system couldn’t possibly be easier here. Everything was completely intelligible even if you don’t speak Japanese and each vehicle left perfectly on time and arrived to exactly the place we expected perfectly on time. It was astounding.

Hiroshima was astounding. We stared in the Peace Park, whose central memorial is the A-Bomb dome.

The building was built in 1915 with a central green dome. The name of the building varied, but largely it was the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. It was used to display and sell prefectural products and do market research and consulting for local businesses. Its galleries served for art exhibitions, fairs, and other events. When the bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, it was one of many buildings that were heavily damaged but this one was the one chosen to memorialize the event. The dome was still recognizable after the bomb. A number of preservation/reinforcement projects have occurred over the years, but it is largely as it was in 1945 immediately after the bomb was dropped. The park is beautiful. It spans both sides of the river and there are various and separate memorials all around. There is a flame that will burn until the last nuclear bomb is destroyed; there is a monument to memorialize student victims, child victims, Korean victims, and more. There is a centograph that contains the names of all the people who died. People were praying there at the centograph and laying flowers. There is a bell for visitors to ring to bring peace to the world. The children’s memorial park holds a collection of origami cranes. The story goes that a little girl dying after the war from leukemia -- the result of radiation -- believed that if she could fold 1000 cranes, she would not die. But, she did die before she finished and her schoolmates folded the remaining cranes in her memory. As did schoolchildren all over Japan. The kids on the ship here (children of faculty and staff) folded 1000 cranes over the last several weeks and they delivered them to the children’s peace park this week.

The park is beautiful and calm and amazingly peaceful. The museum itself is very intense. There was an introductory movie that I had to walk out of. Michael had commented earlier that he heard the movie was really hard to sit through. I said, at that time, that this is why were here, right? To bear witness in some way. But, I literally felt like I would pass out. I had to leave the auditorium.

Giles and Kate (who had gone the day before) were critical of the museum for its general presentation of what happened during the war and the role (not-so-much-acknowledged) of Japanese aggression. They cited a recent U.S. newspaper article that criticized the use of the passive voice in the museum labels: “the war erupted” … “children died who would not have died had the war not ever happened” (by the A-bomb? by the war in general? -- take that however you like, a lot of thought went into that choice of language …) … but, in fact, the passive voice was used regarding American transgressions as well. Several times it said “the bomb was dropped” without that same sentence attributing agency. Certainly, though, it could be surmised by the context. I wondered if the passive voice was just more the Japanese narrative style, I don’t know. The translations were all good -- there weren’t any of the odd translations that we see on the streets -- so I’m not sure anything was lost in translation. And they do attribute agency in many other places: “In 1941, with a surprise attack on the U.S. army and navy bases at Pearl Harbor, Japan started the Pacific War against the U.S. and its allies.” I thought it was pretty fairly balanced, although all the information definitely comes (as it does always) from a particular perspective. Giles studies how history gets told and who gets to tell it and who gets left out, so they noted the lack of mention of the comfort women and the broader history of the Allied/Axis powers and he is right there. No mention of anything there. There is a lot of auxiliary information that is noticeably missing. But, it’s a memorial museum to the bomb, its after-affects, and the start of the nuclear age. Not the history of World War II. Made me wonder what a 9/11 museum would be like (will be like?) …

We passed this sign alongside some roof tiles that have rough bubbles on them due to the explosion: “Feel free to touch these items. They are safe.” I thought this was fascinating. The restriction on touching museum objects are usually intended to keep the museum objects safe. It’s usually (always?) about the objects, not about the people. They also had on display a metal lunch box that was full of ash from the meal originally contained inside. There were many artifacts on display, that one just really touched me.

Something to note: the Japanese consider Pearl Harbor to be December 8^th. Because of the time difference … And while we (Americans) all have memorized the date of Pearl Harbor, I had no idea of the exact date the bomb was dropped. Almost every plaque here started with: “At 8:15 a.m., August 6,1945 …” It’s all about perspective ... “We see things not as they are but as we are.” ...

I came back for the end of the movie to catch back up with Michael and Mary. At the end there was a beautiful song and I’ve spent the morning trying to google the lyrics, to no avail. I wish I could share it with you. It was a likely a poem set to music, I’ll keep searching …

We walked through the park again to other parts we didn’t catch in the first pass-through. De-compressed, let back a little air into our lungs. Breathed in the beautiful sunny 65-degree day. Recovered.

Afterward, we took a ferry to Miyajima to visit the “floating shrine”. The Shinto shrine and the accompanying tori-i gate are constructed of wood and built to look as if they are floating in the water. We were warned by our guidebook that most often they are sitting in mud. The ferry ride was unexpectedly fabulous. It went up the narrow river through Hiroshima for quite a while and then the river opened up much wider and there were mountains in view and fishing boats and fish farms. And blue blue water (as if we haven’t seen enough blue water by now). Michael and Mary and I spent the 35 minute ride largely talking about where we were on 9/11. Vietnam/Iraq … Hiroshima/September 11. How we go there in our heads …

We arrived on the island and walked along the water up to the shrine and indeed it was surrounded by mud. People were walking along the beach, which was lovely, and the shrine was definitely very beautiful but it was sitting in the middle of mud.

We toured the shrine, did some shopping, and as we came back around we could tell the tide was coming in. We went to go find some dinner and then went back to the shrine just as the sun was setting. By that time, the water had come up all the way to make it appear indeed to be floating. It was very beautiful:

And then we took the ferry … to the Hiroshima subway … to the bullet train … to the Kobe subway … to the monorail … back to the ship … This day ranks as one of the best of the trip. Mary and Michael were great to travel with, the travel logistics were a breeze, there was history and culture and sadness and relief and hope and peace and calm and beauty. I had a perfect day.

Day 5. I want to live in Japan. Today I roamed around Kobe, starting with Robin & Giles & Kate walking into town from the ship, rather than the monorail. And then they went back to the ship after lunch to grade papers and I just roamed aimlessly some more. Lunch wasn’t great, but we had salad and I drank ice-water -- which is the first time in 3 months that I’ve had salad and ice-cubes! The water is safe to drink here and tap-water-washed-salad is safe and street food is safe. In Japan, I had fish-on-a-stick from the street vendors, and chicken-on-a-stick, and corn-on-a-stick, and ice cream. Like water, they suggested we not eat non-cooked dairy products in other countries as well. It felt totally wonderful to not have to worry about everything you put in your mouth! I may not have eaten terribly healthy here, but it was oh-so-fun! Back to today -- I was trying to find some gardens several people mentioned, but my map wasn’t very good and I was not at all successful. And, I got detoured by beautiful little streets and beautiful big streets and became totally absorbed by city life. Walking and walking and taking photos and dropping into the occasional store, but mostly walking and walking and taking photos and watching people go about their lives. I didn’t see any other Semester at Sea people, just Japanese people walking and talking and living.

This is the beginning of a week-long national holiday, Golden Week. And people were out everywhere, living their lives and enjoying their holiday. I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore and then took the monorail back to the ship. I loved Japan. I could totally live in Kobe. It’s amazingly easy to navigate, even without speaking Japanese. They literally couldn’t make it any easier. From the trains to finding a ladies room in a public space, all incredibly easy to manage. The orderliness, the calm, just reverberated back to me. I felt totally peaceful here, even in the middle of the downtown with people rushing living their lives. They’ve got a mission, they’ve got a plan, stress feels low, chaos is non-existent (or maybe just not allowed in). The Peace Park is about hope, not about sadness. The purification rituals are about being present in the moment. It was the coolest thing. I’d have to get used to not-jaywalking, and Robin kept shushing me all morning because I’m much too loud and everything around, even downtown public spaces, is much more quiet than I can manage, and having done a little-shoe shopping I learned that there’s no hope of finding shoes here in size 8 … so that would all be problematic. But other than those few little things, I could totally live here. I need to find a way to bring that kind of peacefulness into my life. Breathe it in. It is unbelievably refreshing.

Speaking of chaos … I have managed to do ok with the Internet access for most of this voyage. It helps that I have dial-up at home and so my expectations were adequately low. On my overnight trips, I hardly had any withdrawal at all. Being off the ship and tooling around, I had other priorities. But, being in Japan on the ship at night with no Internet access was really really really hard. We’ve seen a number of ads throughout Asia for Internet Addiction Recovery Centers and such, which seemed pretty amusing at first glance. But, feeling so much much much better now that I’m back online -- physical relief -- I actually do wonder about my state of Internet health …

Late last night, I stood on the deck and watched the lights of Kobe disappear behind us. Ready or not, here we come.

music in the library

2007-04-24T08:16:00.000-04:00

Julie, who is an ethnomusicologist, holds her ensemble classes in the Union, which is right next to the library. She teaches African drums and African xylophones. On many afternoons, we get music in the library. Like today. It’s quite pleasant.

Busy busy again in the library. We have a workaround for yesterday’s problem, but haven’t actually identified or solved the issue. Clunky but do-able. The traffic in both course research and in Japan travel guides is very heavy. I’ve done no research on Japan. I have tomorrow free and so far no plans. The next two days I have day trips to Kyoto and Nara. Day 4, I’m hoping to get to Hiroshima and day 5, I’m free again. I’ll be sleeping on the ship at night and theoretically could blog along the way, but we’re told that we will have no Internet access while in Japan. Something about satellite interference. Cingular told me my cell phone wouldn’t work in Japan either. Seems odd. Japan is perfectly technology modern, so there has to be some better explanation (or solution).

We have a combined logistical/cultural pre-port tonight, which they have been doing lately rather than one on each night. We also got some culture in Global Studies this morning, which was really nice. Usually it’s history/politics/econ -- social science emphasis. But, today Mary taught us about the Shinto religion and the Japanese concept of Ma ("the space between", the interval of space or silence) and Robin did a part on the intersections between Japan and the West and the artistic influences of each on the other. We learned that the Jesuit missionaries set up a painting school in Japan to teach Japanese artists to paint Christian religious art. Jesuits, Jesuits everywhere. Pretty much everywhere we’ve been in any case. Gene wrapped up with a bit of the military history of 20^th century Japan and then demilitarization after the war, ending with the question of whether (and how) countries can become superpowers in ways other than military conquest. It was a good Global Studies.

Kobe should be cool, mid/high 60’s. Much happier weather in my opinion. China turned out to still be fairly warm, except for that last day in Qingdao. We sat outside on deck six for dinner tonight, but it was very chilly. Windy too. I hope I still get a bit of spring in C-Ville when I return before it becomes too hot.

More after Japan …

you’ve got mail

2007-04-23T09:16:00.000-04:00

got another real-life-card today from UVA. I was confused a bit because it all seemed like they were writing at the beginning of the voyage. And then I looked at the address. It was mailed to Mauritius, but somehow just caught up with us in China! Thanks to everyone who signed -- I enjoy getting real mail!

Today was a crazy crazy day in the library. The good news is the catalog is back up online and I’ve met the new IT crew-guy and all seems good there. There was some software conflict. And they’ve documented what they did, so in case it happens again … But, we’re having some problems connecting to the databases again and we’re having troubles diagnosing it. It’s not a proxy server problem. The proxy server is working fine. It seems to be something wrong with the ship’s free-site-server. Sometimes the UVA link passes through as free, sometimes it gives you a 404 File-Not-Found error. If you are logged into the pay-Internet, it works fine always. We don’t know why or what’s wrong but folks are looking into it. It’s another issue of each person only understanding one part of the picture and it’s hard to put the puzzle pieces together. Our stapler ran out of staples around lunch time. You can’t imagine what a crisis it is when our stapler runs out of staples! And many offices around here (except for the library, of course) close for lunch so we had many lines of grumpy students while we waited to get refills for the stapler. Sounds dumb I know, but here are the joys of working in a tiny library. And the stapler is the primary reason that most folks come to the library anyway … Someone stole our scissors and someone stole our calendar from behind the desk while we were at port and that makes me grumpy. Lots of students (way more than normal) responded to this morning’s swath of overdue notices telling us they dropped them in the book drop while we were at port. Except they weren’t there. Note to Jean: I think you need to talk to the Purser’s Desk about being the overnight/port drop-off since materials are secure there. And it’s been busy, busy, busy. There are only 2 days between China and Japan and much paper-writing is underway. The Internet has been sporadic the last two days too which adds to the fun. People underestimate the quality of the print collection. There are some decent materials there, but it does make things difficult when technology misbehaves. A lot of students were doing a lot of work in the library today. And there is so little physical space that it gets very overwhelming very quickly when lots of people are in line needing attention.

Everyone is starting to think about the end. How to process all the places we’ve been to when there is no time to do so between ports, how to prepare for Japan when we have only 2 days and are still flummoxed by China, how to best use the time between Japan and Hawaii (8 days) to bring things together -- both educationally and experientially. How to get all the work done that needs to get done before the end. How not to panic and how not to be exhausted. How not to be focused so much on the end that we forget we still have 21 days left. I feel like I’m on an emotional roller-coaster and I’ve gotta say, despite the fabulous experiences, I’m a little bit looking forward to getting off … the roller coaster that is … the ship, I’m not so sure … it’s definitely an odd space to be in.

