Finals and Alumni Ball

I’m sure that at this point you can tell I’m catching up, not writing by night. I had a lot on my plate those last ten days, let me tell you what. I worked non stop all day. I had two papers for trade due (4 pages and 9 pages), a twenty page paper due for Marketing, a huge power point presentation to make for Marketing (which James helped me SOOO much on, wonderful boy), and a global studies test to make a huge study guide for and then study for. When finals finally came about, I was exhausted. My marketing group was actually supposed to help me, but they didn’t help a bit. I had to rewrite all of the sections except one. I wrote twenty pages of the twenty four. Then they couldn’t even get the power point right (though it ended up being ok). I was pissed, lol, though it was still good despite them. We were also helping out the shipboard drive at this time too, so our regular naps were disturbed. We did gain some hours though, and that was really nice. Saved my life.
When the finals were finally over, it was a dream come true. Lol. I was so relieved. That night was the alumni ball. We all got dressed up, met up, and then went down to the fifth floor dining room. People were looking so nice! I just straightened my hair (since I had a final till ten minutes before the ball), but it was ok. We went down with all of our nine friends, but we didn’t all fit on one table. We were right next to each other though. James and I sat next to our friend Matt who would have been left out if we hadn’t sat next to him. We put ourselves there because we knew it wouldn’t matter so much to us who we sat by, and we’d have to sit with three other random people because they needed to fit tables of six. Anyway, we got there before the rest of the table, and when we sat down we looked at the other tags to see if we knew the people. We did. It was my roommate and the girls directly across from us. Delightful. Hahahahahahaha. It turned out ok, but we were NER-VOUS! Dinner was great though. There was bruschetta, soup, salad, chicken or steak, and then a huge dessert buffet a couple of hours later. It was all delicious. After dinner we went up to the sixth deck and took some incredible pictures. They were awesome. Right on the ocean and we all looked great. There was some good times. We headed down to the fifth deck and Tymitz square where the captain was and took some pictures with him too. Which was pretty cool. We took a lot of pictures that night. With Tom the voice and the deans, with Joe the CRO and his wife. With the discipline officer who is from U of A. All kinds of people. It was a great night. At the program after dinner James and John played the newly wed game. John answered a question that made me want to punch him (I won’t repeat it, but let’s just say that I was EMBARRASSED), lol. John, you’re lucky I love you. Heh. After a slide show, we ate the dessert buffet. Then the dance started. We were there for a bit, but not long. We danced with Charlotte and Maggie, and then with Patrick a bit. I had a pretty killer headache though, so we weren’t there long, and I had to finish six more pages of the marketing paper before I could call it a night. It was due at 9 in the morning. The day was fantastic. A little crazy with finals and the dinner, but awesome. We have some pretty great friends.

Gibraltar

I feel that I should mention this. The day after the auction, we bunkered for a day in the straights of Gibraltar. Spain on one side and Morocco on the other. We stayed in one spot for a whole day. I think I had a test that day, but life went on like normal. We refueled there because it’s the cheapest in the Mediterranean. We didn’t completely refuel, but to do so costs half a million dollars. That’s the thing. People don’t really realize how much this whole voyage costs. ISE and SAS are completely non profit entities. It costs 7 grand an hour to dock in Casablanca and it’s a horrible port. We don’t go to France ever because it’s SOOOO freakin expensive. A lot of kids didn’t want to refuel because they said SAS makes too much money anyway. It’s totally not the case. Some years they have to ask for donations just to make ends meet. It’s a wonderful program and I’m so glad that it’s still around despite the expenses. And Gibraltar was cool. We got a great look at the Rock of Gibraltar!

Fine Dining:

A couple days in we took our Global Studies final. Most of it was on the study guide (whew), so it went well for me. I got a 96. Missed two. Anyway. That night, the ship had a drawing for a free fine dining. We all had completed a survey, and the one that got picked from the pool got the dining experience (which is usually $25). Anyway Some guy named Will Jenkins got it. I recognized the name but couldn’t bring a face to mind. I forgot about it right after. James and our friends had a volleyball intramural, so I was too excited for that (I was the cheerleader, and they got second. We actually all played a lot of volleyball for fun during those few days. It was pretty fun, and I got a lot better. Yay. Lol). Anyway. That night at dinner, we were walking out, and this kid from our trade class stops James. I didn’t notice at first, so I had to backtrack to get back to him. When I got there, James and this kid were shaking hands and James was thanking the guy. I smiled because we’d talked before, but after we walked away, I was like, what was that about.
James said that the kid came up to him and said that our study guides had saved his global studies grade and that he was really appreciative, and that he had won the fine dining that night, but that he wanted to give it to us. So he signed us up for it instead of him. I was flabbergasted! I couldn’t believe how nice a gesture it was! We didn’t intend to do fine dining because it cost too much and here this kid just gives it to us. It was SOOOO nice. I told all out friends and they were all in shock too. It was seriously so nice.
The next day we got all dressed up and went in. It’s like a mini restaurant inside the dining hall. Kids get seated at different tables and they give you champagne (James and I brought our own soda). There was legit bread and we had the best view of the ocean. We got a table all to ourselves, which was nice. We got to pick all our dishes and it was like 4 courses. Everything was great except the crab which was a whole crab deep fried. Lol. Next was Greek salad (which was great), raviolis, and a dessert. It was awesome. You had a server and h’ourderves. Perry was our server and he’s the sweetest guy on the crew. Seriously. We love him. It was a stellar experience. I was so glad we did it. We wrote a thank you note to the guy and thanked him again and again for it. But I’m still almost in shock from the whole thing. I loved it!

Auction Day:

Well, first day back to sea. It’s Shipboard Drive Auction Day. Every voyage, a committee puts together an auction for the students. People donate objects or services to bid on, and the goal is to raise the most money for the ship. SAS is a non-profit, so they need the help for scholarships and ship maintenance. People donate things like: salsa lessons, patches from around the world, ties, books, paintings, guided trips, house stays, condo stays, ski resort stays in time shares. There are things like: last off the ship, first off, steering the ship for twenty minutes, picking a menu for the day, being the voice for a day, throwing a pie at Prof. Bowler, getting the navigation map from the Navigation Nook. Things like that. We didn’t buy anything, but our voyage set a record: 30,000 raised from the auction alone. Which is a NUTS number. Kids who have their parents credit cards obviously. Still, it’s for a good cause, so we were super stoked!
This goes along with the ShipBoard Drive, which James and I were apart of because of our Study Guide. This is a donation drive for kids to help for the same reason. The goal was 100% participation, but that never happens. We were also shooting for 50,000 dollars, which would break every record that SAS has ever had. James and I sat at a booth for lunches for 4 days straight asking kids to donate. I made a thirty page study guide again for students to study for the final, and I’m telling you, I don’t want to toot my own horn, but James and I made the difference with that thing. Kids donated twice, one for the first one, and once again for the second. People would come up to us and say, is this were I donate for the study guide? It was awesome. Anyway. We ended up making 53,000 dollars! Which I know may seem like a huge number, but it was a HUUUUUGGGGEEEE number. We broke the grand total record by ten grand total. We broke the shipboard donations record by eleven grand total, and I don’t see another voyage catching up to us anytime soon. It was intense. Very successful.
James and I had a lot of kids and staff as well comment on the study guide. The Registrar said she was so glad we posted it because she learned more from it than she did for class. Kids came up to us all the time thanking us, and teachers said they thought it was a great idea. I was glad we did it. We almost didn’t for a bit there. The study guide took some serious work. We already had the first and second parts already finished for the most part, but the third part was intense. Anyway. It was awesome. Something to say in an interview: Oh ya. I was apart of a donations drive and I ended up helping the drive raise over fifty thousand dollars and break every record EVER. ☺
Anyway, the next day I had my marketing exam, which went horrible. I got a 64. But it was the highest in the class, so it ended up being a 100%. Just to give you an idea of how nuts the tests are. I spent every night in port reading that wretched book, and still didn’t know half the test. Hahaha. Luckily no one else did too. Anyway. Just a huge paper to write and a power point presentation and I’ll be done with that class!

Last Day in Morocco:

Well, we slept in again, which wasn’t too bad. We headed out, tried to use the phone card we’d bought yesterday, and finally succeeded after like 100 tries and help from two different groups of people. It was semi hilarious, but not at the same time. Anyway. We switched our hotel reservations around, and cancelled some stuff. We called out parents (or tried), and then went back to the hotel we had originally and got some more last minute internet stuff done. We also spent the rest of money. I bought a little travel bag. Lol. Which I needed at the first port, but didn’t get till the last day of the last port. Typical. ☺
We got back early, but that was good. We finally got a shuttle again, but we still waited for about thirty minutes to get on. It was the last port, and the last day, so security was nuts and they had some serious bag checks. We were lucky we got in early. They were afraid they’d have a lot of people be late, and instead of dock time, they punish by not letting us go to the Alumni Ball. Bad news bears. Lol. We hung out on the ship till we left. We watched us depart from our little dock windows and then I went to town on studying. My marketing test is the day after tomorrow.
Woop.

Overall thoughts on Morocco:

I liked and disliked Morocco. There were a lot of things about it that were just like Egypt: the religion, the way that people acted in certain ways, the cabs, and the bargaining. But there were some major differences. The modernity that they’re working on is interesting. The king’s father was not so great a king, and the son is trying to restore the monarchy and the order while bringing Morocco into a global market place. It’s doing pretty well I think. The women have more rights, which is good, and there are new laws that prohibit the men from having all out power in government and things like that. The multiple languages are interesting. There are so many people who can’t read in Morocco, but at the same time, they all speak three languages. It’s an interesting dichotomy. That’s for sure.
Most of the people were really nice. There is definitely anti-American sentiment, but we didn’t feel it as much as we did in Turkey. There were a lot of people who went really far out of their way to help us (the phone and the pizza hut). There were people who were rude (but they’re everywhere). We had a lot of fun at the beginning, and despite our disappointments, I’d say that Morocco was amazing. The place is beautiful. There is a lot of history. There are some amazing architectural achievements. I’m not sure why it’s a popular honeymoon location, but then again, I didn’t get to Marrakech, and I think that’s where it’s at. ☺
We’ll definitely be going back some time.

