last day...

Today is the last day on the ship. It is strange because this place felt like home so fast and everyone bonded so quickly and got so close. I don't like to think that we're going to be scattered around the country (and stay in the same country for more than a week?!?) when we get back...

On the bright side prom... cough cough... i mean Ambassador's ball was last night. It was a lot of fun to see everyone all dressed up! The crew went all out and served us champagne, had a fancy dinner (complete with butter knives! where have those been hiding?), and made huge chocolate sculptures. Two nights ago was the talent show and me and my friends (Bridget, Georgina, Taryn, Lexi, Jill, and Allison) did a dance that copied one of the dances the crew did during their talent show. It was a lot of fun! We went first too so afterward we got to watch the rest of the show (which was awesome! Dean Michael sang us a lullaby! Didn't expect that...).

Alrighty. I'm off to get some sleep so that i can pack (ew), run around and take pictures of anything and/or everything, say goodbye to people i probably won't see tomorrow (sob), and steal people's pictures (yay external hardrive!!)

All done!

No more classes for me!! (at least for another 21 days...)

Morocco! ...last country : (

Whew! I finally got around to writing about Morocco…

Day 1:
Morocco started off nice by my dock time being taken back because they realized that the Prime Minister of Egypt speaking at the Alexandria library wasn’t exactly within my control.

After breakfast and waiting around for passport distribution (you needed one if you were going to leave Casablanca… aka everyone) me, Taryn, and Georgina went off to see the town. We started by going to the train station to check the train times to Marrakech. After the ridiculously long walk (there is a shuttle but they were on their lunch break) we grabbed a petit taxi and got overcharged for a short ride to Casa Voyager (the train station). After waiting in line I attempted to use my rusty French to ask what time the trains left for Marrakech and the guy got a little frustrated when I couldn’t understand his accent and finally wrote down the times for us. After that we got a much cheaper taxi to the souk (same thing as a bazaar). The souk was pretty cool but nowhere near as awesome as Istanbul. It could have been that it was only the middle of the day and it was a Sunday. We walked around for a while and saw lots of wooden carvings and boxes and lots of leather. We walked up to one vendor to look at some boxes and he asked if we had ever seen a magic box. When we said no he handed each of us a box and told us to try to open it, shook it, and told us the key was inside. 10 minutes later he finally showed us how to open the boxes! We each bought one : )

After looking at the magic boxes we walked around some more and ended up walking through a food market on the way out. It was rough to walk through all that appetizing looking fruit when the ship has been running kind of low and a lot of the fruit I hadn’t had since America but we couldn’t eat it because it wasn’t safe to eat. After we got back to the regular streets Georgina wasn’t feeling well so she caught a petit taxi back to the ship and me and Taryn went to find the mosque. We had to stop and ask for directions a couple of times and by then my French was starting to come back to me. The last guy we asked for directions ended up walking with us and telling us his life story, including how he is from Norway but has also lived in a couple other countries and is now a YouTube star. Don’t worry… he wrote down the name of his video so that when we finally get some internet we can look him up.

We eventually found the mosque and it was GORGEOUS! It’s the 3rd largest mosque in the world and after seeing that one I want to go find the other 2 that are bigger. We walked down a street that had run down, drab, dirty buildings on one side and a beautiful building that was part of the mosque on the other side. We eventually reached a big courtyard with a beautiful view of the ocean, city, and mosque. Next to the courtyard there was a sea wall (thank you oceanography) that was packed with people sitting around eating snacks and watching a bunch of adolescent boys jumping off a ledge into the ocean. If I had a suit and wasn’t in an Islamic country I might have joined them. Instead we walked back to the mosque and attempted to get in but it was closed for the day so we walked around a little bit more and made our way back to the ship.

We finished packing really quickly and went to get dinner and wait for Ashley and Bridget to get back from their trip so we could go to Marrakech. They got back really late so we missed the 6:15 train we were going to try to make but as we were sitting there eating dinner someone informed us that it was actually at 6:50 so we scarfed the rest of our food and headed out to go to the train station. Me, Georgina, and Bridget took one taxi and Ashley and Taryn took the other one. The cab driver only spoke French so me and Georgina told him that we wanted to go to the train station. After a little while I realized that we were going in a different direction than that morning when me and Taryn had gone and I said that I though we were going to the wrong place but Bridget said that there was probably more than one way there so we didn’t say anything. Eventually the cab driver pulled up at a really fancy hotel and said “Twin Hotel?”. He thought that that was where we wanted to go. After saying train, making choo choo noises and pointing to the green sheet he finally understood and took us to the train station. Shockingly enough we actually got there before Ashley and Taryn so we got our tickets and waited for them. They finally got there and got their tickets and we went to the platform to wait.