Tonight we all had to get our temperature taken because Japan has stringent health requirements for entry into the country. All 850 of us. It’s really amazing how efficient they can be on this ship, processing us all through the bureaucracy quickly.

I didn’t get China photos up today, other than the few in yesterday’s blog. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get them up before Japan, so both will have to be projects as we cross the ocean.

Tonight was open mike night after China. They do this after every port, though I often have one conflict or another. Tonight, it was both China debriefing and debriefing about Virginia Tech. It was hard and sad and lovely at the same time. There were poems and songs and a student from Virginia Tech spoke and also a student who was a high-school friend of one of the students who was killed. Lots of people talked about their experiences in China and many talked about how both events intersected in their minds. I talked a little bit also about some of the things I put in yesterday’s blog. Everybody here has a lot of "stuff" in their heads right now.

We lose another night of sleep tonight, so I’m headed to bed early …

please be well seated and always make yourself safe

2007-04-22T23:52:00.000-04:00

we woke up Tuesday morning to the news of the massacre at Virginia Tech which had happened while we were all sleeping on the other side of the world. I got up about 6:30 for the reportedly beautiful view coming into Hong Kong. Here’s what I saw:

Eventually it cleared a little:

and Dean Mike came on the loudspeaker to announce that the diplomatic briefing would be preceded by a few words and a moment of silence for the victims at Virginia Tech. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Normally, I stake out a seat in the Union for mandatory meetings (including the diplomatic briefing) but our flight to Beijing left early and our group was assigned a satellite classroom to gather. It was rather surreal, we all had our stuff, excited to be headed into mainland China. Marvel -- one of the mental health folks on board -- read the statement from the University President, which at that time still said 22 victims. And then the Archbishop spoke and brought us all to tears. There are three Virginia Tech students aboard and many more, of course, with friends there. One of those students sat crying on the floor in front of me. She had no information and was getting on a plane to go to Beijing for 5 days. Her friends promised her they’d help her find an Internet café. They canceled the diplomatic briefing in the end because there was no way to change course and go on with that, and then we left for Beijing. All I saw of Hong Kong was the hazy skyline coming into port and the road to the airport.

I’m sure you are all watching news coverage around the clock, the same frightening stories over and over and over. Most of what we learned came from the English language newspaper, China Daily and what we eventually saw on CNN International once we got to the hotel. The shooting has been the top story in China Daily each day also. The first story had used the passive phrase, the shooter "was killed" but never indicated if this meant shot by the police or whether he killed himself. At first I thought this was maybe some cultural commentary on suicide. But maybe they just didn’t know at the time of this first article. All the other articles did say he shot himself. And there was much commentary about America’s obsession with guns. China Daily quoted an Italian paper saying the shooting was "as American as apple pie".

The plane ride to Beijing was worth writing about. 3 -- count them, three -- rounds of the beverage cart, and a full meal (though not good), and a Hagen-Dazs ice-cream dixie cup. And little television screens where we got to watch us take off and land, as if we were looking out the front windows in the cockpit. Way cool. We arrived in time for dinner (despite the meal on the plane) which was at a place that is famous for Peking Duck. The meal was duck, duck, and more duck. The appetizers were all different parts of the duck. And then dinner was duck. I like duck, but it was a lot of duck! After dinner, I walked back to the hotel with a couple of students for the opportunity to walk through Tiananmen Square at night. All lit up. The vastness of the square takes your breath away. It’s mammoth. To think about all those people -- all those students -- in the square when the tanks pulled in and opened fire. Takes your breath away. Back at the Rex Hotel in Saigon that night with everyone telling Vietnam stories, I said my first real political memory was watching the Iran hostages come home. I remember very clearly watching them get off the airplane. I was 9 then. But Tiananmen Square was a different kind of experience. It was June of my senior year in high school. I was excited about going to college. Those students were not much older than I. I had been to D.C. a number of times in high school for protests -- to get the U.S. out of Nicaragua, to loosen immigration policies for Jews trying to get out of the Soviet Union ... I’m sure they were comparatively small protests, they felt like a lot of people. I wasn’t a hard-core activist, but I had been a student protesting like these students were protesting. The night was a beautiful night, the portrait of Chairman Mao at the one end and buildings of mammoth scale forming the square around. It took my breath away and struck me hard.

Day 2. The next day, we woke up early and headed to the Great Wall. There are several places around Beijing where tourists can climb. The part we were at did not at all match the image I had in my head. First off, Beijing is perpetually hazy from pollution and so we didn’t even see the mountains until we were right there at their feet. There are a ton of stairs up to the top as it climbs up the mountain, but the wall itself isn’t all that high off the ground. If you measured the length from the ground up at any point. That surprised me. I made it up to what we called the "first top" -- there were other tops, but I was perfectly pleased with where I got.

The stairs were really uneven. Some were so shallow you almost wanted to skip one, but others were crazy deep you had to haul yourself up. Going down was almost as difficult as going up. The views from above were very hazy but beautiful nonetheless. I sat up there above and watched China below before climbing back down. There were a billion tourists speaking a million different languages and it was fun to watch how the grunts and groans of exhaustion are pretty universal regardless of language. At lunch there was the requisite shopping and I bought a jacket I like a lot. Not formal (more like work-clothes) but something that would work well enough with a Chico’s skirt for the Ambassador’s Ball (more on this below). I got more than $50 off with the negotiation skills I’ve been perfecting as we travel round the world. After lunch was a tour of the Summer Palace. Lonely Planet describes it as "the playground of the royal court." There is a beautiful lake and amazing gardens and elaborate buildings and a crazy marble boat. The original plan was dinner on our own and shopping/roaming, but an optional acrobatic theater performance was offered to us. After much debate, we decided to go. I was afraid it’d be high on the hokey-quotient and high on the touristy-quotient. But it was quite enjoyable. Crazy what people can do with their bodies. There were a ton of people everywhere all day and someone joked that we saw 1 million of the 15 million people that live in Beijing in our travels just that one day. Beijing has twice the population of New York City. It’s crazy big and traffic reflects it. We spent a lot of our time in traffic. Just keeping up with our tour guide and trying not to lose our group in the crowd was a lot of work!

Day 3. Today was the organized trip to Tiananmen Square. Our guide told us all about the celebrations held there. Especially the day they announced that Beijing would host the 2008 Olympics. There is much Olympic prep going on here. They are building arenas like mad and hotels like mad and planting trees to help curb pollution (as if that will solve their problems before next summer). They are clearly very excited about the spotlight the world will be putting on this city next year. The guide told us about the crowds in the Square on the day of the announcement and he told us all about how he used to rollerskate in the Square as a kid. That the Square is "a place of celebration." He said nothing about the massacre until one of the professors on the bus finally asked if he would "speak about the events of 1989". He said yes, that things were very "complicated" then. That there were a lot of corrupt politicians and that students were protesting the corruptness and that what happened was "inevitable". He used that word multiple times: inevitable. He said the government couldn’t control it and so they made "some mistakes". That was really all he said, ending it all again with "it was very complicated" but not elaborating at all as to why or how. Our guide was pretty informative throughout our time in Beijing, but he gave us a number of vague non-answers to most of the political questions we asked during the trip. During Global Studies we had seen a clip of "Tank Man", a documentary about Tiananmen Square and we learned that China basically whitewashed all evidence of the massacre in their textbooks and their political storytelling. The interport student (from Hong Kong, incidentally, not mainland China) got up after the video clip and said he hoped that we wouldn’t just think of what happened in 1989 when we think of China. That China has so much more to offer than those days in 1989. I think we were all surprised how western-looking a city Beijing is. We knew that of Hong Kong, but Beijing is incredibly big and built up with skyscrapers and evidence of commercialism and corporate logos and neon and wide boulevards and all things we associate in our minds as western. After Tiananmen Square, we walked to the Forbidden City and toured the immense palace, with again about a million of our best tourist-friends. Built in the 15th century, it is called the "Forbidden City" because it was off limits to the general population for 500 years. Two dynasties of emperors lived there. After a not-so-great lunch, we toured the Temple of Heaven which was beautiful and peaceful with Beijing residents playing cards and hacky-sack and singing and hanging out together. And then we got on a plane to Xi'an. The English signs in Beijing were plentiful, but oftentimes oddly worded. On the shuttle bus to the plane, I found the title of this post. Please be well seated and always make yourself safe. Which may be my new slogan for this whole whirlwind trip around the world.

On the bus-ride to the hotel from the airport in Xi'an, the tour guide pointed out a square where people were dancing. I took a walk over there after we checked in. I had understood it to be some kind of performance but it was really just a public dance floor on a piece of cement underneath the highway overpass. I stood there and watched fascinated for an hour. There were couples of all ages though most were retired. Some were dancing-dancing (swirling and twirling) and others were just walking in wide circles swaying and talking. There were many females couples and, unless Xi'an has a huge out gay population (hard to imagine), women-friends must just do this too. Music was coming from a loudspeaker. I was the only white person there for the first bit and I attracted some attention. I had my camera. Some folks wanted to see their photos on my screen, but most just passed me by smiling. I got pretty far on my only 2 words of Chinese (hello and thank you) and later with the help of a very nice elderly man who spoke English pretty well. Eventually, two other white women showed up with their cameras also. "Your friends", my new Chinese friend said to me. Turned out they were French and so we couldn’t really communicate either. But they started dancing with a few Chinese men in the crowd and I went quietly back to semi-anonymously watching from the perimeter. It was lovely. It was a really nice night and the dancing and the love and the neon and the complete un-self-consciousness of the people dancing nearly brought me to tears.

Day 4. We started at the Tang Dynasty Art Museum and the Wild Goose Pagoda. The Pagoda was constructed in 648 AD, built to house the Buddhist scriptures brought back from India. A very early library. From there, we went to the Shaanxi Museum which was nice as museums go but mostly served to teach us something about the various Chinese dynasties. Which, believe me, was much in need. After lunch in a place that Sue started dubbing "bustaurants" -- a place where bus-loads of tourists are taken and fed in 40 minutes, huge tables with spinning lazy susans in the middle and tons of various Chinese dishes (this one at least had really good noodles!), we went to the Terracotta Warriors Museum. I loved this. Barbie’s pictures from the summer voyage don’t come close to representing the enormity of the excavation site or the life-sized-ness of the warriors, as I’m sure my pictures won’t either. The expression of power and expense and the size of the excavation/preservation endeavor are incredible. The warriors are 2000 years old and were unearthed only in 1974 when a farmer was digging a well. They face east in battle formation and they are each different, holding spears and daggers and axes. There are also horses and chariots. There will be more pictures up eventually. As with the previous blogs, only a few now to get this post up speedily.

The evening was scheduled to be a "spectacular Tang dynasty show and dinner". I was fried and had a headache and couldn’t bear another bustaurant and a billion people (no offense truly, that’s the only way to do this efficiently and affordably for 69 participants but I just couldn’t do it). After originally thinking I was the only one bailing, Bianca and Sue and David and Phoebe and I opted for dinner on our own. We had a five-star dinner at the Shangri-La Hotel with beautiful and amazingly delicious Chinese food. There will be pictures of this too eventually! It was exactly what I needed: calm and relaxed, quiet and slow. And then I bought a jacket in the store that actually is dressy enough for the Ambassador’s Ball. It’s red and silk and has Chinese characters on it. $70. The clincher was when Bianca (a fellow Chico’s shopper) said, you’d pay $125 at Chico’s at home for something like that & this you are getting in CHINA! So, I’ll wear it with a shell and a black Chico’s skirt and I’m set (minus the heels, but I don’t have much hope for them). Also, in an odd conversation, Bianca persuaded me to wear it buttoned. I never where jackets buttoned, I don’t know why … It has the Chinese buttons you think of, long cords across the divide. So now I can officially stop obsessing about Ball attire …

Day 5. I didn’t sleep well overnight and so I bailed on the optional calligraphy lesson and hung out in the room watching CNN. I think I was watching Larry King and Anderson Cooper live -- 12 hours ahead of the East Coast. Kind of odd to realize. Both were about Virginia Tech so I learned a few more of the details and considered myself grateful that I wasn’t hearing these stories 24x7 like I’m sure you are all. I also heard the tape of Alec Baldwin yelling at his kid and realized that I’m not missing CNN all that much. In the 2 ½ hours that I watched the "news", I heard not one thing about Iraq. I joined the group for lunch at a rotating restaurant overlooking that city. Except that it didn’t rotate. We never learned what was up with that. After lunch, we went to the Han Dynasty tombs which is also an active excavation site as well as a museum. They have only opened one tomb there, for an emperor and an empress. Found gold and ceramics of people and animals and pots, etc. They gave us funny plastic bags to wear to cover our shoes and we walked on glass platforms, underneath which was the open tomb. It was incredibly cool! It was a really interesting way to see all the artifacts. Good museum. Dinner and another airport flight to meet up with the ship which had sailed in our absence to Qingdao. Xi’an has 7-8 million people, about the size of New York City, but it’s considered in China to be a "medium developing city". It was the capital of China for over 2000 years and so contains much much history. There is some pretty amazing stuff to see. There was much less English signage here than in Beijing, but the Coke logo and the Pepsi logo and the McDonald’s logo and the Microsoft logo are all immediately identifiable on billboards no matter what script they are written in. Again, crazy globalization and hard to reconcile with the socialist/communist government.