Casablanca Day Three:

Well today was interesting. To say the LEAST. First, we woke up an hour early because we didn’t change our clocks for day lights saving time (cuz we’re retarded obviously). Then we went down to the bus station looking for our trip to Marrakech (which we were super excited for (there are snake charmers there, monkeys you can hold, and huge bazaars), and there was no bus. We were like…what’s going on. We needed to be out here at 7am and there’s nothing here. Well, turns out that they double booked us. Yesterday when we went to Rabat, we were supposed to have gone to Marrakech, but the yellow book said it was today. Well, the changed the trip last minute, so we didn’t get the memo. We missed the trip. We were TICKED! We really didn’t have the time to reschedule either or take our own trip. We only had a day and a half. We were super disappointed, and even though we got reimbursed, we still feel like we got rather screwed out of a huge experience. It’s just an excuse for us to go back to Morocco though. So…it’ll work out in the end.
Anyway, we went back to sleep for a bit. Woke up when lunch was over, so we missed it. We decided we should make a trip to the grocery store (and we figured we’d pick up lunch on the way, though we didn’t). It took us awhile to get there because we really didn’t know where it was and we got some interesting directions in a mix of Spanish, French, English, and Arabic. We finally made it though, and stocked up big time. I bought 21 kinder bueno bars, snacks, sodas, and some water bottles. We filled a whole backpack to the top and James’ carry on suitcase. We got a quick cab, and made it back to the port a ok, and pretty cheaply too. After we unloaded, we decided to head back for more internet. There were some quick things we needed to do. Then we went back to the ship. THEN we decided to go to the Souk that was right outside the port for some last minute shopping. Man. We got some stuff done. We also bought more luggage, which was a great decision in the end. We spent a pretty decent amount of time there. There was a lot to see and plenty of little stalls to bargain at. By the time we were done, it was around 6pm (note we had NOT ate yet). We were famished. Big time. We remembered seeing a pizza hut close to the port the first day on the tour, and we knew we were close, so we headed towards that. We figured we were starving. We needed some tastes of home. Anyway. We got hopelessly lost and decided we needed to ask. We saw a group of three girls walking towards us dressed really modern, no headscarves, and while they were modest, they had really fashionable clothes. So. We decided they prolly spoke English, and we were right.
The girls were super nice. They led us straight to Pizza Hut. The one girl who was the leader said that she was only 22, but she had some gray in her hair, and she looked a little older. We didn’t care too much though, she took us to the food. Lol. It was actually a little bit of a walk, but they were super nice about it and we finally made it there in one piece. The food was awesome. We downed a huge pizza. Two sodas each, and a bowl of pasta. It was stupid almost.
Afterwards, we headed back to the boat. We didn’t want to be out too long, and the sun was setting. We ended up chilling at the boat all night. We hung out in 2050 and watched the movie that was on. I still had a lot of homework, so I went to town on that too. It was an interesting day. A good one overall I’d say, but it started out a little auspicious.

Morocco Second Day:

Well. We woke up a bit earlier today. 8am. Somehow we never seem to make breakfast. I had an interesting experience with the water last night. It smelt a little funny when I was showering (but it’s super hot and humid in Morocco and I was disgusting, so I wasn’t going to stop). I got out, dried my hair, went to bed like normal and when I woke up, I found that my hair, my beautiful blonde locks, were green. Not completely, but it was definitely a tint to it. Hahahahahaha. The shower curtain was green, and when we finally got to the tour of Rabat, there were girls with blue hair as well as green. James had drank some of the water from the night before, and he said his throat hurt and tingled a bit. It was just a weird thing. We had heard that the water might be a little different in Morocco, but we weren’t really expecting that one. We survived though, and I’m pretty sure that the green has been predominantly washed out. Though it definitely lasted a few days.
Anyway. We went off to our tour of Rabat. The tour guide was the woman who wrote the whole Wiki-Travel section on Alexandria, so she was just a little node of knowledge. Very nice. She told some corny jokes, but you could tell she was super smart. She was also a single mother, which was something of a novelty. The king of Morocco is travelling towards modernity, so there are things like that which are now possible for women, though they are still seen as subservient.
Rabat was interesting. It’s the capital of Morocco, but there wasn’t much to see per say. We went to a couple of palaces which had some gnarly guards with huge machine guns. We saw the royal mosque. We walked to the mausoleum of Mohammad V which was very nice inside. This was the king during WWII who turned away the Nazi’s looking for Jews when he said that there were no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccans. He’s a national hero. It’ a pretty cool story really. We had a guy take a picture for us who worked there, and he tried to take other pictures after ours. James fairly ripped the camera out of his hand. Which would have been funny except it’s a nice camera. He wasn’t going to steal it…he just started to walk around with it. Haha. He was a little old Moroccan man, but it was still weird.
Next we went to a Medina of the city (Medina means city). It was by the water and there were some beautiful gardens to see. We had some coke and water which was amazing, and went to a bakery where they make bread for the whole medina. It was very quaint, very small, and a quick visit.
On our way back home, we passed a Muslim graveyard. This was interesting. The Muslims don’t bury their dead in a funeral, they simply put them in the ground. The graves are super close together with tall thin headstones, and all the feet point to Mecca. The graveyard was on a rolling hillside, and it was huge. I think it might have been the most interesting place we saw all day. We ate dinner on the ship. Sometimes its easier than scouting and we were pretty famished.
We went to a hotel right outside of the port next. Caught up on some internet time and skyped the parents for a while. It’ll be the last time for a bit, so we wanted it to be worth it. Lexee even got up to talk to me. Hahaha.
Went back to the ship and got prettied up a bit. We had made a date earlier in the week to have dinner with the Gillespies (the couple who really liked us from Italy). We caught the shuttle out of the port (one of the only ones), and then headed off for a bout a ten minute walk. We ended up at this little authentic Moroccan restaurant that had a French name and no real tables. There are little round desk like things that you bend over and sit around on coaches. It was really pretty cool. The atmosphere was great. Mr Gillespie speaks French too, so it was easy for us to find it luckily. Eating was nice. We had a little bit of everything: couscous, some things cooked in a tanjine (which is an all day process in a little cone shaped pot), a chicken dish with almonds in a little tortilla thing (like a taco bell crisp but WAY better and cinnamon like), and then lots of different desserts which were amazing. The whole experience was great. We talked about our homes and our majors. They talked about the classes they taught. We talked about the teachers and the program in general. It was all great conversation. We walked home in a big group of people, but we mostly stayed with them. After we got back to the ship, we ended up going upstairs with them to see how the people on the seventh deck live. haha. We always make jokes that the second deck is the dungeons, but its not really much different than the other decks except we have a smaller window. Let me tell you though, the people on the seventh deck live in style. There’s a coach, and a huge bed. They have a balcony with lawn chairs and a nice view. It was intense. They had a desk and a nice little refrigerator that was pretty big. They were definitely living the high life ☺
It was nice of them to let us see for sure.
After visiting with them we went back to 2050 where I started some more homework. I’ve been reading like crazy every night trying to get things done. I’ve got a lot. My marketing class is insane. That’s all I’ll say.

Morocco Day One!

        Well. We’re here in the last port. I almost can’t believe it. Only four days here, and I’m almost sad. We started out late today, sleeping in. Lots of things went on during the five-day trip across. We were exhausted. Sleeping in was nice.
Started out with a city orientation. There was a little Moroccan man who took us around and we saw some interesting things. We started with the huge Hassan II mosque, which you can literally see from almost everywhere in the city. It’s the third biggest mosque, and it has the tallest minaret. At night, there’s a little green laser light that shines out towards Mecca. It was actually pretty cool. We went to a medina with some palaces, walked down some lanes. Went to a catholic church that had some great stained glass, and then went into some crazy store that had no historical value whatsoever. The guide definitely took us there because he had some connections with the owner. Lol. All of the tours went there I guess. Not joking. That’s the baksheesh culture though. It was bad in Egypt, and it’s bad here too.
        We came back to the ship to eat a bit before heading out with Charlotte, John, and Patrick. We ended up walking the thirty minutes from the port to the entrance of the city, and then another twenty to Rick’s Café! Super exciting! We thought that we wouldn’t be able to make it in because all of SAS wanted to eat there, but they had room for us. We ended up going to the roof top terrace called the “Blue Parrot” and had some sodas. We hung out for awhile, and Casablanca was playing in the background. It was all very quaint.
        Next we got into two cabs and headed to the Corniche, which means waterside. There’s a huge city center there with lots of restaurants and clubs. There’s also fitness clubs with swimming pools and private beaches. It’s actually pretty awesome. There’s ALSO a McDonalds! And it’s insane there. We didn’t eat there, but it’s interesting to see the differences. The food is more plain and there’s HUGE play places for the kids to play in, like two story huge little play places. Make ours look dinky. We ended up eating some shwarma’s just like Egypt’s except for the fact that the sandwiches are toasted like a Panini and have mixed meat. They were pretty good. We cabbed home after walking around for awhile. We tried to fit all of us into one cab, but they wouldn’t go for it. When we got in initially, the man didn’t even see me, so when three of the six of us left, he freaked out. Lol. Fun fact.
        Walked back home. Thirty minute walk from the entrance to the port. Lots of pot holes and little light. Hahahaha. It’s interesting. Great day though. Casablanca is cleaner than Egypt. That’s a plus!  ☺

