Mauritius: Welcome Back to Humidity

As soon as we got to Mauritius, Megan, Jordan and I got on the bus to the Terre de Paix children’s center. When we got there we learned a lot about the educational system in Mauritius and what the Terre de Paix does. Apparently, around 6^th grade, kids in Mauritius take a test they call the CPE. If you don’t pass the test, you can’t move on to high school, but 40% of kids don’t pass the test. If you don’t pass, you either have to repeat the grade and retake the test the next year until you do pass, or you just drop out of school. The Terre de Paix works with these children and tries to teach them different things in different ways. The official language of Mauritius is English, but most kids learn a creole language as their home language and have a hard time being taught in English. Terre de Paix teaches them in the French creole. Even though they won’t ever be able to take and pass the CPE in English, at least they will know something about reading and writing. Another reason some kids fail the CPE is because of behavior problems. Terre de Paix tries to find things these kids are good at so they will actually want to be in school. They have classes in music, sculpting, painting, and this weird wood-burning tool that people draw with (kind of like my sipring keychain from South Africa). The behavior problems usually go away when they have these things that they are actually good at to look forward to. A lot of kids go on to work in hotels or some other kind of tourism place that you don’t need higher education for, but you do need social skills and reading and writing that they can get from Terre de Paix. Besides all that for older kids, they have a preschool too. We went in when they were eating lunch and hung out with the little kids for awhile. Because this school is taught in the French creole (even the preschoolers, which I didn’t understand because they haven’t failed any CPEs yet) we couldn’t really talk to any of the students. It reminded me of something I noticed in other countries but never really thought about until I was actually in a situation where I couldn’t communicate with anyone. There are two things that can bridge any language gap.

1. Music- when we visited the music class, the students played us a Beatles song, I guess assuming we would recognize it, which we did. I thought it was funny that on a random island off the coast of Madagascar, they would play us a Beatles song. It made us all the more into it and it was really cool to see them learning songs like that.
2. Digital Cameras – kids LOVE digital cameras. They think it is the coolest thing to be able to see themselves in the picture right after it’s taken. What they like even more is taking the pictures and seeing them on the screen right away. I let them use mine for a minute…mistake! I have about 20 pictures of fingers and legs and nothingness. Ironically, in Mauritius something they liked just as much, if not more, than a digital camera was a Polaroid camera. Someone on the trip had one and they loved watching the pictures develop. So, when it comes to going to a country where you don’t speak the language, we had the right technology 60 years ago and it took about 50 years to get it again.

We got back from the school around 1 and took a taxi to a beach. The taxi ride was about 25 minutes so we talked to the taxi driver for awhile. He had some interesting things to say about living in Mauritius and being a Muslim. At first it was really cool how open he was being, but after awhile he got kind of weird. We had asked him if he had any kids and he said “I’m not married.” About 10 minutes later, someone called him on his cell phone and when he got off he said “That’s my wife.” We laughed and said “I thought you weren’t married.” And he said, “I was just kidding with you.” Then he proceeded to tell us all about his son from his first marriage and how his wife left him and now he has a second wife…the whole thing was just really weird and after that we didn’t know what to believe anymore. But, something weird about some countries is that the taxis will wait for you and you don’t even pay them until the end. We paid about the same to have this guy drive us to the beach, wait 3 hours, and then drive us back as we would have paid for 2 separate taxis. When we got to the beach, we ate lunch. It was a cool outdoor open-air restaurant, which randomly served Chinese food. Apparently Chinese people make up a small part of the Mauritius population. It was funny because whenever someone tried to tell us the people that live on Mauritius, they would say “The population is about half Hindu, there are about equal parts Muslims and Christians, and there are some Chinese.” It just made me laugh every time because Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, are people from a certain religion and Chinese people are people from a country…it was like they didn’t count as much to the people on Mauritius. They could be any number of religions, but they’re just “Chinese.” After lunch, we went to the beach and rode a banana boat. It was pretty funny. Then we got in the water which was soooo warm. It was one of those island beaches that I’m not used to that doesn’t have waves. The water was really still and clear and nice. We left around 4:30, got our taxi driver to stop at a grocery store, and then went back to the ship EXHAUSTED. It was soooo humid on Mauritius. I haven’t been in that kind of humidity since I left the USA, and my energy levels couldn’t deal with it. Neither could my sweat glands. It was pretty disgusting. From here on, everyone is pretty much counting down the days until India. I’m pretty sure we get there Thursday.