Day 6. We got back to the ship around 11:30 the night before and I had an all day trip planned for day 6 that I thought about bailing on, but I knew if I slept late, I’d never get out. Like the energizer bunny, I just had to keep going going going while I had momentum. We started at a Taoist temple which (despite all the tourists) was omigod beautiful. Built into the side of a mountain overlooking the sea. I want to be a monk in my next life and I want to live here (minus all the tourists of course). Mountains and water all at once. The sound of bamboo crackling all around as the wind (very cool here) moved through the trees.

Then we headed to a Buddhist Temple which was very pretty (I’ve seen a LOT of Buddhist temples by now!) The best part of the tour was at the beginning when the guide explained the history of Buddhism in China. He talked about how Buddhism came to China from India and was active there until the "liberation" in 1949. After the liberation, the government said that the Chinese "couldn’t believe in Buddha anymore, they had to believe in Karl Marx." And so, they believed in Karl Marx for many years … "but now they don’t know what to believe" so many people are coming back to Buddhism. They are coming to the Temple again and laying out their problems before the Buddha. My first question was whether (and how) they laid out their problems before to Karl Marx … hmmm … The whole narrative made me laugh.

Then we went to a Catholic church. The Germans colonized Qingdao interestingly enough and so this was a Gothic cathedral that looked very much like other Gothic cathedrals. The best part was the signage. The tourism focus is clearly not catering to a western (Christian) audience, it caters to Taoists and Buddhists. So the signs don’t tell you about the architectural structure, they tell you about Christianity. I’ll get up photos up eventually, but they say things like:

The Altar and the Lecturn are placed in dominant places in the church because of their important roles in the Eucharist Celebration.

and:

Mary was the Mother of Jesus, the Savior of the world. She was an ordinary Jewish girl engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The angel Gabriel was sent to God to ask her to be the mother of Jesus, the Son of God. She agreed to do God’s will and became pregnant. According to Church tradition, her body and soul went to heaven after her death.

I found it refreshing to be in a place that didn’t presume that everybody was Christian and would know these things.

Dawn and I walked back to the ship with a few life-long-learners and got to see a little bit of Qingdao on my one and only day there. And thus begins the email-checking/blogging/photo-uploading activities …

I didn’t really know what to expect from China. It wasn’t on my top 10 places to visit. But, as with the other Asian countries we’ve traveled to, it totally blew me away. It’s huge and really more populous than it is possible to wrap your brain around. The buildings in Beijing are not only high, but they are wide. They are built (as is Tiananmen Square) on a scale that is just immense. The modern looking buildings are immense. The Forbidden City is immense. The scale of the country is truly hard to comprehend. It takes your breath away.

Despite the enormity, all three cities we saw were so much more internally focused than any of our big cities. There were lots of Chinese tourists but not so many international tourists. There was not the urban feeling that exists in our large cities. The cities feel provincial despite their size. In Qingdao, folks reported that they had a really hard time finding ATMs and that no one accepted credit cards (or those other than Bank of China). Even at the Walmart. There was a Walmart in town but it didn’t take international credit cards. U.S. corporate enterprise in China … but not. Globalization … but not. International tourism … but not. Sharing their history … but not. Sharing only the parts that they want. China seems to want all that they want all at once, but it’s hard to see how they can move into the global economy without becoming part of global history and global politics. Especially with the Olympic spotlight soon to arrive. There is so much more I want to tell you about China, but this post is already much too long. We arrive in Japan in 2 days and I know there won’t be enough time to get it all in.

One of the things this trip has accomplished for me is to give me a sense of other places I need to go in my life. I definitely need to go to Thailand and I need to go to Cambodia and I need to see other parts of China. The Chinese man at the dancing kept inquiring: Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai? And I kept answering, Beijing, Xi'an. And he would return with: Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai? .. Shanghai? … This trip has definitely made the Asian countries more accessible in my mind. Bringing the world closer together. Which I guess (hope?) is what happens when you seat yourself well and try to make yourself safe in the world. Much love to all those sharing in the grief at Virginia Tech.

tomorrow in hong kong

2007-04-16T03:49:00.000-04:00

we dock tomorrow. There's lots of travel-guide checkout-activity going on in the library. Which, fortunately, doesn't require a library catalog. Also, btw, lots of proxy server handing-out-of passwords, I should mention that too. Folks doing research for papers due between China & Japan.

I won’t be really spending any time in Hong Kong. I would have liked to, it was a hard decision, but I also really wanted to take the big overland trip to China. We leave the ship at 9:45 tomorrow morning and fly to Beijing. We see the Great Wall and all that and then we fly to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors. From there, we fly to Qingdao to meet up with the ship. The ship will be sailing from Hong Kong to Qingdao with about 75 faculty/staff/students aboard who are not doing overland trips. It might have been nice to stay on the ship too, quiet and all.

I'm really excited about this trip. Amazing sights for sure. And tons of faculty/staff are on this same trip. In many ways, it kind of feels like the last hurrah. I have day trips planned in Japan, but nothing big. Then we’re only in Hawaii for one day. And then we’re done. So, it will definitely be nice to do this last big trip with a fun group. There is Robin & David & Phoebe & Sherri & Giles & Kate & Anne-Claire & Simon & Joyce & Bob and other nice people I'm not sure I’ve mentioned on this blog. Anyways, it should be nice. We're gone for 5 days, so this will be the last post for a bit.

I missed breakfast this morning because I missed the time change. This is the first time I've done that. They remind you both at the noontime and dinnertime announcements when we need to advance our clocks, but nonetheless I totally forgot. I was in the shower when the announcement came on for Global Studies. I made it to class on time, but breakfast was already closed. We're back to 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, which is easy for the math at least. In the next 29 days, we'll be advancing another 12 hours. Yipes. The last 3, though, will be in the air from San Diego to Charlottesville.

The summer voyage is under-enrolled. Yesterday, they offered discounts to our current students if they want to sail again in summer. There is lots of speculation as to why the enrollment is so low. This is the first time there is a language requirement (Spanish), as they are going all around South America. Some people are wondering whether the language requirement is a deterrent, since there are so many other good study abroad opportunities for Spanish-speaking students. Summer is always lower than fall & spring, but current enrollment is still considered low by comparison to other summers. This voyage that I am on now has a record 702 students. More than ever and students were turned away. If you know any college students who would like to take a voyage to South America, send them to http://www.semesteratsea.com. The summer voyage is 65 days long and they take 3 classes for 9 credits. And they will have to take Spanish at "their current level of fluency". The full itinerary is on the website.

grumpy days in the library

2007-04-15T05:21:00.000-04:00

destiny (the new library catalog) is down and we don’t know why and we don’t know how to fix it. They installed the new Microsoft updates on the server and now Destiny refuses to run. Despite the fact that it is normal class days for us, it is the weekend in the States and we are 11 hours ahead, so we’re having trouble getting technical-support. And by the time it’s Monday morning in the States, we’ll be in Hong Kong. Kenny, the IT crew guy on the ship, knows lots about the server but little about library systems. I know about library systems, but not so much about why the Microsoft updates caused us problems. We tried all kinds of things either of us could think of, but no luck. Ugh. And, Kenny is going off in China. A number of our crew are leaving in Hong Kong and more in China. Kenny’s relief arrives in Hong Kong, they sail together the 2 days to China, and then Kenny goes off in China. I’m going overland from Hong Kong to China and so won’t be on the ship during the transition. I’ll get back on the ship in China and there will be a new crew-IT guy who hasn’t been through any of the Destiny issues with us. I’m a bit nervous – and grumpy -- as you might imagine …

Today, was a Global Studies exam. So, lots of photocopying of people’s notes going on in the library yesterday. First, we learned that the students have the photocopier access code and are making free copies. Which made me REALLY grumpy. The copier requires that one of us put in an access code, so when we see someone standing there, we always ask if we can help. Yesterday, I asked that and the kid said no. I walked over and he had the access code written on his paper. He wouldn’t tell me where he got it. So, then I had to track down Kenny to change the access code, which it took us forever to figure out how to do. Students were copying Global Studies notes all day long. Particularly, one set of notes that was 22 pages long. Students would come up to fill out the invoice form and try to calculate the cost of 22 pages (25 cents/page). We spared them the math. We all knew. $5.50. Those notes got copied over and over. At one point, someone must have miss-copied because all of the sudden all the students were paying for 21 copies instead. I let them know they were missing a page!

And then -- the rest of the day, besides photocopying and catalog woes, was spent tracking down potential plagiarism. I had two faculty ask me for help in trying to prove plagiarism. And students well know that plagiarism is cause for UVA’s single sanction (expulsion).

The only library good news is that the collection is small enough that working without a catalog isn’t the end of the world. And we have a dump of the catalog we did a couple weeks ago to send back to UVA. That’s a little bit helpful. And everyone has been very understanding. We’ve got a backup circulation system going that’s working ok. Clunky, but manageable.

Yours, in hoping tomorrow will be a better day in library-land …

traffic & squat toilets

2007-04-14T04:24:00.000-04:00

In Vietnam, crossing the road is like frogger. There are thousands of mopeds and some cars and trucks and no one stops. Some of the only evidence of communism here is the large number of mopeds and the small number of cars. Prices are controlled by the government and cars are very expensive while mopeds are very cheap. There are thousands and thousands of mopeds on the road. Mopeds (and cars, but not so much trucks) will swerve around you. No one will stop for you. If you wait for a break in the road, you will never get across a street. You just need to step off the curb and walk purposefully and deliberately (no hesitation, no running, no worry) and the traffic will move around you. Truly, you just have to believe. I LOVED it! Those of you who have watched me cross 29 in C-Ville or City Line in Philadelphia will understand. I am a very aggressive pedestrian. My philosophy is that cars are not allowed to run pedestrians over. They just aren’t. I kept wondering what the Vietnamese people must think when they come to the U.S. There are occasional stoplights here, though not many, and they seem to be only advice not law. If no one is coming, you go. If someone is coming, just as long as you properly judge their speed and distance, you go. When they come to the U.S. and see all of our rules and regulations, they must think we have the most oppressive, totalitarian government in the world. Somehow, the traffic pattern in Vietnam speaks much more to democracy than ours does. They don’t want to hit you just as much as you don’t want to be hit. So, if everybody just does their part, everyone will get where they are going safely. You don’t need rules, you just need some faith in human-kindness. They even put their children on mopeds, clearly no seatbelt laws let along helmet laws. It’s mind-boggling.

The night we went to the Rex Hotel and then dinner, Robin & I & a few others decided to walk back afterwards. Most of the rest of the group decided to take a taxi. It didn’t look far on the map and it was after dark and had cooled down significantly. It seemed a nice night for a walk. Michael said (before he hopped in the taxi) that he thought you had to walk through construction and it wasn’t a nice walk. The ship arranged for shuttle buses back and forth to town, but we didn’t yet appreciate why. It was a short shuttle ride. We walked down a block or two to the waterfront and then turned right. We could see the ship’s lights. We crossed the crazy busy road that separated us from the waterfront just as we had all the others -- we walked deliberately and purposefully and traffic swerved around us. Then we hit the construction to the left of us. We had to walk to the right of the barrier. We were walking into incoming traffic. There was a narrow place where we were walking, which seemed like it should have been fine. If it had actually been a sidewalk or shoulder, it would have been. But there were trucks coming towards us and there were mopeds who were trying to pass to their right and when they would do that, they would come face to face with us. With no room for either of us to go anywhere. Robin was in the lead and I kept teasing her that she was stopping traffic. Each time we would stop, Lois -- who was immediately behind me -- would put her hand on my shoulder. Like that would help in some way. The mopeds then had to merge back in with the trucks into the main lanes (which I use loosely, ‘cause it’s not like there really are lanes). There was absolutely nowhere for us to go, so the mopeds had to move back into traffic. It should have been a 3 minute walk, but it lasted much longer. When we got back to the ship, we ran into all the folks who took the taxi. They were just getting on the gangway. I was all hyped up. I LOVED it! Robin, however, looked pretty horrified and totally glared at me when I said that. She seemed mildly traumatized.

There was traffic in other countries too. Chennai was frightening as well and they seem to have their own set of unspoken rules. In Chennai, they use the horn for everything. I’m going through the stop sign, honk, honk … I’m going through the red light, honk, honk ... I’m a big bus going around a curve on a narrow mountain road and I have no idea who is coming towards me, honk, honk. It was dicey crossing the street there too, but the traffic wasn’t nearly as dense. In Vietnam, the mopeds are non-stop. And while they use the horn some, it seems the governing rule is just "go when no one else is" and "don’t hit anyone" and all else follows from that. Pretty simple when you get right down to it. Vietnam is the first place in a while where they drive on the right side of the road. I got pretty used to looking out for traffic coming the other direction, but this definitely felt more comfortable again. Walk deliberately and purposely, have faith, and all will be fine.

