TravelStream™ news feed for member randiandersen on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/randiandersen en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:41:34 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1203150840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1203150840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1203150840/tpod.html Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:41:34 -0500 The University of Waikato - Hamilton, NEW ZEALAND

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Rotorua, New Zealand

Well the rest of my stay in Raglan was about the same as the first bit. I wore shoes for probably two hours total across the span of the week, I wrote like a madwoman, and I had a permanent claim on a chair in the living room and a hammock in the courtyard as I bounced between them depending on whether I was writing, reading, or napping. One night I switched to a couch instead of the chair, which was noticed by a friendly Brit named Paul who used that to start up a conversation ("you've moved seats" - I didn't recognize until later that I'd switched into the same seat he'd been sitting in for five days straight) that ended up lasting the entire evening and through dinner and two jigsaw puzzles. We spent a lot of the night trying to figure out what you call the parts of the jigsaw pieces that interlock. We decided that somewhere, in some jigsaw geek-fest convention, they have a name for them, one of those integral pieces of jargon that manage to remain completely esoteric and known only to the true geeks of the jigsaw world. We even tried a German alternative, but our German speaker had no advice either. Paul tried to make up words for them, but they simply didn't stick. If anyone has any better ideas... let me know, okay? It's driving me crazy.

I left really early in the morning, caught the correct bus to Hamilton, waited a while at the Transport Center, and once again caught the correct bus to Rotorua. I was dropped off at the Information Center there, where I found myself essentially stuck until I figured out how to get to the hostel where my booking for the night was and where I would be meeting the rest of the Australearn group the next afternoon. I went in to the desk and asked what was the easiest way to get to the YHA (the Youth Hostel) and five minutes later I was being picked up by the most friendly wonderful woman named Bev who managed the hostel and worked the front counter. We talked about politics, of all things, on the short ride back. Then I hung out in the café working on my book some more until my room was ready. It was a single room, which surprised me and made me very very happy; after sharing with 8 others for a week it was incredibly nice to have a bit of privacy and a door to lock and a big bed all to myself. There was a queen size bed in there if you can believe that! I paid 25 bucks and when I checked the sign the next morning it said singles were $42. I got a wicked deal! Maybe because I was with Australearn? I don't know. But I'm not complaining!

So that was a lazy, me-time night (not that I hadn't just spent the last week having me-time) with some writing and a lot of internet time (they had wireless! Not free, but cheap) and an early bedtime. Australearn's buses were late because some planes were delayed, and I will freely admit that I was really nervous. I don't really know why; maybe just the idea of meeting a bunch of new people all over again. But eventually they got there, and I had moved into the double room I'd be sharing with someone else and left the door open, and then she was there and we were talking and everything was fine. Her name is Caitlin and she's going to Waikato too. She's very nice and we got on great. They served lunch even though it was after three, which was great because I'd been holding off hoping they'd feed me and I was starving. Then we had a welcome session which wasn't that interesting but which was held at a traditional Marae (meeting place) in a Maori community on the shores of Lake Rotorua. We had to take off our shoes because, well I don't know why, I only know that you don't ever wear shoes when you go in a marae. Anyway, there's nothing to say about the session except that it was pretty boring.

Then they served us dinner and we had the evening free; I spent it in my room writing because I still couldn't quite get used to the crowds of people again after a few weeks of total independence. Janna came by (a girl I'd been talking to over email for several weeks who's also going to Waikato) and we talked for a while. She's really cool too. Oh, and I met this guy who looked really familiar, so I told him he looked really familiar, and he kind of just paused and then introduced himself, turns out he looks familiar because I know him, he goes to Western! There were two other WSC students besides him and me, which is crazy; all of them are going to different schools than me but it was nuts that we were all there in Rotorua New Zealand and none of us knew the others were coming!

It was an early bed night for me again, even though the party over at the bar was raging; I just never have any fun at those things and since I know that I've just never been able to force myself to go to them for the social atmosphere. I'm going to have to get better at that; I think that's part of the reason I miss out on the initial click-building: I don't participate in the click-building parts of the orientation. I'm not sure what it is about me that refuses to have fun at the social events everyone else seems to thrive on; eventually I always manage to find other people who don't like the same things I like (almost more of a requirement than liking the same things I do like, in a way), it just takes me a long time.

The next day we had a big day planned. We had a morning full of more info sessions, which I can't claim much memory of or interest in. But after the sessions and before lunch, we drove out to the Agrodome and saw a sheep show. That was pretty cool, actually; I hadn't been very excited about it (yay, sheep...) but it ended up being a really fun show. They had something like 19 rams of different breeds all lined up for us to see, and the kiwi announcer talked about them all, but talked way too fast for me to get much of what he was saying. He was really funny, though, at least the parts I did hear. He brought the dogs out, and showed off the ones that were trained to bark like crazy. The sheep didn't seem bothered a bit by all the barking, though. Some of them fell asleep, and the announcer had to poke them and wake them up before he sent the dogs running over the top of them. That was pretty entertaining. The dogs would stop on top of the sheep and lie down and a couple of them fell asleep up there. It was pretty funny.

The guy sheared a sheep for us and brought some volunteers up on stage to learn to milk a cow. Then he brought up some more volunteers and handed them all bottles with milk in them and said they were going to have a drinking contest. They all had mildly horrified looks on their faces until the lambs came crowding onto the stage. They were so cute! I got some really great pictures of one of the girls (who I later found out is going to Waikato!) feeding the lambs. Awww!

After the sheep show we got to see a dog trial, with the three sheep and the gates and the pen. Like in Babe.  Baaaa Raaammm Eeewwwe. Lol. That's all I could think about the whole time. It was cool to watch the trainer work the dog who in turn worked the sheep. He used a whistle, mostly, and called out to the dog a lot too.

We wandered around the gift shop a bit and then we were back on the busses. Lunch was back at the hostel. They were feeding us really well, which I appreciated especially after feeding myself for a month. Then we were right back on the busses again - we were going zorbing!

If you don't know what zorbing is, the best I can come to an explanation is a memory I have of standing in front of the washing machine as a kid watching my "kitty pillow" go around and around, wondering what that felt like. I think I know now. A zorb is a giant beach ball contraption - one smaller ball attached inside a larger one with a million multicolored elastic strings that make it look like one of those electric charge balls that have all the electric currents flowing from the middle to the outside. There's a tunnel from the outside into the middle of the inside ball, which they zip closed as soon as you've wriggled your way inside. I was paired with these two tiny girls, both shorter than me and a whole lot skinnier. I was afraid I would crush them both on the way down the hill. Oh yeah, there's a hill involved. They put some water in the ball with you, so you have to wear your swimming suit ("togs", in this country), and so you won't get plastic-burns. Then they give the ball a slap and tell you to walk it forward, which of course is easier said than done as you are barefoot inside a beach ball full of water and slipping and sliding everywhere.

I was standing pretty confidently until the operator banged so hard on the side of the zorb that I fell down, taking the other two girls with me. And just like that we were rolling down the hill, tumbling over each other and screaming and laughing ourselves silly. When we got out we were soaking wet, despite the fact that there had only been a few inches of water in the zorb to begin with. They rolled the ball forward and we tumbled out in turn, feet first, and they took our picture in front of the zorb. If I'd ever been in a washing machine, I would probably compare it to that. As I have never been in one, however, I must admit I have absolutely nothing to compare it to! I'll just say that if you ever want to know what it felt like to be your teddy bear when Mom put him in the wash, all you have to do is go to Rotorua or Queenstown (the only two places in the world where you can do this, I'm told) and forty-five bucks will get you a ride down a hill in a giant beach ball full of water!

We decided to buy our pictures; it was $25 for the CD but between the three of us that wasn't too bad. I was absolutely exhausted and went straight back to my room for a nap when we got back to the hostel, because we had still more planned for the evening and I wanted to have a good time and not be grumpy all night because I was tired.

The plan for the evening turned out to be a fully booked tour of a Maori village, and for a moment I expected to turn around and see a big sign that said "The Scholar Ship" bobbing off over the crowd. Still a tourist. There's no getting out of that, it seems. But it was a really well-put-together tour, and our guide was of Maori descent and told us a little of the history of her people on the way to the office. We started off with a couple of videos, and the theatre spaces were all decorated and we walked through a jungle set to get from one room that was decorated like the inside of a lodge where we watched the first movie, to another, which was the outer edges of the village where a few huts were set up, to watch the second movie. The gist of the films was the decision of a young boy to leave his home in Tahiti to search out new lands because the island was getting too crowded. He ended up in Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. That's New Zealand. It was basically the story of how the Maori people came to be in Aotearoa in the first place.

After that we were off in the waka - this time the bus, and I learned that "waka" can represent any form of transportation and not just a boat. We elected a chief for our visiting tribe, and when we arrived at the village the three chiefs from our three visiting tribes moved to the front and we all waited behind, awaiting the challenge of peace from the warriors of the home village. The warriors came out, one at a time and then all three at once, taking the forms of some of their gods and doing the best to intimidate the visiting chiefs. We were instructed not to laugh, smile, or intimidate the warriors in any way lest they take our reaction for a challenge. There were women there, too, singing and chanting and doing their best to scare us away. It almost worked. I would not want to meet those warriors in a side street at any time of the day.