South Africa: Nothing Like Table Mountain to Remind You How Out of Shape You Are

Day 1
They cleared us to go off the ship later than they were supposed to. But, they did bring people on to exchange American money which was convenient. By the time that was done, some of us had kind of an awkward amount of time until I had a trip scheduled so some of us went to get something to eat at the waterfront mall. The waterfront mall was less than a minute walk from where we docked so that was nice. On the way there we noticed that there is always something going on in the streets in Capetown. People are playing music or putting on shows and then when you turn a corner someone is playing a different kind of music or doing something different. Some of us ate subway and some of us ate pizza. It was kind of nice to have some American food. I came back to the ship and went on a Semester at Sea trip to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner. We took a ferry to the island which took about 20 minutes and then we toured the island in a bus. It was interesting because I expected it to just be a prison but they also showed us a gravesite from when Robben Island used to be a leper colony and they showed us quarries where the prisoners used to work. After that we had a tour of the jail led by a former prisoner. The whole thing was really interesting but definitely not something I would need to do more than once. We went down to this boardwalk thing and saw 100s of penguins (the weird kind not the tuxedo kind). When I got back to the ship some of my friends had made reservations at a placed called Mama Africa, but we couldn’t get in until 10:00. Mama Africa is a pretty touristy restaurant and serves all the “african” food that people want to have when they come here but that African people don’t regularly eat. 8 of us went out to get a snack first because we were starving. Then we took a taxi to Long Street, had 2 drinks at a popular Irish pub while we waited and then went to Mama Africa. The people were way off with our reservation so we didn’t sit until about 10:45 so we had a couple of drinks at Mama Africa too. It had a really fun atmosphere even though it was wayyy too crowded and hot. There was a random African band there that I guess was trying to cater to all of the Americans and was playing weird stuff like the African version of music from Titanic. We all joked around that we live on a ship and that’s not really what we want to hear. At dinner I split a platter with my friend Sarah that had crocodile, ostrich, kudu, springbok, and a kudu/springbok sausage mixture. The kudu and the sausage were my favorite. The other 3 were kind of hard to chew and I was indifferent toward them. By the end of the meal I was ready to leave since I knew I had to get up early to go on a shark diving/ bungee jumping trip I had signed up for.

Day 2
Apparently we didn’t leave the restaurant early enough, because instead of waking up at 4:30 when my alarm was supposed to go off, I woke up at 6:10. I went and banged on Nicky’s door and found out he had also overslept. Neither of our roommates heard our alarms either. I tried to call the woman in charge of the trip to see if there was some kind of train we could take to meet them but the call wouldn’t go through. I don’t understand these foreign phone numbers that have a “+” in them. Nicky and I went back to sleep for a few hours and decided to leave around 10 to try to figure something else out to do. It kind of sucked because everyone already had plans and stuff so we couldn’t even hang out with any of our other friends, we were kind of stuck just wandering around Capetown by ourselves. We ate lunch at a restaurant in the mall and both of our meals were amazing. We went to the waterfront where there are all kinds of touristy companies trying to get you to do things and signed up for a shark tour for the next day because we both still really wanted to do that. Then we took a 15 minute helicopter tour which had really beautiful views of the city. After that it was still only about 2:00 so we decided to try to find a double decker bus tour we had heard about where for about $12 it takes you around the city and you can get off wherever you want and another bus will come by every 20 minutes and you can get back on. On the way to the bus office, we found this indoor craft market where a ton of people have handmade things that they are selling. We saw some really cool stuff and talked to really interesting people. There was one man that did art by burning pictures onto buffalo hide with some kind of hot tool. He mostly did big things and I asked him how long it took him to do the big ones and he said a week. I said that a week wasn’t as bad as I thought and he said “yeah, but 10 hours a day!” He had little keychains with small pictures on them and if you told him your name or something to write on them he would burn that on there right in front of you. I wanted him to write something but I didn’t want my name and when I couldn’t think of anything else to write I told him to just put spring 2009. He asked me to write it down for him so he could copy it, so I did…he still spelled it wrong. I now have a keychain that says “sipring 2009” with a cool picture on it. They were less than $5 and if I really wanted another one I would have just gotten it but I decided that this way is more authentic and it makes me laugh so I just kept it. By the time we got to the double decker bus tour it was almost 4:00 and we had to be back at the waterfront around 6:00 to find out our pickup time from the shark people since neither of us have working cell phones. We decided to still do it to see the city and just not really get off anywhere. It was actually really interesting and I’m glad I did it because I saw parts of the city I never would have seen otherwise. They gave you headphones to put in your ears and a recording would tell you about all the places you were passing and stuff like that. I ended up being glad we missed our trip because I got to actually spend time in Capetown. I talked to some people that did the trip I was supposed to do and also did the Table Mountain thing I did a few days later and they said that they spent barely any time in Capetown and didn’t really know anything about it, so I’m glad it worked out the way it did. After the bus tour 7 of us went to Camps Bay for dinner and the restaurant where we ate was really good – I liked my stuff and everyone else’s stuff that I tried.

Day 3
We ACTUALLY managed to get up early this time and went on a shark diving trip. Nicky and I were the 2nd people to be picked up; the first woman was from the USA but worked as an international flight attendant and she had a layover in Capetown. It took about 45 mins to pick up everyone else and then on top of that it was almost a 2 hour ride, so it took a little longer than I expected. When we got there, the “office” was actually a small beach house, which was cool because they fed us breakfast and stuff. The guy we were going with is pretty famous and has been on National Geographic and stuff like that. There were pictures of him taking famous people out diving. Some of the famous people were Jude Law, Maroon 5, the actor from Passion of the Christ, and some other random people. We got on the boat and drove about 20 minutes to a spot. The guy said the waters seemed too rough so we moved. We were going during the worst time of the year for sharks so he really wanted to get us to see one. The day before us, he had gotten his group to see 4 sharks but the day before that was only the second time in 2 years that they had seen NO sharks. I was just hoping we would see one. We waited around for about 45 minutes but then a shark finally came and it stuck around for awhile. We only saw the one shark but it was really big so it was still cool. The water was FREEZING! We had full wetsuits on and even with them, the first time I went fully underwater and came back up and tried to breathe it was a little difficult. I didn’t realize how much work is put into running a shark diving business; I guess I just assumed that you just threw some shit in the water and hoped for the best, but on the way back the guy showed us how long his chum line went and stuff like that. We were the first boat of the day to find a shark in a good area of the water but as we were leaving another boat stole our shark. Our guy said that he talked to another boat that had seen 5 sharks but they were in such a bad area of the water that people in the cage couldn’t really see any of them. We could see ours clearly so I was happy with it. We got back to the ship later than we expected and Nicky and I were both exhausted and starving. We didn’t really know what anyone else was up to and we just wanted to eat asap so we could go to sleep early so we ate at a restaurant on the waterfront. Both of our meals and desserts were amazing. A lot of the food I ate in South Africa was pretty similar to American food but a little different. I ate things I probably wouldn’t find in America but they reminded me of America. While we were eating, one of the people playing music outside played none other than…Titanic. Apparently Capetown is obsessed with “My Heart Will Go On.” I was in bed around 11:00 which never happens so I was clearly exhausted.