Squat toilets. I keep meaning to mention about them. Ever since we left South Africa, squat toilets have been the norm. Hole in the ground, with little places to guide your feet on either side. The touristy places have western-style toilets as well, but we’re not always there. Or, even it we are, in the public restrooms there will be both options and with a bus-load of Americans, if you want to jump to the front of the line, you have to be willing to squat. I’m getting very good at them. On the train in India, there were both options but the western-style were so much grosser that this is when I gave up and decided the other style had its merits. How much more do you want to know?

The Vietnam photo set is up at left. Today is April 14^th. One month from today, we’ll be pulling into San Diego.

vietnam is a country … not a war

2007-04-13T08:47:00.000-04:00

Faculty/staff/life-long learners keep commenting that the students here are too young to really understand what it means to be sailing down the Saigon River. Truth be told, I'm a little too young also. My father served in the war here, but I really know very little. Born in 1971 … other than history books, it's not really internalized for me either.

I woke up early, mostly because I couldn’t sleep, and we had yet to start down the river. I watched on and off during the morning, taking some pictures, sitting in the faculty/staff lounge, sitting far away from everyone in attempt not to spread my cold. Dr. Matt gave me cold medicine, since I had finished what I had and Robin’s Chinese healing oil didn’t seem to do the trick. It’s a very busy waterfront here. Lots of fishing, lots of industry. I’m going to post this blog without too many photos, because it takes a long time to get them all uploaded together. I’ll let you know when the images are up, but I didn’t want to hold up the blog post.

During Global Studies this week and at last night’s pre-port, Bob -- the guitarist -- has been singing anti-war songs. Everyone in the audience knew all the words even though we weren’t born back then to protest. All those songs are American standards now.

Day 1 in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) was shopping day. In Vietnam, the thing to do is to have clothes made for you. Especially silk. You obviously need time for that, so it can’t wait until the last day. The idea was to get measured on day 1, go out of town for the trip days 2-4, and then pick it up on day 5. So, the shopping team -- David, Phoebe, Robin, and I -- headed to Tailor Row. May 4^th is the Ambassador’s Ball on the ship. Rather prom-like in more ways than one. Formal attire required. We bought tickets last week (me, under a certain amount of duress) -- it’s a charity event. So, now we were all of need in formal attire. See how this works? SAS helps to stimulate the local economy everywhere we go … 700 students in need of formal attire. Lots of men get suits made in Vietnam (several of the male students have commented that this is their first suit ever) and the women, fancy dresses. Phoebe got measured for a traditional Vietnamese dress, in amazing royal blue silk. Robin bought a fabulous silk black skirt and grey jacket off the rack (‘cause she’s smaller than the rest of us …). She’s going to look beautiful. I couldn’t find anything I liked. All the Vietnamese dresses had very high collars which always make me feel strangled. And not being able to try on a style made me nervous. Even if the cost was only $42 total for the fabric and the making, like Phoebe’s. One student said that she’s heard only about 50% of the time are people happy with how their dress turns out. So, I’m still in need of something to wear. If I buy heels somewhere, I might be able to get away with the dress I brought for the Captain’s Dinner. Otherwise I need to keep looking. I did, though, buy a silk robe and a few silk gifts. Then the four of us met a bunch of others for a drink on the rooftop of the Rex Hotel. Clearly, the hotel bore some sort of importance but I had no idea what it was. Giles told me that all the American reporters in Saigon would gather there for drinks during the war. It was a beautiful night overlooking a beautiful city, lit up and neon, and looking both totally elegant and perfectly modern. To think about my dad in Vietnam, even if he wasn’t yet a reporter back then ...

I was by far the youngest person in the group of us that night and I just sat and listened as they all exchanged stories about the war. They had so many stories even though none of them served here. I just sat and listened to them talk. Then dinner and a harrowing walk back to the ship. The traffic in Vietnam is deserving of its very own blog post, so I’ll come back to that story later.

Day 2. Got up early for a 4-hour bus ride to Phan Thiet (pronounced Fan Thee-it). I had hoped we’d see more countryside than we actually did, though we did pass through many villages which was cool. We stayed in a resort-place on the beach, about ½ hour away from the small fishing village that is actually Phan Thiet. We took a boat ride and a cyclo tour in the town, both feeling rather touristy. They gave us all the traditional Vietnamese hats, which I have to say don’t seem so practical. They kept blowing away, for one thing. One stop was a pagoda where a religious ceremony theatre performance was going on. It was packed. And we were the only non-Asians to be seen. Everybody stopped watching the performance and stared at us. They were very kind -- brought us chairs and a fan (it was stifling hot) but otherwise mostly stared. We were clearly very distracting and, despite their graciousness, we felt badly for interrupting their ceremony. The cyclos are the same as what Indians call a rickshaw and Malaysians call a tricycle. You sit, someone pushes you or pulls you (it varies, but always in blistering heat) on a bicycle. We saw a bunch of sites in town and then went to the market, where we were pounced on to buy things, t-shirts, fake Rolexes, whatever. After dinner, I sat on the beach for awhile. I had a high-school-flashback-moment (well, there was already the prom-thing) of Natasha and I hanging out at night on the lifeguard stands in Stone Harbor. Which we used to do all the time, just sit up there and talk. I love the beach at night. It might be my favorite time -- windy, listening to the waves crash and only now and then seeing the white foam. I sat on a chaise lounge for a while and jotted down notes on what I’d tell you all when I got back to the ship to post. Sitting with my feet in the sand on the other side of the world. When I was a kid, we’d also do the digging-the-hole-to-China-thing. Next week, I’m gonna be in China ...

Day 3. We woke up early and took "old Russian vans" (jeeps) along the beach and then up to some beautiful sand dunes. It was quite beautiful and peaceful.

I picked up some shells – we’ll see if they make it all the way home. After lunch, Phoebe and David and I went back into town. We found a part of the market where we noticed the sales pressure was much less intense. Food, household goods, etc. Less swarming of the white Americans. We were more mostly a curiosity. It was difficult to ascertain the level of tourism in this fishing village. Clearly the beach resort area was heavily touristy (with mostly European tourists), but the fishing village itself was a ways away and there was not much tourist infrastructure. But with the previous day’s aggressive pressure to buy t-shirts and hats and knock-off Rolexes, there is definitely a tourist market. Anyways, David & Phoebe & I were roaming around an area that was clearly more local. We were attracted to some pretty bamboo baskets for very cheap and we purchased several. After that, everybody started laughing at us and pointing as we walked by their stalls. We couldn’t figure out why our baskets were so funny. I was taking pictures here and there of the market stalls. And the people walking by selling vegetables and such. As I was standing there -- for probably the 15^th time -- looking through my viewfinder, I realized what was so funny.

The baskets we thought so pretty were to them entirely utilitarian. They were the baskets that carried the fruits and vegetables. It was kind of like tourists wanting to buy a plastic shopping basket. Or maybe worse, the clear plastic bags that you put your produce in at the grocery store. Just a thing to do work. They thought it was hilarious we wanted to buy them. Lots of people stopped us to talk about them and we finally got across our question of what they were called. Significantly fewer people spoke English here than in Saigon. Our baskets were definitely a conversation starter, though, whatever our communication difficulties!

Then I went to the beach for a bit and swam in the ocean and slept in the shade. It was breezy and pleasant. Folks were kite-surfing (surf board + kite, as might make sense) and it was both beautiful and intriguing to watch. Dinner was a barbecue where we picked out which live fish we wanted and then watched them die on the grill. I really don’t have any desire to watch my food be killed. But since Toni made me promise I’d eat everything even if it was looking at me, I considered myself grateful that I could at least identify what my options were. I had delicious grilled crab and clams and calamari. And watermelon and dragonfruit (which is red and green on the outside and white with black polka dots on the inside and really delicious all around).

Day 4. Took a long walk on the beach and napped in a chaise lounge before we checked out of the hotel. We had a nice lunch and then headed back to Saigon. On the way home (oops, I typed "home", I meant "back to the ship!"), we stopped at a lacquer factory that employs victims of Agent Orange. We saw many disabled people at work lying eggshells and gold leaf and making art. Trays and rice bowls and wooden boxes and paintings. We got a super-fast tour of the factory that of course ended in the gift shop. I might try to go back there tomorrow. Tomorrow, I have an FDP to meet with a former UPI Photographer, but my morning is free. I have all kinds of goals for tomorrow morning, we’ll see where I get. (Tried to post this blog, but the Internet seems not to be working & couldn’t post …)

Day 5. This morning, I started out at the Reunification Palace. Formally called Independence Palace, it was built by the French and completed in 1870. In 1954 after the French withdrew from Vietnam, it was handed over to the South Vietnamese as the Presidential Palace. It was bombed in 1962 and then rebuilt. It looks very 1960’s. In 1975, it became the symbol of Vietnamese reunification when the Political Consulate Conference for Reunification of the Country was held there.

"We see things not as they are but as we are" (Anais Nin) ... The tourist brochure I was given this morning says:

On 07 May 1954, the French colonialists after having suffered heavy defeat in Dien Bien Phu campaign, had to sign the Geneva Accords and withdrew from Vietnam. The US Administration looked for a way to engage in order to carry out their intention to occupy Vietnam … With the Ho Chi Minh historic campaign, on 30 Apr, 1975, the tank of Liberation Forces bearing plate 390 has hit off the main gate, tank 843 hit and inclined the auxiliary gate of Independence Palace to move forwards. At 11:30 PM of the same day, 1^st Lieutenant Bui Quang Than, Commander of tank 843 lowered the flag of 3 red stripes and raised the flag of the Liberation Front of South Vietnam. This flag has flown vividly on top of the Palace concluding 30 years of hard and heroic war of Vietnamese people, carrying out the wish of President Ho Chi Minh: People of North-South Regious have been reunited.

My Lonely Planet Vietnam (2005) says:

The building, once the symbol of South Vietnamese government, is preserved almost as it was on that day in April 1975 when the Republic of Vietnam, which hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and 58,183 Americans died trying to save, ceased to exist.

The most interesting part of the tour was the underground bomb shelter, which had actually two stories underground and a crazy network of tunnels. There were way too many tourists in there (mostly Vietnamese) and it was hot like hell and I just feel the need to say that there is no way I could live in a bomb shelter!

After that, I decided to try and find the lacquer factory from yesterday. It seemed like it had to be in the same general area and so I wanted to walk. I had the address and at each corner I would stop and hand it to someone and ask for directions which they would pantomime for me. Everyone made it clear in pantomime that I should take a moped or a taxi. But, I was positive I was in the general area and that it was walkable. Eventually I started getting conflicting directions and, finally, I realized I really didn’t have enough time to find this place and do any shopping by the time I needed to get back to the ship. I should have just taken a taxi to begin with. I was dripping with sweat by the time I made it back to the ship and my feet were killing from walking a million miles around. I took a quick, very refreshing shower and headed out on the FDP. It went first to the home of a former UPI photographer, Hoang Van Cuong, where he showed us his work and talked about his story and answered our questions. He took famous pictures of people being airlifted off the roof of the American embassy in 1975.

Although there is some argument about whether or not it was truly the embassy building. He was imprisoned for many years after the war and has many vocal opinions about the communist government. Giles & Kate took this same tour the first day and reported that their tour guide went on a long rant about the photographer when they got back on the bus and that much of what he said was not true, etc., etc. I need to go back and ask them more now that I’ve been there also. Our tour guide said he was a "very good friend" of Hoang Van Cuong and so there was no rant. Giles teaches Politics & Memory so he is really interested in how history is told and retold in different ways. He loved it. After this stop, we went to the War Remnants Museum, formally called the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes, so you might be able to guess as to its slant. It was duly horrifying -- the photos, the baby victims of Agent Orange preserved in glass jars, the reconstructed jail cells. Lots of armory, tanks, airplanes, etc.

This sign:

next to this sign:

The Vietnamese translation of the U.S. Declaration. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

It was a long, hot, intense day.

The phrase that I used for this post’s title, "Vietnam is a country … not a war" is credited to Le Van Bang, former Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States. Our interport lecturer used it in one of his Global Studies lectures. It was clear the night at the Rex Hotel, where I was sitting with folks many years older than I, that they are still very focused on the war. For me, I find myself somewhere in between. Up until this week, I was definitely seeing war first. Now, I’ve taken in those experiences, but also the beach and the 21^st century lives of the people here. For the students with us, however, they are the ones truly able to see Vietnam as a country first. It is fascinating to watch that kind of historical legacy pass through the various American generations on our ship. As befitting a voyage with Desmond Tutu, you can see truth and reconciliation before your eyes.

The Vietnamese clearly see the United States as colonizers, just like they saw the French. They talk about the war as a war of independence, not a war of communism. But they see our students now clearly as tourists and consumers. So much history and so much globalization. All smushed up together. It’s hard to figure out exactly what to do with that. How to make sense of it. And it’s causing us all to spend a lot more time talking together about Iraq than we have thus far. War and history and globalization. Violence and loss. Politics and memory. Forgiveness and peace.

i’m sick

2007-04-08T04:02:00.000-04:00

the day before yesterday, I was in denial about possibly getting a cold. by yesterday I definitely had one. I took some DayQuil & slept some. I left Sherri in the library all afternoon and crashed. Robin gave me some Chinese Healing Oil. She’s very into all the homeopathic stuff. I have no idea, it tasted really awful is all I can say. I’m willing to try pretty much anything because I don’t want to be sick for Vietnam.