One of them placed the peace offering on the ground - just a small stick, nothing fancy - and one of our chiefs went out to him and picked it up, showing our acceptance. Then we followed the warriors and the chiefs and the women into the village. While I was on my way in there I could hear jungle ambience noises and thought perhaps they were taped, along with the screeching of the women which was still going on. Then I heard one of them scream right next to me and she jabbed her staff at me and I about jumped right into the bush on the other side of the path. Definitely not canned ambience. When we got into the village, all the people (there were only about a dozen total) had taken places at various huts and were showing different arts, objects, and skills of their people. One of the warriors was doing a carving demo and the other two were showing and explaining the weapons. There was a cooking hut and a woman in another hut was making clothing out of strips of flax leaves. The warrior that was doing the carving called us out on looking too serious. He said, "Now that the ceremony is over, you're allowed to have fun, so I want to see some more teeth." It took him a while to get us all to smile, we were pretty shaken up; the ceremony was so real!

Then we moved into the marae, or the meeting house, and they performed for us. The woman showed us their stick-throwing games and their poi (bean-filled pouches on strings that they swing around dance with) - both of which were once games for the boys to limber and strengthen their wrists but which have been picked up by the women now that the men don't need the warrior skills so much. It was so cool to watch. The singing was amazing and it made me almost ache to be singing again. They did a haka (war song) for us too, and lots more singing and dancing. There was a beautiful duet of a love song as well, something from the Maori legends. It was a typical Romeo and Juliet story without the tragic ending: Hinemoa and Tutanekai were from different tribes and because of social differences were forbidden to see each other, but one night Tutanekai sat on his island in Lake Rotorua and played his pūtorino, his flute, as a call for his loved one to come to him. Hinemoa snuck down to the shore of the lake, only to find that her father had pulled all the canoes far up on the shore so that she could not get one into the water. Being a very determined woman, she instead strapped empty water gourds around her waist for flotation and swam the three miles across the lake to be forever with her lover Tutanekai.

After the performance came dinner, a traditional hangi meal cooked in an underground oven. We were shown how the food was cooked: in a hole dug in the ground and filled with white-hot rocks covered with mats woven out of flax leaves. The meat goes in first, and then more mats, and then the vegetables, and more mats, and then the "pudding" dessert, so it all cooks for the same amount of time and gets done the way it should. Dinner was absolutely amazing; it was like Thanksgiving only more exciting because it was different. I ate soooo much.  The pudding dessert was really good too; it wasn't what we would think of as pudding but more like a kind of chocolate cake. And to think all this food was cooked in the ground while we were being led around the village and watching the performance. Mmmmm.

The tour guides did a little more performing for us after we ate and while we had tea and coffee and many of the other Australearn students visited the cash bar. There was a huge bonfire outside and we hung out around there for a while just taking and still meeting new people. It was a little bit cold, actually, and we were glad to get back inside for the goodbye ceremony and then back on the buses. I was exhausted. We'd had a crazy long day and I went right to bed when we got back.

The next day was a big one too; we were going caving. I had hoped to do the blackwater rafting again, but there were a lot of people going and I wanted to give someone else a chance to do it. There were too many people who wanted to do the wet caves, so I just did the dry one instead. It turned out to be plenty of work and just as much fun; our guides Ryan and Liam were fantastic and we got to be in harnesses and repel and do a zip line. It was so fun. There were no glow worms since it was a dry cave, but the calcite formations were absolutely incredible and I really wished I had a camera. They don't let you take your own camera down there. They took really good pictures of us and I would have bought them, but we took so long in the caves that we had to rush out and didn't have time to go back up to the office and buy them. But we had a fantastic time. I was with a bunch of people who were going to Waikato, which was fun too.

A lot of people didn't want to do the dry cave because they thought it would be boring, but it wasn't at all. It was a lot of climbing and the repelling was really cool. The harnesses weren't particularly comfortable, though. The formations were amazing and I couldn't get enough of them. You didn't get that in the wet caves as much. I don't know why. But these were millions of years old; they had to be. It was fantastic. But by the time we were done I was so exhausted I wished I could go straight to bed. I even took a nap between the caving and dinner. We had a free night but I didn't go to the bar; I probably should have but I couldn't get excited about it; I just got some more writing done and read for a while and went to bed early again.

The next morning we had yet another session that went way over time, but eventually we were back on the buses and on our way to the University. I was really excited, but actually a little nervous. We stopped for lunch at a lake and the view was great but the sandwiches were really lame, and we stopped for a little walk down to a suspension bridge with a view of the Waikato River. Our driver, Josh, had games for us to play; we circulated a story where we each finished the previous sentence and left another open-ended sentence for the next person, and we each wrote out sheets with our favorite color and favorite food and the date we would orchestrate for Sheila, our Australearn leader. The idea was she would chose which ones she liked, but she ended up making some matches based on what people said. I wish they'd taken this one a step further, because it would have been a really neat way to meet people. Josh wanted my date.  It was just a nice dinner and a play, what I would think was a really nice date if someone took me out on it. Sheila read them out loud though which was a little unnerving.

When we got to the University, everything happened really fast and before we knew it we were off the bus at Student Village and being met by our RAs and escorted into our rooms and then the bus was gone and so was Australearn and we were here, and on our own. The rest of that is for another post!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202865840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202865840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202865840/tpod.html Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:26:25 -0500 The University of Waikato - Hamilton, NEW ZEALAND

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Raglan, New Zealand

When I left Orchard Park I was ready for a break. I don't know how I can justify that emotion, since I'd been taking one long break for the last three weeks. But I was ready for a vacation from my break. I took the bus to the center of town, posted the last of my TSS blog (it's finished!), and waited at the Transport Center for the bus to Raglan. Three hours. Bleh. I don't want to have to do that ever again. It's like the worst kind of airport layover because there's nowhere to go and nothing to do and no internet and well it just was not very much fun. Enough of that. The bus was crowded with school kids, gossiping about the new kid and whining about their teachers and going on and on about how much they hated so-and-so. I was crunched into my seat with my heavy backpack on my lap and the ride was very long because of all the stops the bus had to make. The bus was loud and bumpy and hot and I just wanted off. All the students got off at the same time I did, and it was a good thing they were all talking about it because I heard one of them say "Information Center" and I knew it was my stop. I went in and asked about phones and internet and could she please point me to the hostel. I thought it was a much longer walk than it was. It's about a block. I love small towns.

I had a tour of the hostel, and wished we'd stayed there the last time we were in Raglan. The place is nothing short of the perfect beach retreat. It is situated right on a beautiful inlet and built so that all the rooms are connected in a rough circle around a center courtyard. The courtyard has a picnic table and lots of chairs, and even more hammocks. It's full of flowers and bushes and even has a couple trees growing in it. The dorm I'm staying in has 8 beds, and it's hard sharing a room with 7 other people (the place is full every single night), but as usual I'm the first one in bed and the first one awake. Well the first morning they all got up early to surf, so I was the last one awake. That was an odd feeling. Anyway back to the hostel. It's got a full kitchen with two sets of everything (except fridges - it's got about five of those) and a TV room and a "living room" and two computers with internet and a laundry facility. I think the hosts just dreamed up what their ideal beach retreat would be like and then built it. There's a shelf full of games in the living room, and shelves of books in most of the rooms. The kitchen has shelves of food that people have left that's free, and more shelves of condiments and spices that are free to use. If I was going to come to NZ to work, this is where I would want to do it.

Needless to say the Raglan Backpacker hostel is the top of my recommendation list for places to stay in NZ. They have bikes, surf boards, kayaks, sports equipment, and just about anything you can think of that's free to use for guests and really cheap for everything else. In the kitchen there's a bucket for food scraps for a local pig and under the board that tells the weather and surf conditions and tide changes for the day there's a bowl for Meg, the beautiful longhair tabby cat that lives at the Backpacker. She's fairly shy unless you have food, but she doesn't run from me at least. There's a pair of kingfishers that have a nest in the tree right out the back door on the beach side. At least I think they have a nest there because the male is about permanently staked out in the tree watching. I've seen him come diving down into the yard and swipe insects out of the air a few times - once he came so close to someone sitting at the picnic table that he could have taken an insect out of her hair, and she didn't even notice. I made friends with one of the little sparrows that live in town, when I was eating fish and chips the other day and she came right up and stood there next to me and stared me into giving her a piece of French fry. She took it right out of my fingers. None of the other birds noticed. I think she appreciated that it needed to be a covert operation. She came back once, and I gave her another piece, and then she was gone. I saved her some more but she never came back. I think I'll go sit in the same place tomorrow and see if she comes.

The weather has been beautiful; we had one day of rain (or mist, rather), that cooled everything down and it has just been delightful. I get up sort of whenever, write for a while, have some breakfast, write for a while. The supermarket here is perfect - not too big but it still has everything I need (except a mechanical pencil; I ran mine completely out of lead writing). I've been out to eat a couple of times, for the sake of vacation and spoiling myself. I had fish and chips both times. The fish here is always fresh because they go catch it every day. I plan to take advantage of the opportunity while I have it! I've finished reading a book I picked up here (this crazy thing about going behind enemy lines in the Serb-Croat civil war to investigate the death of a British girl and finding a war crime - not like me at all but a good book) and started another one (a play by Christopher Marlowe about a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in return for infinite knowledge - much more like me and much more interesting), but the real purpose of this week-long hiatus is to write, and I have been doing a lot of that as well. I'm plowing through the new stuff I need to write to clear up the holes I've got in this book of mine (well, most of the holes - some of them I'm afraid might not ever get filled) and tomorrow I'm going to start putting them back into the actual typed manuscript. I'm feeling really good about where the story is going and I think it's getting a lot stronger with the changes I'm making. I'm hoping to have a new draft done by the time I leave Ragland on Friday.