Day 4
I got up early (again) and went to climb & abseil Table Mountain. The climb was a lot harder than I expected; I assumed that since so many people do it, it must be pretty easy but that wasn’t really the case. It was like climbing huge stairs most of the way. At first, I was really frustrated because my body does this weird thing where if I don’t eat at all or don’t eat enough a couple hours before exercising, I get really shaky and my vision starts to go black. I asked to be tested for anemia once but they said I didn’t have it so whatever. It hasn’t happened in awhile because I’ve learned how to avoid it but all I ate that morning was 2 muffins because I thought it would be enough. Since the climb was so much harder, I could feel that stuff start to happen and I knew if I didn’t eat soon I would have big problems. I told TWO of the 3 guides AND one of my close friends that I needed to eat ASAP and no one really paid attention to me or offered to stop with me to eat. We had 21 people in the group and I didn’t really want to make 21 people stop so I kept going thinking it would get easier and it didn’t. Finally some guy that I don’t even know who organized the trip offered to wait with me while I ate so that was nice of him. Once my food digested it got WAY easier for me but at that point I was frustrated because I regretted climbing with such a big group. If I had been by myself or with 1 or 2 people I would have eaten within 10 minutes and been fine the whole rest of the time. Most of the climb, I climbed by myself anyway. Because I had waited to eat and had fallen behind during that time, I was too far behind to be going with the majority of the group but I was too fast to be with the few people that were slower than me. I liked it better by myself and I wished that I had just done it alone. But, the abseiling part of the trip made the big-group thing worth it, because if I didn’t go with this group I wouldn’t have gotten to abseil. When we got to the top, we were basically in a cloud because clouds are usually at the top of Table Mountain. In the pictures, you can kind of see the city and the view but not really. Once we were at the top, I didn’t understand why you would take a cable car up instead of climbing, because the views were cool but it would have pretty much meant nothing if you had just ridden up. We got snacks at a restaurant that’s on top of the mountain and then got ourselves in groups of 3 to abseil. It took each group awhile to prepare to go, even though the actual abseil took less than 10 minutes, so we waited awhile to go. The waiting was kind of annoying but kind of good because by the time my group went the clouds had cleared up and you could see everything around you. It is supposedly the highest commercial abseil in the world and was about 360 feet high (not the whole height of the mountain). I really liked the abseiling but it was different than I expected. It worked your arms way more and your legs way less than I expected. The guides kept telling us there would be a “surprise” halfway down. People were starting the weirdest rumors, like the surprise was them dumping water on us, which would have sucked because it was kind of at the top. Halfway down you learned that the “surprise” was actually the rock totally ending and you kind of just sat in your harness and let yourself the rest of the way down. At first it was really weird because you don’t want to hang in nothingness and trust just your harness to hold you but once you got used to it, it was really nice because you got to look around you and enjoy the view. When you were using your legs, you were more concentrated on not fucking up than on the scenery. When you got to the bottom of the rope, there was another 20-30 minute climb back up a different route. It was called the “dangerous” path but I liked it better because it was more like hiking and less like climbing. I continued the girls’ thing I wrote about in the last post about asking someone in every country what they think of when they think of Americans. I asked 2 of the guides and one of them said “luckier than here” and the other said “hard work.” One of the girls I was with misunderstood and thought he said “hardworking” and made a comment agreeing with him and mentioning she was applying to law school. But, what he really meant was hard to deal with so that made me laugh but I didn’t want to correct her and embarrass her so I just laughed to myself. When we got back to the ship we found some of our friends and everyone ate on the waterfront. Dinner was good but not the best we had had. 2 people left after dinner to use an internet café and 2 people left to go to a bar but my roommate and I were the only fattys that stayed for dessert. On the way back to the ship we ran into 2 people we know so we talked to them for awhile but eventually went back to the ship and fell asleep by 12.