Last night was the ship’s Passover seder. There were about 200 people. There was matzo-ball soup which made us happy. But also pasta & cake … hmmm … the seder was nice, but a bit too conservative for my liking. This morning was the sunrise Easter service with the Archbishop. Fortunately we got to “retard” our clocks last night which gave us an extra hour of sleep. I got up for the service and then went back to sleep. For both events, we were given strict instructions to get dressed up. The Easter service was in the Union, which holds 300-some, and it was packed. I got there at 6:15 and was in the very back row. The service was lovely, I find the Archbishop totally mesmerizing. They did Communion and then we all processed out to deck and threw flowers overboard into the water. It was very pretty. I went back to sleep after, missing Global Studies, and I’m feeling a bit better now. I’ve been in the library all the rest of the day.

One of our professors was badly stung by a jellyfish in Malaysia. She’s on all kinds of serious pain killers and a number of faculty/staff/life-long-learners are taking turns being with her. The medical team wants her to stay awake all day so that she’ll sleep ok at night. I was supposed to do a shift this afternoon just hanging with her & keeping her awake, but I don’t want to share my cold. Seems like that’s all she needs. She came down to lunch today and is looking much better, so we’re hoping that the worst has passed.

Tomorrow is Vietnam. We should arrive in port around 10 am, but will start up the river towards Ho Chi Min City around 6:45. It’s supposed to be beautiful. I have a day free in Ho Chi Min City on either end of our stay with a 3-day trip to Phan Thiet (out in the countryside) in between. I’ll try to get a blog post out tomorrow night before I leave town.

Happy Passover & Easter to y’all out there …

pirate watch

2007-04-06T06:37:00.000-04:00

we’ve been in the Straits of Malacca most of the day, but still up where it’s pretty wide. We couldn’t see land. The Straits run between peninsular Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Here’s a map for your edification:

All day we’ve been going crazy slow and we turned a number of times. There was a man-overboard drill for the crew this morning where they turn the ship around quickly, but the rest of the day we were just slowly turning and weaving. We’ll be bunkering tomorrow for refueling in Singapore. We are ahead of schedule for Singapore and they want to go through the narrow part of the Straits at night to avoid pirates, so basically we were just killing time. About 7 pm., we sped up. We were up to 29 knots about an hour ago, but are down to 23 now. Not sure why. They said we would go to maximum speed overnight, which we believe to be 34 knots. You can definitely feel that we are going faster, but the water is very calm. At 7 when we started to speed up, I was up on Mary & Michael’s balcony for another daughter’s birthday party (more cake). We could hear the noise as we sped up and we watched the wake get larger. But, walking around the ship, you can’t really tell the difference. And now it’s dark, so the Straits might be narrow enough to see land, but we can’t see. There are a number of boats around though … pirates, who knows?

There were crew outside in the space next to Mary & Michael’s balcony and they said they were on pirate watch (we asked). I don’t know whether or not to believe them, truly.

You can read all about the Straits of Malacca at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straits_of_malacca

From an economic and strategic perspective the Strait of Malacca is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, an equivalent of the Suez Canal, or the Panama Canal. The Strait forms the main ship passageway between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, linking three of the world's most populous nations: India, Indonesia and China. The Strait carries 50,000 vessels per year, carrying between one-fifth and one quarter of the world's sea trade.

Piracy in the Strait has risen in recent years. There were about 25 attacks on vessels in 1994, 220 in 2000, and just over 150 in 2003 (one-third of the global total). After attacks rose again in the first half of 2004, the Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean navies stepped up their patrols of the area in July 2004.

There have been no recorded acts of piracy against passenger ships. They were all commercial ships. Good to know.

penang & pirates

2007-04-05T11:07:00.000-04:00

today, our last day in Penang, my plan was to roam aimlessly around George Town & see what I found. I ran into David & Phoebe at breakfast. They had just returned from Kuala Lumpur and we exchanged Malaysia stories and decided to head into town together. We started at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (Chinese Buddhist), which I’ve got to say totally challenged my notions of houses of worship. I found it hard to wrap my brain around. First off (as you might have guessed), there is a HUGE reclining Buddha. I couldn’t get it all in one photo:

The Buddha is also pictured here very female.

Other photos of the temple:

and there are many different places to pray for many different things:

And then there are walls of urns of ashes.

At UVA, we are written into the will of a faculty member at Yale who has a significant Asian collection. When he passes away, we will be receiving his collection to fill our new East Asian Reading Room. We will also be receiving his ashes. This was part of the deal, he wants his ashes in the room with the collection. Now, seeing all the urns of ashes in the Buddhist Temple, I better understand. Interesting, I had no idea.

And then we went across the street to the Burmese Buddhist Temple, where there was also a giant statue.

(that photo is not zoomed at all. I was very far away, it was so big.)

Then we went shopping (of course, last day in port …). Batik is the thing that is particularly Malaysian. There is also much Indian and Chinese dress, as would make sense.

and had lunch at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel (E&0). Like the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the E&O is an old colonial hotel. It was built in 1885 and it sits on the waterfront. According to the website: "among its more famous guests it has welcomed Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks, Hermann Hesse, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham."

Lunch was delicious and the hotel was totally elegant. Walked around a bit more, did more shopping, ended up in Chinatown, and returned sweaty and exhausted back to the ship. I really loved Malaysia. I knew very little about the country before last week and had no expectations for it. But it is beautiful and multicultural and friendly and really interesting in all kinds of different ways. I would definitely like to come back someday to go to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or some of the other islands. Ho Chi Min City is our next port. I’m really looking forward to Vietnam. Vietnam and South Africa were the two countries that had me excited about this voyage itinerary. Three days at sea and then we arrive in Vietnam. We're headed now into the Straits of Malacca. This is where there is pirate risk! Wish us safe travels ...

rice & rubber & palm oil

2007-04-04T09:18:00.000-04:00

Due to a stupid mistake, I don’t have a lot of photos of today. Long story not worth going into ... Today, I went on a tour called “prime commodities of Malaysia” -- it is a port full of agriculture and economics for me. Yesterday, orchards & spice gardens, today palm oil plantations, rubber trees, and rice mills.

Malaysia is a very large exporter of palm oil, which goes into an amazing number of products we consume. It’s the most widely produced vegetable oil in the world. We went to a factory, where we learned how they extract the oil. Palm trees bear fruit every three weeks all year around. Harvesters knock them off the tree with huge stick-like-things and then pick them up off the ground. During the factory tour, we saw everything. There are bundles of red-fruits attached to each clump that are processed first for their nuts and then the seeds are extracted into oil. Every part of the palm fruit is used for something. The large clumps (sorry to be so unscientific & it would help if I had photos!), once shed of the red-parts, are burned for bio-fuel. In the factory, we walked all around and climbed up to the top on very steep metal stairs. Holding on to the hand-rails, you feel the oil on the rails. The platforms up there were also all slippery. This is definitely something that wouldn’t be allowed in the U.S.! Tourists climbing up oily stairs & standing on oily platforms in the middle of a factory.

Then, we saw how they tap rubber trees. The itinerary made it sound like we were going to a rubber plantation, but really we just pulled to the side of the road with our guide and he took us back through a bit of overgrowth to the rubber trees. Malaysia & Indonesia are the largest makers of condoms in the world. And latex surgical gloves. In case that’s ever a Jeopardy question, you’ll be prepared. Natural latex is tapped by cutting into the side of the rubber tree and letting the sap fall into little buckets. Latex tappers are all women -- we’re told because the cut must be gentle not to harm the tree -- and the sap must be collected every day. A tapper can tap 500 trees in a day. A man will then come by and empty all the buckets. It’s very hard work and each bucket is only 60% usable latex, the rest is water. Many rubber plantations in Malaysia are now replanting with palm trees, because palm oil only needs to be harvested every 3 weeks. Rubber is much more labor intensive. The tree’s life is 20 years, they cut diagonally one direction on one half of the tree every day for 5 years, then diagonally in the other direction on that same half every day for the next 5 years. Then the same thing on the other side of the tree for 10 more years. After 20 years, the tree is cut for wood. Furniture and such.

After the rubber, we went to a rice mill and learned all about how rice is processed. We also got to walk all around that factory in hard hats and masks. It was very dusty. The biggest thing I learned is that white rice & brown rice are exactly the same kind of rice. White rice is just “polished” -- all the nutrients, actually, are polished away to make it white. The farmer arrives to the mill with his rice paddy which is weighed. The truck + the paddy are weighed minus the weight of the empty truck. From that gross weight is then deducted the estimated water weight and the estimated weight of the impurities. The farmer is paid on the net weight. First the paddy is dried in dryers that take 24 hours to run a cycle. They have 15 dryers in the mill. They also have what they call a LSU dryer, because it was invented by a professor at Louisiana State! After drying, the paddy goes into a husking machine where the husk is removed and then a separating machine, where the husk is separated from the rice. They opened the top of the husking machine for us to see and rice was hopping all around. Then there’s a sifting process that removes the “bran”. The outer layer is called the husk, then there’s a layer called the bran, and then the rice grain. After sifting, it all goes into a machine that cleans the rice and removes the impurities. After that, you’ve got brown rice. If you want white rice, you’ve got one last step of polishing. As with the palm oil, they use everything. So, the brown/white rice gets dumped out into giant 1 ton bags of rice that go off to a wholesaler. And the bran gets sold for animal feed.

The Malaysian government heavily subsidizes rice production and they still import a huge amount of rice from other countries. Particularly Vietnam and Thailand. China is the largest producer of rice in the world but they consume most of what they produce. The company we visited (Bernas) is a former government agency (now privatized) that is the only company in the country licensed to import rice. As a result, there is also rice smuggling on the border with Indonesia, which goes up and down (down now) based on what the cost of rice is on the world market. The Malaysian government provides input subsidies to the farmers (free fertilizer), output subsidies (on the sale to Bernas), and also sets the market price. Since it is Malaysia’s staple food, they take the stockpiling of rice & goals of self-sufficiency pretty seriously. Also rice farmers are the poorest paid workers in Malaysia and there is a conscious effort to help improve their conditions.

After the trip, Dawn & I walked around George Town a bit (I misspelled it yesterday, you might have noticed). We went up to Little India, which felt a little silly since we just came from the real thing.

On a segment of the street that forms an F, we passed an Indian Hindu Temple on the bottom street, a Chinese Buddhist Temple on the left side street, and a Mosque on the top street. All a stone’s throw away from each other. We were lingering outside the mosque wondering if we could go in when a man came out to get us and told us to come in. We could hear the call to prayer as we were walking up. We took off our shoes, he walked us in, told us to sit on one of the carpets and told us to watch. He said he’d come back and get us after the prayer was over. He even said it was ok to take photos. Many of the mosques in the area won’t let non-Muslims enter at all.

After the prayer (Muslims pray 5 times a day and this was #3), he gave us a tour of the mosque. It was quite beautiful. Originally built in 1801 with some more modern renovation.

Then, he took us back to his information center and talked to us for a very long time about Islam. He was very interested to learn that I was Jewish. He said that Jews don’t very often come to Malaysia. People carrying Israeli passports are not allowed into Malaysia nor are Malaysians allowed into Israel. He said, up until a couple of years ago he "didn’t know what a Jew looked like". He was quite nice and very informative and answered all of our questions. I asked whether the Muslim community here spoke Arabic, but he said no. They can follow along and read the Arabic characters in the Qur’an, but they don’t know what they mean. I said for very many of us that is true of Hebrew as well. He asked me a number of questions too, but his command of the Old Testament was wayyy better than mine. I was only able to answer some of his questions. I’m not sure I’ve been in a functioning mosque before. I’ve been in several in Spain, but all are now historical museums or such.

Finally, we walked along the “clan jetties” by the water, where Chinese fisherman live and work. It’s like a boardwalk with homes built on top of it.

Another nice day, if very very hot. I like Malaysia very much. I’d add it to the list of places I could totally see myself living in … if it weren’t so !@%$#%@ bloody HOT! One more hot country (Vietnam) and then we should hit more temperate climates. I can’t wait! …

I’ve finally created flickr sets for each country’s photos. I’ve linked to them at left, in case you like that better than using the map’s navigation. There are more photos on flickr than I’ve included in each blog post, so go there if you want more. I’ll put up new sets as we leave each country.

fruit & spices

2007-04-03T04:24:00.000-04:00

today, we went to an orchard and spice garden. We saw so many plants & flowers and I have so many pictures and no ability now to identify them all. Penang is know for durian, a fruit that "smells like hell but tastes like heaven." Smells so much that hotels have signs in the lobby telling guests they are not allowed to bring durian inside. We were all a little relieved to find that it is not currently in season! Our guide told us we must return to Malaysia in June or July to taste the famous durian. Will do ... It is referred to as "King of the Fruits". Mangosteen is "Queen of the Fruits" and Rambutan is "Prince of the Fruits", but they are also currently out of season.