It's been a whirlwind of inactivity; actually I can't believe I only have three more days here. What with all the writing, and the writing, and the napping in the hammocks every afternoon, and the writing... I don't know where the time is going. I'm looking forward to going to Rotorua and starting the Australearn program orientation, but I don't want to leave Raglan. I have a feeling I'll be back here for more than a few weekend getaways before this semester is over. I bought a BBH (don't know what it stands for) membership card that gets me discounts at backpackers all over the country, and because of my 7-night stay here in Raglan it's already paid for itself. No complaints there. The more I stay here, the more I save, that's how I see it. (

All I can say is that Raglan is an amazing town. It's got a lot going on for such a small place and for someone like me who doesn't care about the night life the fact that there are only one or two places for it doesn't matter. I love this place and I'm so excited that I get to spend some time here, and that it's only an hour and $5 away on a bus. It's the perfect combination, being in a big town to go to school and having a small town sanctuary to escape to when I get sick of it. Hopefully I won't have to come here every weekend...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202426400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202426400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202426400/tpod.html Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:21:30 -0500 The University of Waikato - Hamilton, NEW ZEALAND

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Hamilton, New Zealand

A wonderful missing Colorado song by John Denver

Starwood in Aspen
John Denver

It's a long way from LA to Denver
It's a long time to hang with in the sky
It's a long way home to starwood in aspen
And sweet Rocky Mountains Paradise
Oh my sweet Rocky Mountains paradise

Springtime is rolling round slowly
Gray skies are bringing me down
I can't remember when I've ever been so lonely
I forgot what it's like to be home
Can't remember what it's like to be home

I think on my lady's sweet memories
I think on my children's sweet smiles
I think on my home in starwood in aspen
All my friends and the snow covered hills
Oh my friends are the snow covered hills

And I tell you I'm happy to be here
To share and consider this time
For I see here the shadows are changing
And a feeling of new friends survives
And I see here some new friends to find

It's a long way from this place to Denver
It's a long time to hang in the sky
It's a long way home to starwood in aspen
A sweet Rocky Mountain paradise
Oh my sweet Rocky Mountain paradise
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198451940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198451940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198451940/tpod.html Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:20:23 -0500 On Board the Scholar Ship - 4 months of world travel at sea

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Hong Kong, China

A beautiful goodbye song by Jonathan Coulton. I want to post the songs, but I have to get them in the right format first. I'll keep trying!

When You Go
Jonathan Coulton

Only a moment ago we had nothing but time
Everything lasted forever and you were all mine
Only a dream I know
Thinking you'd never go
Tearing off pieces of myself
Just for the time it binds me

Fold my heart up small
Or break it into pieces
Find somewhere and keep it there
Take it when you go.

There in the frame of your face and the cast of your eyes
I saw this coming but still I am caught by surprise
All of this time I knew
That I'd be losing you
That doesn't mean that it's okay
That doesn't mean I'm ready

Fold my heart up small
Or break it into pieces
Find somewhere and keep it there
Take it when you go.
When you go
When you go

Some things you always remember, some things you forget
No way to make it up now, no room for regret
That's no good for anyone
And so I come undone
Now I am less than what I was
Whatever's left is yours.

So fold my heart up small
Or break it into pieces
Find somewhere and keep it there
Take it when you go.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202252400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202252400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/2/1202252400/tpod.html Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:01:27 -0500 The University of Waikato - Hamilton, NEW ZEALAND

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Hamilton, New Zealand

Well this week has passed about as uneventfully as any week possibly can. I've been spending my time catching up on my blog, catching up with my friends and family, catching up on Xena Warrior Princess and the extended Lord of the Rings documentaries, and most importantly catching up on my sleep. It is amazing how much I can sleep and how little I can accomplish. On the flip side, I have nearly finished writing and posting my blog from The Scholar Ship, and will be very happy to have that finished. Although at the same time it's almost like re-living the last few days, and just like I never wanted them to come, I am hesitant to finally achieve this final piece of closure on the whole experience.

I did manage to get out to the Hamilton Gardens a few days ago and get some quality writing done on my book before getting one of the worst cases of writer's block ever. I may be mired too deep this time, we'll just have to keep digging and see what comes of it. The gardens are beautiful and I know that in Spring they must be absolutely breathtaking. The roses were thin, nothing like the rose gardens we saw in Christchurch, but beautiful and striking as roses always are. I wandered around the theme gardens for a while too - the Japanese garden of mediation, the English flower garden, the Chinese gardens which almost put me back a month and right back in Shanghai, the Italian Renaissance garden, and the American Modernist garden. All of them were beautiful and wonderfully simple and not too overdone. I hadn't taken my camera and it was actually quite freeing not to have the added weight of both the camera itself and the duty it bore to chronicle the experience. So I wandered for a while, and then felt an almost desperate need to find the roses and a quiet place to sit and write. Well I found the roses, and the quiet place, but very promptly fell asleep. The sun came out and luckily woke me up, so I moved into the shade and got a bit of writing done. Then I made my way back to the bus stop - I was worried for a while that I'd missed the last bus because I had no idea how long I'd slept, but when it did come and I was able to check the time - I had no watch and the info center had no clock - I still had a couple of hours before the last bus to the Gardens ran.

After that I went to the internet café to post my blog and caught the very last bus back to the University. I won't do that again - it didn't even come all the way in, the driver just stopped randomly and kicked us off. Luckily we were on the outskirts of the Uni and I could at least figure out how to get back to Orchard Park. I've been going to the internet café a couple of times a week; it is pretty cheap and makes it easy to get everything posted with my flash drive. Unfortunately the USB ports in the free computers on campus are deep-set into the computer and my flash drive is built in such a way that it doesn't fit. I didn't realize until about yesterday that I have an extension that came with my hard drive that will indeed fit, so I won't need to go to town to post anymore, thank goodness. That tends to take the entire day.

I also took myself out to a movie - Sweeney Todd. It was a good movie; I would recommend it and probably see it again. They did get a little carried away with the blood at times, though, and that was distracting. I think they got a little carried away by the temptation to make a horror movie. But the music was fantastic and who knew Johnny Depp could sing? He's amazing! Well, he's no Patrick Ryan Sullivan. But he sure has a set of pipes. And terrifying to boot. Perfect for the role, really. The man can play anything, which has led to an almost brutal type-cast: I don't think he's played anyone remotely normal since Gilbert Grape. Well, perhaps Ichabod Crane. But that was certainly not a normal movie either.

As far as everything else, there really isn't much to say. The campus is beautiful, and not as big as I'd originally feared. Everyone I meet is very friendly and helpful, in particular the people at the International Center where I use the computers. Every day someone knew says hello to me, whether it's another international student or a staff member in the office. It is good to recognize some faces and know that some of them recognize mine. I'll be in Orchard Park until Friday, at which point I'll check out of here and move on to Raglan for a week before going to Rotorua to meet the rest of the Australearn group for Introduction. I've asked permission to leave some of my things here for that week and should be able to make that work, so I won't have to lug my big suitcase on the busses back and forth. That will help. I'm coming to grips with spending just a little more money, particularly on food, while I'm in Raglan. I'll be staying in a hostel in a dormitory and will therefore have nowhere to store anything and I don't even know what facilities to cook. It's only about $40 more to stay in the hostel for the week than it is in Orchard Park, not counting the price of the BBH membership card that gets me a discount on the room and $20 on a phone card. I think the phone card might actually have voicemail capability, too - I'll have to look into that. I keep forgetting to check my messages on my cell phone; it would be nice to have the account tell me when I had messages. Geez I'm getting lazy.

I'm looking forward to having some quiet time to really get down to business with my book. I'm hoping to have the TSS blog complete by the time I leave here Friday morning so that I can post once or twice on this one from Raglan and not have to spend hours every day online anymore. Although it's getting to the point where I'm spending two hours just to check my email and Facebook. It's ridiculous. I'll be glad to have this one extra thing done. It's been a huge project and I would just like it to be finished! And it will be, before the end of the week. So that's really good.

Well if I kept writing much more I would just be filling up space. There is simply not that much to say. So for now I will say goodnight, and with luck will write again from Raglan. Cheers!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198190280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198190280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198190280/tpod.html Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:46:06 -0500 On Board the Scholar Ship - 4 months of world travel at sea

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Off the coast of China, China

This was without a doubt the most stressful day of my life. Not just the last four months, either. I mean ever. It was absolutely insane. We rehearsed frantically all morning, skipping the mandatory closing activities that were starting as we neared the end of the voyage. When we arrived at rehearsal we learned that half of our props had wandered off during the night. Some of the costumes, namely Jonathan's, some of the just-for-fun props like toys, and most importantly the fishing poles, which Lindsay and I had spent the entire afternoon and evening searching out the day before. I only realized later when Jonathan pointed it out that if he hadn't been keeping the shirt of mine that he was wearing in the show in his own room, it would have been stolen too. And it's my favorite shirt. There was one bit of lucky anyway. Then we had a bunch of drama trying to find the props, because some people had been playing with them in the middle of the night so naturally they were the ones blamed right from the start. Lindsay and some of the cast went angrily knocking on doors at 8 in the morning and made a lot of people mad, and only got more angry themselves, and I was thankful that I was able to just step back and let them worry about it or I definitely would have lost my mind. I don't know how Lindsay survived the day; she had so much more to deal with than I did being the director of the show and having all the extra odds and ends to get ready.

It was our first rehearsal with the props, what props we had left anyway, and we had still not blocked the last five pages or so. Luckily for us we had written the play, because we never did finish blocking. Unfortunately that still didn't help us much. We worked feverishly (there's no better word to describe it although I'd call what we were doing something more than that if I could think of something) and through lunch, and when we took a break I had to meet Gabriel and Vanessa to work on something for the Learning Circle conference that was also going on that day. There were several people, including Lindsay, that were bound to the conference, so we took a break in rehearsal just for that.

