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!!!!