Birthday

My birthday today! Big twenty one! We actually moved ahead an hour last night too, so my birthday is 25 hours long here on the ship, and if you count that there’s birthday time in Tucson, then my birthday is like 36! Anyway. I woke up like normal and went to class. Things were fine. We got a shout out from Bowler in class about how awesome the jeopardy team was.  ☺   I passed James in the hallway at one point and he asked for my room key cuz he had a headache and the Tylenol is in my room. Haha. Clever boy. After classes, we’re going to go get ready to take our customary nap, when James says that he left his water bottle in my room, so we go in there and lo and behold! There’s my room all decorated with hand made streamers and a huge sign over my window that says Happy B-Day Jack! Adorable! There were all my friends in my room and presents on my bed and the works. It was so incredibly sweet. I got a little SAS teddy bear and some SAS boxers (I love boxers), and the teddy was holding a Tiffany’s box! I put my earrings on right away and made everyone look. They’re beautiful. James really went over the top. He’s so awesome.
I also got some really great emails from my family on my birthday too, so thanks guys. They really made my day all that much better.
After the party and the nap, it was time to study. We had two tests today. The first one went by quickly enough. It was in trade and I never know how to truly study for that class. Then was dinner, which was another birthday surprise. James ordered a cake and they brought it out with a candle, and everyone sang and I blew it out. We all scrunched together on a little table and it was just great. Even my friends who don’t like each other came for the most part.  ☺ More kudos for James. Then we had the second test, which also went alright. It was supposed to be easier, but I thought there were some really hard questions. I was all stressed too because I needed to get a good grade to keep up my reputation. You can’t sell a study guide if you can’t get the grades yourself. Anyway. I got a hundred, but I got lucky. I wasn’t so sure about it.
After that, we really just chilled out. Casablanca was on, so we watched that since I’ve never seen it before. We didn’t get through it all, but I followed most of it. Seems pretty cool. Then we had a little Turkish Tea Party with one of the tea sets and some of the cheaper apple tea. Delicious, and it was sweet to hang out. It was mostly James, me, and his roommate John, which is quite the party, but Fogarty came for a bit too and Charlotte  ☺  It was a pretty nice day. Kudos to James and everyone for making it great. Family! No worries, we’re going to have a huge birthday bash when I get back! Still, not many people can say they were in the Mediterranean on their way to Morocco when they turned 21!

Sea Olympics, in the Mediterranean:

First day back at sea, and it’s time for the Sea Olympics. The floors on our ship are split into certain groups of rooms, and they’re called “seas”. For instance, the second deck has the least amount of students, so we’re one sea. We’re called the Aegean. All of the different groups of rooms are given a specific sea name that is in the Mediterranean. Each sea has a color too. Ours is black, and our slogan is “Black Out!”. Hahhaa. Anyway. I slept through the opening ceremonies, but James went. He said it was pretty exciting! Basically, the Olympics are a big competition between all of the seas to see who gets off the ship first. The first place team gets off first. Second and third are the same, though after that it’s random who gets off next.
The day was great. Our whole sea got into to, cheering on everyone else at the different events. James competed in two different things: Ice cube Scramble (which was not very well ran) and also the relay race, which was SO intense! We ended up with second in the relay, though it was rather stupid how they judged it and the other team cheated in my opinion.
My only competition was jeopardy which was based on Global Studies questions, questions about the ship and its history, and random facts about SAS. One question was who won the NBA National Championship and the World Cup, because they happened while we were on the ship. Most of the questions were historical ones from the Global Studies class. There were also some questions on geography and the winds and seas of the Mediterranean. There were three to a team. The Aegean had me, a girl named Olyvia (who is in the politics class, which was a category) and Amanda who is a classics major from Dartmouth. I don’t want to brag, but I have to admit, we kicked freakin butt. The first round was a wipe out. We literally cleared the board. I was the clicker, and I was black belt fast.  ☺ If it was a politics question, then without a doubt Olyvia knew it. If it was some random question, then Amanda knew it. I knew everything else. We got to the final round no problem. But in the finals were the teachers, and there were two of them who had been on like five voyages before. The first few questions were horrible. Our clicker wasn’t working, and I was freaking out! I unplugged the thing though about five questions in, and that was it. We DOMINATED! We blew the teachers out of the freaking water! It was pretty awesome. They totally thought they were going to win too. You could tell. The Global Studies teacher said that in the first round he watched with pride at our knowledge and in the final round he watched in horror as we trounced his colleagues. It was a pretty awesome high! We ended up with second place overall. We lost to first by three points. Which was super disappointing, but still cool that we got second. That means that we get to get off second from the ship but I’m not sure I’ll want to. I’ll be sad to leave it almost.
After the sea-Olympics, we came up with this crazy idea for Global Studies. Everyone pretty new that there was a girl who had really made the teachers look bad, and during Jeopardy, James started saying that we were making a study guide for the second test that was coming up. Basically we decided to make the study guide and then try to sell it NoteHall style. We asked the Dean, who said no. Then we told him we’d donate some to the ShipBoard Drive and he still said no. She we decided in a moment of altruism that we would post the study guide to the folder that everyone on the ship has access to and tell them on the study guide that they should donate to the drive. There results were huge. We spent about fifteen minutes spreading the word around the ship (news travels fast) and before we knew it, most of the ship had the study guide. We listened around and people were saying that they’d donate for sure and that it was a great idea. The study guide was eleven pages long, but it was pretty quality, and a lot of people printed it out. They actually stopped the printers because people were using them SO much. Kinda cool in an environmentally horrible way (we DID make it an electronic thing, people printed on their own. Just a side note). Just hoping now that what I put on the study guide is what’s on the test. Haha…..

Overall Thoughts on Egypt

Coming into Egypt, I really had no idea what to expect. I knew that they were poor and I knew that it wouldn’t be clean. So many kids complained about Naples while we were there. Now Naples looks silly in that regard. There were a few places like that in China, but for the most part, China’s pretty clean, and it smells good. Not always the case in Egypt. Still, everywhere you go there, you have to remember that you’re walking on the land of the pharaohs, and the same places that people like Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, and Tut walked. Of course, we didn’t go to Luxor, but that just gives us another excuse to go back again.  ☺
It’s interesting to see how the people act in Egypt. Everyone is someone else’s brother or uncle. The people are very friendly, and while they may be shooting cat calls at you one minute, they might also give you the best advice the next. There’s a lot of anti-American sentiment, but at the same time, we never felt threatened and we actually got a lot of wonderful help and conversation from a lot of different people. I loved Egypt. I liked the people, and I liked the history. Going into the Egyptian Museum was intense for me after learning about all of these things for so long. That’s the thing about this trip, there’s so much history. We’re not used to that in the United States because we don’t have a lot. Places like this have changed the shape of the world. They’ve changed the way that people developed and lead the world in innovation at different times in the past. It’s humbling.
Ali really made our trip. Though we were a little weary the whole time we were with him, he really made Cairo an enjoyable experience. We tried to thank him profusely at the time, but I hope he really understands how awesome he made our experience. I loved Cairo, and while I probably wouldn’t go back, I have fond memories without a doubt of the place. The Nile was incredible. The Pyramids were incredible. The Camels were great. The whole experience was over the top.

Last Day in Egypt, Alexandria

Well, we slept in a bit today. Which was nice. We were all super exhausted from the trip. We’re all sick too. Coughs and congestion. James found out he has an ear infection ☹  Which is a bummer. We didn’t do much today. We had lunch on the boat. Then headed out to find some internet. We walked for a while before we found a hotel to chill out in. James and John and me stayed there for quite a bit, doing some research and all that. I eventually got to talk to my parents and my nieces, which was so nice, but we had to leave in a little bit of a rush.
Halfway through our time there was a big rush of people in a big group. They looked like they were apart of a religious group of something meeting in Alexandria in our particular hotel. Anyway, there was also another group of guys who were not part of the group who were sitting in the little table in front of us. While I was talking to my parents, James saw them one by one turn to look at us and he said that he could almost feel the tangible hate they were exuding towards us. We quickly packed up and left. I had to cut my conversation with my parents and sweet nieces short.
We walked back to the boat, had to wait in line (we were afraid we’d be late but we made it), and finally got back to the ship. We didn’t do much really. Chill night. We traded some really great pictures and had sea meeting for Sea Olympics. Tomorrow! Woop!

Cairo Day Three

Well. We woke up around ten today. We all tried to shower the night before (because Cairo is SUPER dirty), but they didn’t have towels. Unfortunately, they didn’t have towels again, so we ended up sharing them all. James, Charlotte and me shared one and the other boys shared one. What can you do? We were filthy and it was worth it.
After a quick breakfast, we headed to the Egyptian Museum. It was ten minutes from our hostel. We had to cross the street by ourselves (we were used to having Ali help us out), and that was interesting, but we lived. So no worries. The museum is intense. There are like four different security points to go through and you can’t take cameras or bags in. Inside there are two floors. The bottom has the most but the top is the most interesting. There are a lot of Coptic jars and sarcophaguses and different things all over. On the top floor, there is the King Tut exhibit. We got to see his famous headdress and his different boxes that his sarcophagus was in. The original sarcophagus and mummy are in Luxor where the tomb was originally found in the twenties in the supposedly “cursed” tomb. Got to get to Luxor sometime. Seriously. Anyway. I felt like a little know it all again, telling people about things. James said that he appreciated it and that he’d rather have someone doing that for him than not knowing. So I feel a bit better.
After the museum (we were there for about two and a half hours), we went back to Ali’s shop and asked him to show us the best place to eat in the area. He took us around, ordered for us so it would be cheaper (Egyptians get better prices EVERYwhere). The food was great though we had to stand up (a little different. I like my seat, lol). Ali wanted us to go back to his shop, but he convinced us otherwise. He bought us some water though and some dried dates (I didn’t like them). Then we headed back to the train station. We walked the entire way and since we had a little bit of time, we hung out at a restaurant for a while. The train ride was no big deal. We made it early and we found our train. The ride was ok. We were in first class so there was some nice AC (Air Con to the people from Minnesota). Three hours later we made it back to Alexandria where we had a quick bite to eat before grabbing a taxi home. Man, the sight of the boat was something fantastic. I was so stoked to see it and finally take a shower for real. Cairo was an experience though. I absolutely loved it. I think it goes two ways. You either loved it or you hated it. I feel lucky to be the former.