Gabriel and I worked for a long time; thankfully he had already started work on a little video for us to present for our Learning Circle at the conference. The point of the conference was for everyone to get to see what the other Circles had been doing, but I knew no one was going to show up. I knew I wasn't going to show up, except for the part I had to be there for. I worked with Gabriel for a long time; it was taking longer than either of us expected and we kept running into technical difficulties. For example he was making a movie of our pictures, but the movie program didn't actually import the photos, it just linked to them wherever they were. So I gave my pictures to Gabriel on a flash drive, and as soon as he took the flash drive out, we had no slideshow anymore. So we were in the process of doing it all again, when my computer crashed. Yep. Crashed completely. Luckily while I was trying to get it running again Vanessa showed up, and we sent her after her flash drive and her pictures. Fortunately she had most of my pictures too by this point.

I had been using a borrowed power converter and when it blew it shut my computer down. I had no time to go straight to the IT department like I should have to get it looked at; I just had to keep on going. We missed three deadlines with the coordinators of the conference, and I just had to keep going back up there and ask how long we had and interrupt them to tell them we weren't ready yet. On top of all of this I was supposed to meet Liz, Alexa, and Kyra to work on a mime piece for the showcase that was that night. Two hours earlier. We were supposed to finish the conference project, then I was going to work on the mime for a while, come back up and do the conference, and then get ready for the showcase. No dice. I went downstairs where they were rehearsing and talked to them, and they showed me what they had, and I worked with them on it for a while. They'd done a great job and I felt like I was intruding on the art they'd created by participating. I suggested that I maybe direct it. But they really wanted me in it. So they kept working and I went back upstairs to present my Learning Circle. The plan was to show the film and then talk a little about some of the artifacts we'd picked up to kill some time. When we all got there, Gabriel was still working on the film because the program had lost all the photos again. So we did the artifacts first, talking as long as we could to give Gabriel time to finish the movie for the fourth time. Poor Gabriel. He really saved us that day, that's for sure.

Everybody that had shown up clapped - all twenty people that were there. They wanted us to perform, because we'd mentioned having performed for the group in Panama. But nobody really wanted to. Then they volunteered me, and I said no too. I was too stressed out. After the conference I ran downstairs to finish getting the mime ready. We were going to decorate a Christmas tree. Not very international, I know, but the four of us Colorado girls thought it would be all right. I threw down dinner and ran to the technical rehearsal, worked out some cool green light for when we plugged in the tree at the end of our skit, ran off again to change my clothes and find my costume, and went to the dress rehearsal for the show. There would be about 10 small performances in the showcase and then our big show, which we called "ARTficial." I was participating in 2 - the mime and one other where we lip-synced to Avenue Q and changed the words to "Oceanic II" - the name of the ship. We rehearsed quickly for that and then moved on to the dress rehearsal for ARTificial. We got through the first half flawlessly as always, since that's all that we had rehearsed, then we tried to put together the rest and never did finish. We were still working when people started gathering for the show, so we had to quit. There was nothing to be done but hope we all knew our lines. For the record, I learned mine frantically over the next half hour!

The Avenue Q run went great - we got a couple volunteers from the audience to do the parts we still hadn't filled or people dropped out of and everyone thought it was really funny. I'm glad we had decided to keep it; for a while we had cut it because one of the IRCs got after us for rehearsing a song with a curse word in it while there were executives in the room. Ridiculous. A lot of people got upset and the tension was really high and Lindsay just cut the piece to save time and worry, but I'm really glad she decided to put it back in, because it was really fun and thank you very much the executives didn't mind. It's not like they'd never heard the word before. Seriously, we're all in college we can handle it! Anyway that went well and the mime went beautifully; we were able to include a funny little inside joke that just the four of us and a few in the audience were in on, and some of them were able to recognize it, so that made us happy. Everyone loved it, even the people that couldn't figure out what was going on (I thought I made the tree really clear, but if you don't have the frame of reference I guess you don't have anything to go on), and a lot of people were glad to see the mime come back. I wish I'd had my stuff together earlier in the voyage for open mic nights and stuff. We used music from Manheim Steamroller, which was pretty fun and not necessarily US-specific besides the fact that that's where they're from.

Then we had a couple of other acts before we were on, and we all got ready and went over lines. Ashley and Alaine sang "For Good" from Wicked, which made me cry of course because it's the perfect song for the ending of anything. The faculty did a skit that was hilarious, and there were a few other instrumental duos. Jon and Maxine sang "All I ask of you" from The Phantom of the Opera. That was beautiful. There was sure a lot of talent on this ship. It was an awesome way to close off the voyage in one great culminating event. Then we were on. Just like in rehearsal, the first half went beautifully. All the "awwws" and the applause were in the right places. But as the relationship between my character and her boyfriend started to deteriorate, the audience started getting really involved, booing him and yelling at me (or my character, rather) to dump him and cat-calling and things. It was great that they were getting involved, but it was sure a test of my ability to stay in character. Then the relationship between my character and her female photo subject went completely unnoticed, but the audience set their minds on another, between me and Lindsay's character, the art show host's maid. Whatever. Let them think what they like; I couldn't change that. Jonathan's character became the jerk the audience wanted, earning every boo and hiss right down to the end.

By the time we got to the end, it was just a fight to make it through intact. Everything was falling apart, but we held on with teeth and nails and everything we had and dragged the show to a successful (by the audience's standards) conclusion. The photo entry for my character to submit to the art show that we didn't have when we started the show miraculously appeared backstage for me when I needed it (because Lindsay is amazing), Becky saved a tense moment when the volunteer judges from the audience didn't have their cue cards by finding them and cleverly blaming the assistant, and the musical number in the middle with Nick in drag and the rest of us in sparkling hats and dancing around in circles saved more than a few points for us by the end. It was more than a little sigh of relief when we were finished, though. I was sad that the show was over, because we wouldn't have all that fun rehearsing anymore, but I was glad that the performance was over, because five more minutes and it would have been the biggest train wreck in history. No joke. It was an act of grace or providence or something that we made it to the end at all. Or an act of Lindsay-genius. Probably that. The woman is incredible. And the cast made some really good decisions and worked together really well to get through. I was really proud of everyone and thankful to have a great cast.

I was so exhausted by this point that I just wanted to go to bed. Most of the cast did. I rounded up my costumes and went back to help clean up, and it was just a few of us left. I was stopped probably a dozen times by people with compliments, and Ricky said our performance looked professional. A lot of people were really impressed that we'd written it. I was so happy that people had liked it, and it made me feel better about how bad I felt the last half had gone. I resisted the temptation to use this knowledge to field compliments, letting what people didn't know go on not hurting them.

It was finally done, the long haul was over, and this was the last thing left to complete. And now it was done. Unfortunately this meant that I now had to face the fact that in three days it really would be done - all of it. I'd been dreading this moment for longer than I would have liked to admit.


For Good
Wicked
Stephen Schwartz

I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led to those who'll help us most to grow if we let them
And if we help them in return.
Well I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today because I knew you.

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good.

It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a sky bird in a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
But because I knew you
Because I knew you
I have been changed for good

And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness for the things I've done you blame me for
But then I guess we know there's blame to share
And none of it seems to matter anymore

Like a comet pulled from orbit
(Like a ship blown from its mooring)
When it passes the sun
(By a wind off the sea)
Like a stream that meets a boulder
(Like a seed dropped by a bird in the wood)
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
I do believe I have been changed for the better
And because I knew you
(Because I knew you)
Because I knew you I have been changed for good.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198104060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198104060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198104060/tpod.html Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:41:58 -0500 On Board the Scholar Ship - 4 months of world travel at sea

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Off the coast of China, China

I realized too late that there are a lot of things I forgot to talk about in the time frame they were actually happening in. The 24-hour theatre festival, for one, can you believe that? There were a lot of pretty amazing things we did on board that I will never forget, but want to chronicle now so that as much detail as possible remains intact. So I'm going to write about them now, and stick them somewhere in the middle of some ocean where there isn't much going on.

THE CHARITY AUCTION
The Social Justice Committee put together a charity auction to raise money for a school one of the students was working with in Kenya. We all put in pledges, everything from a hot date (no holds barred of course) to a photo shoot (that was mine) to slave-for-a-day (there were lots of those) to paid vacations to people's homes across the world (I really wanted to bid on those, but who knew when I would really go?) to writing the dreaded Global Issues essay we all had due soon (the next day there was an email from the Onboard Life Staff about academic integrity). My photo shoot was put on Silent Auction, and then moved to the blind raffle. No one was bidding on it. Paula won it, and we never did do it, although I did have lots of pictures of her from various things we'd done together. I bought a manicure and a massage and origami lessons, none of which I ended up cashing in. But it was my way of contributing (I bought all of mine on silent auction) to a very big event that ended up raising over $10,000.

Our captain had donated an officer's jacket (the big-ticket item, of course, and a very generous donation on his part) that when coupled with the opportunity to give the Noon Announcement of navigation and weather information went for $1700. The girl that bought it was drunk and called home to ask her father if he would donate two thousand dollars to charity. The event was a blazing success, but many of us couldn't help but wonder at it. Most of us never really had the chance to bid at all; every item started at over a hundred dollars. It was the first real, material evidence (besides the cabins certain people were living in, of course) that there was such a disparity of wealth on the ship. It was very frustrating for many of us to watch money come and go like that, but on the other hand it was very inspiring to see it going to charity. At least it was being thrown around for a good cause. But I had wanted to play too, you know? I had wanted the opportunity to buy something and be seen doing it, to show my support for what they were doing. All I ended up doing was spending thirty bucks on things I never got. It was an interesting dialog-opener, no question about that. And we raised a huge amount of money for a very, very good cause.