Day 5
On the last day, I went on a Semester at Sea trip to the township Khayelitsha. Over half a million people live in this township. When you looked at it, it seemed like it went on FOREVER. Townships started during apartheid when everyone except white people were kicked out of Capetown and other cities and they congregated in these areas. Even though apartheid is over, the government hasn’t really made moves to rebuild the areas of the city where these people used to live so the townships still exist. When we got there, we stopped at Vicky’s Bed & Breakfast. This woman started her business right in the township and once she got it running she has encouraged 12 other women in the area to start similar businesses. She also started a food program to try to feed children before school. But, she said that it isn’t completely off the ground yet and right now she can only feed them on Tuesday and Thursday. She said she doesn’t want to have to start turning people away and if she offered it every day, there wouldn’t be enough. Even with it being only 2 days a week, all she is able to give the kids is 2 pieces of bread, soup, and a piece of fruit. She also started a Christmas program and she collects small things all year, like pens pencils stickers and other things and the past couple of years they have a Christmas party. She said before this program, Christmas was just like any other day to the kids. Vicky told us that people in Khayelitsha are poor but proud and she also said that even though people live in “these houses” they aren’t upset about it and they have positive attitudes and try to live like normal people. After Vicky’s B&B, we went to a craft market and across the street there was a church they told us we could see. Even though I don’t really go to church I like seeing churches so a couple of us went in, not expecting an actual church service to be going on. A girl coming out warned us that we would feel “SO intrusive” but we went in anyway and I don’t really know what she was talking about because I felt the complete opposite of intrusive. Everyone was so welcoming and I did not feel like I was intruding at all. The service was held in another language but the priest/minister/whatever (I couldn’t tell what branch of Christianity the church was) directed things at us in English. He said for “their friends visiting,” he would explain what he was talking about and would switch back and forth from English to the language they were using (I’m assuming Afrikaans, but I don’t know.) I’d love to see a church in the USA where someone would explain things to “visiting friends.” When everyone in the church sang hymns, it was genuinely good singing and didn’t sound anything like churches in the USA. At one point, a woman in front of us knew a hymn by memory and handed us her book and pointed to the one they were singing so we could sing with them, which I thought was SO nice. We looked down at it to start singing it and laughed to ourselves because it was written in the other language so there was no way we could have followed but it was a really nice gesture. After that we went to another B&B where a woman had snacks for us. This woman studied at the University of Pittsburgh for 2 years under a fellowship program that selects 2 people per year from developing countries to study entrepreneurship. The year she was picked, it was her and a man from Brazil. She also has encouraged other women in the area to start similar businesses and she also said her B&B has created jobs for other people because once she got going she began delegating things like baking or tours to other people. Khayelitsha has an 80% unemployment rate so she said she wishes more people would do what she has done because it would create jobs for themselves and others. I was really impressed by the fact that both women we had talked to had encouraged other women in their town to start the exact same kind of business, B&B’s, as they did. That would NEVER happen in America, where competition is the name of the game everywhere. These people weren’t concerned with becoming rich, they just wanted a job and they wanted to better their community. It was a mentality that I am completely unfamiliar with. The people we met there were some of the most inspiring people I have ever met. After the 2nd B&B, the owner had people walk us around the perimeters of a political rally going on. Zuma, the leader of the ANC, was speaking later that day so people were having a rally. Apparently South Africa’s elections are happening in April. It reminded me of Philadelphia when Obama won the election and it was just a rally. I can’t imagine what will happen when a winner is chosen. Wherever we walked, everyone waved and smiled and said hello if they knew English. I don’t really know anything about the political situation in South Africa but later my roommate, who had met up with a 26 year old friend of a friend on the first day and had dinner with her, told me some things about this Zuma guy that the woman had told her. Apparently he isn’t a very good guy and it kind of made me a little less excited to have witnessed part of his rally. When we got back to the ship, 3 of us ate at the same place where Nicky and I ate lunch on the 2nd day and by then I was out of money so I went back to the ship.I can’t believe we’re done with Africa. I would definitely go back to Namibia and South Africa on my own time. I would only go back to Morocco if someone paid for me, haha. Today one of my teachers made some comments about South Africa that I thought were interesting. She asked how many of us had been to a township and a lot of us had and she said she was very disturbed by the situation because it reminded her of the USA. She said that she has been to India 15 times and she said everyone talks about how shocked they are at India’s poverty but she said that what we saw in South Africa isn’t much different, it just isn’t in your face like India. She said in India the rich and poor live side by side and you can’t help but see it. She said in South Africa you could easily have stayed inside the “non-reality cyst” of Capetown and the waterfront and seen beautiful things and had an amazing time but not REALLY seen what it is like for most people to live there. She said this reminds her of the USA because there is poverty all over our own country too that most people choose not to think about because it isn’t immediately in our faces. I thought that was really interesting and also really true. It is also interesting because the poor people I met in South Africa had 100 times more positive of an attitude than anyone else I know. I’m glad we spent 5 days in South Africa so I had time to do the fun things and see these things, because I think both things are important. We stop in Mauritius for a day for fuel which I’m not even that excited about because it’s mostly just beach and then we go to India.