Cairo Day Two

Well. We had an interesting night. The window in the room didn’t really close all the way no matter how you fiddled with it and the ac unit was loud. Lol. Despite that, the city is up ALL night LONG! People screaming and taxis honking and babies crying. I’m thinking that the city doesn’t get going until the sun goes down. It’s too hot anyway. Anyway. We were a little tired when we woke up. We had some breakfast, and checked out. We had tried to stay another night, but it was no good. They didn’t have the room. So we went searching for a hostel. The building next door was a whole 13 story building of hotels, one on each floor. So we tried a few of those before we finally snagged one. It was a little nicer than the one before, and it was only like 3 dollars more a person to stay. Sweet! There was better ac, nicer beds and a nicer atmosphere though there was only one computer and it sucked. Lol. Anyway, now that we had a place to sleep, we needed to get our train tickets home for the next day. So off we went. We had heard that the station was close, so we decided to try to walk to it. What a mess. We had to ask a few people and go under some crazy bridge and still it took us forever to find it. When we did we realized our mistake. We had found the bus station. We wanted the train station. We were put off a bit, so we decided to just cab there. We figured they’d know better than us where it was. So we split up into two cabs. James, John, and me in one and the others in the other one. The others made it right there. We had some problems. Our cab driver dropped us off two blocks too earlier and then gave us atrocious directions on how to get there. We had to ask around AGAIN and go OVER some crazy bridge before we finally got there and then we had to find the others. Which we eventually did, after awhile. What a mess. Then we had to try and GET the tickets. Also a mess. There are different lines for different places and then there’s a woman’s side and a man’s side and the people freak out if you don’t figure that one out. Then you had to elbow your way to the front to finally get to the tickets, then you had to hope that they spoke English and could understand that you wanted tickets for tomorrow during the night. We finally got some, thank goodness. We saw a couple other kids trying to get home too. They were trying for that night, and unfortunately, all the tickets were sold out already. We had heard that they sold out fast. That’s why we went a day early to get them. Looks like we were lucky. Other people had to take buses home or stay an extra night. Unfortunate.
While we were there, we met up with three other girls who had been staying and travelling by themselves. Nuts just to start out with. We ended up taking them along with them for lunch and a little walking around. Lunch was another mess. We walked around for ages, starving to death. Lol. To top it off, the girls were total yatches. Hahahha. I feel like I’m complaining, and I don’t mean to. It was a lot of fun. We were just really surprised how mean they were after we took them under our wing. We found a restaurant that looked great, but they didn’t want it, so we walked around for another 45 minutes. Ah well. We eventually found a great restaurant and just settled. Afterwards, we went to the Egyptian Museum and found out that it closed in an hour and it cost thirty pounds. They were leaving early the next morning, so they went in. We did not. Man. What a relief. Hahahaha.
We ended up going into a papyrus shop right afterwards and met up with this guy Ali. Papyrus is something that Egypt is known for, but there are a lot of fakes around the streets that you can pick up for really cheap. Papyrus is basically soaked wood that is stripped to be really thin and then beaten and woven together to make paper. It was the first paper ever created and it’s pretty cool. Ali does paintings on his papyrus scrolls. Very nice. Anyway, it’s with him that our adventure really started up. Some how, some way, this guy convinces us that he has an uncle who does Nile cruises and for super cheap, he can take us around on one. We had done research on the price and it was a great price. So we said ok. We left with promises to meet back up with him later. So we went back to the hostel for a bit, hung out and then went back to the papyrus shop. We headed down to the Nile (which was right there), and eventually found a dock where there were lots of boats hanging out. After a first try that failed, we eventually got into a functioning boat complete with rap music and Celine Dione’s My Heart Will Go On played three times. We danced, we sang, we took pictures and we hung out on this huge boat that could fit fifty to sixty, just the six of us. Freaking cruising down the Nile….No big deal….It was awesome. It was beyond awesome. And beautiful too. We went during the sunset, so we were able to see the sun go down as we drove by.
Right before the tour ended (it was two hours), we ended up asking Ali about the Bazaars around town. He told us that the best one was a night one, and it was the biggest in Cairo. He said he’d take us there and help us bargain. We were totally down. He found us taxis and went with us to the night bazaar. That’s the thing about Cairo. It’s too dang hot in the day to do anything, so everything goes down at night. We went around the bazaar, using Ali as our bargainer. He got us some awesome prices. He’d tell us if the price was “disgraceful” or not, and whether to leave or stay. It was pretty great. Eventually we had him help us get our taxis back to his shop which was close to our hostel. All in all, we paid about 15 US dollars. For the whole thing. Unbelievable. Seriously. Ali was great too. I was scared for the first little while, and it was a little sketch. But it turned out to be awesome. We left him a great tip and then left for our hostel. After getting back we realized we were pretty hungry, so we walked a couple blocks to the main square. We had some fresh squeezed mango juice and had some shawerma, which is like a gyro sandwich with not as good meat. Lol. They’re pretty delicious though on their own. Not going to lie. We hung out for a bit and then decided to head home. We met a man from Sudan on our way while we were sipping on some mango juice who we talked to for a bit. I would have LOVED to talk to him for longer, but our group was leaving and I didn’t want us to have to go home alone. He gave us some fascinating info on Sudan and his ideals of American policy. I was sad to leave him.
The last night in the hostel was a bit better. Nicer AC, not as loud outside. A better night’s sleep though just as short. We figure we want to get the most out of Egypt. It’s worth it.

Egypt Day Two-Cairo

What a day. Seriously. We started out really early, at 7am or so. We went straight outside to the port and picked a bus for a day trip to Cairo! We started out in the first bus, and got comfortable. We always sit in the same seat (near the back exit so we can be first off), and that’s right where we headed. My roommate got on a little later with her group of friends though, so when we saw our friend Matt go onto bus three, we switched and sat with him….Good decision I think. The trip up was not eventful. We slept as much as we could as it was a three hour ride. When we got up, we were right at the Great Pyramids! Holy cow, I went for exhausted to super energized in the span of a second! The pyramids are nuts. They are ginormous and they’re everything that you want them to be from what you’ve heard. There are people on huge camels everywhere and people on horses. There are a lot of hagglers trying to get you to buy things. There are tourists everywhere. It’s an experience for sure. I loved it though without a doubt. We went around the two that we could see with Matt. We took some stellar pictures in front of them and even went inside one of the tombs for the wife of one of the pharaohs who was buried in the bigger pyramid. We had to crawl down into the tomb area through this little cave thing. It wasn’t really intense, but it was still pretty cool. We had to run to get snapshots of the smaller pyramid, but it was worth it. It brings the number of wonders of the world I’ve been to up to three: The Great Wall, The Grand Canyon and the Great Pyramids. Sweet.
We got back on the bus for about five minutes and made our way down to the Sphinx. This was not what I was expecting. It was huge. And the paws of the lion were extremely big. Everyone is so taken by the face that it’s easy to miss the massive lion body that is under it. More stellar pictures here. You can’t actually go into the Sphinx, nor touch the pyramids. But being that close to them is an experience all its own. It’s fascinating to think that people where able to carve and sculpt such detail thousands of years ago. The ability of the ancient Egyptian society was without a doubt some of the most impressive in history.
Next, we moved onto some of the ancient tombs next to the Pyramid of Zoser also called the Step Pyramid. The tombs were beautiful. They had just uncovered another one literally one week earlier, so we were extremely lucky that we were able to explore two of them. These two were above ground, but because of how well they were preserved, you can still see some of the color that was painted on thousands of years ago. The hieroglyphics were to beautiful, and the uniformity that they were able to achieve with hand painting and carving is incredible. We went underground (crazy) to see the last tomb. You should see the video James took. We traveled for about five minutes underground completely hunched over to finally make it to this tomb. It was worth it with out a doubt, but it was an experience getting down there and even more of one getting back up. James surreptitiously video-taped our trip, and it’s worth watching I’m sure.
 Next we moved to the pyramid itself. Zoser is the oldest pyramid in the world, and beyond that, it’s the oldest standing building in the world period. It’s not nearly as big as the Great Pyramids, but it’s still intense. We took some silly pictures in front of it, but I must say that we were the first to make a human pyramid in front of the first pyramid every built. That’s saying something at least. We got a little haggled along the way (see James blog. I’m still too ticked to reiterate it again).
We went to lunch after. We drove through some crazy parts of town to get to a country club that served us a buffet lunch. It was a little disconcerting to see the differences in the neighborhoods in Giza (the town outside of Cairo where the pyramids actually are). There is a nice country club in the middle of the desert, but surrounding it are sheep herders and poor farmers who live next to a polluted river that was filled with dead animals and trash. Our guide said that the people were not upset or discontent with their living conditions. They feel that they will eventually receive their due in either the afterlife or in the life of their children. It’s an interesting philosophy. The children in the neighborhood were cute. Every time we passed by them in the bus they would run after us waving. The day before a man carrying a little girl about a year old told me that his daughter wanted to kiss me and if that was ok. We were outside of a mosque in a big group, and it was a baby. So I said yes and let her kiss my cheek. She gave me this huge grin. It was SOOO precious. She was adorable. The children are cute here, so excited about everything I feel.
Afterwards we went on our jeep safari. We piled six people in a land rover at the country club and headed out to basically off road on the dunes of the Sahara. It wasn’t too crazy, but we did some bouncing and we went up a rather large hill once. I was a little scared, but Matt and James were fine. I liked it. The jeep took us to a huge swarm (?) of camels waiting for us all.
I picked first. Well, I was ushered to one really. He seemed a little ornery, and he kept barking at me. I had expected to ride attached to James, but some how Matt got ushered up next and we ended up riding together. James’ camel wasn’t attached to our train and he was led by a little kid who didn’t understand when James said he wanted to ride near us. We were never too far, but it was funny. Matt and my guide took a picture of us in the middle and said for us to hold hands because he thought we were together….We gave high fives ☺
My camel’s name was Mikah, which I thought was cute for obvious reasons. Matt’s was called Moses. There were about twenty Moses I think. But mine was the only Mikah I found  ☺   James’ was Michael Jackson. He’s just lucky that way. The camel ride was freakin sweet. We went through the desert till we reached the country club again. What an experience. Camel riding is not very comfortable, per say, but I like it!
After our trip, we got dropped off in Giza near Cairo. We met up with Charlotte and got in a taxi heading towards our hostel. It wasn’t a terrible experience. It was a little hot and a little crowded and the man had to ask a few people but we eventually made it to Wake Up! Cairo, our hostel. It was my first hostel experience, and I have to say it was pretty good. The beds were clean. There was AC. The staff was really nice. We had a great little breakfast of bread and jam. The bathrooms were nice enough. There were two computers there with headsets for skype. I will say, it was like a little oasis in the desert and once we got in there, we really didn’t want to leave for the night…but we were really really hungry….and then Patrick (who was there with John from earlier) suggested we order from the pizza hut he’d seen earlier that day….and we haven’t’ had American food yet…all trip! SO we did. We ate freakin four huge pizzas between the five of us. And they were freakin delicious. James, Matt, and I had a little excursion out to go for cheaper cokes and everyone drank two of those along with their six slices of pizza each. I’ve never appreciated pizza hut more.
Then John came back over with a friend who’s studying Arabic in Cairo. She was a family friend and his older brother’s ex girlfriend. She’s soo cute and soooo smart. Her name’s Becca and we ended up staying with her for quite awhile just talking about the cool places she’s been and what she’s doing. We had some great conversation and then she ended up taking us to the best koshery place in town. Koshery is like Egyptian pasta with hotsauce and tomato sauce and lentil beans and some other strange stuff. It’s actually pretty good, though I was skeptical at first. We hung out there for awhile before going back to the hostel. John and Charlotte and Becca stayed out for a little while longer but the rest of us headed home for showers.
You’d think that’d be the end of the day. We’d been up since 7am and we were exhausted. But no. We ended up staying up for prolly three more hours just talking and being extremely loud. The kids we hung out with were a really good time. The whole group is pretty funny. And we like to give hard times. I was an awesome day for sure. I went to bed with a better feeling about Cairo and Egypt in general.