THE 24-HOUR THEATRE FESTIVAL
I had signed up to direct in this, and was given an all-female cast of four. All of the plays that were written were taking longer than usual, so I chose one that wasn't finished yet. Lindsay had written one that a group got started working on right away, self-directing it. It worked out well that the strongest script was self-directed; it was an effective match. Gabriel was writing the play I was to direct, and when the actors finally showed up (every single one of them was late) we arranged a meeting time for later when the script was supposed to be done. There was a lot of putting off and re-organizing and regrouping on this particular event; there was so much other stuff going on that people weren't really sure how to handle this one and although Lindsay had been advertising like crazy for almost the entire voyage, there was only a little response as far as participants. It was also right smack in the middle of midterms and everyone was uber-stressed. We ran through the characters and the script for a long time, and then broke for lunch, and when we were getting into technical rehearsals one of my actors asked me to take her role. I knew she needed to do what she needed to do, and couldn't push her. So I spent the next half hour frantically searching out Lindsay, who was finalizing the program at that very moment. I did manage to get the names changed and everything worked out fine that way.

Gabriel had written an amazing piece of theatre, in which four women commiserate and reminisce about a man, a sort of mystery lover, we decided. It was later discovered that the four women were voices of the same woman. Gabriel kept tracking me down and asking me questions and giving me ideas and it was really good to have his input on the project. He was also very careful not to give anything away, and to leave the Director's interpretation exactly that. I was very thankful for that, and it paid off in a big way. Since we had a tech crew, we were able to do some really fun and unusual things with effects. We all wore black and white with different colored Egyptian scarves one of the actors let us use. We were two students, an IRC, and a faculty member, which also added a unique opportunity as well; the cast had a lot of impact on the lens with which we eventually presented the script to an audience. There were a few particularly poetic or philosophical lines in the play, so we added the effect of a small bell, like the one you ring if there's no one at the desk, and a blue spotlight on the speaker for these lines. It allowed each actor to have total focus for a few moments. A true fifteen seconds of fame. Gabriel absolutely loved what we did with the piece and just went on and on about it afterward. I wish I could have put the show through a real rehearsal process and on a real set. There was so much left to be pulled from Gabriel's words. I was honored to have had the opportunity to work on something he'd written and I really hope we get the chance to work together again.

The other plays were wonderful as well; there ended up being three including mine. The self-directed one Lindsay had written was just incredible and absolutely heartbreaking, about a girl and her friend who like to play games like leap-frog and hide and seek and tag. As the girl, Janice, grows up, her friend Sam still wants to play games, and she tries to fit in with her friends at her new school and still play games with Sam and finally Sam, who doesn't ever want to grow up, is hurt by the changes in her and doesn't come around anymore. Janice grows up and becomes a successful businesswoman, and one day Sam comes back and asks her to play a game with him. She finally agrees and we see her transition back into her childlike attitude, only to discover that Sam had died when they were children playing hide and seek and he had hidden in a dumpster and suffocated, and had been only a figment of Janice's imagination as she grew up and tried to fit in. It was beautifully done and mine were not the only teary eyes in the audience after it was over.

The other play came about much differently; the play that was written turned out to be much too strong to put on our stage - politically, in particular. I never read the play but the cast and director that were to present it became very uncomfortable with the text very early in the process and decided to start over. I was heartbroken for the writer, who had stayed up all night working very hard to finish it on time and was the only one besides Lindsay who did (We were supposed to have five plays, the other writers never finished). But he ended up being involved in the re-writing and performance of the play anyway, and seemed satisfied with the way things worked out. This play was a parody of life on board the Scholar Ship, all the little inside jokes and issues and quirks of the voyage were somehow worked in there. It was very well done and very funny. The crowd just went crazy, too, to see our lives put into parody like that. Doing parodies is fun, doing parodies of yourself is incredibly entertaining.

THE TSS FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
This was another event put on by the Social Justice Committee. The idea behind this one was for all of us to get rid of all the stuff we weren't taking home and perhaps have the chance to pick up something new and useful as well. I got rid of a few things to lighten my load, but I had brought all my favorite clothes with me and wearing them around the world had not tarnished that one bit, so I didn't end up getting rid of much. But I didn't pick up any extras either, which was good. The coolest thing about this project was how hard the Social Justice Committee, and particularly Cindy, worked to get the crew involved. We had tried so hard throughout the course of the voyage to find a way to merge our world with theirs, and the rules were just too strict. They finally wrote out a formal invitation to the crew, printed it out several times, and had ever student on the ship sign the invitation. It worked. It was a wonderful way to involve all of us in each other's worlds for just a few hours, and I know that the clothes I no longer needed went to very good and very deserving homes. Everything that was left over (there wasn't much) was donated to a charity in Hong Kong when we debarked. It was a wonderful event.

Cindy had also set up a desk for photographs to be donated. She would either frame them or make a book out of them, most likely the latter, and our names would be associated with our photos. Then the organization they were donated to would be able to sell the photographs or the books or whatever to finance their work. I was proud to be able to donate something and ended up donating one photo from each port we visited. I thought it was an appropriate way to close out the voyage, and really give something that I was extremely proud of.

MEDICAL EVACUATIONS
In addition to these fun events, I feel I should share that the total Medical Evacuation count by the end of the voyage was five, not including one who checked himself into a hospital and was later dropped back on when we evacuated another student, one who went home for two weeks because there was a death in her family, one whose attempt to climb a mountain in too short a time to acclimate correctly resulted in his chest and back muscles swelling and landing him in a village doctor's office, one whose mother came to Sydney to help her figure out her health situation, one who had surgery during the voyage to repair an old injury, and one who left the voyage in Sydney because of a health problem. Oh, and one who almost broke her ankle tripping over someone's shoes. That makes twelve. And those don't count the countless quarantines and minor medical scares that didn't result in hospitalization or coast guard evacuation. And of course it also doesn't count the horror stories that I invariably didn't hear about - and there are always several of those. What a trip, what a trip.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198621200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198621200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198621200/tpod.html Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:20:59 -0500 On Board the Scholar Ship - 4 months of world travel at sea

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Hong Kong, China

I woke up to my own alarm this morning (none of this fake phone ringing crap) and got ready quickly. I was already a mess, having had only two hours of sleep and knowing that today really was the end. I was dreading saying goodbye to Jonathan more than anything. The future was just so unpredictable. I had every intention of seeing all of these people again. But somehow with this particular goodbye the questions all managed to surface at once. I pounded on his door like I promised. It took several tries but I eventually had him up and he said he'd meet me at breakfast. He was already there when I got there, having packed and woken Ricky and stashed my stuff in my room and checked out and everything. I was nauseous; I couldn't eat. All I could think of was the slowly closing gap of time I had left to spend with this person that I admired so much and wanted so badly to keep in my life. It was harder than saying goodbye to Liz and Nikki in a way because I knew without any doubt that we would keep in touch and see each other soon; they both live in Colorado and are very easy to visit once I get home, but Jonathan will be in Australia for a year and then who knew where, but he lived in New York. A lot harder to visit. I tried to linger at breakfast but finally Jonathan said, "You need to go."

We checked in at the bell desk for the shuttle. It was waiting. Laura was there too and she and Jonathan walked Ricky and I outside. I hugged Laura first and was already crying; I was sad to leave her too. She is an amazing woman and I hope I know her for a long time. Then Jonathan said, "And I'll see you..." and gave me a hug. "I'll see you soon." In his words I read, "Not to worry. It won't be long." His uncanny ability to ease the situation never fails. At least it kept me from coming apart, that is until I got on the bus. But he'd done it again, he'd made goodbye easier, and just like that he turned away and I turned away and got on the bus. Ricky and I just held each other and cried for a few minutes, and then it was all over in the necessity to concentrate on getting to Ocean Park.

It was a shuttle ride, a walk, a metro ride, and then a bus. Somewhere between the bus and the metro I realized I had left Little Foot sitting on my bed in the hotel room. So I called the hotel and dealt with that and was assured that he would be waiting for me at the bell counter when I returned. Ricky and I both called home to say Merry Christmas (each in our own fashion, Ricky's family is Jewish and they don't celebrate Christmas - actually they go out for Chinese food which I thought was kind of ironic) and then we got on the metro that took us right to the bus station. It was soon clear that I had discovered not only the thing to do on Christmas Eve but also the thing to do on Christmas Day. I swear the whole of Hong Kong had turned out to go to Ocean Park. The line was over a block long and luckily they had several ticket kiosks set up or we would have spent the entire day just trying to get there. We planned our time carefully and realized we would have to leave about 2 to get me back to the hotel by my 4:00 pickup with breathing room on either side. The ride was uneventful but arriving at the park was everything but. It was like Disneyland, only in Hong Kong. Except they have a Disneyland in Hong Kong, so that analogy sort of falls down, doesn't it?

Anyway the place is amazing. It's huge, of course, and we conceded that we would probably only have time for a couple of big hurrahs before it was time to go back. But those couple of big hurrahs promised to be worth the day and worth the price - it was only about $25 US to get in. We promptly got lost looking for the big roller coaster and had to ask directions. We found one of the roller coasters near the very top (the park is situated on a hill) and there was no line whatever for it. I hadn't been on a rollercoaster probably since the 7th grade when we went to Elitch Gardens in Denver with the Junior High Choir. Ricky, on the other hand, lives in San Francisco and goes to Disneyland every year. Both of us were like kids as we got into the cars and the thing started moving. It was brilliant! It was so fun and exciting and we were both screaming and cheering and when it was over we both looked at each other and went, "Can we do it again?" So we went right back around and got in line again, and were on the next car. Then we did it a third time.

