India: Day Two

The second day I had signed up to do the Rotarian Homestay.  We got on a bus and drove to a central location where we met the families that we would be staying with for the next two nights.  A girl named Katherine or Katie and I were to stay with a couple the man’s name was Arul and the woman’s was Sharmila.  They lived in Chennai about 45 minutes from the town center just ten minutes from the airport.  They took us to lunch at a nice hotel restaurant just around the corner where we had a typical south Indian meal.  It was a big plate with a banana leaf covering it.  On the middle of the plate was a small pile of rice with some spices and something that tasted like peanuts.   Surrounding the rice were small metal bowls that each had different sauces in them.  Sharmila instructed us on how to eat with our hands mixing the different things in the bowls with plain rice that was brought later.  One of the bowls that was saved for last had a sweet thick milky substance that was spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon and had a few squishy noodles.  We did not mix that with rice but just drank it instead.   I also tried this “sweet” wrapped in some kind of leaf.  I did as instructed and popped the whole thing in my mouth at once.  The “sweet inside was, as far as I could tell, purely cloves and not anything like the sweets we have in the US.  After lunch they took us to the mall where we wandered around for a while.  Next we went to the Chennai museum that had a lot of statues of the different gods that were very old.  Afterwards we went to Arul’s Cousins apartment for some tea and cookies.  After tea we went to the hotel where the rotary club meeting was being held.  We had snacks there and at the end of the meeting, dancers performed two different traditional dances, one from the north and one from the south.  The rotary club gave us all presents, and were all very welcoming and nice.  After the 45 minute drive to the apartment we were staying in that our host family had only moved into a month ago, they fed us more dinner before we went to bed. 

First Day in India

On the first day in India Evergreen had a SAS trip so Jen, Laura, Katherine, and I went out together.  We hired two motor rickshaws to take us to the town center we said.  The driver Jan and I were with seemed to be the leader and took us to a church and two temples then a store.  At the store were several other sas students, we left without buying anything because it all seemed to be overpriced tourist items.  We asked our driver to take us somewhere to eat so we drove around the corner to a restaurant where there were several tables of other SAS students eating all with rickshaw drivers waiting for them.  We ate there despite this and it was good and there were a few locals eating there as well.  All four of us wanted to get Kurta’s made (or sometimes called Kurti) so we asked our driver to take us somewhere.  He didn’t understand what we were trying to ask so he called the other driver over and we told him then they consulted for a little while and said ok they would take us somewhere.   They drove us to another tourist store that had SAS students and premade clothing we again left without buying anything.  We talked to our driver again making sure to use the word tailor.  They drove us some more and we ended up at the silk house.  The people there explained that there was a tailor in the building but we had to buy fabric first so Jen and I picked out silk for kurtas while Laura and Katherine looked at scarves.  The two of us bought silk fabric and went to look for the tailor.  At first they sent us upstairs (4 flights) but there were only more silk shops.  Finally one girl understood what we were looking for and took us down the lift to the basement where there was another store and a tailor.  He measured us and asked about the neckline and the length and whatnot.  When we were done we looked around and realized that Laura and Katherine were gone.  They had gone to pick out fabric because they now wanted outfits made too.  When everyone was happy we got back in our rickshaws and asked to be taken back to the ship to get Evergreen who had been on a field trip all day.  On our way there we ended up stopping at one more temple and one more church(?).  On the last stretch back they told us that we each owed them $60 US dollars for the ride.  We of course told them no that they had originally said $5 each but they would not listen.  Finally they stopped the rickshaws and the two drivers and Jen and I bargained.  We finally got them down to $35.  They dropped us off and just a few minutes later evergreen appeared.  This whole time we were swarmed by people trying to sell drums and people begging and trying take us somewhere on their rickshaws.  By this time though we were simi use to it so we dragged Evergreen with us through the people just talking to each other because while this seems mean it really worked.  By the time we got to the atm the number of beggars and rickshaw drivers had decreased dramatically.  We all got money from the atm and then negotiated with a rickshaw driver to take all five of us in one rickshaw to a restaurant for 150 Rupees.  The conversion rate is approximately 44 rupees to the dollar. 