While waiting on the platform a Moroccan guy struck up a conversation with us and told us that yes we were on the right platform and yes Moroccan trains are normally late. His friend didn’t speak English so he just awkwardly stood there the whole time. At one point it came up that I like to dance and he mentioned that he watches “that American dancing show” and I asked So You Think You Can Dance? And he said “yeah, that one lady that screams a lot is annoying!” That cracked me up and made me think of home.

Finally after about 30 minutes the train came and we rushed to get seats and even though we were some of the first on the train we still ended up standing in the hall. The train look like harry potter only not as great (especially since I couldn’t figure out how to open the window and the guys behind us were smoking). After a little while we got to the next stop and someone in the compartment stood up to leave and the smoking guys behind me let me sit down (how nice of them!). I sat and listened to music and after a little while Georgina and Taryn joined me in the compartment and told me that Ashley and Bridget were in the other compartment. After a long time Bridget came over and said that there was room for us in the other one and we went over and all sat on the same bench which was clearly not made for 5 people. Finally at about 11:00 we made it to the train station.

We went to Hotel Oudya (that’s probably spelled wrong) and put our stuff in our room, got ready and attempted to go out. I say attempted because everywhere in Marrakech is really expensive and has a dress code for guys. As a result we ended up getting pizza at 3 in the morning and going to bed.

Day 2:
We got up somewhat early (9ish) and went and got breakfast. We then asked the front desk if we could leave our stuff there for the day and got a map (and directions!). We set off to go to the old town part of Marrakech but kept getting distracted. First by a place to exchange money to Dirhams (my friend Jill kept forgetting the name and called them Dali Lammas the whole time) and second by a place that had payphones to try to figure out if we could go white water rafting. When the guy on the phone informed me that the white water rafting place was closed down we ended up walking toward town again. The last place we got distracted by was  a Segway tour shop. We might have passed it up but we had been talking about segwaying in another country so we decided to sign up. After talking the tour guide into giving it to us for 200 dirhams each (only 24$, 150 dirhams cheaper than it was supposed to be) and giving us a free shirt we went segwaying!!

It wasn’t hard to get used to. The trickiest part was that instead of turning the handlebars to turn you had to pull them either left or right and lean forward. We went for a pretty long tour and saw everything. It was pretty funny when at one point we went to the giant souk in the middle of Marrakech and kept seeing S@Sers there and eventually saw the videographer Tiffany. She laughed at us and filmed us a little bit and then we headed off to get 3 dirham orange juice (still on our segways). At another part of the tour I was in the back of the line videotaping us rolling around Marrakech and some police officers saw me and got angry. You aren’t allowed to take pictures of police officers while they are in their uniforms apparently. The guy asked me what I was taking a picture of and I said the segways and he went through my entire camera just to make sure before handing it back to me and letting me leave. Finally it was time to head back.

Our tour guide, Karim, took us to lunch at a little place that had grilled chicken and French fries. It was really different eating at a Moroccan restaurant. They don’t give you water automatically (not that we could have drank it anyway). They also don’t put salt and pepper or silverware on the table or have regular napkins or bathrooms. The food was really good though! Everyone in the restaurant (including us) was eating with their fingers which was interesting when we were done and had no napkins, just scraps of paper.

After lunch we went back to the souk and wandered around for a while. I bought a really cool mirror (which broke on the way back to Casablanca on the last day sadly) and eventually we went back to the train station so that we could all buy our tickets for when we were going back which was at all different times. Ashley and Georgina had a S@S trip so they went back right then, Taryn had a S@S trip on the last day so she bought a ticket for the next morning, and me and Bridget bought tickets for the last day.

After that Taryn, Bridget, and I went back to the hotel and relaxed before going out.

Day 3:
We got up pretty a little later this day and walked Taryn to the train station and got some lunch at the McDonald’s. They had a sandwich called a McArabian! It’s Tangine beef on pita bread. I was tempted to try it but I’m not that brave. After that me and Bridget went back to the hotel and took a nap and then decided to walk to the old town and ended up stopping and shopping at a store called Zara. I got a dress that I think I’m going to wear to the ambassador’s ball and then we went across the street and Bridget bought a really big bag.

