Hey everyone,

 

 

Sorry its been a while since I updated my blog. Its so hard because the internet on the ship is TERRIBLE!!!! So CHINA was amazing. I had such a great time. Ill just give you a little snippet on what we did.

 

The first day we were in Hong Kong which is a beautiful city. I went to Disneyland Hong Kong!!! Shocker to all of you, I know. But we had such a great time. It was just like home though. It was ttinnnnny though. I had such a good time despite the lack of rides. the next day I headed off to my trip with the company the china guide. If you ever go on SAS or just go to China in general I suggest going through this company, it was SO much fun. We headed to Beijing and just went to the hotel that night and went to bed. The next day we went sight seeing and saw Tiananmen square and the forbidden city. That was cool and the place was huge. After that we went and had our first official Chinese cuisine. Nothing like in America haha. it was delicious though I have a feeling I will never like the Chinese back home after having the real deal. We later traveled went to a fake market which was awesome!! So much fake stuff for so cheap. I could have spent all day there.

 

After we went to the great wall. What a freaking sight. We hiked up to where we got to sleep which no one gets approved to sleep on the wall only this company gets to sleep not he great wall which is another bonus to travel with them. We got up and set up our beds and then just had fun dancing and hanging out with everyone. Not to mention that it was only about 5 degrees Celsius. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO COLDDDDD. I thought I had frostbite. I seriously cant describe how cold it was sleeping outside with just a sleeping bag and nothing else on a mat on the great wall. We woke up at sunrise and just got to appreciate our surroundings which was so amazing. After that we hiked 4 miles on the wall. It was SOOOO hard. Some of the areas are at about an 8 or 85 degree incline too. mind you most of it is just broken cement or broken steps so you literally have to crawl up the wall. It was really scary. It was amazing to finish it though after such a hard hike!!!!

 

The next day was just spent in Beijing exploring going to the Olympic stadium, another market and a few more places to see. Its kind of hard thinking back on it I cant even remember what I did practically haha!! We went to Xian to see the terracotta war solders which were really cool. we got to meet the guy who discovered them too. They are still excavating them which we also got to see. It was really crazy. We also went to the city wall and just biked around there which me and my friend got a tandem bike. Hilarious to say the least. We spent 2 nights in a sleeper train too. One to Xian from Beijing and one from Xian to Shanghai. It wasn't that gross actually. The second night we met some guys from Holland who were soooo fun! They were in their 20s and thirties though but it was a blast. I talked to them about field hockey a lot which was interesting since that is the number 2 sport in Holland behind soccer of course.

 

Shanghai was also really really cool. I just spent the day shopping really but it was succcccch a beautiful city especially at night. the skyline was GORGEOUS.

 

We just left Taiwan. It actually was the worst port as far as activities go. I didn't get any souvenirs there because there was NONE. nowhere to buy any souvenirs. How annoying. I had so much fun though just traveling the country independently with some friends.

 

We are now headed back to America. Its crazy to think that ill be home in less than 20 days. I really wanted to be home but now its like wow... its almost over. Its really upsetting. yikessss!! Im so happy to see everyone that I miss so much back at home though. Ill let you know how these next 11 days at sea will be since I have SOOO much work to do during that time before finals. Ah! Miss everyone!!!

Vietnam!

Hey Everyone!!!

Vietnam is absolutely amazing. Its such an amazing city!!! I spent the first day exploring the town a little bit and some shops. I also went to a tailor to get a completely custom dress made!! We went to the Vietnam house restaurant which was really awesome. One thing about the way vietnam dining works is they usually do family style dining and just bring out a plate and share it with the people at your table.

The next day we went to Halong bay. I almost didnt get to get on the plane becuase the girls mom who bought my ticket was already through security and i didnt have her credit card information so i almost couldnt get on but they just let me go after 45 minutes of arguing. The plane was HUGE. I havent ever been on a plane that big in my entire life!! We arrived in Hanoi and then took a 3 hour bus ride to Halong bay. When we got there we got on our "junk" boat which is just a big boat that just hangs out in the bay and drives to some places where you can sleep and eat. Ours was really really nice. We enjoyed some lunch and then went to some caves which were really cool. That night we had karaoke night and just had a lot of fun together.