I don’t have many actual pictures from South Africa because most are of scenery and that kind of stuff but here are a few: (once again, I have NO idea why they post in a funny order and not the order I put them in)




me, Nicky, and Sylvie getting ready to abseil:


me on top of Table Mountain...in the cloud:

Khayelitsha:

Nicky & I on the double decker with the city behind us:

me with Table Mountain in the background:

Capetown from the helicopter:

us at Mama Africa:

Namibia: "If you need an emergency toilet...hey man it's Africa! Go behind the bush"

Namibia was AMAZING, but it’s kind of hard to explain why. It was completely different from both Spain and Morocco. Before I got there, I expected to love my safari but feel kind of indifferent toward the country. I did have a really good time on the safari but it wasn’t 100% as amazing as I expected, but the country exceeded my expectations by sooo much that it all balanced out. When we first got to the port, a group of young girls that we assumed were in a choir were standing on the dock singing and dancing for us so that was really cool. Once we got off the ship, my friend Sarah and I went to ask some of the adults that were with the children exactly what the organization did. They told us that they ran an after-school program that gave the kids a place to go since school lets out at 1:00. They said some students come every day and others come once a week or once a month or just whenever they feel like it. Then they told us that most of the kids they had brought with them were orphans, especially due to AIDS. They aren’t even really a choir; they just wanted the experience of coming to the ship. That was really depressing and I had a crazy amount of respect for what these people were doing. It was really interesting to me to think about the fact that going to our ship probably made these kids’ month, but all we ever want to do is get OFF the ship. After we talked to those people for a little while, we found the bus/van weird vehicles that were taking us to our safari. We got going for the safari and stopped at a town about 20 mins away from the port city called Swakopmund. It surprised me because it reminded me of a beach town and that’s not what I expected in Africa. The weather was sooo nice out and I really liked it there. We were in kind of a rush to find a place to get Namibian money and to eat and we saw a KFC so we figured since we didn’t know what we were going to be eating on a 3 day safari and since we’re soooo sick of the food on the ship, we should jump on something that we recognized. Some of the people in our group were 10 or 15 minutes late to meet back up and Nicky tried to apologize to the guide for some of the group being late and holding him up and the guide said “I guess they’re really Africans now,” which I thought was hilarious. We got back on the bus not realizing that we were in for the most annoying bus ride EVER. Someone from the company had originally said that the ride took a little over 4 hours, so with stops and everything I was expecting about 5. Between all the stops for gas and bathrooms and snacks plus the fact that one of the safari vans broke down on the way and we had to stop for 20 or 30 mins to help them plus the fact that it started raining on the way it took between 8 and 9 hours. I would have been fine with a 9 hour bus ride if I had been expecting it, but none of us had any idea it would take that long, so it pretty much sucked. The one cool thing about it was we saw pretty much every kind of African landscape on the way. A little bit out of the port city we drove through the sand dunes on one side and beaches on the other. After that it was still pretty barren but there were some small bushes and stuff on the brown ground. Eventually it looked like a green savannah-type landscape that we would be in for our safari. When we got to the camp site it was raining pretty hard and we had to set up our tents before eating dinner, which by the way ended up not being until 11:00 at night so I was STARVING. Looking back on it now it was a really funny experience but after an unexpected 9 hour bus ride, no one was laughing. Dinner tasted sooo good so at least we didn’t wait until 11pm for nothing but soon after we finished eating I went to sleep in my tent because I was exhausted. The next morning we got up early and they gave us coffee and hot chocolate to “wet our lungs” and we went on a 2 hour safari drive before breakfast since we didn’t get to do any the night before because of the weather. I finally was seeing the area we were in (Etosha) in the daylight and it was beautiful. Everything I saw in Namibia seemed so untouched. I really can’t describe why I liked it so much but I loved it. We saw some animals on the morning drive, mostly springbok and zebra, and then went back to our campsite for breakfast. After breakfast we went on a longer game drive. Something I liked about the way the safari was set up was even though there were about 130 people doing it, there were only 14 people in each van and each van had a guide and an assistant. The guides pretty much did their own thing when it came to where we were going and when we were going there, so it wasn’t like all 9 vans were following each other around the whole day. When vans would pass each other, they would stop and tell each other what they had seen and where they had seen it so that everyone could hopefully see as many animals as possible. I didn’t know that this is the rainy season in Namibia which is a bad season for safaris. Apparently since water is plentiful, animals don’t go to specific water holes and easy-to-see places like they do in the dry season. So, since we were already at a disadvantage because of the time of year, our guides wanted to make sure we got as much out of our time as possible. We saw a TON of zebra and giraffe and a bunch of other random animals and, thanks to some guide telling us where to go, we also saw 2 female lions. They had recently killed a zebra which was mutilated about 10 feet away from them which was really gross but really cool. We went back for lunch around 2 and then tried to go on another game drive but we were seeing pretty much the same stuff we had seen all day so we cut it short so everyone could just relax and stuff. That night the guides grilled a bunch of food which was AMAZING. It was one of the best meals I’ve had all semester (minus in Spain). There was also a watering hole close to our tents so we went down there and saw an African sunset which was really pretty. That night everyone just kind of hung out around the campgrounds and drank and relaxed. There was a bar/restaurant on the site that some people went to, but me Nicky and our friend Sarah had bought stuff to drink earlier so we took it to the watering hole and hung out there hoping to see animals (which we didn’t) and some other people from our trip came later and hung out with us too so it was a good time. Even our guides hung out. One girl said something I thought was really interesting. She said that in every country she asks someone from the country what they think of when they think of an American, like what type of person they expect. She asked our guide because he was from Namibia. So far her answers have been:
Spain: loud obnoxious drunks
Morocco: disrespectful
Namibia: they’ll sue you in a second
After our guide said that he went on to say that all of the guides doing our trip had been saying we were the coolest Americans they had ever met. I thought he might have just been a little drunk but the next day before we left he said it again and said “most Americans are shitty people, but you guys are the best.” The next morning we woke up wayyyy too early at 5something and got ready to go so that we could get back to Walvis Bay at a decent time. This trip only took about 7 hours instead of 9 since no buses broke down, it didn’t rain, and we spent way less time at the rest stops. My friend Nicole and I peed on the ground at one rest stop instead of using the bathroom. (The title of this blog is something our guide told us on the first day.) We stopped at Swakopmund for about an hour on the way back which was a nice break from the bus.
It’s hard to explain why I liked Namibia so much since the majority of my trip was spent in the bus, but I loved it and I would definitely go back. The safari was a lot of fun even though we definitely didn’t see as many animals as I would have liked to, but the country was beautiful and, although I didn’t get to interact with that many people, the ones I did interact with were really nice. Just like in Morocco, I noticed people in Namibia can be very intelligent but in a different way than a typical American would be considered intelligent. My guides in Morocco and Namibia both spoke 6 or 7 languages, which to me is amazing, but in their own country one of the “best” jobs they’ll ever get is as a tour guide. It’s always surprised me that the American education system doesn’t value teaching a 2^nd language as much as it should; you don’t start taking foreign languages until you’re 12 years old which is the same age that brain development slows down and it becomes harder to learn completely new things. But, even though this has always surprised me, I never realized HOW behind we were in all of it until I came to Africa.
I had a really good time in Morocco but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to go there, but I would definitely come back to Namibia.