Eventually we made it to the old town area and started walking toward the gardens. We stopped at the souk on the way to get CD’s that we heard about in one of the explore seminar movies (I <3 Hip Hop Morocco, it’s a pretty good movie if you have time to watch it). We got some more orange juice and walked around some more. Before heading out to try to find a cab that would use their meter. After finally finding one we went to the palace gardens. They weren’t as great as they sounded. In fact it was just a bunch of rows of trees with a big cement sidewalk down the middle and a giant dirty swimming pool that I joked was meant for Bridget to practice her synchronized swimming in.

We grabbed a cab and went back to a movie theater we had seen near our hotel and attempted to see Harry Potter but it was in French with no subtitles so we went and got dinner instead and then went to an internet café (where I sat and memorized the Chi Omega Symphony because I was getting a little rusty). After a while we went to check if Ashley and Georgina’s S@S trip was at the hotel yet and they were so we took another nap, got ready, and went out. It was kind of sad that it was our last night in port together. : (

Day 4:
We had to get up super early on this day (and by super I mean like 8) and go to the train station. After the trip there we had learned our lesson and bought first class tickets so that we were guaranteed seats. 3 hours later we were in Casablanca. We went back to the ship and Bridget realized that Georgina had her id so she stayed on the ship and I went out to spend the last of hers and my dirham. I decided that I wanted to buy a big overnight bag for the way home and while I was at the ATM a random S@Ser came up and said that she had some dirham left over that she didn’t want and handed me 40 dirham! Perks of Semester at Sea!

It was really funny walking around the souk because I started off by myself and ran into some people I knew on the walk to get out of the port and then after a while they stopped in a shop that I didn’t really want to go in so I kept going and ran into some more S@Sers I know. That kept happening both with S@Sers I know and some that I didn’t know. By the time I was ready to head back I realized that I had forgotten to get boxes for Georgina and snacks for me and Bridget so I asked a couple of people where a supermarket was and they send me on a wild goose chase for a supermarket that turned out to be a 15 minute cab ride away (I never actually went, I heard about it from some people on the ship though). I found a place really close to the port thought that had a bunch of junk food and boxes so I settled for that and went back to the ship.

S@S definitely saved the best country for last. I felt really comfortable in Morocco because it was kind of like a mix between France and Tanzania. I would go back in a second! (actually I really want to go back and see Rabat, Tangier, and Fez one day). It was sad that that was our last country and its really unlikely that all of us will every be together again in a foreign country. I’m going to miss waking up in a new country and just doing whatever I feel like with no homework, job, cell phone, etc. to worry about.

Things on the ship are winding down. Tomorrow I have my other 2 finals (global studies test day was yesterday) and then we have a talent show that me and my friends are dancing in. Then we are going to sleep on the deck (finally) and then its ambassador’s ball.

My favorite ship day has happened since the last time I wrote. It was the last day of class when the person who bought being the voice on the announcements did his announcement and said “Calling all turtles and dolphins out in the Atlantic. Please come closer to the MV so that we can take pictures of you. Whales and sharks stand by for further instruction.” That made me laugh. Then the person who bought picking the dinner menu in the auction picked the dinner so we had fajitas and French fries (it was the shortest I’ve seen the peanut butter line in a long time) and then Taryn’s theater class (theater for social change) had a playback theater show where they have the audience tell stories and they act them out. Bridget told a story from when me, her, Georgina, Taryn, and Lexi were in Rome. Then Captain Roman turned out the lights so that we could look at the stars. After a little while it started to rain and we were the only idiots that stayed where we were so that we could keep looking at the stars and got a little bit wet but it was worth it. Finally we crashed a mixer between a couple seas where they were showing the Hangover (funny movie!!).  ok lets recap… funny announcements, great dinner, funny theater show, star gazing, and movie! Best. Day. Ever.

Alrighty can’t wait to see everyone in 6 days!!!!!! (ok more like 7 because I’m not sure I’m going to be all there after the wisdom teeth get taken out)

Ps. Funny thing! My mom reads this one site that puts a bunch of blogs together and my friend mentioned that I lost a necklace I got in turkey and my mom emailed me about it and I told my friend about it so Courtney (the friend) put a little shout out to my mom in her blog and I just got an email from my mom about it!!! I’m so entertained!!! (yeah I have too much time on my hands now that classes are over)

back to school

Since leaving our last port the ship has gone from only having 1 day between the countries and very little time for school to having no countries left and too much time for school. Not to mention finals... I have 3 finals, 2 papers, and 1 project between yesterday and next wednesday so it is going to take a while for me to finish my Morocco blog...