The next day we transferred over to our boat to go to our bungalow on our private beach. This island was really beautiful and we got to eat some lunch then head out on a kayak ride. For those of you who dont know what halong bay is, basically it is just a beautiful bay (even though the entire time i was there it was completely foggy and so hard to see anything at all and it was really cold out) but there are huge rocks that were formed. Google it, me explaining wont do it justice. We just spent the night hanging out on the island with everyone.
The next day we left and headed back for our flight to Ho Chi Minh City. Which everyone likes it better if you call it Saigon. When we got back we went out to dinner at a sushi restaurant. I even had a whole piece of sushi and it was delicious. I have no idea what kind it was but it was soooo good!!!!!! We then went to get my dress fitted, thank god i went because it was HUGE on me.

Today we spent the day just roaming around the city and shopping and such. I got my dress back and it fits nice. Im excited. It was completely custom tailored and only 50 dollars which is not bad in all actuality.

I had a lot of fun in Vietnam. I had a lot more that i wish i could have done. If i was able to spend one more day here or be only in Halong for 1 day instead of 3. I had such a great time though. I really recommend coming to Vietnam. We met so many cool people here and its just a great place!!!!

CHINA HERE I COMEEE!!! I am so excited for it i have a huge trip planned so i cant wait!!!!

Also, i cant remember if i said anything about this in my last email but we are obviously not going to Japan any more. We are now going to Taiwan which is really cool. I cant wait. As of tomorrow only 1 month until i am done. So crazy. I am really excited to see everyone from home though!!!
Love and miss you all!

Hey Everyone,

So I will just let you know about Mauritius first. I literally just laid on the beach all day. It was really relaxing. Mauritius is a beautiful island I would love to go back to!

 

Now onto India:

 

India was jammmmm packed with adventures!

The first day was spent on a trip to a rehabilitation center for victims of natural disasters and people who are extremely poor. They allow them to live there for 250 rupees a month, which is about 6 bucks in the US and they teach them how to make their own money, and live on their own and be a good citizen. It was pretty cool to see but it was also really sad to see because it was so terrible to look at. After we went to the welcome reception where we got floral necklaces around us. (By the way, I literally felt like I was in Hawaii because everywhere I went I got a handmade fresh floral necklace with all types of flowers.) At the reception I got some henna done and ate traditional food and watched a performance and also got to buy an wear a sari it was really cool. I had so much fun there. I didn't go to bed until about 1 AM because we were having so much fun at the welcome reception we just stayed for a little longer.

 

The next morning I had to wake up at 3 am to go on my Taj Mahal trip. We took a flight to Delhi and looked around there for a little while which was cool and then went to take our train to Agra and it ended up being delayed so we just took a bus instead which took about 6 hours to get there which kind of sucked. When we got there we got to our AMAZING hotel. My roommate and I upgraded to a king size room for free because they didn't have enough doubles for us so whoever in the group was willing to upgrade got to and our room ended up being a suite. Legit suite. It had a dining room, a living room, flat screens and touch screen remotes, a automatic massage chair which was so freaking amazing. We had an amazing bathroom with a party shower and a tub and it was so big. The bed was also probably one of the most comfortable beds I had ever laid in my entire life.