After three times we went in pursuit of more thrills and the other big roller coaster in the park. We had lunch and took a break from walking - there are lots of moving staircases at the park to help deal with the hill but there is still a lot of hill to walk and Ricky's arthritic knees were bothering him and my feet hurt and both of us were starting to limp a little. So we just sat for a while and watched people and talked. Ricky is such an incredible guy and I was so thankful to get to spend this last, relaxed, laid back day with him. I could not ask for a better final day or a better companion to spend it with. I am so lucky to have Ricky in my life and I would be so sad to say goodbye to him. I didn't want to leave the park because I knew that meant it would be time to say goodbye. We did find the other rollercoaster, and this time the line was considerably longer; it seemed the massive crowds had begun to gather at last. But we stood in it anyway; unwilling to pass up this chance at a crazy ride. This rollercoaster was like your calendar poster picture ride - it was up on the top of the hill with an amazing ocean view and the track wound around a dome that stuck up above the park and was visible for miles in every direction. We couldn't pass this one up.

The ride was as spectacular as the view, and my head was spinning when we got off. It was exhilarating to say the least. We decided against another wait in that line for the sake of time and Ricky's knees, and went instead to wander around the gift shop for a few minutes before getting back on the bus and heading down. I almost fell asleep on the bus ride back. Then it was back on the metro and back to the hotel (there was no shuttle running at that time so we had to ride the metro all the way and change lines twice). We had about half an hour before my ride came to pick me up. Little Foot was waiting faithfully at the bell counter, and I finalized my packing and got everything ready to go. When my ride arrived, Ricky came down with me and asked the driver if he could ride along with us, and if the driver could bring him back. The cab fare back (because that's what the driver would run as if he drove Ricky as a fare) would be over $300 HKD, but the driver said there was a bus that would take him for about $100. He very badly wanted to come along and I was extremely grateful for the company.

When I got to check-in, I had nothing short of a major panic awaiting me. Apparently you can't get into New Zealand without proof that you're leaving or a proper visa for an extended stay. Since I had no plans yet and had not had the ability to send my passport, I had neither of those things. I was sent to another counter where I could purchase a refundable ticket to get through immigration and then start over. What a ridiculous concept. Having a ticket you're going to refund is essentially the same as not having a ticket. It didn't solve anything. The refundable tickets were incredibly expensive and I didn't have that much money in my checking account or that much credit allowance on my credit card. So I was able to find a non-refundable ticket to Sydney, Australia. I had been tentatively planning to visit there on my way home, since this was the closest I'd be for a while, and this ended up working out all right. But if I hadn't had Ricky there for moral support, I think I would have broken down right there in the airport.

One of the other girls on the farewell package tour had been complaining about not being given enough time between her ride to the airport and her flight, and had her time changed to give her three hours at the airport instead of two. I thought she was making a big deal out of a little issue, until I got into this mess. Thankfully it was all taken care of and I would indeed be able to get into New Zealand and see my family as I'd planned. Once that was all taken care of, the subject of goodbye could no longer be avoided. It was one of those "Well I guess this is it" moments. There were more hugs and more tears. I think I hugged him about six times. He had done so much for me today, and we'd had such a great day, and then he came out to the airport and spent his entire afternoon making sure I got on my flight. He is an incredible friend and I was so lucky to have him with me that day. The last goodbye is always the hardest because it is the final goodbye, and because all the other goodbyes have a last emotional appearance there as well. I remembered leaving my parents at the Albuquerque airport, and hid my face as I walked away from Ricky and through the metal detectors and out into the terminal.

Now this is a massive airport. If I thought Atlanta was big, I was kidding myself. I took a ten minute ride on a subway-style terminal train to terminal E, where I then walked up stairs and down hallways and followed the very, very large signs to my gate. Thank goodness it's an easy airport to navigate because I was in no state to think after the day (well, week) I'd had. I determined that I'd had about fifteen hours' sleep that week. I made it to the gate, checked in, used the airport wireless to facebook Ricky and let him know that I had made my flight. Then a woman came around with a big piece of paper with names on it, and mine was one of them. They'd moved my seat, no big deal, I had an isle. Whatever. I was just going to sleep anyway. Needless to say, it was only minutes after takeoff that I was sound asleep, although I did manage to wake up just in time for dinner, and then again just in time for breakfast.

I need to take this opportunity to thank everyone who is reading this blog. Whether you're a casual reader or a first time viewer, or if you're reading this in book form if it ever gets to that point, or especially if you are one of those faithful readers who have been with me from the very beginning through thick and thin and through the weeks that I was too busy to post, you have made this trip the amazing experience that is has been. In our last Residential Community Meeting, Amanda asked us the dreaded question: what our favorite part of TSS had been. My answer would have surprised me if I'd heard it when I first boarded the ship, but it didn't now, thanks to all of you; my favorite part of this experience was having the opportunity to share it with others, to have other people share in the wonderful things I was seeing and doing and experiencing. It has been an honor to share this with all of you and I cannot thank you enough for your support and excitement and, especially, your patience. Thank you for sticking with me, thank you for believing in me, and thank you for being the roots and the trunk that allowed the branches to spread as wide as they have. Thank you so much.

And so it ended, as it began, tearful, heartbroken, overwhelmed and unsure, flying in an airplane over the ocean and above the clouds. I remembered what Dad had said to me four months earlier when he said goodbye in Albuquerque: "Fly, Randi. You fly." And I had. I had. And now it was time to come down. And I was ready.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198534320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198534320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198534320/tpod.html Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:14:38 -0500 On Board the Scholar Ship - 4 months of world travel at sea

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Hong Kong, China

When we were dropped back at the hotel after the farewell dinner, I had every intention of having a quiet evening with Jonathan and Ricky and going to bed. But we were in Hong Kong, for heaven's sake, on Christmas Eve! Thankfully Jonathan would have none of that going-to-bed early crap and turned me right back around and took me out again. Ricky had been really short on sleep and very tired, so he went to be so he'd be able to have proper fun the next day - we were going to an amusement park! So it was just Jonathan and me for the majority of the evening. It was already late, after 9, but tonight the metro would run all night long, so we didn't have to worry about getting back. Unfortunately when we got to the station, which was a chore in itself, all we had were 100 notes and none of the machines would take them. We asked a few people for change, but they either had none or simply thought we were crazy. Finally we had to walk all the way back out of this tunnel and find a convenience store and buy something to break our big bills.

One of the couples that we had asked for change (They spoke good English but with an accent; I think they were French)was in the same convenience store, and I think had finally figured out what we wanted. They had bought a pass for the day and were finished riding, so they gave the passes to us to use. It would only work on one particular line and only until midnight, but it would get us halfway to where we were going for free. It was so nice of them to think of that and to be so generous. So now we had change and tickets and we were off. We had only a little trouble figuring out where we were going, and ended up taking a very cheap taxi to the restaurant we were looking for (where the TSS party was) simply because that was the easiest way to find it. We got there and it was this total dump and we walked up some stairs past this really scary looking bouncer who was working for the bar on the lower level and into this beautiful, elegant bar. There was an upright piano and live music and just this wonderful atmosphere. We met the manager, who explained that there was a $400 cover for each person and that included almost everything for the whole evening, including dinner and dessert and some drinks. Well we'd already eaten, and didn't need that much to drink, and mostly just wanted to see some people one more time. We were also severely underdressed; I was wearing my WSC hooded sweatshirt and all the other girls were wearing fancy dresses. It was a very upscale place and we simply did not fit. We didn't stay long, just long enough to have a chat and say goodbye one more time and decide where to meet up later. The manager gave us a good recommendation on a bar up the street and told us how to get there, so we headed for it and arranged to meet the rest of the group there at midnight.

The streets were very crowded and rapidly growing more so. I had no idea Christmas Eve would be such a party. In the US it's a quiet night for the most part, staying at home with the family and wrapping presents and admiring the tree and all that. But here - it was like New Year's Eve in Time's Square or something! I realized that we'd found ourselves in Hong Kong on perhaps the biggest night of the year. We're talking tens of thousands of people in these streets. Staying for the Welcome Package and not flying off when everyone else did and not being home for Christmas seemed a little easier to bear with this knowledge in mind. To top it off I was there with one of the best friends I've ever made, and one who took such good care of me and seemed to instinctively know when I was comfortable and when I wasn't, so that I never felt uncomfortable at all. We're talking loud bars and clubs, lots of people in various stages of intoxication, the biggest crowds I've ever been in times about a hundred - I mean this is potentially a terrifying night for me and I was more than a little nervous about it at the start. But Jonathan simply brilliant; he was able to acknowledge my limited experience (or rather, my naiveté and innocence, really) without judging me, and let me follow his lead without getting too far ahead of me. I was never worried that I'd lose him in the crowd or get snagged from it by some outside influence.

Jonathan bought me a drink (well, two, a drink and some fancy Christmas shot) and since the bar had a minimum charge to sit inside, we left the empty shot glasses on the bar and took our drinks outside. He'd ordered a shot for each of us, and when they brought three, we shared the third one. It was one of those you drink from the bottom with a straw. So that was fun. The drink he bought me was amazing; I don't know what was in it quite frankly because there were just too many other things going on to try and remember data like that when there's so much other exciting stuff happening, but it was really good. It was called a French Fantasy, I remember that much. I imagine it's not the kind of drink that's the same everywhere you order it, so I'll probably never have one again. But that's all right considering I will never have another night like that one.

As the clock creeped up on midnight, the crowd came to a standstill in the middle of the street. The people noise grew louder and louder, and soon a cheering contest grew out of the chaos. There was an awning in the way so Jonathan and I couldn't see all of what was going on on our side of the street, but soon the action transferred to the other side and we could see the drunk crazy people hanging out of windows and dancing partially dressed on the balconies. It was madness. We were crammed in behind this partial barrier (and thankfully, because the crowd in the streets was there just waiting to swallow you up and it was questionable whether you'd be able to get back to the same bar you left without going all the way around the block) with people from all over the world speaking every different language and watching this incredible drunken spectacle.