Egypt Day One - Alexandria

So excited for Egypt! Growing up through school, we did an Egypt program every year. I feel like I know a bit about it. Definitely fascinating. Definitely exciting. I couldn’t WAIT to get off the ship and see Alexandria. The original city was conquered during the time of Alexander the Great. Alex was a Macedonian who conquered almost one third of the whole of Asia and the Middle East during his reign (he died at 33). In many of the places that he conquered, he renamed cities after himself (but the feminine version of his name) and ensured that the cities were built up into huge Metropolitan areas. Just a tidbit on how the city got its name. As you can tell, I’m a history nerd BIG time, and Egypt is SO rich in history. Our first day encompassed a SAS trip called the Best of Alexandria. It started early, and I have to say that I think it covered just about all there is to see…
We started around 9:30, as soon as the boat cleared immigration. We have to take our passports around Egypt (which is a little scary) or we can’t get on and off the boat. As we were on the trip, we were allowed to get them first, so we bypassed a HUGE wait. Nice! Haha.
The trip started at the Catacombs of Alexandria, and the bus ride there certainly dispelled some of the notions that I had about Egypt. I knew that it was a repressed country, and that it was on the level of China on human rights and freedoms. I knew that it was a developing nation and that it would not be clean and that there would be a LOT of poverty on the streets. There were beggars in China; there were beggars in Greece. I know what they look like and I know how I feel when I see them. Alexandria tops them all. The place is huge and it’s filthy. There are people who live along the rivers with dead animals in them, especially dead horses. There is trash everywhere. In China, there is a certain level of order. You know that there is still poverty and dirt, but at the same time, there are measures to clean it up to a degree. I’m not sure that there are any measures here. Not in Alexandria at least. It’s definitely the most “developing” (?, pc?) country that I’ve ever been too. Everywhere you look is a little “sketch”.
Anyway, when we actually got to the Catacombs, they were rather interesting. Our guide was a cute little lady and she did most of the explaining outside. The catacombs are basically a public cemetery that is underground. There are huge burial cites where there are multiple bodies placed (in big holes in the wall), and then more exclusive tombs. We went about three stories underground and toured them all. There was a festival room that we went to, and we were even allowed to see the more exclusive burial rooms with the really nice raised tombs. They would actually lower the bodies down into the catacombs and allow the family members to watch it go down the shaft to the burial “holes”. One historical fact I picked up.
After the catacombs we headed to the Alexandria National Museum. This was fascinating for me. The museum was split into different eras in Egyptian and Alexandrian history. I don’t remember it all, but there was a lot of different jewelry from the different time periods and some Hatshepsut stuff (B.A. lady Pharaoh). On the basement floor there was an actual mummy with the sarcophagus intact. There were three layers, and they were all beautiful. I’d never heard of the mummy, but there are an awful lot in Egypt in general…I always feel a bit uncomfortable going into places like that. I’ve read a couple books on Egypt and I hate to sound like a know it all, because I really don’t know that much at all, but I always come off that way. I want to tell James all the things I know, but then other people listen in and I sound like a little professor on the tour. I hate that. Lol. But I think James would rather know than me stay quiet about it…So Professor Jack reigned in Egypt for a few days.
Lunch was after. Really nice place down by the beach and Quaitbay Fort (which is a fort on the beach that literally looks like a ten story sand castle). We ate with the LLCs (which are like the RA’s  (Resident Assistants) of the ship) and a few professors. It’s different, but we relate better…still. Lunch was great, and we got a few shots of the beach the bay with the boats docked. Pretty nice overall.
Next was the Library! Highlight of the day for me! Let me give you some history (sorry):
The original Library of Alexandria was put together by one of the Ptolemys (who were the rulers of Egypt for years and years). This particular Ptolemy wanted to build a grand library, and in it house all the knowledge of the world. He took advice from the greatest philosophers of the time and gathered texts from all over the world: Archimedes, Aristarchus, Eratosthenes (people like that). The museum was huge and it was known throughout the area. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in a fire and all but one scroll was destroyed. Basically one of the greatest catastrophes ever. They’ve rebuilt a new “Bibliotheca Alexandria” in it’s place with a historical museum underground that we toured. The library is huge. It’s shaped like a disk to represent the sun and there is a planetarium dome where they show scientific films that represents the earth. It has a killer website where you can see almost every book in the library. You should check it out. I loved being there. There are students from the university next-door who were studying there and I couldn’t help but think how absolutely lucky they were to be studying in the site of the greatest library in history. I’m sappy like that.
Last on the tour was a palace that we saw from behind a gate and the gardens that surrounded it. Let’s just say that I’m from the desert, and we don’t do gardens. The Sahara is no different than the Sonora in that fashion.
We had dinner on the ship to be heap and then met with James’ roommate and some of our friends to go the grocery store. We split up into two taxies: James, Jack, Charlotte and Patrick, John, Maggie (Charlotte’s friend). Our taxi made it just fine (though we were haggled INTENSELY before hand. It seriously sucked). We waited for thirty minutes for John and the others till we decided to just go in. We finally found them in the food section. I guess that their taxi driver wouldn’t take them to the Carrefore and instead took them to the bazaar (called a Souk here) across the street instead. There followed a huge argument and John and them running from the taxi man till he caught up to them in another taxi and demanded money. Not a good first impression.
We grocery shopped for awhile. Got some coke and other necessities. They were running a deal that you could get three free sodas for every six you bought. We bough enough soda to get 36 other sodas. For free. Hahahahahaha. We ended up selling 24 to my roommate and we have another twelve to barter with. Productive night though the grocery store was an absolute mess and the taxi ride was a little extreme.
I can tell that this place is going to be different. It’s about as Islam centered as Istanbul, but they are more devout here I feel. There are NO women without a head dress. There are even women in full Habib (pronounced Ha-beeb) where there is everything covered except their eyes. They even wear gloves and all black. Our tour guide explained to us that Islam only requires that you dress modestly and have your hair covered as a female. This is called the veil of Islam. You may wear any color. If you are dressed in a full Habib, with your face exposed, then you are a “radical” Muslim. For those who are dressed with all but their eyes covered, then they are not originally Egyptian. Only countries like Saudi Arabia and countries surrounding it use the face coverings. All very interesting stuff. As we do not often cover our hair though and do not own Habibs, we get some different types of looks. And catcalls. And stares. It’s going to be interesting, and for all who aren’t travelling with a guy, I’m interested to see how their travels went.

Last Day in Turkey!