 

The next morning we got up at 545 when we didn't go to sleep until almost 230. (another night with no sleep) and went and saw the Taj at sunrise. It was so beautiful. words cant describe the taj. It was breathtaking. After we had some breakfast then went and viewed the deserted city and saw this palace almost thing. I don't remember the name exactly because it was really crazy and long but it was soooo cool. It was huge and went on forever. you would walk through one building and it would keep going. it was all outside too and then there would be random rooms to walk through and we just kept going it was really cool. After that we got some lunch and then went to the Agra fort which was kind of cool, not as cool as the taj and the palace we went to. Finally we went and saw the Taj again at sunset which was really exciting. After we took a train to Delhi where weirdly I sat across from a girl who went on semester at sea in 2007 and is living in Mumbai right now. How crazy right? That night we got to the hotel which was also another amazing hotel, but no suites. and I got on my first rickshaw which was really fun and then came back and hung out with all the kids on the trip and other trips because there ended up being 3 trips all at the same hotel which was really fun.

 

The next morning we got up and viewed some temples and saw some cool things. it wasn't all that exciting what we did really. Just temples of different kinds and saw some monuments. I had no pictures from this day because we weren't even allowed to take any at the temples so there was no point. That night we took the flight back to Chennai and didn't get back on the ship until almost 2 o'clock. FYI: Indian flights are amazing. They aren't even international or really long flights and very chair has a TV, and realllly comfortable seating and every time you are on the plane you get a meal. not peanuts. it was really cool. and on the TV they had like TV shows and tons of music and stuff. It was really cool.

 

I skipped my service visit the next morning because I didn't get back until 2 and had to get up at 545 when each night on my trip I was only getting 3 hours of sleep a night so I just skipped it. I felt bad but I heard it was terrible when everyone came back because all he kids had lice so they couldn't even interact with them. Thank goodness I didn't go. I caught up on some sleep and then went shopping which was fun and I got a lot of stuff. That night we ended up going out which was really fun at this club at a hotel. I had such an amazing time that night because since I never go out I actually got to meet a lot of people that ive never met before on the ship.

 

The last day I also spent shopping because there was nothing to see in Chennai. I am so glad I did my taj trip instead of staying in Chennai. I wish I did a bigger trip but I am so happy I just got to see what I wanted to see.

 

India is so cool with the culture experiences I had and everything. However, one day while I was leaving the taj mahal I saw a little boy get beat by an adult with a stick. There were always children trying to sell you stuff and I don't know what happened but I watched the adult hit the kid in the face and kick him in the leg and I was so upset and he was just sitting on the ground crying and when I got on the bus the man came back and swung at the child with a stick and smashed it on his shin and the poor boy was bleeding from his leg and his mouth. I have never seen anything like that and I was SO distraught. I couldn't believe that someone would do something like that. I was so sick to my stomach and was crying because I couldn't do anything. that is the culture in India and there was nothing I could do. There were so many other Indians around just laughing while this was all happening just watching in a circle and ugh I just cant even think about it because it makes me so upset.

Besides his fact all the colors and the way women are embodied in India was so amazing. the only way I would ever live in India is if I could just wear a sari everyday and wear a bindi. which I did all the time haha.

 

Today we had Neptune day which is just a day to celebrate crossing the equator which we were supposed to have had a while ago but they had to postpone it. I got fish guts dumped on my head and I kissed a fish. it was so gross but cool. A ton of people shaved their heads today which is a tradition and its donated to locks of love. SO many girls shaved their heads too. it was crazyyyy! I couldn't imagine going back home with no hair, power to all the girls who did it.

 

On to Singapore next. Ill update you soon! Love and miss everyone!

Hey everyone!

Sorry that its taken me a few days to update about South Africa. The ships email has been TERRIBLE and every time I finish typing everything to email to my blog, it freezes and kicks me off. Gotta love it here. This is why I never use my minimal amount of internet time I have on the ship because its soooo slow its not even worth it. Anyways, about Cape town...

 

 

CAPE TOWN IS THE MOST AMAZING PLACE IN THE WHOLE WORLD!!!

I kept referring to it as Disney world. It is such a beautiful place with so much to see and do. I don't think for this post I will tell you what I did each day but rather just some highlights because I know most people are just curious as to what I did overall not all the annoying details that I love to put into my stories. If you really want more detail, email me at asflewelling@semesteratsea.net!!!!