We stood on the sidewalk outside Bit Point, the bar we'd been recommended by the manager of Vive le Róse (think French), the fancy club where our friends were partying. It was quickly moving on past midnight and Jonathan was anxious to find the rest of the group before they got picked up by the massive crowd and moved off. The road had become a one-way pedestrian street, with only one way in and one way out of the clubbing district. They had this down to a science, and what an exercise in people-moving it was. I was impressed by the organization but at the same time it was rather frustrating; at one point we left the bar and went up looking for the rest of the group (by this time it was nearly one o'clock) and realized that they wouldn't allow us to go back. We snaked our way down one side, against the traffic, and were finally able to make it back down to Bit Point, where we decided it would be best to hang tight and wait.

This hypothesis turned cold when the police started forming lines in the street and forcing the crowds forward. There were police guarding most of the gaps in the barrier near the sidewalk, so that even if our friends did manage to escape the crowd and make it to the edge, they wouldn't be able to get on to the sidewalk and into the bar. I don't know the reasoning behind keeping people in the street - maybe they were trying to calm the evening down by keeping people out of the bars. Who knows. But we were safely out of the street and on the sidewalk. But by now it was getting very late and we thought maybe we'd better get out of this street and see if we ran into somebody. We made our way out into the crowd, allowing it to push us up and through to the end of the street.

Jonathan mentioned that I'd have to finish my drink, because they wouldn't let me take it out. I'd been nursing it this whole time and although he'd finished his I was still not halfway through mine. I was happy with this ratio of course, but I certainly did not want to throw the drink away. Thankfully the huge crowd moved slowly and I was able to keep nursing my drink until it was gone just before we fell out of the crowd as it dispersed at the upper end of the street. Not five minutes later, we did indeed run into our friends, who had come up this way hoping to make it to the bar from the top. But with the police not only monitoring the crowd's movements but controlling them forcefully as well, there was no way we were getting back that way. So we made a huge loop, down and around several blocks, to get back to the bottom of the street and work our way up to the bars again.

Now keep in mind many of these people have already been drinking and most of the girls are wearing fancy dresses and high heels. I was suddenly much less self-conscious of my choice of attire. One of the girls was quite angry at being pushed around by the crowd and the fact that the crowd was being pushed around by the police, and it got more than a little old listening to her yelling about it, so I was glad when we found a club that suited everyone. The music was too loud and there were too many people, and it smelled too much like alcohol and it was too dark to see anything and too noisy to talk to anyone. You know, your typical nightclub. I was done with drinks for the night but Jonathan gave me a sip or two of whatever it was that he was having. I danced for a while, and as soon as I sat down found myself drifting off to sleep. I think it's whatever was in his drink that made me so sleepy, because I wasn't sleepy until we got to the club and he had a second drink and shared with me.

I don't remember much at the club, partly because I slept through part of it but mostly because it was boring. I don't want to remember much of it, because there isn't much to remember, really. I remember Jonathan recognizing that I was tired and trying to sign to me over the noise and the dancing crowd but of course I couldn't understand a word his hands were saying since I don't speak American Sign Language. Put that one on my list of languages to learn. I remember waking up and not knowing where he was, and suddenly being generally terrified. But I was never afraid that he had left, never once. And of course he hadn't, and eventually he started asking around to see if anyone was going back to the hotel so that I could go with them. None of the people who were leaving were going back to the hotel, so I asked him to please just walk with me to the metro station and I would take it from there. I wasn't worried about finding my way back; I knew the names of the stations and the name of the hotel and I knew just how to get there. I didn't particularly want to go alone but the hardest part was getting to the metro station; after that it was easy.

But he said no, he'd come back with me, and that he really was getting tired anyway and that it was time to go back. We both said our goodbyes to everyone, his substantially longer than mine (he's the social one and the popular one) and then we headed back. It was a long quiet ride on the metro as we both fought to stay awake. There wasn't much to say after a night like that. I do remember saying something from Lord of the Rings (because that's what we do when other people's words are better than our own), like, "I'm glad to be with you, Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things." I will remember parts of that night for the rest of my life. I don't care about remembering the club, despite the fact that our time there encompassed most of the evening. I just want to remember what an amazing night I had, that I spent Christmas Eve with Jonathan in Hong Kong, that I had a really good drink and a really good time and was properly exhausted afterwards. I've never liked clubs or parties or loud music, and tonight was no exception. I had as lousy a time in there as I always do. But the earlier part of the night was more than enough to wipe that out - it was that great a night. It definitely goes in the list of the best nights of my life.

We got back to the hotel without mishap and I thanked Jonathan over and over for bringing me back. He had promised to come to breakfast in the morning to see us off - Ricky and I were catching the 9:00 shuttle to Ocean Park and Jonathan's ride to the airport was at 11:00, so that would be goodbye. I was relieved to be too tired to think about it. I promised to bang on his door the next morning and fell into bed. It was almost 6:00.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198544160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198544160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/randiandersen/tss_2007/1198544160/tpod.html Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:57:14 -0500 On Board the Scholar Ship - 4 months of world travel at sea

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Macau, China

It felt strange being on a tour bus doing the same old things; even after all the tearful goodbyes and watching the boat disappear around the corner of that massive mall, it still felt like we were going to be back there soon, that in the next few days the tour would end, as it always did, and we'd go back home to the Oceanic II, just as we always did. We arrived at the hotel, checked in, got our room assignments, changed them around so we'd be staying with our closer friends, and went to see our rooms. Nikki and I would be staying together, with Jonathan in a single down the hall and Ricky in a double with someone who hadn't shown up yet and wasn't planning on going on any of the tours. Our luggage was brought up and we then had to change it all around too, since half of us had changed rooms. The room was amazing - five star hotel indeed. I thought back to that silly little room in Greece and decided this was already worth the money. Then I fell down on the bed, as I almost always do when I arrive in a hotel room exhausted and glad for a rest, and was promptly and forcefully tempted to change my mind. I say "bed," and assume that most everyone who hears the word has a general conception of what it means. So perhaps, in order to avoid misconception and confusion, I should amend my choice of words to more accurately portray this particular subject of description. This was not a bed, then; this was... what shall we call this? A sacrificial slab of concrete comes to mind.

Honestly, I'm not exaggerating. I go to flop down on this bed, expecting that no matter how hard it is it will at least have the slightest bit of give when I throw my entire weight on it - it was like throwing myself down on the floor, except that if I had actually thrown myself on the floor, I would have had some previous knowledge with which to make assumptions about what it would feel like to land on the floor. The very thoroughly constructed frame of reference I have built up over the years regarding beds - flat old futon with no stuffing left in it, sleeping mat on the rocky ground, bad college dorm beds, cheap ship cabin beds, dozens if not hundreds of hotel beds and fold-outs of varying qualities, halves of camp-trailer bunks, the list goes on and on - simply had no room for the poor excuse for a bed that this was. It was like raising the floor 30 inches and putting a couple of blankets on it. This sacrificial-slab-of-concrete bed was accompanied by four of the biggest, fluffiest pillows I have ever seen. Why the manufacturers could not incorporate some of this wonderful downy filler into their mattress is beyond my comprehension. To sleep, I finally lined up the pillows, folded up all the sheets and blankets I could gather to put on top, and slept on top of the lot with my own blanket over me. Not the most effective adaptation, but it would have to do.

Beyond the bed, the rest of the room was beautiful. We had a spectacular 16th-story view out over the city of Hong Kong and even a bit of the harbor, and from the bathroom we had a spectacular view of the rest of the room through two glass walls. That was a nice touch. The colors in the room were really well done, in browns and beiges and things, and it was a really elegant room, except for the fact that the bathroom was transparent and the bed was made of granite. You had to put a deposit down to unlock the TV and the phone, and money would come off the deposit when you used either one, so we didn't do any of that. I was afraid to open up a phone just to use my phone card only to have the hotel charge me for the call anyway. But this way we spent more time talking than watching TV anyway.

I wanted to take a little nap before dinner - we were meeting our guide at 7 to start the tour and get dinner and have a tour around Hong Kong. But Nikki and Jonathan and I went to explore the hotel instead (why waste time sleeping, right?) and pre-empted dinner by going to the restaurant in the hotel. Nikki also wasn't coming on the tour, so for her this was dinner. We were all starving since we'd been too busy with goodbye to have lunch on the ship. I ordered salmon salad, which turned out to be cold salmon that I'm not sure was cooked and a little pile of greens. Luckily for me Jonathan and Nikki shared with me. We ordered cheap (well, sort of, it was an expensive restaurant) so we could have dessert, and that turned out to be an excellent choice. We each ordered something; I had crème brulé (is that how you spell that?), Jonathan had bread pudding (his was the best) and Nikki had cheesecake. And I had left my camera in the room. But the presentation was incredible and the food tasted just as good as it looked. I had pulled my debit card out of my bag so that I could pay with that, but then I brought my bag instead of my card. Needless to say I owe Nikki dinner when I get home!

Dinner was wonderful, as always, but admittedly better in this program than in our AFP. No doubt because we paid so much more for it. After that our guide, William, took us around to some of the night spots in Hong Kong and showed us where the party life was. We rode this giant escalator up to the highest part of the city (again I remembered Greece and those Gods-forsaken stairs) and then stood in a line that wove its way around what was essentially a museum-style timeline of Hong Kong's history to ride a trolley (déjà vu, no?) up even higher to see the view. Unfortunately, it was both dark and very foggy, so we couldn't see anything at all. But the wind was blowing and I remember leaning over the railing into the fog and feeling the wind on my face and closing my eyes and trying very hard to pretend I was back on the ship. It even worked for a minute.