After eating we got in another rickshaw for the same price and went to the movie theatre and got tickts to a movie that was showing at a different movie theatre at 10:20pm.  But it was in walking distance so we walked to this place which turned out to be a brand new mall (just opened a few months ago) with a really nice movie theatre.  The movie tickets were approximately $3 a person and the movie theatre was nicer than the one on Turkey Creek at home.  We saw a Bollywood film called Anjaana Anjaani.  It was really good and almost exactly three hours long with a 15 min intermission.  It was surprisingly easy to follow the plotline even though they hardly ever spoke a whole sentence in English.  We now have the soundtrack.  We got back to the ship at 1:30am.  It was a good long day that we learned a lot from.

Dance at Sea

As I have mentioned my friends and I are going to Salsa lessons every B day. Yesterday (an A day) there was a hip hop workshop that we also went to. It was a lot of fun. It also showed me that despite the salsa I am a little more out of shape than normal. But like I said it was fun. Today we had another salsa lesson. Evergreen and I are already talking about the possibility of doing a salsa workshop when we get home. In the front of the ship where we have these dance classes (inside) it is rockier than at the aft of the ship, making harder to keep your balance but I think we are getting better at that as well.


My classes are going well. I have now completed 4 (almost 5) collages. In anthropology we just got our first essay back (I did really well), but I am behind on my reading because there is not much time to read while on the ship, and while off the ship who wants to read. In world religion we are currently studying Hinduism. This will be really relevant in the next country we get to, INDIA!!! We get there in two days. I can’t believe that our voyage is halfway over. We try not to think about it too much but I have heard that it goes by really fast because we have less time on the ship between countries. We have at most 3 days between countries until after Japan. Tonight we go ahead 30min, so weird.

Mauritius Pictures

On mountain overlook in Mauritius after going to the hindu temple

Flic en Flac Beach at sunset

B Days on the Ship

As I have mentioned before days on the ship are divided into A days and B days.  A days I only have one class, so it is my study day.  B days I have World Religion from 10:45 – 12 then I go to lunch after which I study until my Collage class which starts at 1:35 and goes to 2:50.  Right after that class I stay in the same room for my Anthropology class which goes to 4:10.  I then study until 5:45 when my friends and I go to salsa lessons.  There are several students aboard who know salsa and one girl in particular who has taught salsa before.  We have a lot of fun and switch out being the boy because there isn’t an even number of males and females in the class.  Salsa ends at 6:30 giving me half an hour to eat dinner before I have to go to work in the computer lab.  Tonight after work they were showing Slumdog Millionaire in the Union so my friends and I went and watched it.  It was just as good as the first time I watched it.  Going to bed now it has been a long day. 

Mauritius

Most people don’t know very much about Mauritius.  I know that I didn’t other than hearing that we were going there.  I now know that it was the home to the dodo bird.  The first day there Jen, Laura, Katherine, and I went to the Valley of Colours.  This is a natural occurring phenomenon where the volcanic soil oxidized leaving it different colors.  When some excavating was started they saw the different colors and stopped.  The Valley of Colours also had three waterfalls you could stop at on the way to the part where you could see the colored earth.  After that we went to Flic en Flac beach, the longest beach on Mauritius.  We ate a late lunch at a café and then went swimming as the sun went down.  There were pieces of coral everywhere so we had to be careful not to scrape up our feet walking on it.  We got back to the waterfront around 7o’clock and ate dinner at a cheap (but very tasty) Indian restaurant.  I got chicken taka which was very spicy but very tasty and bright pink in color. 