 

So basically we were supposed to arrive into Cape town on Thursday however the winds were so bad, 50 knots and higher, that we couldn't dock. We spent the day on the ship literally watching movies allll dayyyy longggg. It was quite boring. The next day we finally got to dock at around 12. The sight of cape town with table mountain over looking the entire city was absolutely breathtaking. An image I cannot get out of my head. Mark my words, I am going back one day! Friday was spent just searching around the waterfront area, getting some food and such. We went to table mountain that night for the sunset. We had planned on hiking it but there was a U2 concert in Cape Town which held up traffic so bad we had to take the aerial car up instead just to make sunset.
Seeing the sunset on top of table mountain overlooking the harbor and the city... breathtaking. No, breathtaking cannot describe it. There were clouds literally getting stuck on the mountain as they passed and slowly draping down the mountain like a waterfall almost. It was incredible.

 

Some other things I did the next few days was mostly shopping around and exploring the city. I saw a lot of key things about south Africa such as Cape point, the cape of good hope, 2 wineries which were absolutely amazing. Now I really like wine when I absolutely hated it before. I went to boulders beach which was home to so many African jackass penguins. They were so cute!!!! I also got to visit an orphanage. We didn't get to play with the kids because they were all napping which was really a disappointment but one little boy, no older than 1 1/2 kept staring at me and I kept making a monkey face at him and he would giggle so cutely and try to do that face and he couldn't and he would just giggle some more. He was amazing, I just fell in love with him. After that we got to ride bikes through a township which was really cool. It was basically like the slums of South Africa which was really interesting to see not inside a bus. After we got to play soccer with the kids from the township which was so fun! Although I am absolutely terrible at soccer, I have to say I did really well. I even scored the winning goal for my team!!! (Anna Meyer, I know you'd be so proud) There was a little girl on my team who was about 8 or 9 who really attached to me and when I left she was like you're not leaving forever are you? and I was like unfortunately I am but I'll try to come back one day I promise and she cried telling me she didn't want me to leave. That was really upsetting. :/ Its hard when you attach to the kids in countries and you know you wont ever see them again.

 

Lastly, the most EXCITING THING I HAVE EVER DONE.... I rode elephants. Which most of you probably already see the pictures since ive already posted them but oh my gosh what a feeling. It was really so amazing. We got to this amazing almost resort where you can sleep above the pens where the elephants sleep at night which is just cool to even think about. They also do weddings and everything there and showed us all around the ceremonial buildings which was cool. We got to get up on the elephants and rode on them for about an hour where they just walked around grazing and such and we just did whatever they did. They even ran a little which was really interesting and really hard to stay on! After we got to feed them basically whole pineapple not even peeled so the pointy stuff and all. I got to hang out with little baby elephants and their moms. Holy big. It was so weird knowing they could literally crush you but they were so gentle at the same time. After that we went to Wild Cat Park. We got a tour around the facilities seeing animals and such and then the continuation of one of the greatest days of my life... I got to go into the adult cheetah pen and pet the cheetah. It was amazing. just feeling the cheetah purr was so crazy. (im starting to run out of words like crazy, exciting, indescribable. :P)  After we went into the white lion cub pen. Literally this was an out of body experience. They were ADORABLEEE!!! We got to go in and pet them but were annoyingly shooed out really quickly but they ended up bringing us back in because they didn't get good enough pictures of us so lexi and I were so excited. We got back in and they were so playful just biting my flip flops and nibbling at my ankles and fingers. OMG SOOOOO CUTE. One just put its huge paw on my foot which literally covered my whole foot even though it was so small and just looked at me and started licking me. (Mom, can we get oneeeeeee?) :D After we went into the cheetah cub pen and got to pet those too but they weren't as fun at the tigers but still adorable. After this incredible day we ended with local south African fast food. Wow so good. Their burgers had 1000 island dressing on one side of the bun and bbq sauce on the other side. and their French fries had an amazing seasoning on them... I am literally CRAVING this right now.