We saw bananas:

pineapple:

nutmeg:

(did you know that you can poison someone with nutmeg?)

some weird kind of apple:

asian figs:

ginger:

and lots of pretty flowers:

At the spice garden, there were also lots of beautiful plants, again most of which I can’t remember to identify:

some kind of endangered palm, maybe?:

There was also a tsunami memorial. Our guide yesterday told us that 47 people perished in Penang in the tsunami, the guide today said 68. Low, by all comparison but very sad nonetheless. There are many hotels along the beach here too, but they had time to be warned. Hotel managers in Bande Ache had notified folks here and they were able to clear the beaches. The people who perished were all fisherman. Like the stories of other areas, here in Penang, the water receded before the tsunami arrived. Fisherman went further in to catch the fish that were hopping around on dry land. They were not warned. When the wave hit, they were dragged out into the sea. A lot of fisherman here are still living in temporary government housing over two years later.

it's pretty, wake up

2007-04-02T08:50:00.000-04:00

last night, Michael & Mary had a birthday cake for yet another one of their adopted daughters. I’ve had a LOT of cake since I joined Michael & Mary’s family! They’ve sailed before so I asked them whether Malaysia was worth waking up for -- to watch us come in to port. I’m willing to get up at 6 am if it’s worth the view, but otherwise I really needed sleep. We lost another hour last night and we’re now officially 12 hours ahead of the east coast. Michael & Mary said they couldn’t really remember but they always watch us come into port and so Mary volunteered to call me if it was pretty. This morning at 7 am the phone rang & I completely forgot & honestly my first reaction was “who the hell????” When I picked up the phone, the voice said: it’s Michael, it’s pretty, wake up.

Ok, I guess the view was worth it:

I couldn’t go back to sleep because I had an early trip and the ship was tendering. We’re anchored here in the middle of the water and our life-boats are tendering us back & forth to shore. It’s adding a good 45 minutes to arrival & departure times. There is a cruise ship next to us doing the same thing. Their main pier is under renovation.

The first stop on our day-long island orientation was a butterfly farm. There’s one of these in Richmond and I keep meaning to go, but I’ve never been. This was very nice & pretty.

Then we went to a snake temple, where they have live poisonous snakes:

Lunch was at a Chinese restaurant on their fisherman’s wharf:

After lunch, we went to Kek Lok Si Temple and Pagoda (and monastery) and climbed a million steps up in horrid horrid heat (have I mentioned before that I don’t so much like the heat???). The temple, though, was well worth it.

This is called liberation pond. They buy tortoises in town and then set them free in the pond.

And this is a gold-plated Buddha:

Next we went to a botanical gardens where monkeys where roaming around. I now have monkey pictures in most countries we’ve been to.

We got hissed at by one monkey who looked very angry at us & scared us away. So, I've also continued the activity of pissing off the monkeys ... And, finally, we went to the Khoo Kongsi Clan House. This was the signature building built by early Chinese in a small neighborhood. When the Chinese immigrated to Malaysia they established neighborhoods of single family lineage or for all those coming from the same village. Everyone from that village would move to that same area and the clan house was a central place where they would worship their ancestors. The Khoo Kongsi Clan House is for Malaysian Chinese of Khoo ancestry. Gold pates on the wall indicate the family members and their institutions of higher education. Clearly, they were very proud.

It has beautiful paintings & sculptures:

And then we got back on our tender-boat to get back on the ship:

Like Mauritius’ place as a bridge between Africa and India, Malaysia is a bridge between India and China. All trade passed through Malaysian ports. For the most part, we saw Chinese influences today. Malaysia has three very distinct ethnic communities: the Malays, the Indians, and the Chinese, and the country is about 60% Muslim. It consists of a peninsular mainland and 200 distinct islands. Penang is one of those islands and Georgetown is its capital.

Our Malaysian interport lecturer for this leg of the voyage told us that we shouldn’t ask people how the different ethnic groups in Malaysia get along. Ethnic identity has begun to be openly discussed only recently, and then only after significant trust has been established. She also told us that, while the Malaysian people will understand that we -- as individuals -- may disagree with our government’s foreign policy, we should not ask people what they think about Americans nor should we ask them what they think about U.S. foreign policy. She let us know that Malaysians are very friendly and won’t be hostile towards us, but that we should stay away from any such controversial topics. The whole cultural pre-port emphasized that we should be agents to help Malaysians change existing negatives stereotypes of the U.S. … or … it was alternatively suggested that we starting talking with Canadian accents … ugh ...

oh the things we can learn

2007-04-01T03:49:00.000-04:00

so, I read my little booklet called “Kerala and her Jews”, which says it’s based on a paper given before the Kerala History Association in 1965 and a master’s thesis from 1984. So, it’s a little dated, I’d have to do more research to see what’s been learned past then. It’s pretty unclear how Jews arrived in India. One theory is that they arrived as part of King Solomon’s merchant fleet. There are resemblances between Hebrew words and Tamil words that support this view. Another theory is that the Jews arrived in Kerala as a result of the exodus from Persia during the 5^th century. The tradition of the Cochin Jews says they arrived soon after the destruction of the second Temple in the first century. And there are many other theories as well.

Their origins undecided, Jews definitely had their own settlement in India, in Cranganore (also called Shingly), from the 5^th century to the 15^th century. They had a virtually independent principality “ruled over by a Prince of their own race and choice”. After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, many traveled to Cranganore and settled in the existent Jewish community there. The Portuguese then arrived in the early 1500s and expelled all the Jews from Cranganore. The Jews fled to Cochin and came under the protection of the Hindu Rajah “who in the words of an English historian, ‘with a liberality that can be hardly understood’ granted them a town by the side of his own palace and temple”. Jew Town was built then and the synagogue in 1568. There were ups and downs after that when Cochin came under, first, Portuguese rule followed by Moorish rule. Under Dutch rule and, finally, British rule, the Jewish community lived peacefully in Cochin.

Most of the Jewish community eventually emigrated to Israel in the 20^th century. The master’s student conducted a survey questionnaire, the results of which attributed the emigration to religious sentiment, the lack of marriage partners, and better employment opportunities. The booklet concludes by saying:

“After some years the story of the Jews of Malabar which has marked an interesting episode in the chequered history of the Jewish people may come to an end. If this happens History can record that their emigration was not motivated by intolerance or discrimination by Government nor by external political or social pressure but their deep sense of religious fervour to live and die in the Holy Land.”

In the spirit of religious diversity, I have signed up for both the Passover seder and the Easter Sunday sunrise service. We’re actually having two first-night seders. Passover starts tomorrow, our first night in Malaysia. There will be a small seder that night for anyone who will be around the ship and then a big seder for the shipboard community on April 7^th. I signed up for the Easter sunrise service because it will be led by Archbishop Tutu. It’s been fun seeing him around the ship casually and hearing him speak, but I thought I’d very much enjoy the formal experience of watching him do his thing. He has been holding Sunday services as well in his cabin but it is by invitation only. I haven’t felt comfortable asking to just come and observe, it feels too private.

This morning, for April Fool’s Day, Dr. Matt came to Global Studies and told us that two students had been diagnosed with leprosy overnight, after leaving India. He had everyone going for a very long time. There was much angst in the room. We arrive tomorrow in Malaysia, which feels a little crazy. We’ve only had 2 days of classes since India. Day 1 was also the cultural pre-port and tonight the logistical pre-port. We’ve had a very whirlwind overview of Malaysia, so hopefully we’ll learn lots while on land. I’m staying in Penang. No overnights this time, just a few day trips. Stay tuned.

cookie-grams & real-mail

2007-03-31T01:59:00.000-04:00

yesterday, was a very lovely day, our first day back on the ship from India. For starters, it was a no-class day. We opened the library at noon, but it gave us a lazy morning. It was also cookie-gram-day. One of the student organizations called "Students of Service" organizes this to raise money for charities around the world in ports we visit. I got a number of cookie-grams. Dia says I'm the coolest librarian ever; Aya and Priya, two of my favorite students who are in the library all the time, said that Semester at Sea has the greatest library staff in the world; and there were a few others. Two were unsigned so I have no idea who they are from or who to thank. And then it was also mail-day. It takes a few days to sort through all the mail that arrives in port and yesterday I received a letter from UVA. It was my first real-mail and made me surprisingly excited! Many thanks to Leland for spearheading this, and to Joe & Liz & Virginia & Barbie & Elizabeth & Mary for all signing. It was very sweet. And we ended the day with a party that the spouses threw in the faculty/staff lounge for all the faculty. Everyone was decked out in new colorful clothing that they bought in India. It was a day for decompressing about our experiences in India, getting our minds around the transition from long stretches at sea to this new period when we'll be only a couple of days at sea between each country, showing off & telling about all our new purchases, and having life & work celebrated all around. Lovely day!

so much color, so much grime

2007-03-30T04:09:00.000-04:00

not even sure where to start. I have many many very disconnected thoughts about India. I’ll spew a bunch of them here (with some photos), but they are very unprocessed. I think I’ll need a bit of time to put any cohesion to my time here.

Here was the view from the ship. They are making cars and waiting to load them onto ships. The port here is very industrial.

It is unbelievably hot & unbelievably humid.

There are people everywhere. We were little (mostly) white magnets. Everybody wanted our attention, our energy, our money.

Everything needs to be bargained for. And hawkers and retailers are all incredibly aggressive. Shopping is hard work, getting around is hard work. You’d negotiate a price with a rickshaw driver to go to a place & he would take you to a completely different place & argue for a completely different price. It was a bit exhausting.

(those are onions ...)

The cities are dirty and grimy. They’ve put plastic down everywhere over the carpets on the ship and given us blue towels, rather than the normal white, to hide the grime.

Here are my feet from an outing today that lasted no more than 3 hours.

I’m sitting in the faculty/staff lounge now and the crew has been through 3 times to wash the deck in the short time I’ve been sitting here. You can still see the dirt on the wood. The windows are filthy, despite the fact that they also have been washed multiple times. They closed all the outdoor food areas for the duration of the time we were in Chennai. I thought they were over-exaggerating, but looking at the deck this morning it is clear that they were not.

And everything is beautiful. The sarees are incredible, the fabric is incredible, how these woman stay so beautiful & so clean amidst all the dirt & grime is really difficult to figure out.

The temples are beautiful. The colors are vibrant & startling & everywhere. Why don’t we have color like this?

The mosquitoes here are not deterred by deet. I got very bitten despite heavy dousing of deet & promethrin.

The first day we did a little shopping and then I left immediately for an overnight train trip to Kerala. We were in 6-person compartments, air-conditioned, thankfully (have I mentioned that air conditioning is the best invention EVER?), a curtain separated us from the hallway that people walked back & forth along all night. Our group was great, there were only 18 of us and about a third of those were “adults” (faculty/staff/life-long-learners). I had a top bunk and slept ok that night. Dia claims to have seen a rat and is now calling the experience: “rats on a train”, but other than that the trip was uneventful. I like trains.

We arrived about 6 am in Madurai, we checked into a hotel briefly just to change clothes (there was a “boys” room and a “girls” room) and have breakfast and then we went sight-seeing. We started at the Hindu Temple in Madurai, called Meenakshi, which is dedicated to Shiva. It was built by the Nayaks, who ruled Madurai from the 16th to 18th centuries. The Temple was incredible & colorful. There were visitors, like us, and then many people worshiping. We weren’t allowed in the most center area because only Hindus are allowed in there, but we got a really good sense of the very large temple. I have a ton of pictures that I’ll put up on flicker over the next few days, but I was particularly drawn to the ceiling paintings.

We also visited an ancient palace of the Nayak Kings, which was interesting mix of Hindu elements and Islamic architecture.

You can immediately see the resemblance of these arches to those of other Islamic-influenced countries, like southern Spain for example. Driving through Madurai, it reminded me also very much of the little town outside of Madrid where my Spanish family had their vacation home. I can’t remember what that town was called and, of course, anything that would answer that question is at home. I’m not quite sure honestly where the similarity lies, and I kept wondering about it all day -- why that struck me. The town outside Madrid was a vacation-home-town in the mountains, with much wealth. There was not wealth in Madurai. But something about how the roads edged off into dirt on either side and the presence of that dirt in the air as it was kicked up by all the people out doing early morning daily shopping (before it gets too hot), and the congregating and chatting and doing business and laughing, the noise, the mopeds, it struck me all as very familiar.

After lunch, we drove 5 hours in a bus (also gratefully air conditioned) to Periyar. Periyar is in Kerala in the mountains and we drove the very big bus up very windy narrow roads. There was a fatal bus accident several years back during Semester at Sea and it was very hard not to think about that. Periyar is beautiful and high up and everything was lush and green and very unlike the city we had come from. We stayed in a lovely hotel that night where we were treated to a cooking demonstration (yup) and some Indian dancing. One dance I’m almost positive was also one we saw in Mauritius at the Mahatma Ghandi Institute.