The next day I had a SAS trip called Volcano Island.  Our first stop was to a school where we were a half an hour early so had to wait a few minutes so they could get ready.  Mauritius is a very densely populated place which makes traffic around the island, especially on the small two lane roads, very congested so I think some extra travel time was allotted.  Anyway, at the school (or collage, I really don’t know) a lady talked to us and told us about the dodo bird, and the rainfall of the different regions, and about the volcano’s.  The mountains in Mauritius all look extra pointy because the volcanoes are dead and so the insides have caved in.  We stopped and saw one volcanic crater that had a lake in the middle of it.  We also stopped at a Hindu temple that had a man-made lake outside that was filled with water taken from the Ganges River in India.  My friend Tesia and I got the kohl put on our foreheads and paid a small tribute after standing during a ceremony.  I really don’t know what it was about because they didn’t really tell us but we did figure out that we were supposed to walk around this one alter 9 times, one for each planet (see Pluto is a planet).  We got back on the bus and went to an overlook where we could see the highest mountain on the island.  From there we could see a gorgeous water fall which later that day we went closer to (but still not next to).  It was amazing to see how different the flora was there, high in the mountains, compared to around the base of the mountains where there wasn’t as much rainfall.  We went and ate lunch at a really good restaurant which had an awesome view.  We bread, squash soup, chicken kabobs, and tiramisu.  It was all really good.  I was really full afterward.  I even liked the soup, which I almost never eat, but it was really good.  After lunch was when we went to the giant waterfall that we had seen earlier then we went to the 7 Coloured Earth.  The 7 Coloured Earth was like the place I had seen the day before but bigger and next to it was a giant tortoise pen with about 4 giant tortoises.  After leaving there we went to flic en flac beach for about 45 minutes.  I didn’t swim because I didn’t think it was worth it to get on swim suit and have to take it off again a few minutes later so I collected coral on the beach.  Back on the ship we had BBQ for dinner; it was really good after that long day. 

Habitat for Humanity (Last day in SA)

The last day in South Africa I had managed to buy a ticket to go to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. Evergreen already had a ticket so she and I along with about 16 other people loaded up on a bus with a sack lunch and were driven to a township to the north of Cape Town. It seemed to me that the township itself was small but the shanty town that surrounded it was huge. These tiny shack houses were stealing electricity from the township through many wires that were strung everywhere. The whole week groups of SAS students had been working on a house for one single woman and her three kids. The house already had a roof and all its cinderblock walls put up. We just filled in the gap between the walls and the roof with parts of cinderblocks and daga (a mixture of sand, concrete, and water). We mixed the daga using the Jacuzzi method. This involves mixing the dry ingredients on the floor with shovels before making a hole in them and filling that hole with water. Shovelful’s of daga are then taken and thrown on daga boards where people are working with the cinderblock pieces. Some others also oiled the wooden doors and painted the trimming around the roof. At 10am the woman to whom the house would belong made us tea and fat cakes. Fat cakes are like beignets without powdered sugar on them. You cut them in half so you can put jam on them. I didn’t put jam on mine because it was already really good. We ate our sack lunches around 12 and saved the leftovers that people didn’t want to eat to give to the preschool in the township later. At 1:00 we cleaned everything up so we could present the house to the woman. The house was locked up and we all stood in a circle outside and passed around the key and said some kind of blessing on the house. Then the key was given to the women who opened the door and invited us all in. Throughout the day we all wrote something in the front of a new bible, when we went inside the house we all stood in a circle again and did the same thing with this bible as we had done with the key outside. The woman thanked us all for helping build her new home. Before leaving the township we went back to the preschool where we gave the leftover food to the teachers to distribute and the kids sang for us. They were really cute. The drive back to the ship was silent.

Back at the ship we had 2 hrs before on-ship time so we hurriedly changed clothes and went to the mall (right next to the ship) and bought some snacks and supplies. Later that night, after we departed, we learned that our global studies teacher, Professor Sanchez, had a partially detached retina and was in surgery back in Cape Town and would be meeting the ship in Mauritius. So these past few days of global studies have been thrown together and throwing schedules off. It will hopefully get back on track fairly quickly after Mauritius. We were told yesterday that he went through two surgeries successfully and would definitely be back. In the meanwhile we have had one guest speaker, and will have another tomorrow.

The second to last day in South Africa

The 5th day in SA my friends and I were on a SAS field trip for our world religions class (well three of us anyway, Jen was just along for the ride).  It was called a three faiths tour.  We went to the first mosque built in Cape Town, a Jewish museum, a synagogue, and St. Georges Cathedral.  At the mosque our guild told us that one day a year these three places switch speakers.  For example the Islamic leader will go speak at the synagogue; the Jewish rabbi would go speak at the Cathedral, and the catholic priest would go to the mosque.  The Jewish museum was opened by Nelson Mandela and had a lot in it about the Jews involvement in apartheid.  It was really interesting. 