 

So basically South Africa was AMAZING. I wish I had 2 weeks, a month, a year there. I still don't think it would be enough. If you EVER get the chance to go there, please do. Its so beautiful and full of history and absolutely breathtaking with the views. Basically, I LOVE SOUTH AFRICA... even bought a sticker to prove it :D

 

I will be in Mauritius tomorrow for the day which I will only be laying on the beach all day soaking up the sun. If anything exciting happens I will post about it but most likely nothing will just sitting on the beach but we will see. After that is INDIA! yay!!!!!!

 

Missing everyone so much! Love ya all!

-Alicia

Just some pictures from South Africa!!!

So Far Away from NY! :(

Elephant Ridinggggg!!!!

Petting a Cheetah, No Big Deal

Annnndd some white tiger cubs

Table Mountain at night, gorgeous

Chapmen's Peak

Petting my new friend

Wine tasting in South Africa

Table Mountain at Sunset

Cape of Good Hope!

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I havent updated you all in a while. Ive been SO busy with school work.

So Ghana was AMAZING. I had such a wonderful time.

i started off my trip with a 3 day/2 night trip with a group that i independently set up. We went to the Tafi Atome monkey village which ended up being 8 or 9 hours away which really blew. We stopped on the way to get some lunch and i got Jollof and chicken. it was pretty good. We ended up arriving at the village around 830 i believe and got some dinner which was wicked spicy. It was...interesting. We got to have the village do a drumming and dancing ceremony for us which was really exciting. I went up and danced with them it was really fun. We ended up heading to our "apartments" which were really interesting. Pretty gross too but hey, i was in Ghana.. No complaining there. We woke up bright and early to feet MONKEYS! It was amazing, they came right up to you and peeled the banana right in your hands. It was really incredible to say the least. After we got breakfast which was just rice and water. agian... interesting. I put about 3 pounds of sugar in it to make it flavorful. After that we went to the school and i had to make a speech to all the children and then ended up finding out they didnt udnerstand a word i said. Most people in Ghana speak English but they had just started learning english so it was a big fail on my part. Oh well though. We went to the Wli waterfalls after that which was amazing. the site was incredible and the pressure from the falls was unbelievable. We left and headed to Accra and on the way we stopped at lake volta which is the largest man made lake in the world. It was pretty cool.

We arrived at Accra, which is the capital of Ghana. It was an incredible place. We got to head out on the town which was cool. We went to this bar/club and i had a great time. A few people decided to leave the group which i was extremely ticked off about but thats a whole other story. We headed back to our hostel which was the Salvation Army and we had 7 beds in one room. It was an adventure to say the least. We woke up bright and early and headed to the market which was AMAZING. it was so incredibly fun! I got a lot of exciting things. After that we headed back to Takoradi on a very long bus ride. When we arrived back at the ship Kristen and I decided to go to a internet cafe which was annoynig because the cab drivers here were incredibly pushy.

 

The next day we woke up and went to the Elmina slave castle. This was really hard to go to. They put us in a cell that the whites stayed in and then a cell that the black stayed in and they were so different it was really uncomfortable. I didnt get emotional until we went into the womens quarters which they were in for 2 to 3 months at a time. There were 150 women in this one room which you would have to see to understand how terrible it was. They went to the bathroom, #1 and #2 and had their menstrual cycle happen ont he floor with no clean up. For months. all these women. HOW DISTURBING IS THAT? i was on the verge of tears. And then the guide tells us how the women only used to get up to go into the square where the governor who ran the castle would point at a women and they would be brought upstairs to be raped. It was so disturbing and terrifying to me. We had a nice lunch and then headed back to takoradi where we just decided to hang out for the rest of the day/night.