Well, we woke up around 1030 or so and headed out with James’ roommate John and his friend Patrick. We headed straight for the Grand Bazaar one last time. James got his little oil lamp that he was hankering for, and I was able to get one last souvenier. We literally spent every dime we got out here in Turkey. We spent way too much money. Lol. It’s funny. We automatically say that we’re from Canada now. It’s a trip. They ask us where we’re from right after they give their first price. We tell them Canada and their price automatically drops twenty lira. It’s almost funny. Except that’s how little they think of Americans. Rich and snooty. That’s what we heard. One interesting thing: Patrick wanted this scarf for his sister and the guy wouldn’t give him a good price so he asked me to help him out. The guy started out at 40 lira. I went on and on about how beautiful it was, but that I literally had no money to buy it off him, only twenty dollars. We went around and around till Patrick showed up. The guy freaked out when he saw him, and was like this guy just asked for this. Do you know him?! And I was like, “no no no! Who’s this guy?! I’m a girl, you can’t sell this to him. I want it more than him!” Patrick got the hint and left. And the guy made me promise that it wasn’t going to him. I pulled out the twenty. I said it was all that I had. James handed me a five, and said I can tell you really like it. Here’s five, but it’s all we have to spend. The guy totally gave in! I felt a bit bad, because it was for Patrick, but it was just because Patrick is a horrible bargainer that I did it for him. Lol. It was kinda cool. We got to do some more bargaining for some other things and I got some pomegranate tea and spoons for my set. So I was happy.
Afterwards we went inside the Blue Mosque. We went in like ten minutes before a call to prayer too, so we were really lucky. Inside was a trip. You have to take off your shoes and put them in bags to get in and you have to cover your hair. The floor is carpeted with this awesome carpet that is so nice to walk on. The inside was huge, and extremely beautiful. I’ve been in cathedrals and a temple of two and some really huge churches. This was something a little different. Beautiful in its own way.
We returned to the ship next and had some lunch for free which is always nice. We took a little nap (because we woke up pretty early) and then headed out to the hookah bar to skype with the really fast internet. We were lucky. There were hardly any people there smoking hookah. Haha. We bought a coke and got away with it. Made it back to the ship right on time. We had a lifeboat drill, which stank, and got some homework done. Pretty nice day.

Overall thoughts on Istanbul:
This was one of my favorite ports. Things were different here. You can definitely tell we’re not in Europe anymore. The Middle East is somewhere that I never thought I’d go to, but I’m glad I did. The people are really different. Their culture is really different. It reminds me of China in a way, though I think I like China’s culture a bit better. I never felt scared in China. I was a little uncomfortable one time in Istanbul. Still, the good outdid the bad. Bargaining was fun. Talking to the people was interesting. They were really willing to talk to us and tell us their problems and what we thought. Our server the third day was so open to telling us why he didn’t like Americans and why he appreciated them nonetheless. The people complained about the university, just like I do on occasion, for the same reasons I do.
The city was beautiful. It’s architecture was beautiful. The history is intense. The Ottoman Empire can still be seen almost everywhere and it’s interesting to think that it used to be called Constantinople because it was part of the Roman Empire. I loved it.

Turkey Day Four

Today was our mosque day! We started out at 10am and headed out to see the Tokpaki Palace. This palace is actually a museum, the only one that we’ve seen that that’s way. We walked around, saw the different artifacts. There weren’t any rooms like the other ones, but there were jewels and pearl chairs and gilded outfits. The main one was the Spooner’s Diamond. I guess that there was a huge diamond that someone sold to a peddler who made spoons. I guess the rock wasn’t cut, so there was no way to really tell it’s value, but as soon as the Sultan of the area found out about the stone, he bought the Spooner’s diamond from him and had it refined. The diamond is an 85 carat stone…..85 karats. It was ginormous. The turned it into a turban ornament, but it started out as a ring. Now it’s on display in this huge palace that was built on the sea side. It was pretty awesome.
After the palace, we saw some of the mosques that were around the area. The first was the Hagia Sophia. The color scheme was slightly strange, but this gigantic work of architecture was built in like 500 AD. It makes sense that Istanbul (which was Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire) was once a part of the Roman Empire back when it was in its hay day. There’s some history and really impressive architecture. The St. Sophia mosque is supposed to be the most impressive. Supposedly, the statue of liberty (minus the torch and the base) could fit inside. It did not look that big, but I believe the stats. We walked across this great garden and ended up at the Blue Mosque. This one was a little more exciting. The color is just like it says, it’s a dark blue and light gray color and the architecture is just breathtaking. We went inside just as a call to prayer was happening though. In the Muslim religion, practicers pray towards Mecca 5 times a day. Every so often, you can hear the call to prayer playing from the mosques. It’s basically a man singing in Turkish. Friday, also, is the Sabbath day. So calls to prayer last an hour or so. Lol. We waited and waited outside (because they kick you out). We saw the column of Constantine (400 AD), an Egyptian Obelisk (300 AD), and the Serpent Column. The SC is an interesting story. If you’ve seen 300, you know the story. Basically, the Persians defeated the 300 Spartans at Thermopolii. Then the whole Spartan army came and defeated the Persians and wiped them out. The Spartans took their weapons and burnt them down and then molded the material into a huge column with a serpent’s head. Pretty BA if you ask me.
We ended up not going in. But we might tomorrow. We ate lunch on a fourth floor terrace afterward. We had a really good time. Our server talked to us for a long time about the different opinions he had of Americans and the Turkish government. It was very interesting. Cultural things too. Example: The Turkish think that if people are jealous of something and too many people are, it’ll break. Like our server had really good teeth, so too many people were jealous, so his tooth broke. Interesting thought process. He ended up buying us some Turkish apple tea for free too! Exciting! First time trying it and I must admit that I love it.
After lunch, we headed to the Cistern. This is like a huge underground place to get water for the city that is supported by Doric and Corinthian columns that are absolutely huge. You can walk through and see where the people got water hundreds of years ago. There are also these huge Medusa head columns. Not sure the history on that one, but they were cool to see.
Next was the Spice Bazaar which is just like the Grand Bazaar but only teas and Turkish delight and spices. We ended up getting a lot of different fresh teas and they even air-vacked them for us.
We headed back to the ship and ate a quick dinner so we could make it in time for our last trip in Istanbul: the Sufi dance. We all dressed up and headed by bus to this place that used to be a Turkish bath. Now they have Sufi dances in there which is basically a religious ceremony for a mystical branch of Islam. The Sufi dancers are the men with the weird top hats and the white dresses that spin. They’re called Whirling Dervishes. This is another must see, must do thing in Turkey. The men believe that when they are spinning, they have Allah inside of them and they are closer to heaven. It’s all very interesting with lots of bowing and different rituals. There is a boundary across the floor between the spirit world and earth, and they must bow before entering each one, but when they spin, they are limitless, so they don’t HAVE to bow. The symbolism is all very interesting, but we didn’t talk about it for a good hour as it was so strange. We’re still processing it I think.
Afterwards, we took a quick walk with James’ roommate and some friends. Just for some fresh air. It was a long day. Nice, but we packed a lot in.

Turkey Day Three –Bospherous

So we woke up right at 12:30 and were on the trip at 1:00. Haha. No lunch of breakfast for us…again. We started out our day by going to a museum of the clothing and artifacts of the Ottoman Empire. This museum was pointless and we had a whole hour there. Lol. I feel bad for saying it, but it was boring. The museum was small and the artifacts were small. Eh. We ended up leaving and getting some potato chips and a soda since we hadn’t ate yet.
After the museum (?), we headed off for our actual tour for the day. We ended up on the top floor of a little ferry headed out to the Bospherous, which is a river dividing the Eastern half of Istanbul (Europe) with the Western half of Istanbul (Asia). You can go over to either side by bridge, but the Bospherous gives you a unique perspective as a lot of the larger homes and monuments of Istanbul are built RIGHT on the water’s edge. We saw three of the palaces that we’d seen the day before, but from the water. Way cool. The water here is really choppy. In most ports, we never feel out boat move, but here it does. Basically it’s because there are two seas running over one another. The two currents move in opposite directions, making the water pretty crazy. It’s not safe to swim, though you see locals trying every once in awhile. While we were on the Bospherous, we saw some of the homes that the upper class live in. There were solid wood ones, extremely long ones, and some REALLY pretty ones. The average prices of a sea-side home is around 15 to 20 million supposedly. Lol. Some day I’ll have one….maybe…. ☺
I find that the European side of Istanbul is more exciting, but the Asian side is more beautiful. It’s so GREEN. Seeing it from the ferry really solidified it. We saw some beautiful sights for sure.
After the tour, we headed back to the ship. We almost ran, but we ended up beating 160 kids to the boat. James calls it passing the sass (Semester at Sea). It involves pushing Jack off the bus and running past lots of old people and stressed out kids. Lol. It makes for a slightly embarrassed Jack, but we do get on quick.
After a quick turn around, we headed out to the public city center called Takzim Square. This is basically like the Turkish version of La Ramblas. There are shops and restaurants and street peddlers. There are clubs, and different bars. It’s all really busy and exciting.
We found this restaurant and had some delicious Turkish food. Really the first delicious food we’ve had here. It’s all ok…but very different. And as James and I have rather sensitive stomachs, we’re weary here. Anyway, the food was great and we ended up staying in the restaurant for quite awhile. It was the first real food we’d had all day, so we were ravenous. Lauren and Garrett were freaking out at the amount of food we put away. ☺
Afterwards we ended up doing a little window-shopping. James bought some really nice Nike shorts. Breathable. Haha. They were expensive. We ended up going to a club too. It was called Salsalita. It was pretty empty (Thursday night), and we ended up buying a 7.50 lira water (club prices because there was no cover). There were like 6 people there. Lol, but we danced about two dances and it was fun enough. We didn’t stay long.
We took our first Taxi today. We missed the Funicular (we thought it closed at one..it didn’t). We didn’t really know the way home, and it was late. We figured we’d rather be safe than sorry. It was five dollars. NBD.
After we got home and I showered and was feeling refreshed, I headed over to hang out with James and his roommate John. We love John. He’s hilarious, with some voice volume control issues. Hahaha. Anyway. We’re sitting there, just talking about our day when the boys start talking about kabobs and how great they are in Turkey. James starts saying things like, “Man. That sounds so good. And a coke does too, hmmm.” John starts saying, “Man. That DOES sound good, we should get one…”, and I start saying, “Bad idea guys, no good!”.
Anyway, we headed out at freaking 230 in the morning to go get a coke and some chicken Kabobs. We walked for 15 minutes, finally found a hookah bar that served them and we ended up sitting in some crazy bean bag chairs while we ate a chicken kebab. We ended up getting home at like 330. Ya. Typical boys. Lol.