The next day started at 5:15 when we were woken up for breakfast so that we could take an early morning boat-ride on Lake Periyar at the Wildlife Reserve. We didn’t see any large animals. They have a few tigers but haven’t spotted them since last August. Elephants are supposed to be prevalent, but we didn’t see any elephants either. Since I had just done the safari, I wasn’t too disappointed. And, since we arrived so early, the fog was burning off the lake and the boat ride was quiet and peaceful and sleepy and perfect.

As we were walking back to the bus, we saw a bunch of monkeys and mama monkeys carrying baby monkeys.

One monkey swatted at me for taking her picture. She came right up to me and reached up and swatted at my knee. It was a little bit scary, actually. Dr. Matt warned us not to get bitten by monkeys. It was hard to gage if it was play or anger. Maybe she didn’t want her picture taken?, which of course I would be perfectly willing to sympathize with.

We then got back on our bus and drove to a town called Kottayam. We passed tea plantations, which I don’t think I had ever seen before. I had seen coffee plantations in Costa Rica, but this was pretty cool. And also beautiful:

The area we drove through here was clearly wealthy and there were beautiful homes and much greenery & flowers and again, very much in stark contrast to Chennai or Madurai. In Kottayam, we boarded a small boat to sail along the backwaters of Kerala. There is a lake system that takes you through various different villages. Not surprisingly, it is referred to as the Venice of India. As we traveled along, we saw people living and working, women washing clothes, children swimming (or bathing?), and there were also some very beautiful homes. There were water-hyacinths in the water and Monty, who teaches environmental science (as well as documentary filmmaking), says they use them as water filtration. 'Cause lots of unpleasant stuff goes in the water, and yet they were bathing & washing clothes. Monty says they are starting to use these water-hyacinths in the U.S. also.

You can also travel the backwaters by houseboat. You can rent a houseboat for a night or two and hire a crew who cooks for you and get off in the various villages to talk to people. Several faculty/staff did this for their port stay and we ran into two of them as we were traveling along the waterway. The boat dropped us off in the town of Alleppey where we met up with our bus again and traveled about an hour to Kochi.

That evening, we had dinner and heard a lecture by a local college professor who talked about Kerala and answered questions. Kerala has a 95% literacy rate and it ranks very high in India for both education and wealth. A lot of the call-centers we’re all familiar with when we call tech-support are located here. Monty was trying very hard to pin the professor down on the question of “why Kerala?” -- why is Kerala so different than the rest of India? The professor talked a lot about how the British brought their educational system to Kerala and also the impact of Christian missionaries who set up schools. (Did you know that Christianity came to India before it came to Europe? Probably from Syria.) It struck me as odd that a country that is trying very hard to re-define itself post-British-colonization would credit the British for so much. Monty continued to be disturbed by the question of “why Kerala?” -- why not other areas where the British were highly influential, but he didn’t really get a good answer to his question. The students asked great questions, many about gender equality and economics and poverty. One of the students asked about the technology call centers. He said to the professor that outsourcing technology jobs to India is a source of much debate in the U.S. What were the problems that India saw with this outsourcing? The professor said that India doesn’t see any problems, that they were happy for the job creation. But, a few students continued to press and did learn some about sociological problems. For example, women who work in the call centers are working different hours (because of time differences across the world) from what is traditional, even for women who have worked, and that creates tension at home. The professor's university has a language lab where they teach U.S. pronunciation for the call centers employees. I remember Bess saying once that she had to take formal classes to lose her North Carolina accent when she worked at a helpdesk answering phones. Same thing here. The lecture was supposed to go 45 minutes but we were there much later because students continued to ask questions.

The next morning we toured around Kochi (Cochin was its British name). We started at two churches built by the Dutch. The first is now a Protestant Church & the second is a Catholic Church. Unlike western churches, we had to take our shoes off in both places. Vasco de Gama was buried in the Catholic Church until his remains were returned to Portugal. He died in India.

From there, we walked along the sea (Kochi means Queen of the Arabian Sea) to see the Chinese fishing nets, which were incredibly cool. 3 or 4 fisherman manipulate huge nets which catch surprisingly few numbers of fish. It may have just been the time of day, but we didn’t see large catches.

The fish are all then laid out in the fish market, where both people & cats enjoy:

From there, we went to a Dutch Palace that had beautiful paintings, but no photos allowed. And then on to the Jewish synagogue of Kochi, built in the 16^th century. Photos were also not allowed there. The synagogue was small and beautiful and also had much Hindu influence in the color and the decoration. Like the Hindu temples, there is an outer square area where you first enter and then an inner square area where worshiping occurs. We had to remove our shoes here also before entering. After not being able to read the Indian scripts, it made me smile to walk up to the ark and be able to read the Shema, with even my not-very-good Hebrew. There are only 14 Jewish families living in the area now. The tour guide said they can’t get a minyan. The area surrounding the synagogue is called “Jew Town”.

The synagogue was built by the Portuguese and it first it seemed like they must have built it for themselves (their own Jewish community immigrating to India), but the guide said there were black Jews living in India before the Portuguese. And that white Jews came later. After we left the synagogue, I walked into the only store in Jew Town that is still owned by a Jewish family. The woman in there was definitely elderly and definitely white. We asked her a few questions but she didn’t seem to know much about where her family had come from. She told us she didn’t know and her parents didn’t know and they didn’t know their names. Their original Hebrew names, I imagined she meant. She said they did not know Hebrew either, just Malayalam, the language of Kerala. I walked in thinking maybe I would get a mezuzah and when I asked if she had them, she looked at me and said “you Jew?” They had only one mezuzah which was nothing terribly special and it was clear that most of what she did was embroidery. I bought a challah cover, as did Larry & Barbara, who I was with. Here’s Barbara with the store owner, her name was Sarah Cohen (also not so Indian):

It would have been interesting if she could have told us more about her origins. I bought a little booklet on Jews in Kerala, so when I finish reading that, maybe I can tell you more. India has only one other synagogue. Christianity in Kerala is 30% of the population, which is much higher than any of us had guessed. We think of India as so predominately Hindu, but there is significant religious diversity.

We did some more shopping in Jew Town, and then had a relaxing lunch and headed back to the train station. We boarded the train about 5:30 and so we had many hours to kill before bed. But, we chatted about I-don’t-know-what until 10, when lights-out on the train happened. I didn’t really sleep. I was on the bottom bunk this time which I found much less comfortable. We arrived back to the ship about 7 am yesterday morning. Erica, one of the resident directors and our trip leader, had told us nightmares about her previous voyage when she returned from the Taj trip hot and sweaty and exhausted to find out that the ship was on water restriction and no one was allowed to shower. Fortunately, that was NOT the case this voyage. We could shower, although we are still being asked to conserve. I showered, had breakfast, and then joined a field trip to the Working Women’s Forum.

The WWF is a “micro-credit” cooperative, which I confess to knowing nothing about before the Global Studies lecture on this topic. Muhammad Yunus recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Grameen Bank, which has popularized micro-credit. Micro-credit is when a bank or a cooperative (like a credit union) gives out small loans (on the order of a couple hundred dollars) to encourage poor people to start small businesses, like weaving or other handicrafts. They claim to have a 98% loan re-payment rate. The cooperative provides training both for the actual craft skills and for fiscal responsibility. They are doing a lot of on-the-ground work and providing small loans to women to help start to pull them out of poverty. The work of the Grameen Bank is at http://www.grameen-info.org/ and the WWF is at http://www.workingwomensforum.org/ You can read more about micro-credit (and microfinance) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit

We met with the President of the WWF today, Jaya Arunachalam, who told us about the organization and they took us through the bank where women were lined up to come in to make their monthly payments.

Gloria is critical of the micro-credit model and she was on the trip today too. She had spoken to this topic also at Global Studies last week. The micro-credit model encourages groups of women to come together around a particular trade and they receive the loan as a group, usually a group of 8 women. There is a leader (who would have been the women we saw today) who is primarily responsible for the loan-repayment. Gloria says several things happen. One is that women are given the loan but their husbands actually take the money. In order to repay the loan, the woman has to then borrow money from somewhere else (at a very high interest rate), which causes her to be in further debt. And the women in the group pressure each other to repay the loans. The micro-credit model sees this as a good thing -- both peer support and peer pressure for each person to make their contribution. Gloria says this shifts the burden from addressing the real causes of poverty to creating a situation where women are pressuring each other to repay loans that none of them can afford and which require them to take out new loans at higher interest rates to cover the original loan. The art of distraction. She wants to know how many of these small businesses survive 5 years and whether these woman are really working their way out of poverty over the long haul. Many people believe that organizations like the WWF are doing amazing things. And Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work. There are many different opinions on micro-credit and they were on display this morning which was pretty interesting.

After lunch, Dean Mike & Sherri & Joyce & I went to the Khadi Government Emporium which is a shopping experience of the local variety that also doesn’t require bargaining. It was incredibly opposite of all the hawkers/retailers of the rest of the trip, who were really very aggressive. Here, I had a very hard time getting someone’s attention to help me. You’d think there’d be some kind of happy medium. We were the only non-Indians in the store. We took a rickshaw, which was my first rickshaw [death-defying] experience (I loved it!) and bought stuff and it was quite an enjoyable afternoon. I definitely racked up some loot in India. Yipes. I love the fabrics and the colors and it was really hard to resist. No more rupees left in my wallet …

day 49

2007-03-24T12:47:00.000-04:00

we arrive in Chennai tomorrow. Everyone is madly preparing. I don’t think I’ve checked anything out today except for travel guides. There are exams this morning (mid-terms) and much jubilation throughout the library space as they get finished up. Tomorrow as we arrive in Chennai, it will be day 50. Tomorrow, we’ll officially be half-way through. It feels like a very long time and like no time at all … all at the same time. My real life caught up with me a little this week. Needed to work on my annual report for UVA, needed to write a recommendation letter, the new RDA draft is out for comment … I find that I’m having a hard time bringing my real life forward now in my brain.

While in India, I’m headed on a trip to Kerala: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala. Kerala is on the southwest coast and our trip should include Hindu Temples, a Catholic Church, a Jewish synagogue, a wildlife preserve, and a boating experience down the back channels. I’m looking forward to the trip. It’s billed as a 5-day trip, but day 1 doesn’t start until tomorrow night at 7:00 when we board a sleeper train. And day 5 is the morning we return at 6:00 am. So, really 3 full days. The train should be cool, I just hope that it’s not dark outside the whole time. I hear the area is beautiful. Suthar told me I would love it. I’m a bit worried about the heat. It’s going to be very very very hot. Mary described her last visit to India as “suffocating”. She also said, though, that heat in general doesn’t bother her so much anymore. No matter how hot it is, it doesn’t compare to how it was in India. Hmmmmm …

Last night, we were honored with a glorious performance from some dolphins. There were so many of them. Jumping and playing and riding alongside our wake. For a good 15 minutes; up to four of them jumping in unison. It was stunning. I stood there and watched wondering if I dare leave to go get my camera. Of course, as soon as I did they were nearly out of view. If you blow this photo up really large (like screen size), you'll see one:

But, as the dolphins faded away, the sun started to set. And, for that, I did have my camera:

And this is Michael & Mary, of my new adopted family:

It will be a blogless week for my dedicated readership. Talk to you all after Chennai …

crew q & a

2007-03-23T14:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we had a q & a with the captain and his crew. I tried to take good notes so that I could pass along all the info. to my blog readership:

Who is our Captain?

His name is Captain Jeremy Kingston and he is from England. He is licensed to captain any vessel, of any tonnage, in any ocean.

How do we get food & how much do we store in advance?

We store up foods that can only (or best) be bought in America, for example peanut butter & taco supplies. We pick up fresh fruits and vegetables at port. Our cereal, at the moment, is Brazilian. Our last loading will be in Hong Kong and that will get us to the end of the voyage.

Is there any danger of pirates?

There have been no recorded incidents of pirates (since when?, my notes weren’t good here …!). Captain Jeremy’s quote: “To be honest, I have no idea what a pirate looks like …” There is a small danger of pirates as we approach Singapore and our primary strategy will be to increase our speed overnight. We’ll use all four engines then.

What would we do if a pirate boarded?

To quote Monty Python, Captain Jeremy says: “run away run away”. The goal is to keep pirates from boarding in the first place! We have lookouts and, if pirates approached, we would start by spraying them with fire-hoses. Like police in a riot. Or we’d fill their boats with water and try to sink them. But, really, the thing we do is increase our speed. A small boat would have a very hard time coming alongside our wake. Captain Jeremy says: “I’d actually like to see them try. I’d stand on the bridge and laugh at them.”

How much fuel do we consume?

About 85-90 tons of fuel per day. As mentioned before, we have 4 engines. We are currently running on only one engine, which uses about 60 tons of fuel per day.

How many crew do we have?

Currently, 205 crew of 20 different nationalities. Most of the crew are from the Philippines. The crew have different contract lengths depending on their nationality. 4, 5, 6, 9 months variously. The officers work four months on, four months off. The crew has space on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd decks where all of their cabins are. They have a crew gym, a crew bar, a crew mess, and there is also an officers’ dining room.