On the bright side the ship got some real peanut butter!! No more organic, chunky, flavorless goop!! (as a result at every meal the peanut butter line normally takes about 15-20 minutes to wait in until you can finally get some peanut butter... especially when no one likes the lunch/dinner)

Oh S@S...

I swear this stupid program has such bad mood swings... First its all nice and "Oh! have a day off of class to sleep in. No fire drill or anything. We'll even have a crew talent show, casino night, and an auction. Then they're all "Hey there. We're giving you 3 hours of dock time because the Prime Minister of Egypt was giving a speech and you couldn't use the stairs. Sorry that we left you behind at the library but we're going to punish you for it."

Great job S@S. You're really making me want to spend too much money to go on one of your over priced, over scheduled, make-me-want-to-pull-my-hair-out trips.

oh dear...

I also just realized that i only have 18 days until i go home and 4 weeks until i have to have my wisdom teeth out... FML.

The rest of Egypt

So i got some motivation from somewhere today (i even cleaned my room!!) and finished my blog!! Happy reading : )

Day 2:
I decided to skip the S@S trip because they tend to be overcrowded so after donating my ticket I went with my friends, Courtney and Jill (everyone else is on overnights), to catch a cab to Cairo. In Egypt a lot of cabs have tourist services where they drive you around all day for a prearrange price and they wait for you outside the sights. Our driver, Hasan, is a really funny little old man who knew limited English but communicated fine. He really liked the word “wow” and would laugh and repeat us every time we said it. He kept saying we were like his children (he has 2 sons who are 22 and 21 and a 16 yr old daughter). He even called us habibti (again. Phonetic don’t judge) which means beloved one and is used for family members, children, good friends, etc.

It’s a 3 ½ hour drive from Alexandria to Cairo and I slept most of the way. When we got there the first place we went was the Egypt Museum. After checking our cameras and going through security we walked around and looked at the hieroglyphics on a bunch of tombs and a bunch of statues of kings and queens. It was really hot in there so we hopped from one air conditioned exhibit to another and saw King Tut’s tomb, a bunch of mummies, and then a bunch of old jewelry and other stuff that was in some guy’s tomb.

When we left I stopped at the little cart outside to get breakfast because we had left before breakfast on the ship was open. While paying for my super nutritious breakfast of Pringles I met a family from Poland who didn’t speak English. (I asked them where they were from by pointing to myself and going America and then pointing to them and shrugging and then they laughed and said Poland.) Nat you’re going to have to teach me more polish because all I could say to them was tok/tac/tak/toc however you spell it.

Next Hasan drove us to a little papyrus shop and a girl showed us how they make papyrus and then they tried to get us to buy stuff. I wasn’t going to but then I saw one I really liked and haggled them down from 50$ to 15$.

Jill really wanted to ride a camel because she wasn’t going on the S@S trip where you ride them and somehow me and Courtney (who didn’t want to go) got swindled into going with her. They put these little hat things on us and put us on donkeys and took pictures of us and then expected us to pay them for the hats. Since they had already opened the packaging and we couldn’t give them back we had to pay for the hats and then it was time to go in to see the pyramids. It was really cool riding a camel across a small part of the Sahara to see the pyramids. It was exactly how I imagined it. We stopped for a while a took a bunch of dorky pictures and then rode all the way up to the pyramid and climbed up a couple levels to take pictures. Next we rode over to the Sphinx and took some more pictures. That was when we realized that our tour guide was pretty sketchy. He had to pay off some tourist guard to let us climb on the pyramids and then snuck us in to see the Sphinx. We turned out to be right when we got back on our camels to go back to the taxi and the tour guide asked us how much we were going to tip him. When we told him $3 USD each he got really mad and started yelling.

Here’s the thing about Egyptians. Any time someone does something for you they will expect to be tipped. Also, they won’t ask for the tip they will stand there, look at the ground, and say, “It’s okay.” What they really mean is, “Its ok for you to give me money now.”

When we got back we had to deal with the camel guys and the charges. They overcharged us like it was their job (which it is). They plopped us on the camels (which me and Courtney didn’t even want to ride) and then charged us for hats we didn’t want, tickets to the museum, 25$ per camel which is about 5 times the amount they should have, and then told us we weren’t tipping them enough. Which made me really mad and I ended up standing there yelling at the Egyptian guys who handled the camels until they gave us back some pounds. Hasan looked kind of shocked and asked me if I was ok. We told him that we were out of money now and wanted to go back to Alexandria. He didn’t even argue or try to get us to spend more money. He just took us home.