Since we couldn't see the view, we had some time to wander around another gigantic mall. It seemed to be a trend - take your tourists to shopping centers for their entire stay. Shanghai and Hong Kong both seemed to be shaping up this way. So wander we did, since none of us had money. We did stand a particularly long time outside the chocolate factory wishing we had money, though. The chocolate covered strawberries looked sooo good. Jonathan said his mother's were prettier and I said I can't make them because I always burn the chocolate. There wasn't much of particular interest in the mall besides that. Just as it was getting to be time to leave, some performers were setting up some sort of show. Based on the props and boxes and ladders and things that were lying around, I assumed it would be a physical show of some kind - juggling act style, or even mime, except that they were dressed in red vests like vaudeville actors. I wish we could have stayed to see some of it. We took the train back down (thank goodness we had tickets already or we would have been in line for hours) and the bus was waiting at the bottom. It was a short uneventful evening but it was fun and the air was nice and cool and refreshing. We went to a night market that was a lot like the area Lindsay and I had been in, and Jonathan and I went looking for a deal on a digital camera. There are none to be had, we discovered; the prices haven't necessarily gone up, but the exchange rate has fallen so far that we would pay about the same for electronics in these night markets as we would from the source at home in the US. The streets were very busy, even this late, and families had their kids out much later than would have been my bedtime. Scratch that. What was still my bedtime!

When we got back to the hotel Nikki was sleeping; her plan to sleep through the tour so she could stay awake to hang out with us worked except for one flaw: we hadn't slept through the tour. But we stayed up much later than I thought I was going to be able to, sharing pictures and talking and giving each other massages. Nikki put me right to sleep massaging my shoulders (which is surprising considering how tense I was and how much it hurt) and when I woke up she and Jonathan had gone back to his room. I curled up on my pillow mattress and went back to sleep, clothes and all. It was about 3:00.

We were all getting wake-up calls the next morning from reception, but the thing that woke me up was not what I would recognize as a phone. But it must have been the phone, because when I picked up the phone and hung it back up it went away. Unfortunately I went right back to sleep. Fortunately, however, Nikki's internal clock is as good as mine and she woke up just in time for us to get dressed, wake Jonathan, and be in the lobby on time. We had hoped to get breakfast, but it was either that or 45 more minutes of sleep. So we were in the lobby just in time at 7:15. I wished we'd been able to get up earlier so that we could have breakfast with Nikki, since she was leaving today, but she wasn't much for goodbyes and it would have been painful to draw it out, anyway. It was probably easier this way. She gave us all a hug and said goodbye and I tried not to let her see me crying because I knew how hard it would be for her. She disappeared around a pillar in the lobby before we had even left, and I knew she was waiting there for us to go. It was easier not to have to watch us walk away. I was crying as we went out to the bus but Jonathan put his arm around me, strong as ever, and just like that we were on our way again.

Today we went to Portugal. It seemed right that we should end the voyage as we began it - first reminiscent of Greece, then going straight to Portugal. It was as if we were going to do the entire voyage again in fast-forward freeze frame. I suppose it would be appropriate to clarify what I mean when I say we went to Portugal. We did go to Portugal. We just didn't go to what most people think of as Portugal: that little tiny country in the peninsula just north of Spain. We took a ferry to Macau, a Portuguese colony in China. And what an interesting juxtaposition that was. This place was quite literally like being beamed across the continent and into Portugal, from the very European buildings to the balcony gardens to the hanging laundry to the road signs made of tiles (I could just hear Gabriel - Hey look, tiles! - and wished he could be there to see that), to the sidewalks made of not only the exact same designs and patterns but the exact same pieces of rock that lined every singe street in Lisbon. These chunks of tile were brought all the way around the Cape of Good Hope and through the Indian Ocean and around the tip of China in a sailing ship who knows how long ago and used to build these sidewalks and courtyards! All the street names and signs were in Portuguese and doubled in Chinese and only sometimes again in English. Macau has three official languages - Mandarin, Portuguese, and English. I could hear the Portuguese influence in the Chinese guide's accent and had no doubt that she was fluent in Portuguese as well.

We saw the President's house and I remembered the mounted bugle corps that had marched through the square that lucky day in Lisbon. We visited a little food market and I bought Portuguese egg tarts - the same exact tarts we'd eaten the second day of our AFP in Lisbon when Luis had bought them for us, only without the cinnamon and sugar this time. It was an incredible sense of twisted déjà vu, to see the bamboo scaffolding erected over the European architecture and the Chinese characters painted on the blue and white tiles marking each road. We stopped beside the ocean (Macau is an island) in a very highly decorated area like some sort of seaside park, I think, and just had some time to look around. I had fun taking close-ups of some of the beautiful flowers and Jonathan and I spent ten minutes or so following this bee around the flower bed trying to get a close-up of him. The buildings were painted a really beautiful green with white trim and we had fun playing with the pattern pictures in the buildings as well.

Then we had lunch at a "traditional Portuguese" restaurant - I don't know what that meant necessarily but we had table wine instead of tea and pork chops and vegetables and this funny little gelatin thing for dessert. It was wonderful except the gelatin thing was kind of weird. After lunch we visited a sacred place for the Chinese people, an altar to the protector of the colony (I can't remember the story or the woman's name unfortunately). It was a very Asian-styled place, set in among the tiled streets of Portugal. It was very busy; there were people everywhere, coming and going and praying and placing lit incense in the raised sand pits in front of the altar. There were so many people there, putting so much incense in the boxes, that there were workers there taking the incense out again as soon as the people had entered the altar. It hadn't even had a chance to burn down a couple of inches of the incense, and it was snuffed out and thrown away. I couldn't imagine placing my prayer upon entering the altar only to see that it had been removed when I left only a few minutes later. Our guide spoke of the importance of the smoke as food for the gods and a purification rite, but I could see it had become a simple matter of standing on ceremony, and that the incense was never given enough time to create the smoke it was designed to make.

On the way out we passed several shops selling incense in every configuration, and I imagined the money that must be getting thrown away on offering incense to the gods and then having it not reach them. It is a mirror of many other religious institutions, whose rites and rituals and ceremonies have fallen into routine and lost their true spiritual significance. It made me thankful to be separate from it all and have a spirituality without all the baggage and expectations to uphold, from society and god alike.

We visited what was left of some ancient significant building, and quite honestly by this point I was simply quite sick of being a tourist and taking tours like this and was not paying attention. Jesus (he's from Mexico, use Spanish phonetics) and Jonathan climbed up in it and I took their picture. There were people standing around the bottom handing out copies of some religious book, and I had a sneaking suspicion they might be the Bible but I didn't dare get close enough to see for fear I'd end up with one. We also visited a mall and casino, another bit of flaunting prosperity if you ask me but still fun. We skipped the casino and went up stairs to have some free time to look around, but I think several of our group went right back down into the casino again. Jonathan and I walked around the mall - this is the upper level, mind - and watched the gondola boats pass under a bridge and around a large castle centerpiece. The sky was like something out of Harry Potter, with light and clouds and even a sunset coloring at one side. There was a violin player there, playing the same segment of Silver Bells over and over and over. I gave him a couple of Hong Kong Dollars and took his picture.

That was it for Macau; we took the ferry back and had a little bit of time at the hotel before dinner. I got up to my room and found my luggage missing. I looked everywhere, hoping that there was some hidden compartment somewhere that the cleaners had stashed it in. But it wasn't anywhere. So I went down to the lobby, my mind going over every worse-case scenario I could think of. My backpack and laptop and everything that I left out was still there, but someone had removed my luggage. I assumed the bell boys had taken it when they retrieved Nikki's; I could only hope they hadn't put it in the car with her and taken it to the airport too. Many of these people had the tendency to be a little too helpful. I checked in at the reception desk and they took down all my information and called a manager and looked in their computer and finally determined that they didn't know where it was and maybe I should check at the bell counter. Well of course it was there, waiting in a pile of luggage for who knows what. By this point everyone was waiting for me to go to dinner, but I didn't dare leave the luggage anywhere so I declined the offer to have it sent up and took it myself.

Only four of us intended to go to dinner at all - some other TSS students who were still in Hong Kong (I'm pretty sure they were staying at the same hotel in other people's rooms; Ricky's room had about 10 people's luggage in it) had planned a party for someone's birthday and Christmas Eve. But Jonathan, Ricky, and one of the professors took advantage of the meal we'd already paid for, and it turned out to be one of the food highlights of the trip. The food was incredible; they'd really pulled out all the stops this time. It was in yet another mall, and was this not-so-fancy-looking restaurant that served incredibly fancy and expensive food. We were to have a deluxe menu tonight, and since there were only four of us there was a little wiggle-room as far as portions were concerned. Everything was served community style here too, except for soup and dessert. We started out with some appetizer things, and I was really hungry and I wished they'd bring the courses a little closer together. William told us what everything was and translated a bit for us. Then we had shark fin soup - exactly what it sounds like - which is something of a delicacy and very expensive. William said shark fin soup in some places can cost upwards of 100 US dollars a bowl. Well they served us two. Ricky's a vegetarian and he had some weird seaweed soup thing, and I had to take a picture of it because it was so festive. I mean this stuff was really green. Then we had Szechwan shrimp, and I don't know how to describe them except that they were amazing, and some assorted meat courses like you always have in Chinese meals. Then they brought these weird dough ball things, that quite frankly I thought were disgusting, so luckily they followed those up with a real dessert - a pudding thing made out of red beans. It was so good. And they brought that twice too. By this point I was afraid they'd just keep bringing food all night and I was very full. It was a proper Christmas Eve dinner in that sense at least.

Well that was the end of the farewell package but certainly not the end of the night. However, I have written quite enough on this particular entry and will just have to put the rest in the next.
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