Palaces and Turkish Baths!

So today was eventful. We woke up super early for an SAS trip and headed out to see 4 palaces from the Ottoman Empire. Two on the European side of Istanbul and two on the Asian side of Istanbul (which is a strange but cool conundrum). The first one was massive. It poured on us while we waited to get in, but it was worth it. They gave us little pink shoe covers to wear through it (which was cute). The place was intense. We saw the biggest chandeliers I’ve ever seen, and even the room where the Attaturk died. Just to give you an idea, Attaturk was the leader of the Turkish Empire after WWI in the 20’s. This man revolutionized Turkey. He’s all over their monuments. He’s on their currency. There are paintings of him everywhere. His people call him Attaturk because it means the Father of the Turks. Seeing the room that he died in is like looking at the theater and room where Lincoln died for the US. Beyond that, the palace itself was amazing. Absolutely huge and grand. The chaise lounges and the beds were intense. The Harem was nice too. The royalty is addressed as the Sultan and Queen Mother, but the Harem wasn’t like a brothel for the king. Harem itself means forbidden and the harem was a forbidden place for others to enter because it housed the Sultan’s private life. Interesting.
Anyway, the other three palaces were very nice as well. At one stop we were accosted (too strong a word, more like engaged) by a big group of Turkish tourists who were interested in talking to us and the Asians in our group. We told them we were from France. Lol.
It rained off and on all day. Turkish weather is a little nutty, though our tour guide said it was a little different than was normal. It’s usually a bit drier I guess. Lol. We brought the rain.
After we got back to the ship we had a quick bite to eat and headed out again to meet with Garrett and Lauren. We brought Yulia and her friend Alisa with us too. We met at the Turkish bath, and headed in!
Ok. Let me explain this process:
First, the men and women separate. The women go downstairs and the men go up. You get a little locker and change into some swim suit bottoms and a towel. Then you go down another flight of stairs and enter into a hot room with a huge marble slap in the middle. You basically take off your towel and lay on it on an edge of the slab. An old, really fat, and topless woman comes to you and douses you with cold water. Then she takes a scrubber and rubs you down, your back and your front, your whole front if you know what I mean. Then they soap you up in the same process. Then they take you to a sink and shampoo your hair and rinse your body of all the soap. This takes about twenty minutes, and you see all the dead skin coming off your body. Next you go into a little hot room and sit in the “Bath” or Hamami”. The water is warm, but not as bad as the air. There’s also a hot tub, which is nice. Note that at this time, you are still topless in the water surrounded by your friends who you now know a lot better. Then you go outside of the hot room and cool down a bit with some warmed towels. You drink a freshly squeezed orange juice or something similar.
Next, you wait in line for your oil massage. You go in, are slathered in oil, and then rubbed down and felt up again, vigorously, front to back. Next, you shower in the huge shower that has a spout right in the center of the roof and goes straight down. You cool off for a bit in the cooler room. Then you go back in the bath and talk for a bit with your girlfriends.
It’s a nice experience. Everyone says that you have to do it, or you haven’t experienced Turkey, and I think I agree. I loved it. I adored it, I want to do it every day we’re here! Lol. But we have other things to do. Unfortunately…. ☺
Ate a quick dinner afterward and made it home. What a day. My skin is wonderful feeling, and I’m totally relaxed. Sleepin good today!

Istanbul Day One! 7-20

Man. Today was a trip. Woke up at 7am after going to sleep at four because my roommate was up all night writing a paper. I went to the top deck and saw the skyline as all the other boats in the harbor were leaving. It was a beautiful sight. The sun had just risen, and everything was a little pearly. The skyline was absolutely beautiful. There are mosques and tall buildings, there are spires and things like that all over the skyline. I looked on for a bit, ate some breakfast and tried to go back to sleep. Not successful. At 8:30, we went to a diplomatic briefing to learn a little more about Turkey so we would be prepared. The foreign service officer came on the ship and he was pretty likeable. We’ve had one of these for every port, but this is the first one we’ve gone to, lol. Afterwards, we went to a follow up briefing that lasted another hour (as I was falling asleep), but was also interesting.
Next we DID take a nap, for an hour and a half (we missed lunch, but totally worth it). At 12:15, we headed off the ship and met up with our groups for our FDP. Our Trade teacher who really likes us, and his wife were leading it. The trip was called Advertising in Turkey, and it was basically a trip to the Grand Bazaar (the biggest indoor shopping bazaar in Turkey) where you learn how to barter. We pretty much already got it down though, so we didn’t stay long with the group (plus my roommate was there, so another factor). We ended up getting some awesome stuff! I got a shirt (perhaps a gift, so I won’t elaborate), that we bartered for at like ten different places till we finally found the cheapest one. I got an awesome tea set that is hand painted and absolutely awesome (I also bartered like a Bad BUTT for it! It was the barter of the day. He went from 65 Turkish Lira to 25, heck yes!). James got some tea so we can try it out (they do apple tea here, which is more like a hot apple cider). I bought a head scarf (I know, it’s weird, but they won’t let you into some mosques without them and if you don’t have them then you have to take one from the communal box and that just sounds WAY too unhygienic). The Grand Bazaar was great. A little like the silk street market, but they don’t start as high with their prices, so they don’t go as low. It’s also better stuff though for the most part too, so it’s a compromise.
Anyway, after some shopping, we headed back to the ship and met up with our friends Garrett and Lauren. We ended up going back to the same general place (and saw the Burnt Column or the Column of Constantine, exciting). We went straight back into the bazaar and ended up getting one more thing. Lauren and I got matching Burberry rain jackets. Hahaha. We spent some money on them, but they are completely water resistant, and they look awesome ☺
Got some food afterward (I can already tell that it’s going to be awkward here. Can’t eat lettuce or any ice as they will give you travelers dyherria. You can’t drink the water here). It wasn’t TOO bad, but it was…ok? Lol.
Afterwards, we headed down this alley of clothes and shoes (not a bad alley, part of the Bazaar) and did some more looking around. I am done shopping at this point here, but it’s still exciting to look and Garrett and Lauren wanted to see. Anyway. There was a man there, who was selling cheap cologne and he wouldn’t leave Garrett alone. James and I moved over to tell him to get lost and James nudged him with his shoulder just as I was passing by him. They guy turned around, saw me and freaked a little. He said real loud, don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! I don’t touch America!”. The thing was, I am a woman, and an American. Bad news bears. We walked away rather fast to get away father down the alley. It kinda shook me up. Not going to lie. I hadn’t faced that much obvious hate for Americans yet. First time. We passed the guy later and he started saying stuff again, so we told him we were Canadian and he turned right around. Oh yes! Oh Yes! I love Canadians!
Strange. Not going to lie. We actually spent much of the day saying we were from different places. I was from London by the Thames. I was from Australia. I was from Canada. Mostly from London though. They don’t understand accents, so they don’t care. But America is seen in a negative light. Not the people necessarily. But definitely the politics of our nation. It felt uncomfortable saying I wasn’t American. I’m a pretty patriotic person. I love my country. But I felt safer saying I was from Canada. Maybe not safer, but definitely less stressed. They give you better prices. They give you less hard of a time. It’s easier. I’ve never experienced that before. That’s for sure.
I can tell Turkey is going to be interesting. I like it so far despite its obvious difference. It reminds me of China in a way. Though one thing is for sure that’s different: they don’t believe in Deodorant here! Haha. At all. The tram ride is a wretched 20 minutes. Let me tell you what!
After THAT experience, we headed down to a little theater that James found iff the metro stop and watched Eclipse finally! SOO good! Though they left out the best line in the whole book. Not sure why they did that. It’s WHY it’s called Eclipse. Duh. So glad though. The theater was nice though there wasn’t any AC. Still, SO glad!
Made it home alright after that and watched some of the Lord of the Rings. They finally showed the third one.
I like Turkey. I bought some really cool clothes in Greece to wear here and I love them so far. They’re all really loose pants and nice shirts that are cool. Definitely wonderful. Loving it.

Last Day in Greece!

Slept in till about eleven today. At noon, we headed off with James’ roommate, John and his friends Charlotte and Maggie. Cute girls, and we LOVE John. We headed back to Montasariki, and ended up actually losing the girls. They made it back, but we lost them almost immediately. We ate another super cheap gyro (our last one ☹) and then did a little more shopping for some olive oil. I guess that Grecian olive oil is supposed to be WAY better than Italian olive oil, and I LOVED that, so I’m excited to try some for home. It’s going to be great! We didn’t stay long, and after we headed back, we got right back out and headed to the pier to do some internet time. It was pretty frustrating to say the least, but we got the necessities done and we were ALMOST able to Skype our parents.
We made it back to the ship on time and really relaxed for the rest of the day. Did some homework. Laundry for James. The works.

Overall thoughts on Greece:
I think that we were lucky in a lot of way. We didn’t really feel the effects of the economic down turn here. We came at a really good time I guess. There were no strikes and there weren’t a lot of unhappy people. The people here really like Americans for the most part we feel. They don’t like the politics that our government employs sometimes, but they like us. They were always willing to help and to talk. I loved the sights. I love the history. We haven’t gone anywhere that hasn’t been extremely rich in history. It’s insane. It’s incredible. It’s not what I’m used to. I loved every day in Greece. It was a little laid back. There were some hot days, but it didn’t detract from it. I adore Greece. Never got a handle on the language though. Lol. Not even a little. I know hello, and thank you. But it’s a start.
We did a lot more shopping in Greece than anything else. We saw the major tourist places, but we really saw where the people hang out in this port. It was a different experience, but one that we really liked.
One other thing that’s strange: there are a LOT of stray dogs in Greece. I mean a LOT. Everywhere we went we saw them. EVERYwhere. There are stray cats as well, but not nearly as many. I guess that the people in Greece take care of them too. You see shop keepers putting out plates of food and watering them. They’re like the pets of the city. They’re filthy and full of flees, so you don’t want to touch them necessarily. It’s strange. Our friend Patrick Fogherty was terrified of them. The last day we were walking back to the ship with him from the indoor terminal (where there are stray dogs galore) and he told us about how he was so annoyed with all the stray dogs everywhere and that they were “biting” him, but not really, just super gross. Lol. Patrick cracks us up.
Greece is incredible. And beautiful. Loved it!