When we got back I wrote my blog for the first day and then went to dinner where I was so dehydrated that all I had was 2 rolls with butter and an entire pitcher of water.

Day 3:
On this day me and Courtney went on a S@S trip. We slept the whole way to Cairo and then we drove up to the pyramids we had seen the day before and took some more pictures. I had learned how to deal with the vendors selling me stuff that I didn’t want and had a much more pleasant experience. Next we went over to the smallest pyramid and I climbed down to see the tomb (Courtney, who is 6 feet tall, decided to stay outside because it was a little cramped). It was pretty cool, much colder than outside and pretty deep.

After that we went to the Sakkara Country Club to go for a jeep safari and camel ride. The jeep safari was pretty fun. It was a bunch of jeeps driving around the Sahara. Our driver was pretty funny. He played Egyptian slow rock the whole time and every time we asked him a question he answered with one word.

After that we hopped out of the jeeps and grabbed camels. Mine was named Arabel and was led around by a 10-yr-old boy who didn’t speak English. All he knew was lean back, name, and tip. It was a fun little ride with about 60 other S@Sers.

After our camel ride we went to lunch and I had the single best meal of my life! (I’m not sure if it was actually that good or if I was just hungry because it was 2:00 and I didn’t eat breakfast) I finally had some hummus. They also had chicken, pita, rice (with almonds and brown sugar), watermelon, and 3 types of dessert! I was really full after that so once we got on the bus I fell asleep right away.

After lunch we went to 2 tombs and saw some hieroglyphics and the offerings thing and then we got on the bus and headed back to Alexandria. I didn’t really do much at night except for sit around the boat and watch movies.

Day 4:
On this day I slept in and then cleaned my room. Then me and Jill headed out to find the mosque and fort. It was a pretty long walk and we had to ask directions a couple times but we finally found it. It was really pretty! We took off our shoes and covered our heads and looked around a little bit. When we left the guy wanted a tip (of course) so we gave him a dollar and left to find the fort. It was a pretty long walk so we stopped for ice cream. When we got to the fort we hopped into a picture with some people and they laughed at us and took more pictures with us. We walked around for a while and then realized that we were really hot and headed back to the ship.

That night everyone got back from their overnight trips so we went out.

Day 5: 
This day we decided to

Wow. Ok I’m sitting on deck 7 right now writing this by the pool and my friend Courtney is working on her art project and it is really good so I just stopped typing and watch for like a ½ hour… wow! Ok where was I?

Right. On day 5 taryn, bridget, georgina, and I decided to go find the bazaar. We walked around for a while and found a street that looked pretty promising so we walked down it for a while. We had to ask directions a couple times and we found some shops that looked cool but we never actually found the bazaar. We did however get followed for about 20 minutes by 3 creepers so we stopped into a shop that sold glassware to look around and hope that the guys would go away. The shopkeeper was named Sayed and was a hilarious man. He insisted on taking pictures with all of us and then showed us the way to the bazaar and told us to come back when we were done and he’d give us ice cream (we had asked him where the bazaar was and where we could get adda ice cream that we had heard was really good). We walked around for a while and then gave up and went back to the shop and had some ice cream. Sayed has a brother who lives in New York and he lived in New Jersey for a while so he like Georgina (who is from New York). Everytime he tried to tell us something in his broken English and we didn’t understand he would yell it. Some jems of his were “SIT DOWN! YOU TALK TOO MUCH.” to Taryn when she didn’t understand that he was getting us ice cream, “NO WHAT TIME!” when we told him that we were leaving that day, “NO! USE WATER!!”

It was very entertaining. So after that bridget and I went back the ship and georgina and taryn went shopping. I got some stamps on the way and then drew my postcards (yay!!).

Other than that things on the ship have been interesting. We get an hour tonight which is a nice change from losing an hour on the way home. Tomorrow is Georgina’s birthday so we are going to sleep on the deck and enjoy the full moon… for her birthday : ) The teachers have realized that its summer and no one really wants to do any work and have been lightening up a lot (aka my teacher moved back one essay and cancelled another one) YAY! Which means that we have more free time for stuff like blogging and playing taboo! Alrighty I’m going to go sit around and watch Courtney draw… night