The final day we woke up and went to get some stamps and money and headed to lunch. We had our cab driver take us and he said he woiuld stay with us for the day so we were like oh okay thanks! and we went to this EXTREMELY expensive restaurant. He decided to orders omethig and didnt tell us and it was the most expensive thing on the menu. When we got the bill we were like huh? and they ended up bringing out his food in a bag and we were so shocked. We were like um excuse me you need to pay and he wouldnt. He tried telling us we had to pay for his meal and give him 60 cedis.. the exchange rate was about 1.44 so you do the math. Rediculous amounts of money when we ALSO had to pay for his like 25 dollar meal in us money. oh and did i mention we all only had 10 dolalrs each on us, just enoguh to go back to the port. After 45 minutes of arguing, our tour guide ended up just paying the guy off. You do not understand how thankful we all were for him. We just got droped off back at the port and ended up doing a little shopping and left Ghana.

 

So thats whats been goign on. Nothign to much! Miss everyone! were almost in Cape Town!!!! Update you soon!

Feb 2^nd, 2011

The past few days have been really boring, just straight class. I didn’t end up having to work today because a teacher needs me to help email all his students their grades and he didn’t have them fnished so they asked me to work tomorrow instead even though on the day of the sea Olympics we aren’t supposed to work. But tonight was our sea Olympics opening ceremony. For those of you who don’t know what the sea Olympics is it is basically the Olympics on the boat. We are divided into seas based on where we live by room number and place on the ship. I am in the Baltic Sea and light blue is our color. I decided to be part of our cheering committee and helped design the cheer for our team. We used the song Pump It by the black eyed peas. It was a really awesome remix to include stuff about our sea and the other seas and it went so so so so wrong. I was one of 4 standing in front of everyone on stage to lead the team in the cheer however the rest of my team couldn’t hear the music where they were and it got completely messed up… soooooo bad. I was so embarrassed hahahaha. It would have been such a good cheer too. We had to also make banners for our team and ours was seriously the best. We tied for first with the yellow sea which we soooo should have one. I was really upset all night about the whole cheer thing though. I am so competitive that it was so annoying that it was messed up because no one cared to listen to the ones who made it about how it went.  Oh well. Tomorrow is the actual Olympics and I am so excited! Too bad I have to get up and work before!

Feb 3^rd, 2011

SEA OLYMPICS!!!!! So last night the people next to us, who are ALWAYS so loud and these walls are soooooo paper thin decided to stay up all night long and scream and laugh. We called security on them twice because it got that annoying. So not only did we not get to sleep until 2, the clocks advanced another hour ahead last night. Needless to say when the alarm clock went off at 830 I was sooooo tired. I went to go work with my professor and he told me that he actually just did it all himself so I didn’t even end up having to work and ended up going back to bed for an hour before the Olympics started. We got all decked out just like the night before. I cut my shirt into a muscle shirt and put eye liner on my face as war paint…. I looked fierce as always. The day was fulllll of events, I wont go into them all. I have a lot of videos to post when I get back home. We have synchronized swimming which was so much more funny than I had expected. Our team was full of boys in crazy crazy outfits doing such funny things but we ended up getting disqualified because we went over time when everyone said we should have won which sucks. We ended up doing really well in a lot of other events though. We actually got jipped in a lot of events. We lost by 2 points in trivia. Our team bet 1998 dollars and if they bet 2000 we would have tied. Omg it was so sad, and so intense. We also technically won the highest card house which was SO huge but they deducted points for us ripping the cards even though they said we could do whatever we wanted. A lot more happened but I know no one wants to hear about every single event! :P We had a barbeque tonight. It was the first time I have had a hot dog or a hamburger in SOOOOOOOO Long. Even corn on the cob, ugh so good. Back to pasta, potatoes and salad every single day. We had the closing ceremonies tonight where they announced the actual places. We all expected to do terrible and all the sudden they mentioned third place, the third to get off the boat and… BALTIC SEA GOT IT. We were so freaking excited!!!! It was totally unexpected since we got jipped all day. The first place team was also a big shock and completely unexpected. Well I am off to try to get some sleep tonight since I was so deprived last night. Miss everyone!!!!