Greece Day 4

Well. It happened. We missed a trip. It left at 7:45, and we didn’t get around to waking up till 9 or so. James did, he called to say we were out of luck and we decided to just go back to sleep. Which we did, till 1pm. Ah…ya. Pretty disappointing actually. We were supposed to go to Delphi, which is like 4 hour bus ride away and then see some ancient ruins. If you’ve ever read Percy Jackson, Delphi would be exciting for you, and I was stoked. But…it happens. And this was the first one out of many trips that we’ve done.
After the obviously much needed sleep, we headed off for town. We took the 25 minute walk and the metro down to Montasiriki (or however you spell it), and then headed to Plaka again! I wore my Birks out, and they were super comfy, so I was stoked. We ate this AMAZING gyro from a little restaurant that you order to go from. The gyro was only 1.80 and a soda was 1.10. The gyro was HUGE and the best freaking thing I’ve had in Greece yet. They just throw it together really quickly too, which is kinda funny, but man, what an awesome lunch.
After our little sit down, we headed down one of the streets we hadn’t seen yet. We ended up at a Grecian Nike store! We looked around for a bit and I ended up buying a dude type jersey thing. I guess that Nike has a certain type of material called “Dry Fit” and the US soccer team used it for their jersey because it’s very breathable. Well. I’m going to Turkey and to Egypt, and I NEED something breathable, and it fit. So…I bought a dude thing.
Next we went to H&M, which I usually don’t like. There was some CRAZY sale though, and I ended up buying another two pants and a shirt. Hahahaha. Ya. Typical me. Spending more money. I’m happy with them though, I think that they’ll be perfect for where we’re going. Linen like material, and very light.
So next we went on a crazy adventure to the OTHER side of Athens. We took 13 subway stops so we could see the Athens mall and the swimming part of the Olympic stadium (the Olympics were in 2000 or 2004 we think). The thing was, it took 45 minutes for the subway stops, and the subway was down for one of them, so we had to get ferried by bus for the last stop. Lol. The mall is awesome though. It’s a marvel of architecture I guess and it’s changed the way that Greeks look at malls. It’s like 4 stories high, and there’s an awesome looking theater on top. We wanted (I wanted) to see Eclipse and it was playing there, but we told our friends we’d meet them at 8:30, so we had to go back home! It stunk SOOO bad! We ended up being late too because we weren’t positive on the whole bus situation and we got set back a couple of minutes anyway.
We eventually made it back to the boat though, and we ended up going out with Shelby/James and Lauren/Garrett. We went back to Plaka and had another really cheap gyro. Then we went to a little bar place and had a rooftop view of the Acropolis while we ate some icecream and drank a soda. It was pretty nice. We were there for awhile just hanging out. We like the double/triple dates. They’re pretty fun. ☺
So we decided around one to head on home back to the boat. Unfortunately, the subway was down an hour earlier than it was supposed to be, and we weren’t sure how we were going to get home. Luckily, we met up with a SAS trip including a few students and like 8 teachers, one of them being from Athens. SO! We went some crazy way home on a metro that was like 5 flights downstairs and then a bus ride that was super packed. We started at one and we ended up home at 230 or so. It was an adventure, to say the least. Lol.

Greece Day Three!

Today was awesome! We started out almost late to our cooking class and barely made it to the bus on time. We were on the bus for an hour in traffic, but luckily, the restaurant held the cooking class for us! Once we got in, we separated into five different groups. We all got little aprons to wear and we learned right away that the cooking class was more of a competition that anything else. We made like six dishes, and each dish was judged by the executive chef of the restaurant. James and I cooked first. We made this tomato bread dish with lots of feta and olive oil. That’s the thing about Greek food, EVERYthing is made with feta cheese and olive oil. It’s wonderful. We made two salads, some weird potato dish, a couscous dish, and some coffee. Lol. The executive chef came to our table at one point and talked to us about the states. I guess that he’s been to Oregon, and our team leader is from there. He said he really liked Oregon people. Now I don’t know if there’s a correlation, but we totally won! Lol. We got these great little pottery thingys, a cup and a little pot. Super cute. The best part was that we totally beat our Global Studies teacher too. He was team four, we were team five. Side note: James and I did really well on the test! I got a hundred and James got a ninety three! That’s way better than the average too, even after the wicked curve that went on. We studied pretty hard though, so it makes sense really.
Anyway, while we were cooking we got to eat some of our stuff, and surprisingly it was super good. ☺ Pretty cool.
Afterwards, we headed back to the ship and met up with our friends Garret and Lauren again. We had a little adventure and ended up (after some question asking, and some luck) at a sandy beach! Super exciting! The water wasn’t nearly as clean as other places, but the sand made up for it. It felt super nice to get in the cool water after being in the stupid Greek heat for so long. It’s wickedly hot here, and the water is definitely warmer too, but it still feels super good to get in. We didn’t stay terribly long, but James got to try out his new sandals, and I got to use my Semester at Sea towel. Good time all in all. We made a beeline back to the blue shuttle that took us back to the blue bridge that took us back to the metro. We headed back to Plaka. We ate at a little pita place and got a HUGE dinner for another twenty euro. I’m not joking, we though it’d be a little thingy. Enough for two people. These dishes were intense! Piled with meat and that yogurt Papouilles sauce stuff. There was chicken and port and lamb and pita bread. It was so delicious. Everything that we’ve eaten here so far has been absolutely scrumptious. Not quite as good as Italy, but good in other ways. I love the pita bread and that tanziki sauce. I really like the meats too, though you feel like you’re going to explode afterwards because you eat so much.
After we ate, we started out on our mission. Lauren and I were looking for Berkinstock sandals. We ended up stopping a couple times on the way. I got some linen pants and a nice white breathable t-shirt. Turkey is going to be super hot, but it’s also a Muslim country, and they look down on public drunkenness and women who show any part of their bodies pretty much. One of our executive deans on the ship said that he was scared for us because he was pretty sure that there would be at least a few guys who were drunk and walking home and they would get punched out or something. Who knows. I think it’s pretty interesting though. The only thing is, I only have really hot jeans and it’s going to be boiling there, so I needed some linen breathable stuff to wear. Mission accomplished though it was expensive. I’ll get some more there where it’s really cheap.
After the clothes I ended up getting a watch. It’s a Swatch Swiss brand. It’s white and cute. James has been telling me the whole time to get one, and I finally gave in. Within the next thirty minutes I was checkin the time ALL the time. Lol. I like it. After the watch, I got a little souvenir for the fam. More money spent. Then Lauren and I finally found a place that sold Berkinstocks and we got some! They were on sale, and we talked the guy own to fifty. Not so bad compared to the other prices that we saw. We’re pretty happy. Money money money though. I’m spending it like I have it.
We went back to the ship after all that. It was getting pretty late. We have a morning trip tomorrow, at 745, so we have to get some sleep so we’re worth some salt tomorrow. Delphi is where we’re going. Pretty exciting. Greece has been so great so far.

Saronic Islands

Woke up super early today and missed breakfast again. Typical us. We headed straight to the ferry with the rest of the kids on our trip for the day and ended up seeing Yulia. We got together with her and then proceeded to sleep for two hours. After a little nap (we had been super tired), we walked downstairs on the ferry and watched some traditional Greek dances. They were interesting, but pretty cool at the same time. The Zorba dance was my favorite. There were three main dancers, and they were pretty good. After the dancing, we made it to Hydra, the first of three islands we would be visiting today. Hydra was nice. It’s an island where the movie stars go and other rich people. The prices were nuts, but we did some window-shopping. For instance, I really want some Berkinstock sandals (the ones from Germany that are really nice) and they were 80 Euros! That’s nuts! You can get a gyro (pronounced jeero, officially) for 2 euro, but not shoes, man. Haha. We also went to a little rocky beach and did some swimming. The water was warm! Way warmer than the water in Croatia. It was super nice. Just as salty, but eh, at least it was coming off us like at Lokram. Swimming in the Ionian Sea…yup. Pretty exciting. The water is just as blue and just as clean.
After swimming, we went back to the ferry to sleep some more. Haha. Next we got to the island of Poros. We were only here for a couple of minutes really. We walked around, looked at some of the shops. It was nice enough. Pretty hot though. We got some water afterwards to rehydrate and we’d only been at the island for thirty minutes. One crazy thing: There was a huge fire on one of the mountains in Poros as we were leaving! Trees were going up and houses, and there was this huge mansion that was pretty freakin close to the fire. We watched it going up as we sailed away. After that strange experience, we made it to the last island, Aegina.
Aegina was nice as well. It was a little cooler with a lot more shade. We did some shopping, ate a crepe. We did a Greek dance when we got back on. There was a lve band on the ship too. They were pretty darn good. I loved the music. It was very strange, and definitely different, but nice in its own way.
Exciting!: In between one of the islands we saw dolphins jumping! James saw them when we were in the middle of lunch on the ferry. SOOO exciting! So many of the people on the boat saw them on the way across the Atlantic, and I always missed them! So I was so happy to see them. It made my day!
We ended up getting back from the islands two and a half hours later than we expected. So when we got home we scrounged for some food and then headed out to take showers. We wrote some blogs. Ate some pistachios, and watched Memoirs of a Geisha and some of the Labyrinth. Sweet.