Morocco Pictures

Here are a few pictures from Morocco....I tried to shrink them on paint so they would take less time to load so hopefully they still come out ok





the "bathroom" Nicky and I both used in the Moroccan family's house in the village:


4-wheeling:

me with some monkeys...after this picture they got on our heads:

me with a cobra:

a wall in the "pharmacy":

camel riding!!!

a Moroccan "salad" that we had before our meals in the restaurants:

a picture of walking through the souks:

Morocco

We docked in Casablanca, which was a much more industrial port than Cadiz was in Spain. It looked pretty gross. We were also there one day late because our ship couldn’t get fuel on time because of rough waters so everyone was really anxious to get off the ship. (side note – watching the ship try to get fuel was the WEIRDEST thing! We didn’t realize it got the fuel from another ship so there were about 5 of us in someone’s room with a window and the conversation went something like “wow that boat is really close” “wow that boat is REALLY close” “uhhh if that boat doesn’t change direction soon it will probably hit us” “ummm really I think it’s gonna hit us” “oh my god that buoy is scraping against us!” Finally I realized that maybe this was supposed to be happening and that could be where we got our fuel from…but it was a pretty intense 5-10 mins until we made that discovery) We got right on our tour bus and immediately noticed how crazy everyone in Morocco drives. They have lanes but they might as well not have them because no one uses them. Crosswalks also don’t mean anything there. People walked whenever they felt like it but I guess it was easy for cars to avoid them since no one uses the lanes. Our bus made tighter turns than I can make in my car. The drive to Marrakech was about 3 hours so about an hour into it we stopped at a rest stop. One of the tour guides from another bus had to help 3 of us order our coffee and that was probably the first situation where I was in a place where I couldn’t even begin to guess the language. In Spain, even when a person spoke no English, I could use some minor Spanish or just point and stuff to get the point across. Not knowing the language plus the fact that all I had at the time were American dollars made a simple coffee wayyy harder than it should have been. But, the tour guide helped us and the coffee was bangin…not AS good as café con leche in Spain, but still pretty good. On the next 2 hours of the trip, we drove through beautiful rolling green hills. I don’t know if I have ever seen hills so green, which was really unexpected in Morocco. I expected cities or desert, but our tour guide explained that even though 30% of the country is the Sahara, the Atlas Mountains separate other parts of the country from the desert and that farming and agriculture are actually a huge part of Morocco and make up about 60% of the economy. There were a ton of sheep and sheep farmers and small houses and it looked like something out of a book. Later the mountains came into view which made everything even nicer looking. Because I knew Marrakech was a major city in Morocco and that it used to be its capital, I assumed that all the scenery would end when we started getting closer to the city but Marrakech really came out of nowhere. We got off the bus and I have NEVER experienced such a culture shock. It’s really impossible to describe what the scene looked like. Marrakech is divided into 2 parts, the “medina” which is enclosed in walls and is like old nasty authentic Marrakech and the “newtown” which looks more like a typical city except instead of skyscrapers and typical steel-colored or brick buildings everything is red and adobe. First we went to the medina and walked through the souks (probably spelled wrong) which are the small market-like shops. I look a ton of pictures that I won’t be able to post and I took a video or two while I was walking so that I could maybe show people something of what I was seeing because I really can’t describe it. It was total chaos but even though I felt very alert and pretty uncomfortable I loved it. It was like a scary real-life Aladdin movie. Besides the shops they had other random things like a “public bakery.” People would bring their bread dough to this building with ovens in it and they would bake their bread and let it cool there and then take it home. After we walked through the souks we went to a famous square (I can’t remember the name and can’t access google to find it haha) which was even crazier. It was full of snake charmers and people with monkeys and all kinds of people that wanted your money. After the square, we went to lunch at a Moroccan restaurant where Semester at Sea had preordered our meals for us and I was surprised that I actually really liked the food. By the end of the trip I was sick of it because it was kind of the same thing over and over, and I don’t think I’d ever seek Moroccan food out again, but for the time I liked it. After lunch, we had a tour of an old vizier’s palace. It didn’t look like what I would expect a palace to look like but it was cool to see. After the palace we went to some tombs. When I heard we were going to tombs I expected to be going underground but they were actually kind of in the ground so that was weird. Our guide took us to this supposedly famous indoor market. The prices were fixed so it sucked that you couldn’t barter at all since that’s something Marrakech is famous for, but it was cool to see and convenient that so many things were in one place. I got a few things but