For dinner, after walking around for over an hour, we found a really good place to eat that served authentic African food.  It was really good, and our waiter was very nice and entertaining and called a cab for us (after we had eaten for about 2 hours), so we wouldn’t have to walk back in the dark. 

Day 4 in SA

Wednesday after getting back from the homestay and eating lunch on the ship Evergreen, Jennifer, Caren, and I took a bus tour that we could get on and off of all day.  We went to Kristenbosh Botanical Gardens, which are apparently the 7th best botanical gardens in the world.  It was very beautiful, especially with Table Mountain in the background.  I took a lot of pictures of flowers.  We were only there for an hour and a half because we had to catch the bus again so we could go to the world of birds.  The world of birds was a bird sanctuary started by a guy who really loved birds.  It was really neat to walk around the enclosures and see all different sorts of birds native to South Africa and then some that we have in the US like turkeys, Canada Geese, pigeons, and ducks.  There were some very colorful African birds as well but I just thought that it was funny to see these common birds there too.  They also had some mammals like tons of guinea pigs, small monkeys, yellow baboons, alpacas, and goats.  We were only at the World of Birds for 40 minutes because that was when the last bus that was coming through was leaving.  It was another hour or so before we got back to the waterfront area but the commentary on the bus was funny and informative.   

Gardens and Birds

World of Birds

Kristenbosh Botanical Gardens

Day 3 in SA

Tuesday Evergreen, Katherine, and I went to the Green Market Square. They have African items for tourists like statues, clothes, drums, jewelry, and hangings. We wandered around for a while and then went back to the ship so Evergreen and I could get ready for our township homestay that night. For the homestay we were assigned two to a house to spend the night and have breakfast and dinner with a family. I was with a girl named Megan and we were assigned a family of 6, a mother, father, and 4 kids. We ate dinner with them, rice, chicken, potato salad, green salad, and lime soda (basically sprite). The township we were staying in was only 12 years old so it was a lot nicer than some other townships. For breakfast we had cereal and an apple then we left. It was a good experience but it was way to short to really get a feel for living in a township.

Township Homestay

Two little kids from homestay playing with Megan's camera.

First Day in South Africa

The first day in South Africa I went on a SAS trip to the !Khwa Ttu Route (the ! is a pop sound made with the tongue and the top of the mouth). This is a group of San people or Bushmen that were the natives of South Africa. They use to be hunters and gatherers but aren’t anymore. They have created this place to show people how their ancestors lived. They tried to teach us how to make the different click sounds and gave us each a postcard with a description of how to make the noise on the back. We sat in a trailer pulled behind a tractor and went out into the bush where they had a village set up that maybe looked like what their ancestors would have had. They showed us different animal tracks and the kind of clothes they wore. One woman showed us how they made jewelry out of ostrich shells. They also showed us how to start a fire with just two sticks and a wad of dried grass. It wasn't a trip for my class but it might as well have been because my anthropology teacher was there and we had just finished talking about hunters and gatherers in my anthropology class. It was very neat. I got some ostrich shell earrings for myself. While there we also saw some wild ostrich, zebra, and a heard of Springbok, the national antelope that the rugby team is named for. It was a fun and informative trip.

Day 2 in SA

Monday I took the cable car up Table Mountain with two of my friends, Laura and Katherine. From the ship in the harbor we could see Table Mountain, and to its left devils peak, and to its right Lions Head and Signal Hill. The skyline was gorgeous. We spent a long time just wandering around the top on the pathways and taking pictures of the view and foliage (some of which is only found on top of Table Mountain). I also spent about 20 minutes sketching (we are supposed to do one sketch a day for at least 15 min for Collage). The view was so amazing. I took a lot of pictures.

At the Top of Table Mountain

My finger is pointing to our ship the MV Explorer

Herd of Springbok