How much is the ship worth?:

Smaller cruise ships like ours are not all that popular in the marketplace. And it all depends on the marketplace. The last time the sister ship sold, it went for $70-80 million. But, they probably cost about $200-250 million to build.

How much is a Captain paid?:

At top of the industry, $150,000-$200,000 + quarter million dollar bonus after 5 years sailing troublefree. There are also incentives for such things as fuel efficiency. At the low end, a Captain may only make @ $40,000.

What are the difference between working for SAS and normal cruise-ships?.

Cruise ship passengers are always complaining. About everything. We complain a lot too, said the hotel director, but we don’t ask for our money back. Cruise ships spend about $40/day/person for food. The hotel director wouldn’t tell us how much we spend, only to say “we don’t come anywhere near that”. [Other sources report that it’s $5/day/person.] The officers also claim to enjoy getting to know us over the course of the voyage. And they like spending long stretches at sea. On a cruise-ship, there is constant turnover of passengers and they mostly sail overnight to arrive in port the next day. And then overnight again for the next port.

What’s the food cycle?

Every day is repeated 5 times on the ship (for a 20 day cycle), pending supply. Most ingredients for taco-day come from America and so were stocked up on in Fort Lauderdale. Barbecue (which also makes us very happy) is dependent upon the weather. Not only absence of rain but they need very calm seas. As we’ve learned, it can be completely sunny & completely rough. There should be another barbecue-day between Kobe & Honolulu.

Why do we need to conserve water for India?

In every port, we stop taking on water as we near land. In most ports, we supplement our water with purchased water from the port. But, in India, we can’t get water supplied in port because it doesn’t meet health codes. It takes a lot of time & costs a lot of money to have water trucked in (it's literally like mineral bottled water), so we push to conserve while in India. Also, on water, the process is reverse osmosis with heavy chlorination.

Why is there no cold water from the tap?

Water takes on the ambient temperature of the surroundings. At your home, in your pipes, the water comes in cold from the underground. The water here is held in a tank and we don’t chill it. It would be too expensive to chill.

Why isn’t the pasta labeled vegetarian?

Well, the tomatoes & the lettuce aren’t marked vegetarian either … The hotel director expects that we’ll use some commonsense … [Actually, there was a rumor that the pasta was cooked in chicken broth, but the hotel director says this is not true.]

How much do we weigh?

The ship weighs 12,400 metric tons empty and 40,833 metric tons fully loaded.

Why is it so cold on the ship?:

The temperature is kept at 22 or 23 degrees celsius (72-73) in the public spaces. When you put a lot of people in a single place (like the union or the classrooms), the space heats up pretty quickly. It’s too expensive to lower and raise the temperature based on shipboard activity, so it is set at a stable (cold-to-some) temperature.

How often does the ship get painted?

It is “dry-docked” every two years and “wet-docked” every year for painting. [The ship is conveniently orange & blue, by the way -- UVA colors).]

Where does the term “muster” come from (i.e. muster station, where we gather for our lifeboats):?

They didn’t know. But since I’m a good librarian, the OED tells me:

1. Senses relating to the assembling or collecting together of persons, etc. The number of people or things assembled on a particular occasion; an assembly, a collection. First used in 1382: Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.): 1 Kings (Bodl. 959) v. 13 Kyng Salamon chees werkmen of al israel, & e mowstre [L. indictio] was retti thousendis of men.

2. An act of calling together soldiers, sailors, prisoners, etc.; an assembling of people for inspection, exercises, etc., or an act of counting or enlisting people into (esp. armed) service; a roll-call. Also (Austral.): a census (now hist.). First used in 1419: Ordin. War xiii, in T. Twiss Monumenta Juridica (1871) I. 463 That noman be so hardy to have other men at his mustrez, than tho that be with hym self withold for the same voiage.

What’s with all the crew safety drills?

The crew is required by law to exercise safety drills every 7 days.

What’s the difference between M.V. and M.S. and S.S?:

They are all titles for ships. M.V. is motor vessel; M.S. is motor ship. We are both of those and could be called either, but we go by M.V. generally (M.V. Explorer). S.S. is steam ship.

Is Captain Jeremy’s wife really a model?

Yes. She is from the Philippines. [Kate describes her as a “beautiful … elegant … 12 year old".] Her name is Apple and she refers to Captain Jeremy as “Master” … no further comment …[although we all do kinda wonder what he calls her ...]

auntie erin

2007-03-21T10:59:00.000-04:00

tomorrow is Mary’s birthday and she had a little happy-hour get together in her cabin tonight to celebrate. Michael & Mary have sailed before and one of the perks of that is that they live on the 7th deck. Which is very swanky. The Deans have cabins up there as well as the Global Studies Coordinator and the Archbishop. And then the life-long-learners that have paid a lotttttt of money for the privilege. Michael & Mary have a lovely sitting area in their cabin and a great balcony. We hung out on the balcony and watched the sun set. We’ve had many beautiful sunsets, but this one was pretty spectacular. I wish I had my camera on me. We are currently in the middle of the Indian Ocean and are going pretty much due-north. But, it turns out we won’t cross the equator until about 2 am tomorrow morning.

The ship has a program called "extended families" where faculty & staff & life-long-learners "adopt" students. They have birthday parties or game night or dinner together or whatever. Each of the adoptive families has 6 or 7 students. I thought briefly about adopting some students but, frankly, that number was pretty overwhelming. The other night Mary was saying that there were still students needing adoption and she was trying to talk a couple of us into joining the program. I joked that I'd rather be adopted myself. So, Mary & Michael have adopted me too now. Michael has taken to calling me "Auntie Erin" whenever he sees me. Tomorrow night, I’ll meet the rest of my "family" when we celebrate Mary’s birthday with the students.

The internet is still horrid. We also got cut off from the UVA proxy server again. Students are putting in their Internet password into the UVA password box & it fails & then, after many failed attempts, the UVA proxy server thinks it’s getting a denial-of-service attack and they block our IP address. This is the 3rd time this has happened. We’re doing more publicity around here, “password education”, ITC calls it. And ITC is doing things are their end to help their server recognize our IP address. Between the two, it’d be good if something helped. Today, we were back connected to the proxy server but the connection to the Internet is just so horrid that it didn’t matter much. No one is in any kind of mood to do research, it takes so long to send a search & get a result. Before you even try to download anything. They are "asking" students to stop skyping (telephoning or video-phoning, via the computer), because it eats the bandwidth but hard to know if students will actually stop. They keep telling us the ISP company is working on fixing the problem, but there definitely appears to be lack of progress.

Of yesterday’s overdue notices, only one book was still overdue today. And, today, we only delivered 3 overdue notices (two new ones plus a second notice for yesterday). Sad lesson learned: a dash of threatening does actually do a bit of good …

slow slow slow

2007-03-20T15:05:00.000-04:00

the internet access continues to be interminably slow. The good news is that this is really the first time we’ve experienced this. The bad news is that I am definitely experiencing withdrawal. I set my alarm for 6 am this morning to get up & use the internet before the students. I needed to pay my credit card bill & was not having any success over the last several days. It was making me antsy. They say the internet is speedy at 6 am and indeed it was! I just don’t want to have to do that so often. Several students were congregated in Purser’s Square at that early hour. Skyping, emailing, whatever.

Today was taco-day, which is pretty much the happiest day on the ship. When they serve tacos, we all jump for joy. That was lunch. Dinner was less exciting but we were still feeling pretty gratuitous from the earlier meal. The seas were calm today, so all in all a very pleasant day.

Not much other news. Sherri & I are weeding some of the videos. Many of the videos have no cataloging (just brief title records). I’ve cataloged all of the DVDs. We’re trying to decide which of the uncataloged VHS’s are actually worth cataloging/keeping. We’re starting to have trouble getting reserve books back, so we are becoming more consistent about delivering overdue notices. Still not charging fines though. Of today’s overdue notices, about 80% came back immediately. And a few were on the shelf not checked in … ugh. Destiny has a few issues worth complaining about, but on the good side, they have really nice & useful overdue notices that are totally easy to customize & run. And they create very nice “bibliography” reports which will allow us to spew out a list of videos (or anything else we need) which includes both publication info. and summary info. So, we will no longer need to keep two separate video lists: the catalog v. a more user friendly single list for the Intranet. Destiny will spew out a lovely list for patrons at the push of a button. We’ve also created a whole library homepage (through a normal web browser, not the clunky Intranet folder system) that has all of our general information (aside from just the catalog), with links to the catalog, the UVA databases, proxy configuration instructions, etc. We’re working on making sure that’s the page we promote everywhere. And, finally, we're back to taking shelf-reading more seriously, because the shelves are sadly very out of order. 'Tis all the library news that's fit to print.

We’re about to cross the equator again. On, tomorrow, the first day of spring. Seems that this convergence should be notable in some way …

sea olympics

2007-03-19T04:12:00.000-04:00

yesterday was the Sea Olympics, a big event around here. All the students are divided into “seas” by the halls/decks that they live on (like dorms). They have names such as the Arabian Sea, the Aegaen Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, etc., etc. The faculty/staff/dependents/lifelong-learners were the Pacific Ocean and our team color was purple. Wore my crocs, of course. There were activities all day long, such as basketball, relay races, juice pong, ping pong, lip syncing, trivia, etc. The Sea who wins the day overall gets the honor of getting off the ship almost-first in San Diego. (The faculty/staff actually get off very first). The day started with “opening ceremonies” where the Pacific Ocean sang a song & had a banner & tried to set our tone. We didn’t place in that first event. Then I was on the tug-of-war team next. Originally our team strategy had been to LOSE QUICKLY, but as the day got closer our competitive streak started to come out. At the last minute, we decided to try & win. But, we were trampled quickly enough anyway so there was pretty much no outward evidence that we were actually trying. Julie claims that the boat lurched, but I’m not convinced we had any chance to begin with. Bob, one of the business professors, ended up flat on his back & Dean Larry fell right on top of him. Then, I passed on the next series of activities because it was a thousand degrees outside & you couldn’t really get close enough to see anything anyway. After lunch was supposed to be synchronized swimming, but the seas were really rough and they had to drain the pool to keep the water from coming out. One couple was having breakfast on the 6th deck when the pool water splashed onto them from up on the 7th deck. So, they decided to do synchronized swimming on the stage in the Union. It was pretty funny actually. Students trying to pretend they were swimming on land. Some in bikinis, some who rethought their costumes after the location change. The choreography was set to all sorts of odd music: Thriller, Madonna’s Like a Virgin, several songs from the Little Mermaid including an all-male team “swimming” to Ariel’s solo, A Whole New World. That team was the best, in my opinion. The Pacific Ocean had 2 teams in the competition, one with all the children and the second with several of the life-long-learners led by Missy, the bookstore-lady. We placed 3rd. We also placed 3rd in trivia, which had very complicated rules & was very disorganized. After the final tallies, however, we didn’t place overall for the day. We didn’t come in last either and so long as we weren’t humiliated, I guess it was a success. I was lazy for a good bit of the day and watched a few events and took a nap and filled out customs/immigration forms for our next series of ports and enjoyed the no-class day. Sherri & I opened the library for the evening, splitting the shift, and we did get substantial business. Students studying for exams for today, last-minute of course …

No photos of the day because we are having Internet woes. I can't get them uploaded. Something's wrong with our satellite connection & the Internet Service Provider is working on it. Everything has been painfully slow here the last day or do. "Painfully" being in contrast, of course, to the normal speed pain we normally feel ...

acquisitive

2007-03-17T14:17:00.000-04:00

Phoebe, as she says of herself, is "acquisitive" … so today we went shopping. You might start to sense a pattern here, but the last day in port we need to make sure that we spend out the rest of our local currency. In this case, our extra rupees. Phoebe & Robin & I walked along the waterfront which has higher-end stuff. Some nice stores, some overly touristy stores. Today was pure touristy fun. I bought a ring -- a chunky silver ring with four semiprecious colored stones forming a square pattern. I consider it Ann’s influence on my life, the purchase of yet another chunky silver ring. And I bought a pair of silver & black earrings, which Phoebe said she liked with my new haircut. We lunched on the waterfront at a French restaurant. I had a goat cheese & honey pizza ‘cause I was just enthralled with the idea of that. Quite delicious & something it seems to me that Leland & Joe could potentially like to make … And then we ended the afternoon at the grocery store, where we paid a taxi driver to take us & then wait so that we could stock up on "essentials" for the next 6 days at sea. For Robin & Phoebe, that includes wine, for me it’s primarily cereal. And then we shopped together in the aisles containing chocolate, cookies, & salty snacks. So, now we’re all set to sail. Land having been walked on, essentials stocked up on, jewelry purchased, rupees all spent …

muslim restaurant redux

2007-03-17T00:46:00.001-04:00

i knew I was disturbed by the reference yesterday to lunch being at a Muslim restaurant but I couldn't quite figure out why. We had chicken, which certainly could have been halal, & rice. It was tasty. When I reread yesterday's post, I see I used the phrase "billed as a Muslim restaurant" so something definitely felt off. This morning I realized what it was -- there was alcohol. A number of the faculty had wine. Having worked in a kosher/halal kitchen, you'd think I would have figured that out quicker. I wish I had so I could have asked ...