I thought we would have more time to shop for cheaper, which we ended up not doing much of, so looking back I wish I had gotten more. We went back to the square because it was getting dark outside and it gets even crazier at night. All of these people were selling food that looked soooo good. I wanted to try some so bad but everyone made Moroccan food sound so dangerous that I was afraid to. We went and checked in to the hotel and had dinner. Dinner was buffet style so it wasn’t as good as lunch but it was still decent. After dinner Nicky and I wandered around the hotel for a little bit and realized you could go to this rooftop place so we saw the city lit up at night which was cool. On our way back down we got a drink at the hotel bar and ran into some people who were as bored as we were so we played card games with them…we turned spoons into straws haha…and after a little we were all exhausted. I was in bed by 11:30.
The next day we got up early and went to the outskirts of Marrakech where people live in adobe mud houses. Our itinerary said we were playing “Olympic games” but it was raining outside and really muddy and NO ONE felt like “playing games” so no one was all that excited. But, when we got there, they had all of these ATVs to ride together. They gave us some rain suits so we all looked so funny. The rain and the mud made it even more fun to ride the 4-wheelers. We rode through villages and when the kids would see you they would come up and give you high-5’s as you passed. We rode for awhile and then stopped so everyone could switch drivers if they wanted. I let Nicky drive first so I got on 2nd and thankfully nobody died. Haha I haven’t driven a 4-wheeler in years so I thought it would go pretty badly but it was fine. We stopped at a Moroccan family’s house and we sat in their receiving room and they gave us mint tea (mint tea is famous there and it tastes soooo good) and this weird flat bread. I used the bathroom there and it was literally a hole in the ground with some ceramic type stuff to funnel your pee into it. It also had these weird foot indents to put your feet in. We were all sooo muddy from 4-wheeling but when we left it had stopped raining. I let Nicky drive again so I could take pictures because my camera had more battery. We drove through fields and farms and saw the mountains – it was soo nice. After that was done we ate at another Moroccan restaurant. After lunch we went to a place to ride camels which was so funny. When we first got there they wrapped our heads in cloth for us. When we got there they told us we could choose whether to ride by ourselves or together. A lot of people wanted to go by themselves, including me, but by the time they got to the last group of us and the last group of camels, they asked if people would go together because the rest of the camels were sick or pregnant and they didn’t want to use them so Nicky and I ended up riding together. We got the perfect camel for us though; he was a fatass. He was always stopping to eat. At one point he bent over to eat grass and I thought at least one of us was going to fall off. The camels took us to another Moroccan house and we sat in their room, but this time it was on cushions on the floor so it felt even more authentic. They gave us more mint tea and weird snacks and the camel guides played us music. We took the camels back to the bus and then some of us wanted to go with our tour guide to this “famous” “pharmacy” in Marrakech. It was the WEIRDEST “pharmacy” I have ever been to. It looked like a creepy science lab; there were things in jars all over the place. They gave us this big demonstration of all their products. I bought a few things but some people bought A LOT of things. They told us they were discounting it for us because we are students, which I thought was a bunch of bullshit, but when we got back on the ship Nicky’s roommate had bought something similar somewhere else for way more expensive so I guess we really did get deals. When we got back to the hotel we ate dinner and then 10 or 11 of us crammed into a minivan taxi and went to a “hookah bar” which was really more like a weird bar/restaurant for this girl Kaeleigh’s 21st birthday. You could tell the bar really catered to tourists because drinking isn’t a huge thing in Morocco. 5 or 6 of us had a couple of tequila shots and when we went up to get another, they told us they were out of tequila. We thought that was hilarious that we literally cleaned them out of tequila. We stayed out for awhile and then came back and hung out in two girls’ hotel room and then around 3 we all went to bed. The next day we drove back to Casablanca and had lunch at an American café – we were kind of over Moroccan food by that time. We got back on the ship, they confiscated a spice we got from the pharmacy which was ridiculous, and now here we are for 9 straight days – I am NOT excited.
I think Nicky’s roommate at the hotel put it best when he said “I like Morocco better because, even though I love Spain, I could have done all that stuff in the USA. This stuff I wouldn’t be doing anywhere but here.” He was definitely right. This was the first country where it really hit me what I’m doing this semester, because most of what I saw was sooo poor. Morocco was amazing but in a totally different way than Spain. Spain was an all-around good time but Morocco was an experience.

I want to post a few pictures but the internet is really shitty about it and when I tried to do it it wouldn’t work and I don’t want to use unnecessary minutes so I’ll just try to do it later.

Me Encanta Espana

We got off the ship..FINALLY...and went to the train station and took a train to a city called Seville. It was really picturesque and reminded me of something from a movie. It felt like "authentic" Spain - it was a pretty quiet city. We all ate lunch together. The wine was good but the food was just ok..I don't think we went to the right type of restaurant for what we were eating. We went to this cathedral that is supposedly the biggest gothic cathedral in the world and it was sooo nice. 4 of us accidentally got separated from the group so we just kind of wandered around and got some ice cream which is more like gelato and that was amazing. ALL the food in Spain was sooo good minus that first meal. After awhile we went back to the hostel and met up with everyone else again. Most people wanted to do a pub crawl but Nicky and I really wanted to see Flamenco so we went to a show at this bar where supposedly locals go a lot. According to Nicky this bar looked like it was someone's barn and it really did. It was so much fun though - the Flamenco show was by far one of my favorite things that I did. We ran into 2 other people from our group who ended up not doing the pub crawl either so we hung out with them and had some sangria which apparently Spain is famous for. The people who did the pub crawl didn't even seem to like it that much so I definitely made the right choice there. We got home around 1 and went to sleep and got up at 6 to get ready to leave for Barcelona. When we first got to Barcelona, it took over 2 hours to get to our hostel from the airport. We weren't that good at the train system so it was kind of hard. That was kind of annoying because there were so many of us and any issue turned into a huge debate about what was right and wrong. All 16 of us never did the same things while we were in the cities but traveling from place to place we were all together and that was a little intense. When we finally got there we were starving so we all ate lunch at this outdoor tapas bar and the tapas I had were amazing. A lot of restaurants here have a "menu del dia" which is usually 1-3 tapas (really small portions of appetizer-like food), paella which is a weird mix of rice and meat and pretty much anything else, and a glass of sangria so I got that there. After that everyone kind of split up. 6 or 7 of us went to the parc guell. I'm not that knowledgeable about art but maybe some of you guys have heard of this artist Gaudi. He designed some cracked out stuff. The famous cathedral in Spain, the Sagrada Familia, was done by him but some of his stuff feels like you're in some alice in wonderland drug world and that's how this park was. It's really hard to explain but it was really nice and we walked around it for awhile. After that some of us went to a soccer game which was INTENSE. Spanish people are crazy for their soccer. When we got back, everyone else wanted to go to sleep but Nicky and I wanted more tapas so we got some. People in Spain eat really small meals all day long - my kind of place. The next day there were about 6 of us that really wanted to see a lot of things so we got up around 9 and got ready. We went to the Sagrada Familia which was beautiful on the outside but under major construction on the inside. We did take this elevator up though so we got really cool views of the city. After that we went to the Picasso museum which was cool because they were his actual works. There was another famous cathedral nearby so we went but it was also under construction. I swear everything in Barcelona was under construction. The Sagrada Familia won't be done for years but really random stuff was under construction. After that we took a taxi to the stadium they used when they had the olympics there in the 90s. Mentioning a taxi reminds me how funny I found it that in the 6 or so people I was hanging out with, most of them did not understand the subway system at all. I guess being so used to Philadelphia and DC, I don't consider that most people never use subways...the map there looked a lot like DCs so it was easy to decipher but even when the people could understand how to read it they didn't get that there were 2 directions for each line. Nicky and I were pretty much the subway leaders that day. Anyway, after the stadium 3 people went back to the hostel to take a nap but me, Nicky, and this girl Mandi wanted to see some more of Gaudi's crazy buildings so we went and got a mid-day snack which is really like a small meal. We saw 2 more of his buildings from the outisde but didn't want to pay to get in them so we just took pictures. Mandi told me that the word "gaudy" came from Gaudi's last name because his designs were so out-there. After that we met up with my roommate and other friend Jordan (they had gone to Barcelona a day earlier than us) and the 5 of us went out to dinner. Me, Nicky, and Mandi split a meal that was a whole bunch of tapas meant for 4 people. It was sooooo good. There were between 8 and 10 tapas and I liked all but 2 or 3 of them. After dinner we went to a bar that is famous for the FUNNIEST shots. One was called a "boy scout." The bartender lined up the shots, poured something on the bar around them, lit the bar on fire, then gives you a marshmallow on the end of a stick and you roast the marshmallow, stick it in the shot, eat it, and then take the shot. The bartender was really nice and I tried to speak some spanish to her and whenever we would tip her she would give us free things. Tipping isn't popular in Spain - you usually give whatever coins come from paying your bill but if you tip as much as we do in the USA, it is seen as looking down upon the person's occupation. This bartender would take the tips but then give us something for free, I guess to feel like we weren't just giving her money for nothing. It was a win-win situation. Everyone in Spain was so laid back - they NEVER bring you the check at restaurants. You always have to ask for it and it usually takes at least an hour to eat there. On the 2nd Barcelona day when me Nicky and Mandi went to get coffee (which by the way Spain has AMAZING coffee) and a small snack, after the waiter brought out our sandwiches he disappeared for forever. When we finally saw him, he was sitting down at a table eating with someone. No one there is in any rush to do anything which is kind of nice. Our quick snack turned into an hour and 15 minute thing because we didn't want to interrupt him eating but once we got up and started moving around again we felt sooo much better and less tired than we did before so maybe the Spanish and their no sense of time have something going on there. I LOVED SPAIN!!

Here are a few pictures in a random order because they wouldn't post right:

the "boy scout" shot at the shot bar:

Mandi & I drinking delicious Spanish coffee:

6 of us in front of a weird monument at the olympic stadium:

what a plate of tapas looks like:

one of the Gaudi buildings:

fans at the soccer game in Barcelona:

Nicky and I in front of the Parc Guell (Gaudi park) in Barcelona:

some of us at the first restaurant we ate at in Seville:

one of the most detailed walls of the cathedral in Seville:

a typical side street of Seville:

the whole group of us that traveled together right after we got off the ship: