Dear Hawaii,

Remember when you gave me quality time with lovely friends?

How dearly I miss them!

Love. Anna

Dear Japan,

Remember when you enchanted me with your quiet stillness?

Oh, but it was a little bit of divinity, wasn't it?

Love. Anna

I Haven't Forgotten You, China.

Dear China,

Remember that one time when I conquered the icy steps of your Great Wall?

Quite invigorating, if I do say so myself.

Love. Anna

Dear Vietnam,

Remember that one time when your bat attacked me in the Cu Chi Tunnels?

I have documentation.

Love. Anna

Dear India,

Remember when I woke up at the crack of dawn to see your white marble wonder?

Totally worth it.

Love. Anna

Dear Mauritius,

Remember when I took the best nap of my life on your beach?

Would love to do that again sometime.

Love. Anna

Dear South Africa,

Remember when your landscape took my breath away?

I'll never forget it.

Love. Anna

Dear Ghana,

Remember when I heard your rhythms for the very first time?

Unforgettable.

Love. Anna

Dear Morocco,

Remember that one time when I rode across your fine-sand desert?

Good times.

Love. Anna

Dear Spain,

Remember that one time when your waves tickled my toes?

Thanks for that.

Love. Anna

A Few Very Brief Introductions

I want to introduce you to just a couple of the key players in my lovely Semester at Sea voyage.

And I thought I would do it extra cheesy profile-pic style because, truthfully, everyone on the ship has a million ridiculous and very travel-weary photographs like this from the past three and a half months.



Meet Allison Jean Hart. She is fantastic and funny and one of the most refreshingly authentic people I know. She made my voyage daily. O how much I shall miss our bedtime conversations!



Meet Lila June Carpenter. This girl blesses me in such crazy wonderful ways. Hearts like hers just don't come around that often, which is why I'm glad I stumbled upon it. You should know now that I think she's going to change the world.



Meet Brittany Leona Mitchell. She takes lovely photographs of the world. And has the most contagious laugh ever. She's pretty incredible, not gonna lie.



Meet Bryan Lee Payne. The best neighbor anyone could ever ask for. He came over to join Allie and I for our movie nights, fort-making extravaganzas, and other random silliness--and he gave us a million fabulous memories along the way. The good news is he's agreed to be my brother, so there'll be many more to come.



Meet Don. Our extra-smiley cabin steward. He is definitely a key player in our journey, seeing as how he greeted us every morning and cleaned our room from day to day. Bascially, Don rocks our world.


Home is wonderful. And so new, even in its familiarity. So much to process...but all in good time.

Love. Anna

December 14th

I’ve fussed over this post.

Tried to find words, and couldn’t.

Words and I have a long-standing love affair, but there are moments where they fail me—and this would be one of them.

They can’t articulate all the things that are stretching my heart at its seams.

I’m so very sad to go.

And so very excited for home.

These two sentiments coexist in the most nonsensical of ways for me today.

I look forward to sharing the stories and experiences of this odyssey when I get home.

But I also recognize that no matter how specific the words or detailed the pictures, there are parts of this journey that will forever remain a secret for the world and I to share—and this enchants me to no end. The specific smells and tastes and the feelings so thick you could cut them with a knife—all gifts from the world just for me. I'm moved to a goose-bump kind of gratitude.

My heart is full. And ready for the familiar.

Love. Anna

Wrapping Up

Today is packing day on the MV Explorer.

Let me tell you, friends, it ‘s going to take some small miracle to get three and a half months of my life back into two suitcases.

But crazier things have happened, and for better or worse, I’m getting off the boat tomorrow in San Diego with my things in tow.

Wish my suitcase zippers strength.

Love. Anna

Motionless

Sitting at lunch today, we were trying to process the fact that we’ve been moving for the past three and half months.

Not just figuratively moving, literally in motion—be it running around in port or life on the ship—we’ve always been on the move.

We laughed about how weird it will be to sit in class without the rocking, to eat dinner without the rocking, to try and fall asleep at night without the up and down, back and forth motion we’ve come to know so well. Allie and I have memorized the hum of the engines, and the color gradient of sunset after sunset sitting outside on deck 6 aft. We know well the white caps that greet us each morning when we open the window shade.

But now it’s time to say goodbye, and learn how to be still again.

There is an end to every season.

Love. Anna

Favorites

Allie’s merciless teasing on a certain issue over the past three and a half months has helped me learn something about myself—I’m really, really bad at picking favorites.

I like to think it’s really just an appreciation for specificity.

Regardless, I can’t very well give you my favorite color until we clarify whether I’m painting my toe nails or my bedroom walls, am I picking a color for my next sweater purchase or my next car?

Don’t even get me started on my favorite restaurant because that all depends on what meal of the day we’re eating and how long we have to eat it.

All this is to say…there’s a question I know is coming my way very soon, and I’m already in dread of it—what was my favorite port?

In light of this dreaded and quickly approaching question, I thought it might be helpful for me break things down a bit…by category…just to get the basics out there. (Am I sounding type-A right now? Because I’m really not, I promise.)

Here we go…

Most Adventurous Port: It’s is a tight race…but I’m going to go with China on this one…something to do with climbing the Great Wall and eating duck brains.

Most Relaxing Port: Mauritius (by far). But that’s what remote, little islands are for, right?

Most Educational Port: Ghana—this country is so full of life—it can instruct the deepest parts of you.

Most Challenging Port: South Africa—the legacy of apartheid that is still so evident today was just too much to swallow.

Best Cuisine: Vietnam—I don’t pretend to have experienced the full extent of the cuisine in the short time I was there, but I didn’t have a meal that wasn’t absolutely scrumptious in Vietnam (India was a close second though).

Best Weather: Honolulu, Hawaii—perfectly delightful seventy-degree beach weather.

Best Sights to See: India—quite possibly the most visually stunning country in the entire world.

Best Shopping: I didn’t know it at the time, but probably Morocco. I guess it depends on what you’re looking for…if you want cultural goods, go to the Moroccan souks, but if you want knock-offs, then Vietnam is where it’s at.

Friendliest People: That would be a tie between Japan and Ghana—kindness was just about everywhere we found ourselves in these two countries.

I finished finals today, friends. It was brutal, I’m not gonna lie.

But only TWO MORE DAYS—and so close to home!

Love. Anna

Uncovered Redux

I had an earnest prayer coming on this voyage.

I shared it with a few dear confidants.

I asked God to teach me to be comfortable in every bit of my own skin.

Then I got on a boat.

And waited in expectation.

I would like to share with you what I uncovered.

From the middle-aged women walking topless on the beach in Spain to the Ghanaian girls shaking their belly rolls in perfect time with the beating drums to the midriff-bearing grannies of India, I began to realize that there might not exist another culture in the world with more cruel and absurd ideas about bodies than our own. And I’m convinced the implications of this are hugely profound.

At the end of the day, skin and bones are far to universal a thing to warrant the hyperawareness that invades the hearts of most every girl I know from my generation.

In spite of my earnest prayers, I never awoke in the morning to brush the eye crusties aside, take a good look in the mirror, and remark on just how incredibly comfortable with myself I happen to be—that day never came. I was hardly surprised by it because a change like that would have been far too easy and vastly unsatisfying for someone as complicated as I am.

Oh but He taught me!

In the middle of this all, He taught me how to breathe deeper and laugh harder and weep for things that matter in the world. He broke my heart for things bigger than stretch marks, and frustrated me for things larger than a longing for petite-ness. He taught me to open myself to an entirely new way of understanding bodies—that they are not to be hated or worshiped, but rather viewed as vessels through which we have the privilege of experiencing this world.

Lately, I’ve settled myself on words from a favorite book of mine—“We can never arrive, we can only become”—they hold the simplicity needed to remind me that this particular race is without a cleanly marked finish line. But I’m walking the journey anyway…so that I may know the fullness and joy that is found in and through growth and change and grace.

I am being made new.

I am a becoming woman.

Love. Anna

For Real Now

We just pulled away from Honolulu to brave the stormy seas.

Two exams.

A whole slew of goodbyes.

And four days and counting.

I’m homeward bound now.

Love. Anna

False Alarm

So...it turns out our last hurrah wasn't actually our last hurrah.

Horribly anti-climatic, I know.

The coast guard issued a storm warning, and in the avoidance of some pretty serious swells, our captain decided it was best not to sail.

Hilo, however, couldn't let us dock for another day, so last night we ended up sailing back to Honolulu.

That is where I currently find myself

What does this mean for the next six days?

Well...

Finals will still happen on schedule, which means I still have two papers due tomorrow, and two exams the day after that...so my newfound day in Honolulu is currently being spent at a random coffee shop, laptop in tow, writing about reproduction and U.S. foreign policy (separately, I should clarify).

As for now, we are planning to sail tonight, and if we do, we will still arrive back to San Diego on December 14th as planned, but they are telling us that everything is contingent on the conditions and Captain Jeremy's decision to sail or not.

I really, really, really want to arrive in San Diego as scheduled (did I mention I want to get back to San Diego on time?), so I am waiting with fingers crossed that everything works out just fine.

Papers are calling...

Love. Anna

Hawaii

I walked up the gangway for the last time today.

Bittersweetness.

When we first pulled in to Hawaii on Friday morning, I wasn’t sure if I had another port in me.

I know that must sound ridiculous, but I promise you after a continuous amount of navigating and planning and running and a constant amount of sleep deprivation, there is an exhaustion that forms deep and becomes harder and harder to shake.

Which is exactly why Allie and I choose to spend our first day in Hawaii navigating a sub-par public transportation system to the beach in Waikiki, and it was just what we needed.

We napped on the beach for hours and ate hamburgers and called home and it was simple and wonderful and restful. Later that night, we met up with the girls to celebrate Brittany’s birthday over Italian food. Allie and Brittany went to see New Moon, while Lila and I had a coffee date (I’ll pass on vampires, thanks though) and we taxied back to the boat at midnight a very happy kind of exhausted.

Day two in Honolulu, Allie and I took the bus to Pearl Harbor, which was fascinating and completely worthwhile in light of my Warfare class. We had breakfast for lunch (because, really, what’s more wonderful?), and met up with Lila at the beach after her surf lesson. On ship time was early that evening in order to make it to Hilo by 8am the next morning, which we did successfully (and with no ruff seas, as they predicted).

Day three/day one in Hilo, a big group of us girls hired the most adorable tour guide (she’s a certified hula instructor, so she threw some impromptu hula performances in there for us as well) to take us around the waterfalls and Volcanoes National Park. Hilo is a sleepy town, and it was drizzly and gray during most of our time there, but in spite of the rain, the twelve of us had a fantastic time traipsing through lava tubes and taking in waterfalls.

After we dressed and got Lila ready for her date that evening (shh…don’t tell…she’d be furious at me for doing so…but she’s just so darn cute not to), Laurel and Leanne and Allie and I went to the most wonderful, dimly lit little place for dinner. We enjoyed crab cakes and girl time and good conversation before finishing off the night with a quick trip through Walmart (we thought we’d pick up some Teddy Grahams before finals arrive in all their full glory).

And as for our last day in our last port, Brit and Lila and Allie and I laid on a black sand beach, with our brightly colored towels in a perfect row. It was gray, and the sun was nowhere to be found, but we watched the waves come in and out anyway. After it became too chilly for beach time, we went to get Lila’s nose pierced (which looks most fabulous, if I do say so myself), and we ended our tenth country with falafel and iced tea and another beloved bus ride back to climb the gangway one final time.

Bittersweetness.

Love. Anna

Final Stop

Oh my.

One final down, four lovely days in Hawaii, then two finals and a paper to go before home.

We arrive in Honolulu at 6 o’clock tomorrow morning. Allie and I have decided to treat Hawaii as a time to wind down, to rest, and to process—and what a better place to do it, no?

The weekend is near, and I hope it is a wonderful one for you.

Love. Anna

3 More Days...

Happy December, dear friends.

Can you believe it’s here already?

Allie bought Christmas window clings at the dollar store in Japan. We decorated, and Bryan came over to watch Elf with us.

It’s the little things that carry us through ten days of sailing and eight days of class.

Love. Anna

Foreign Object

I was digging around in one of our drawers yesterday, (where we keep the miscellaneous items like band aids and batteries) and underneath a messy pile of museum brochures and old ticket stubs and past trip itineraries (they build up in number after nine countries), guess what I found?

My cell phone!

I forgot those things existed, friends.

And it looked so strange sitting there in my hand; I had to pause for a second.

I haven’t touched a cell phone in over three months. I haven’t thought about it, and I have to tell you, I haven’t missed it one bit.

I’ve missed the people it connects me with tremendously, but I haven’t missed the tones and the rings and the beeps and the buzzes.

The thing about it is, I completely appreciate the wonderful things a cell phone allows for back at home…I can text Marissa random You’ve Got Mail quotes on a whim or call my mom on the verge of tears when I drop my psychology notebook in the toilet the day before the midterm (Mother dearest, aren’t you glad you gave birth to someone as coordinated and rational as I).

But I also can’t help feeling refreshed by the fact that I’ve lived a life this past semester that doesn’t necessitate cell phone usage—I look at my little black phone and it doesn’t carry the same weight as it used to, it doesn’t have the same power as before. And I think there is some small freedom in that.

I told Allie before we went to sleep last night about the foreign object I discovered in our drawer that afternoon.

And we decided that those are the strange, little things that will make our adjustment back to real life weird and almost difficult at times.

Things like cell phones and television commercials, driving (no silly rickshaw drivers?) and fixed prices (I half expect the checker at Target to tell me my total and to respond without thinking “Fair price now. I’ll give you ten dollars—final offer”).

The beautiful thing about it though is that I don’t just come home to those things, but to people who love me, people I ache for even now, people who will lavish me with grace as I find myself, once again, in transition.

Love. Anna

I just finished a ten-pager (and have another twelve pager ahead), which is to say that my well of words is running dry (not sure we ever thought that was possible).

I do want to wish you the loveliest of Sundays, and let you know that home is fifteen days away!

It won’t be long now.

Love. Anna

November 28th #2

Yesterday was Saturday, November the 28th.

I awoke today to greet Saturday, November the 28th for a second time.

The International Date Line is a strange and confusing thing for my brain to try and grasp, but we did indeed cross it last night.

This means that I went to bed twenty hours ahead of California time, and woke up four hours behind it.

At least I can say I’ve lived a day of my life over again, right?

O how absurd normal becomes when you’re living (and sleeping) on a boat.

Love. Anna

From Home

There are two things in particular from home that I've found in every port of call without exception (I call them two of our most prominent American exports).

Can you guess what they are?

It’s not Coca~Cola (although you can easily consume that in every country too).

And it’s not McDonalds (you may remember that Ghana’s left out of the loop on that one).

Our first big global export is music.

I can’t tell you how many times I was in a restaurant or a store or driving in a random taxi, and We’d hear a song on the radio and I’d to turn to Lila or Allie and say, “Remind me where I am again”. From Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” to Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” to the “YMCA” (most bizarrely in China)—our music is everywhere. I’m convinced a great majority of the time people have no idea what it is they’re actually listening to, but that seems to be of little to no consequence in matters of enjoyment.

Our second pervasive export is a little chain we like to call KFC.

Oh my, how I wish I could fully communicate how the rest of the world loves our Colonel Sanders, but they love him infinitesimally more than we do in the States.

Not only was it by far the most widespread U.S. fast food chain around the world; it was most always frequented by locals from whatever country we happened to be in at the time. I still don’t fully understand it, but this global fried chicken love is, indeed, deeply-rooted.

Seven days to Hawaii (and hooray for a much-anticipated reading day tomorrow).

Love. Anna

I joked with my sister before beginning this voyage that I was going to make a button with the slogan “Girls—the world’s greatest untapped resource” printed on it to wear about the world for all to see.

We both chuckled at the idea, but anyone who’s familiar with my heart on these matters knows that I’m completely kooky enough to actually do it, and having seen more of the world than before, I rather wish I would have.

There are seven billion people on the planet.

About half of those seven billion people are women—a great portion of whom have been exploited, disempowered, forgotten, and excluded from entire arenas of society. I have seen their faces time and time again on this journey, and their great strength and unspeakable beauty never cease to astound me (I cannot wait to tell you of them when I get home).

I have days when I awake disheartened at the state of world. Days when the list of problems seems long, and the list of solutions exhausted.

But then I remember.

I remember that there’s about 3.5 billion of us out there with intelligent minds and creative hearts and articulate voices that have yet to be claimed and cultivated and celebrated for all they’re worth.

This little factoid, while a problem in itself, also gives me a crazy kind of hope, a hope that makes my blood flow thicker in my veins.

Because these women have so much to give the world.

And the more we learn to include them, the more their voices are heard and their minds educated, the more that we advocate for such things, than the more we all up our chances of stumbling upon the cures and the solutions and the bright ideas that our world is aching for. Even in their brokenness, I know they have a remarkable role to play in the making new of our messed up world.

I wait in great expectation for the day humanity comes to understand this.

It’s not about anger or the burning of bras, but about justice and doing right, about acknowledging and fostering the tremendous amount of promise that lies within this world’s women.

I, for one, want to live in such a world.

And I eagerly await the day (though it’s a long way off) when I have daughters of my own, or sons for that matter, that I get the privilege of teaching about the extraordinary and mysterious gifts women bring to this world—I see the possibilities and it moves me.

Love. Anna

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!

It’s been a rather low-key day here on the ship. Classes and routine were as usual, but they did whip up a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for us in the kitchen (which is no easy task when cooking for six hundred).

I hope this day finds you in the fullest posture of gratitude for God’s goodness and grace, and for the abundance we know and experience daily that such a great deal of the world is without.

Whether you’re a friend or a family member or a random blog-reader, I’m grateful for you on this day, and I wish you all warmth and blessing this Thanksgiving.

Love. Anna

Farewell to Jesse and Hello to Don

Our crew works on ten-month contracts that don’t correspond with the dates of fall and spring voyages in their entirety, which means we had to say goodbye to a bunch of our crewmembers in Hong Kong.

One of them was our beloved cabin steward, Jesse.

Jesse probably knew Allie and I better than anyone else on the ship.

He knew what time we each woke in the morning, he knew when we were feeling stressed with work (because our room would grow exponentially more messy), and he cleaned around many a pair of panties (our room often becomes a small-scale laundry mat after being in port) as he made our bed each morning.

We were sad to see him go.

But we’ve welcomed Don into our lives now.

Don is efficient and smiley and has a sense of humor about things (as we know from the way he makes Allie’s bed and places her stuffed hippo in front of her open laptop, as if the hippo were typing away important documents—cracks us up every time, Don).

Nine days to Hawaii.

Love. Anna

Japan

In thirty-six minutes we’ll be sailing away from our last international port (those are such bittersweet words to type).

I’m completely enchanted with Japan, and also adamantly set on returning—four days just wasn’t enough (I know I feel that way with every country, but I really do mean it when it comes to Japan).

The fun thing was that each day in Japan I got to spend in a different city.

Day one: Yokohama—lovely and quiet and lined with trees lit up with all kinds of autumn hues. We took the bus to the Sankeien Gardens, where we viewed a tea ceremony and hiked to a pagoda and threw euros from Spain into a wishing-well. We finished the night off with sushi and people watching (my favorite) and When Harry Met Sally (also my favorite, and quite possibly the best chick-flick ever written).

Day two: Tokyo—Brittany and I decided to take the train to Tokyo for the day, and were completely out of our minds when we went without a single map or brochure or destination in mind. We wandered far and wide, and conveniently stumbled upon the Harajuku district and Takeshita Street, where we window shopped and admired the prettily dressed people (in, of course, our baggy sweatshirt and jeans—we haven’t been able to do laundry for over three weeks. But then who am I kidding? My entire Semester at Sea wardrobe could be washed and hanging in our closet and my outfit still wouldn’t hold a candle to the immaculately put together women of Tokyo) and ate the most scrumptious dip-died noodles ever.

Day three: Hiroshima—We drove ten hours total for our visit, but I have no regrets in choosing to spend my day that way. Anyone remotely close to having the means should go and see and grieve and learn (or at least read John Hersey’s booked, eloquently titled Hiroshima). The atomic age is one I would wish on a million stars to be able to erase, and the museum that was erected to remember August 6, 1945 is breathtaking in that it chooses to skip blame in order to seek something greater—this in itself brings to my heart a great hope.

Day four: Kyoto—My Anthropology of Reproduction professor took a group of us to Arashiyama’s Monkey Park for some good, solid Japanese macaque observation. The macaques are the most hilarious things you’ve ever seen, with their bright red faces and even redder butts (it was indecent of me, I know, but I couldn’t resist snapping a few pictures of the their buttocks). After our observation time was finished, Marissa and I stayed behind to explore the gorgeous, little town of Arashiyama. We had lunch and peeked in the town’s quaint little shops and enjoyed some sweet potato ice cream before navigating three different train lines back to the boat in Kobe for on-ship time.

And just like that we begin our ten-day trek to Hawaii.

The MV Explorer is lovely, and I’ve met people on the MV Explorer that are even lovelier. But ten straight days sailing on a boat of this size is enough to give anyone cabin fever. On top of that fact, we are going to have eight class days during this stretch, and sad as it sounds, that’s unprecedented for us on this voyage, so Allie and I might just be loosing some hair (reality will be a very, very cruel thing come January).

But not to worry—we’re going to do our very best to quell the fever with plenty of movie-nights and Uno games.

Love. Anna

heavy heart.

I visited Hiroshima today.

And I understand better now how dark of day it truly was when humanity figured out how to melt the flesh of 100,000 people with a bomb 3 meters long.

Eyeballs became liquefied and rolled down charred faces as tears.

Human beings were evaporated into oblivion leaving nothing but a black shadow on the sidewalk beneath them.

I’ll be gnawing on this one for a while.

Love. Anna

Important Notice

So I’ve used bathrooms of all shapes and sizes on this trip, right?

From the squatty-potty to the hole in the ground to your plain, old, average toilet—I thought I had seen it all.

Then Japan happened.

I feel the need to inform those of you who thought we had it won with the western toilet that you are mistaken.

Because the toilets in Japan are completely amazing.

Fact.

Heated toilet seats? Remote controls for toilets?

I never knew, I NEVER KNEW about such things, my friends.

Basically, I’m changed—Japanese toilets have changed me.

It's like peeing in the land of the Jetsons.

And I thought you needed to know that Japan is kicking our big booty in the race for most technological toilet.

Love. Anna

Second to last stop...

2 days in Yokohama.

2 days in Kobe.

And one great big hooray for Japan!

Love. Anna

So one thing I had every intention of blogging regularly about, and have failed massively at actually following through on, is food in port.

This is due in large part to the fact that a great deal of the time, we have no idea what we’re eating (there are moments when I think this is for the best).

Menus aren't often in English, and it’s a rare day when you have a waiter who can speak a semblance of broken English, which means it's really a wonder we ever order anything at all.

On occasion, there does happen to be an English menu that’s completely misspelled, and we end up almost peeing our pants attempting to order “Fnied Schnimp with Siggling Onions” while keeping a straight face. And I kid you not when I say there was a dish on the menu in China called “The Palace Explodes the Diced Chicken”—I was tempted to order it, but I passed (I’m not sure how my stomach generally feels about exploded chicken).

Sometimes, we use our own brand of food sign language. Other times, the menu has pictures to point at or you gesture to a kind local eating next to you, who’s vastly more knowledgeable regarding a good order than you could ever be.

And then there was one time in India, where we walked into a restaurant that I’m pretty convinced no foreigner had ever been before—everyone there spoke Tamil (and Tamil exclusively). By the time we sat down to eat, we were so hot and tired and hungry, and there were no menus.

We talked to the waiter man for a minute as if he had absolutely no problem understanding English. Of course he didn’t understand, and began to talk at us, as if we could understand perfect Tamil, which we (shockingly) couldn't.

So I smile widely, and we enter a staring contest of sorts, the waiter and I just looking at each other, until he shakes his head, mutters something, and walks away.

But you know what, he ended up bringing out a perfectly delicious spread for us, and while it’s not the most dignified way of ordering food at a restaurant, it worked in a pinch.

Now for food in China (as I was at my most adventurous in this port).

I had my first bite of duck brain in China—extremely rich and buttery.

And I also really enjoyed eating lotus root, which is a vegetable that has a texture similar to that of an apple, but tastes like nothing I’ve ever had before.

Martin also took us a Sichuan hot-pot restaurant before we left Beijing, and it was hands-down THE spiciest food I have ever had in my life. This is not Mexican salsa spicy or even Indian curry spicy—this is otherworldly, tingly-mouth, cleansing-sweat spicy.

Our waitress brought out this huge pot of dark red broth that rested on a burner in the middle of our table. Floating atop the liquid we had affectionately titled “the witch’s brew” were four whole frogs (at least six inches in length each). Once the chili-broth started to boil, we tossed in all kinds of raw meat and vegetables, they cooked, and then we picked miscellaneous items out of the pot with our chopsticks—it was something like a very spicy grab bag, and you never knew just what you might end up with. 

Martin, of course, was absolutely dying of laughter watching our facial reactions to our mouths being completely aflame. But it wasn’t all that long before he started digging in and began sweating bullets himself (he admitted it was pretty spicy).

I must tell you that the frog was absolutely wonderful, and I quite enjoyed it. I would have it again if I ever got the opportunity (granted my taste buds were essentially charred from the spicy, but texture-wise I thought it very pleasant).

One last random thing I tried while in China was “Blueberry Breeze” flavored Pringles, (which were absurdly wide spread in the grocery marts and convenient stores). They were like what you might imagine salted fruit loops would taste—quite bizarre and something I never feel the need to try again.

So there you are for fun food in China!

I very much anticipate wonderful sushi in Japan, and Allie and I are already assembling a list of things we can’t wait to enjoy once we get home. Sometimes we lie in bed at night and ask each other “if you could have anything to eat right now, what would it be?”

It’s a game that normally ends with a burrito, a tuna sandwich, or chocolately-chip teddy grahams.

Love. Anna

Beijing

Minus weekends of slush at winter camp, I’ve never been in real snow before.

Which is why I kept telling myself it would be cold in Beijing.

But as someone who’s never known a cold that can sting your eyeballs and make your lips feel as though they’ve received a generous dose of Novocain, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The truth is, I laughingly bought leggings and a hat and mittens at the H&M in Hong Kong (which was a balmy 80 degrees by the way), thinking how cute and quaint it was to be making such a purchase.

When I stepped off the plane in Beijing wearing cotton socks and Converse, I finally understood—it would be COLD in Beijing.

That first night, Laurel (who’s tall and witty and makes for a lovely travel buddy) and Lila (who you should know now I absolutely adore) and I ran around the Peking University campus stalking up on long underwear and wool gloves and other such things one needs in order to be properly bundled. And then, of course, Lila and I bought the most ridiculous-looking panda hats. We wore them loud and proud around Beijing, and I can safely say that we most certainly spread joy everywhere we went, as a good three out of five locals couldn’t resist a hearty chuckle at the sight of us (I might post a quick picture if I find internet in Japan so you can get a better idea of exactly what we were sporting around town).

We walked out of the hotel the next morning looking like first cousins of the Michelin Man, but from there on out we were warm enough to enjoy Beijing in all it’s full (and snowy) glory. It felt absolutely magical to walk around the city with icicles hanging off of buildings and the pine trees so perfectly dusted. The Bird’s Nest Stadium was covered in snow, and the Great Wall was made that much more breathtaking (and treacherous, may I add…but more on that later) by the early winter cold.

I suppose I should’ve mentioned earlier that my trip to Beijing was a university exchange, so we were staying on the campus of Peking University (supposedly the Harvard of China, and one of it’s oldest universities). We toured around the city with a student-guide during the day, and in the evening we chatted with Chinese students at two separate receptions the university held for us.

Martin was my first university friend, and what a wonderful one he was—if my suitcase was big enough, I just might’ve smuggled him back on the boat! We got to chat about family and holidays and communism and his dreams of studying at Stanford one day. We all had quite a lot of questions for him, and Martin was ever so patient and lovely to answer them for us. He took Lila and Laurel and Eric and I to his favorite eatery on campus, and we bought soup-in-a-bag and squid-on-a-stick and a random egg-pancake thing, and we could see our breath as we walked happily through the campus.

Lily is my other university friend. I met her at the reception on the second night. She’s studying law, and her hair holds curl (which she is rightfully quite proud of). We talked about relationships and dating and marriage in our respective countries, and about her dreams of studying at Cal Berkley (notice a theme in dreams here?).

Other wonders that I had the pleasure of seeing while I was in Beijing were the Summer Palace (absolutely gorgeous covered in snow), the Ming Tombs, Tiananmen Square (there was much to learn here as the massacre took place the year I was born), the Great Hall of the People (i.e. the Chinese parliament building), an acrobatics show (a slightly lower budget Chinese style Cirque du Soleil), the Forbidden City (gigantic), the Temple of Heaven, and of course, the Great Wall of China (my personal highlight)—we were just a little bit busy, and a little bit tired at the end of four days. Just a little though.

I have a million little gems of moments and memories from my time in China that I wish to share with you in perfect nuance—it truly was such a marvelous time—but this is a small start in that direction, and it won’t be long now until I can convey them to you personally (HOOray!).

Last night, I must have woken up hourly to the sound of drawers slamming or the jolt of a large, rolling wave against the ship, and it’s been so long since we’ve had really rough seas that it seems I’ve lost any and all tolerance I had for them—but our stretch to Japan is so brief; I know I can make it!

Sporting the sea bands and wishing you the calmest of seas,
Anna

Rough seas.

Nausea.

Will post later.

Three hours ago I was in Beijing?

And there was snow EVERYWHERE!

My hands were mittened.

And Lila was my bus buddy.

And my heart is very, very full.

Beijing made it easily onto my top 5 favorite life moments, and is otherwise indescribable.

But I shall try to elaborate more in coming posts.

For now, a night of sleep and then a day of frolicking in Shanghai.

Love. Anna

Shifting Seasons

As I mentioned before, it’s been incredibly hot at every port of call thus far.

From Spain to Vietnam, the sun’s been shining and the humidity’s been in full force.

By the time afternoon arrives, normally you feel like you are walking around in a steamy shower—we often walk by our reflections in a shop window, and I just have to say “embrace the glow, ladies, embrace the glow!” You really do end up being shiny all the time.

But things are about to change drastically.

At our logistical pre-port tonight, they forecast temperatures in Beijing to be in the 30’s.

This basically means I am going to freeze. The extent of my cold weather clothing is a sweatshirt and jeans.

So—if I return home come December with a few missing toes, it’s probably because they were frostbitten off while hiking on the Great Wall of China. =)

I have no idea what access to internet I’ll have during my time in China, which means I’m probably checking out for these next few days, but I’m sending you all my love, and you can send me warm thoughts in return.

Love. Anna

Things are about to get crazy, friends.

We hit China in less than two days.

I’ll be in Hong Kong for one day, and Beijing for four.

My last day in China I spend in Shanghai, where we board the ship again, only to hit Japan three days later.

After five days in Japan, we are U.S. bound to Hawaii.

It’s crazy to think how close we are to the home stretch!

There’s still so many things in my head and my heart I want to process, but because of the insane travel schedule coming these next couple of weeks (meaning very few class days), we all have heavy homework loads now.

I, myself, have hundreds of pages to read and tens of pages to write.

It’s just so hard to find the motivation when you know you’ll be in Hong Kong within the next forty-eight hours.

But I’m going to bite the bullet.

So in case you were wondering what I’m up to on this Monday evening, I’m writing a paper about the Mekong Delta, and reading a healthy portion of "Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent".

Hope your Monday night activities are as equally stimulating.

Love. Anna

Days 2,3, 4, and 5 in Vietnam

Day two in Vietnam, I had an FDP for my Geohazards & Natural Disasters class. We took a boat down the Mekong Delta, looking specifically at human interaction with the river and the impact of floods on the relationship between the Vietnamese people and the landscape.

My professor has a six-year-old daughter named Stella (she looks exactly like Tatum O’Neil in the film Paper Moon) who comes along on all our field trips and talks with the most prim and adorable British accent you’ve ever heard in your life (when you ask this six-year-old girl how she’s doing she says “I’m well, thank you. And how are you?”). We “shared secrets” on the boat ride back.

That evening was the whole rigmarole (to use an Allie-word) involving Emily and our change of plans, so I got to live it up in the hotel room solo, and I made it back to the boat early the next morning to catch Allie and Christina before they began day three in Ho Chi Minh.

We called home from little wooden phone booth stalls in the post office, and then explored the bowels of the enormous Ben Thanh Market for hours.

The first day in Ho Chi Minh City, Christina met a mother and daughter (Elsie and Chloe) who are originally from the Philippines, but who have immigrated to Vietnam for a cheaper cost of living and better jobs. They graciously invited us over for dinner.

So that night we ended up enjoying a home cooked meal in Vietnam. Chloe and her mom were so incredibly hospitable, and we stayed for their little prayer and fellowship gathering, which was random and so fun. I will always remember that night.

The following day, we had a leisure morning. We sipped iced coffee slowly (Vietnam has some of the highest grade coffee in the world—it was amazing) at a café, and wandered through the streets (it’s amazing what delights you can stumble upon when you walk). I also dragged Allie high and low to find a fair trade shop I had read about (quite the fiasco) only to arrive down the ally where it was supposed to be tucked away, and find they had moved elsewhere.

We settled for frozen yogurt instead (did I mention it was incredibly hot and humid in Vietnam? It was HOT and HUMID).

We went back to the boat briefly to drop our things off and devise a plan for the evening, and ran into our lovely friend Brittany. We decided to grab dinner and see a movie (my first trip to the movie theater this whole trip). We enjoyed pho (pretty much the best thing on the planet) and spring rolls for dinner, and were entirely humored to find that the only movie we could get tickets for was “This Is It” (ironic that we came all the way to Vietnam to watch a film about Michael Jackson). But we were there, so we bought tickets anyway (you get to select a seat like you would getting a boarding pass on an airplane…my seat number was G10). And we actually ended up enjoying the movie, and were exceptionally glad to have seen it.

Which brings me to our last day in Vietnam. I woke up early to go visit the War Remnants Museum by myself (the girls had gone the day that I was on my Mekong Delta FDP). I wanted to go and to see it.

I forced myself to stare at the photographs for a long time. To look at the faces—full of trauma and fear and death. It weighs so heavily on your heart, but there was something in me that felt like it was important to do.

After, I walked to meet Christina and Brittany and Allie at the shop where they were getting dresses tailor-made. They had their fitting, and we ooo’d and ahhh’d, and then went on our merry way to the markets to do some last minute bargaining.

I was still set on finding the fair trade shop we had devoted a ridiculous amount of time and energy trying to track down the day prior, so Allie and I slipped away, and to my great delight, we actually found it! The girl who was working there was our age and we ended up sitting and chatting for a while. She attempted to teach us some Vietnamese (quite unsuccessfully, mind you), and after lunch, we decided to go get our toes painted (when your feet have walked you around seven countries, they get pretty battered, I’m not gonna lie).

We made time for one last iced coffee before heading back to the boat, and bidding Ho Chi Minh City farewell.

Happy Sunday, friends. May the start of your week be a wonderful one.

Love. Anna

Rewritten

Hi friends,

Just wanted to let you in on the little fact that God decided to change plans (being the ultimate travel agent that he is), so Emily and I won’t be rendezvousing in Vietnam after all.

I’ll spare you details and just say it was a visa problem of sorts, and we’ll call it a day.

But not to fret.

Emily is spending her days off visiting a dear friend in Indonesia, and I’m spending these next few days exploring the wonderful Ho Chi Minh City with dear friends of my own.

What marvelous things alternative plans can turn out to be, no?

Much love,
Anna

Day One in Ho Chi Minh City

Oh.

My.

Word.

What a first day I had in Vietnam!

Allie and I went to the Cu Chi Tunnels (an incredible and expansive network of hand-carved underground tunnels built over a period of about twenty years by Viet Cong forces).

We knew going in to the trip that we’d have the opportunity to crawl through some of the tunnels, which is a must-do if you’ve gone through the trouble of the two-hour bus ride.

When we arrived to the spot, our guide brushes away some leaves to reveal the trap-door entrance to the tunnel network.

Roughly speaking, it’s a generous 12-inch by 14-inch rectangle opening.

I couldn’t help but have visions of the horrible trauma that would ensue were I to get stuck in this petite-sized entryway.

But one by one our group members were inching their butts and torsos through the opening…meanwhile, I’m still attempting to reconcile the size of the hole in front of me with the size of my lovely butt.

By now most of our group has crawled through the network already, so if I was going to embrace this adventure, the time was now. I think small, get half my body through the entrance with ease, Allie snaps a quick picture, hands me my camera, and bids me farewell with a smile.

Down into the tunnel network I go.

By myself.

Why anyone in their right mind let me go down into the darkness of the tunnels without a flashlight I have no idea…but it’s pitch black, my friends, pitch black.

So I’m using the flash of my camera to find my way on my hands-and-knees.

Snap a picture, crawl four feet, snap a picture, and crawl four feet.

Until I get to a fork in the tunnel network.

Once again. How anyone in their right mind let me down there without telling me which way I was to crawl, I do not know. But I chose to crawl to the right, all the while attempting to breathe deeply (the minute amount of oxygen that’s down there anyhow) and stay calm. 

I continue the crawl-and-camera routine.

Until the flash of my camera startles, of all things, a bat that proceeds to fly towards my face (mind you this tunnel is AT MOST three feet wide—not nearly large enough to feel even remotely comfortable sharing space with Mr. Bat, and certainly not wide enough to handle my dramatics).

I scream.

And the next flash of my camera reveals ever so kindly even more bats hanging every few feet or so from the top of the tunnel.

I have no choice but to keep crawling, but it doesn’t take long until I hit a dead end.

It’s at this point that I realize that right was not right after all.

I reverse crawl now, all the while lamenting how horrible it would be for some innocent tourist to find my carcass eaten away by the flesh-hungry bat species I was sure to be sharing my Cu Chi tunnel experience with. 

Once I made my way back to the fork in the tunnel network, I hear voices.

I literally cannot remember a time I was so relieved to hear another human’s voice as in that moment.

Three other SASers were behind me now, and one had a flashlight.

We crawl left and approach the exit.

I can hear Allie’s voice asking…“Is that Anna?”

Up and out I come.

I take one look at Allie and shout “THAT WAS NOT ENJOYABLE!”

Makes me laugh thinking about it actually.

I’m sure it was the adrenaline talking…but it reminded me an awful lot of the betrayal I felt getting off Space Mountain for the first time after my mother had assured me it wasn’t a  “fast one”.

We finished off our visit with an opportunity to shoot weaponry used in the Vietnam War for an extra fee. Try as I might, the irony of it all was indigestible—where forty years ago (which is nothing but a blink in historical terms), millions of human beings were being slaughtered (and it was indeed millions when you count U.S. casualties, along with Vietnamese soldiers and civilians), my generation will line up and pay to, of all things, shoot bullets.

It’s an irony that will prove invaluable to my Warfare in the Modern Era coursework, in addition to my own ruminations on how it is bombs and booby traps and bullets weaseled their way into most every decade of the twentieth century, and why they’ll most likely continue to do so.

My day was hardly finished after the Cu Chi tunnels, as Lila and I still had many adventures ahead of us that evening, including among other things, two lost shore passes, the most scarring cab ride experience I’ve had to date, dinner at a local night market (I’ve decided wrapping spring rolls is not my gifting), and a hilarious cyclo ride back to the boat (entirely epic, as usual)…but I’m going to tuck those stories away for another time, seeing as it’s late, tomorrow’s another full day, and this post is already longer than intended.

Love. Anna

Good Morning, Viet Nam

As I type these words, it is morning here and we are sailing up the Mekong River to our port destination of Ho Chi Minh City. We can see the fishing boats from our bedroom window, and wave at the locals as we pass them.

I know Viet Nam will hold many exciting things.

But by far most exciting is MY SISTER.

Viet Nam is a cheap flight from Indonesia, which means Emily is coming to rendezvous with me in Ho Chi Minh City for three days.

It is the loveliest, most splendid, perfectly timed gift to know that I will be seeing a member of my family tomorrow.

Exactly what my heart ordered.

Vietnam with a side of sister.

Much love,
Anna

Happy November, dear friends!

Yesterday was a silly day.

The boat didn’t move.

We spent the entire day bunkering just off the coast of Singapore.

We could see the skyline from our bedroom window.

But we weren’t docked there, which meant we weren’t allowed to get off.

Just stare at it longingly.

But we’re moving again.

This time towards the lovely country of Vietnam, where we arrive tomorrow morning.

I have excitement in my bones.

Love. Anna

In class

In an introductory anthropology course, you learn about how once upon a time people lived in hunter-gathering societies. This meant that whatever you had, you carried with you.

To have more than you needed was to be burdened.

Then we figured out how to plant and grow and harvest, and with the birth of agriculture came for the first time the idea of surplus—having more than enough.

This concept of surplus meant that some began to have more, and others less.

Some had greater access, and others not.

This was the beginning of stratified society.

It’s a divide that carries us from pharaohs to feudal lords and onward to this day, where every modern society, no matter the political ideology, manifests to one degree or another the chutes and ladders of a hierarchal system born a long while ago with seeds and surplus.

The thing about India is that it made no attempt to euphemize its stratification—to have caste written into your social and religious creed is about as un-sugarcoated as it comes. And the legacy of that system is on a scale so large and a magnitude so staggering, it would be absurd to pretend otherwise.

The have-nots are not well hidden.

I have this image branded in my brain of our drive in the rickshaw through Chennai at nighttime, and on every block tens and tens of people were asleep on the sidewalk—a new block, a new batch of men, women, and children lying still on the concrete—for the entirety of our drive.

Strangely enough, it was a sight I had seen before.

Because people sleep on our concrete too.

In caste, they say it’s for reasons of karma.

In capitalism, we say it’s for reasons of laziness.

Except, of course, it’s much, much more complicated than that—as anyone who’s ever tried being a part of the solution knows full well.

I find my brain runs in circles, trying to sort through the madness.

And at the end of the day, I have to choose to get off the rat wheel, and to rest in the life and teaching of Jesus, as his heart was always running recklessly after people on the margins.

The messy and the bleeding and the blind and the crusty—we know the stories.

The ones with the littlest of access to the world’s surplus.

They were his great, counter-cultural delight.

Which, having now seen more of the world than before, I find deeply instructive and entirely compelling.

But then I did have a hunch that circumnavigating the world would make the most nonsensical-seeming of things the most profoundly relevant.

Ask me come December if my hunch is right.

Love. Anna

Getting There

It’s said that half the fun is getting there.

I’ve decided that my motto for India is a good, hearty 89.9% of the fun is getting there.

Between the bicycle rickshaws and the auto-rickshaws and the taxicabs and the buses and the trains (oh heavens, the trains!), I had to always repeat my motto.

And in the end, it made for a wonderful India.

The best, most preparatory moment was our first evening in port. Allie and Bryan and Kelly Rose and I had a late dinner at a lovely little rooftop place in the center of the city. Afterwards, we shopped around for a bit and then decided to head back to the boat far later than we should have considering I had a 3:30am wake-up call coming to me the next morning, which would begin my trip to the Taj Mahal.

SO…we bargain with our rickshaw drivers (we were two to a rickshaw) and start heading back to the ship. When we got to the port gate, the guards wouldn’t let the rickshaw drivers through, which meant we had to get out and begin a fifteen minute walk back through the dark, industrial port before finally arriving at the boat.

Now at this point, a huge bus of SASers pulls up, and Kelly Rose and Bryan decide that we should just hop on their bus the rest of the way back to the boat. But while Allie and I are still in the process of paying our rickshaw driver, Bryan and Kelly Rose start running, they hop on the bus, we hear the hiss of the doors closing, and it pulls away.

Great.

Just splendid.

Apparently Bryan and Kelly Rose pleaded for the bus to stop, but to no avail.

So now Allie and I are left alone, coughing in the dust of the tour bus as it drives away.

We are stopped by multiple guards asking to see our shore passes (which we had to carry with us at all times and present to any official who asked to see it). We enter the gate, telling ourselves that we’re going to be just fine.

We start walking.

And the guard starts yelling.

Walking through the port back to the boat was not allowed according to this man (because rules are fluid, and policies change by the moment).

At this point, Allie and I have our hands on our foreheads.

What to do?

What one must always do when in a pinch at night by the port gate of Chennai…hire the emaciated bicycle rickshaw driver that the guard motions over to peddle us back to the boat (I have a little hunch the rickshaw driver and the guard were in cahoots).

This sounds like a perfectly wonderful solution to our predicament, except for the fact that this man was at best the size of one my thighs. He’s literally straining just to begin peddling Allie and I.

It was at this point, amidst the squeaking of the bike chain, the grunting of our driver, and the fact that we were going at best a sprightly .001 miles per hour that Allie and I burst into hysterical laughter.

The hilarity of that moment was more than our overtired beings could contain.

We cracked up the entire way back, and felt as though we owed some sort of apology to this dear man with calves the size of spaghetti noodles for peddling us to the ship. Considering he only spoke Tamil, we settled for a tip and the sincerest bow of gratitude.

Little did I know that I was just being primed for the bus that would overheat, the train that would be two and half hours late, and the rickshaw driver who would take Lila and I on one wild ride.

A wholehearted hooray for the joy of getting there, right?

Love. Anna

Mr. Singh

Mr. Singh was by far my favorite person that I met in India.

We were lucky enough to have him as our tour guide throughout the duration of our excursion to the Taj Mahal.

Mr. Singh spoke with gentleness and a tender heart and a twinkle in his eye. And his turban always matched his shirt just right.

He was full of lovely little ditties that helped us make sense of confusing things. “All Sikhs are Singh’s, but not all Singh’s are Sikhs” being my personal favorite—he really cleared me up with that one.

It wasn’t until later that I discovered he’s 81 years old (meaning, of course, he’s lived through much of the history he recounted to us—entirely incredible)!

If you haven’t met Mr. Singh, perhaps his age doesn’t sound quite so astonishing, but it absolutely is.

I wouldn’t have put his age a year past 65, he was so strong and full of energy.

I asked him what his secret was, and he told me no meat, no alcohol, speaking truthful words and many blessings (I think running was in there somewhere too).

So there you go.

A prescription for longevity from the lovely Mr. Singh himself.

Love. Anna

I’m back.

And I’m alive.

And I love India.

I have never been so exhausted in my entire life (and while I recognize that I have dramatic tendencies, I am not exaggerating in the least bit about the extent of this exhaustion).

And my lungs are most surely as black as my nose boogies (the heavy pollution makes for a continual snack no matter what time of day), but it’s nothing the naan and loveliness of the people I met didn’t completely make up for.

It’s funny because of any port on the itinerary I feel some sort of pressure to churn out deep and profoundly eloquent thoughts, it’s India—and I know many of us are relatively well acquainted with images of India’s social problems (poverty being perhaps at the top of the list).

But the thing is, I’ll be processing these things for a long, long while.

So in the next few days, I’m going to rest. And journal. And chat with Allie. And let go of any pressure.

I’ll be posting a few simple experiences and anecdotes—whatever comes to me really.

And where there are holes, know I’m still processing, and will be ever so happy to share the thoughts with you as they come.

For now, sleep.

Love. Anna

Heading Up North

India has up and swallowed us whole.

I kid you not when I say my senses have been assaulted in every way possible, and I’m loving every minute of it.

Just thought I’d check in to let you know that I’m off to the Taj tomorrow, so I’ll be signing out for a few days.

Much Love,
Anna

The seas have been glassy lately.

It’s a calm I almost forgot the ocean was capable of, amidst miles of white caps and weeks of up and down, back and forth.

Today, I returned to the northern hemisphere.

And tomorrow, we greet Asia for the first time on our voyage as we port in Chennai.

India is a place I have longed to go for some time, and I know before arriving that five days will never do justice to a country that holds 1/6 of the word’s population in it’s borders. I’m grateful for the five days nonetheless.

This port more than any other is eliciting fear in students on board.

Fear of the poverty.

Fear of the smell.

Fear of the crowdedness.

These things have the marvelous potential to inconvenience personal agendas.

And I’m glad for it.

Inconvenience is good for the soul every once in awhile.

More to come.

Love. Anna

For the love of learning...

“Even a knee-high tsunami can kill you; the power of the fast-moving water can knock you down, then beat your body and head with debris, and drown you.”
-Quote from my Natural Disaster’s textbook

How I love the warm and fuzzy reading I get to do while sailing on the open sea!

Really now, the author of my textbook couldn’t find a more morbid way of phrasing these things. Every chapter, I get to learn of numerous ways the earth just might kill me on my travels.

But I do quite enjoy my Natural Disasters class (this in itself is some great miracle, seeing as though it’s a natural science class).

Mostly it’s because my professor is a petite British woman with an accent that is perfectly suited for the title of our course.

Every time she says “disaster” it’s with the luscious and ever so dramatic ‘long A’ sound.

disAHHster.

Geohazards and natural disAHHsters.

Brings such spice to the title, I think.

But then I would love my science class for the dialect of its professor, wouldn’t I?

Oh but it’s the little things, friends.

Love. Anna

Hello there, dear friends.

It’s been quiet on the blog-front these past few days as I am once again battling illness, and trying to fully recuperate before we get to India. (I would just like to go on record and say that I’m officially convinced flu shots do zip for my well-being—I’ve been sick more in the two months since I got my vaccine then I’ve been in the past two years)

Oh, but Mauritius was entirely superb!

Allie and I packed more fun into three days than I thought possible. We explored the diverse and very walkable city of Port Louis and did a submarine tour of the coral reef (we saw an octopus!) and spent a generous amount of our time as the only Americans lying on a beach with some of the truest turquoise water the ocean has left to offer.

And about getting to the beach.

We planned on taking a taxi. This is how most everyone was getting around while we were on the island, and we were told in our pre-port briefing to expect the taxi ride would cost about thirty U.S dollar. But we ran into a SASer on the second day who told us we could take a public bus to the beach for a fraction of the Mauritian rupee we would pay going by taxi, so the next day Allie and I set off to tackle the public transportation system of Mauritius.

Getting to the bus terminal was a breeze. Finding the right bus to get on took a little more work (and plenty of help from kind locals), but when all was said and done, we got to a beautiful beach on a local bus for twenty-four Mauritian rupee, which is the equivalent of about eighty-one U.S. cents.

A savings of  $29.19.

How’s that for some fun international thriftiness?

I’m quite proud.

Love. Anna

My Happy Place

Mauritius is the most delightfully random country on our itinerary. 

You know when you have to pull out a map and search hard to locate exactly where it is you’re going in the world (which I did almost a year ago now when I first started looking into SAS), that it is somewhere special—Mauritius is just one of those places.

I also think we should take just a moment to marvel at the fact that geographically, I am the farthest away from home that I will ever be on this journey (San Francisco and Mauritius are on exact opposite sides of globe), so in a lovely sort of way from here on out we are coming home.

The highlight of my day was the fruit and vegetable market in Port Louis.

There is no other way I’d rather spend an afternoon than walking through the hubbub of a new place, and watching the locals bargain amidst piles of fresh herbs and mounds of fragrant, dry spices (along with a host of other strange and marvelous vegetables I’ve never seen before in my life). Those of you who know me well, know that the produce aisle is my happy place, so for me, today was like the tiniest little taste of heaven on earth.

As we strolled, we bought mangos and pineapple and a local drink called alouda, which is almond milk with some kind of seed (almost like fish eggs or tapioca in texture) added to the bottom of the glass (so incredibly delicious).

Leave it to the smallest of simple things to tickle the soul the most—that’s what I was reminded of today from half way around the world.

So cheers to the simple things!

Love. Anna

Embarrassing Request

Allie and I lay awake in bed until the wee hours of the morning last night, deliriously singing every musical number from The Sound of Music (we’re cool like that).

Some of us were raised on animal crackers, apple juice, and Power Rangers—I was raised (among other things) on this epic film (the term “epic” generally applying to those movies that came two VHS tapes to a package, and take an entire Saturday afternoon to view).

The many hours I spent imprinting my five-year-old brain to the hills alive with music and the mountains confident women with swinging guitar cases are capable of climbing have remained with me throughout the years, which is why I was completely dismayed last night to discover that I have forgotten almost every word to the “Lonely Goatherd” song.

Now I recognize, mind you, that this is completely ridiculous, but it’s one of those tiny things that nags at your brain all day, as you find yourself searching for lyrics continually alluding you.

It’s at times like these that I miss Google most.

But because the Internet and I are on a break right now (a good thing, I assure you), I’m asking some kind soul to google the lyrics for me and to send them to two roommates in the middle of the Indian Ocean who are anxiously awaiting the finish of their musical review.

We are just that silly.

Many thanks and much love,
Anna

Dollars and Sense

The World is Flat.

That’s the title of the book we’re required to read for Global Studies.

While it’s hardly believable that the world has been flattened (I am, of course, circumnavigating it as we speak), I think the title captures a profound shift in reality for my generation.

It’s a shift that actually makes it feasible to set foot in sixteen countries by the time you’re twenty years old. Can you imagine?

A shift that allows you to drink coffee in Spain and play drums in Ghana and eat dim sum in China within whimsically short amounts of time—something a twenty-year-old a hundred years ago probably couldn’t conceive.

This freedom of movement my generation is so fortunate to have at our fingertips also implies that the injustices of the world are framed in much more personal ways than they’ve ever been before. My generation can take cameras to far away places and witness for themselves the unimaginable and grotesque realities of our world—we’re not as reliant on third party media sources to rally us into action.

I see that my generation cares. This is good news.

But.

I am also deeply concerned for my generation.

I’m concerned that this newfound proximity to the world’s injustice is failing to correlate with life change (my name being at the top of that list).

I’m concerned that we’re able to travel half way around the world, snap a few pictures holding an impoverished black child, upload them to Facebook when we get home, and think we’ve done something to change the world, meanwhile our lives continue to look much the same as they did before.

I’m concerned that we’ve been trained to care about poverty reduction (a good thing), while remaining unchallenged to examine poverty production—that is, how it’s created and continues to persist.

I’m concerned that my generation is trying to place band-aids on a wound the size of the developing world. I’m concerned that we’re holding our hands against the world’s lacerations, convinced all the while that the bleeding can be stopped with some feelings of sympathy or a vague solidarity we might share with the poor because we stood in a shack once—we, however, returned home to life as usual, and they continue to be unfed and underpaid.

We need band aids and hands that are willing to help, we absolutely do. These are valid and right responses to pain. But I have to wonder, if these wounds are actually going to see healing, will it take something more? Might it take investigating the cause of the matter to stop its perpetuation? Might this cost us something?

But alas, we’re functioning in an economic framework where scarcity’s implicit and rationality’s assumed. Fine and dandy…except that from where I stand, resources aren’t all that scarce on our side of the world, and human beings are far from rational when we spend on ice cream what could rightly feed entire continents. Are not there flaws in the foundational rhetoric used to organize our world system?

And maybe, just maybe, this all might have something to do with why our acts of charity, however well intentioned, never quite seem to be enough.

Because we are still playing within the boundaries of a broken system we feel we can’t escape—a system that so brilliantly perpetuates an organized creation of dissatisfaction. This, in turn, fuels a deadening cycle of detached, meaningless consumption—a cycle we feel helplessly subjected to and powerless to change. It’s also a cycle I’m convinced is contrary to the life of abundance offered through Jesus’ redemptive act on the cross—he died, after all, that we might know a satisfaction that surpasses dollars and cents.

Consumption itself is the most basic and necessary acts of our human nature—we consume to live. And so consumption is far from evil in and of itself, but only in so much as it acknowledges the basic rights and wellbeing of the party on the producing end of things. And my generation has a comatose enough conscience to know the ways in which modern consumption fails to acknowledge these rights, and lets it continue anyway.

The hard thing is that I don’t have easy, clean answers (which I know the devil’s advocate will be eager to point out when I’m painting with this broad of strokes). I do know of my longing for a way of living that perpetuates justice and abundance and, a recurring theme throughout my voyage, freedom.

I think I just might be getting ready to embark on a journey to discover what that looks like in the day to day. (And I’d rather not do it alone, if you’d like to join me)

I recognize, of course, that this will mean the rejection of many things—I feel scared about this—as I know already that I will fail many times. I take comfort in knowing that at the end of the day, such a failure will only leave me praying for grace and wrestling anew with the complexities of the world, which is perhaps the best possible place I could find myself.

Bitterness is never beautiful, and cynicism is the last thing the world needs more of, which is why I offer these words to my generation as gently and humbly as possible—knowing all the while that I am as guilty and confused as the next person—but struggling, in spite of it all, to say something that matters to the world.

Love. Anna

Day Six in Cape Town

My final day in Cape Town was absolutely fabulous.

Eight of us (including two lovely life-long learners) hired a taxi to take us down to Cape Point (the lowest point on the continent of Africa).

The drive was completely breathtaking! I think I’ve failed to mention in previous posts how incredibly beautiful South Africa is—because it has a Mediterranean climate (much like home), it rivals California in everything from beaches to wine lands, and truly would be an excellent spot for your next big vacation (it’s so much more developed than what you’re picturing it to be, trust me).

We saw penguins (you’re not all that far from Antarctica down there, I suppose) and also the exact place where the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean collide (you can actually see it, friends. It is SO cool!). We hiked to a lighthouse at the top of this cliff, where we looked out over the whole ocean blue—such a worthwhile trek! (We also got to see lots of ostriches and baboons...possibly the funniest looking animals I think there ever was).

Heading back, we drove through some of South Africa's wine lands, which are just now budding, and green as could be (as it is springtime in South Africa). We took plenty of pictures, dined well, and soaked in our last bits of fresh South Africa air, (and even made it back to the waterfront in time to call home) before boarding the ship again.

Almost everyone you talk to on board this boat will tell you that Cape Town was their favorite port; people were so devastated to leave. I wouldn’t call South Africa my very favorite of all (for more reasons than I have time to write at the moment. Ask me over coffee when I get home?), but I did have a marvelous time! There are things I experienced in South Africa that I will never forget as long as I live, and for that I am grateful.

I can hardly believe how fast time is flying. Mauritius (our next port) is the halfway point for our voyage!

Crazy, no?

I do miss you all very much, and wish you the very best this coming week.

Love. Anna

Day Five in Cape Town

Day Five in Cape Town was just one of those days where nothing went as planned.

We were going to hike Table Mountain that morning, but it was rainy and gray, and the trails were closed to the public due to the dangerous conditions—so that plan was nixed.

And we went to plan B, which was a tour of Robben Island (the place where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years). Except that the ferry was closed due to wind and rough seas, and consequently all tours were cancelled.

By that time, it’s raining and we’re freezing—so we taxied to the District Six Museum, which Christina hadn’t seen yet and was really hoping to. I was fine with it, as there is always more to learn about apartheid. Afterwards, we walked to the Castle of Good Hope (built in the 1600s and remains a military base), and watched the changing of the guard. At this point, the sun was starting to peak through the clouds, so we strolled through City Square and returned to the waterfront to go grocery shopping for snacks (I made my own trail mix) that Allie and I store underneath our beds in case of emergencies.

We had an AMAZING South African dinner that night at a restaurant right on the water. We all ordered different things and sampled off each other’s plates. I ordered a “breadie”, which I’m only now realizing is an extremely hard dish to describe…it’s chunks of meat (mine was lamb) cooked with almost artichoke-like flowers, covered in a sauce full of spices, and served over rice. Others in our group ordered various types of game—so I also got to sample wart hog (sorry, Pumba) and springbok (which is like South African deer), and both were quite lovely.

I’m off to a Global Studies study session for now (our midterm is quickly approaching, as is the miniscule little island called Mauritius that is our next port of call), but tomorrow is another reading day—hooray for no classes and a guilt-free nap!

Love. Anna

Day Four in Cape Town

My fourth day in Cape Town was spent with the NGO Operation Hunger.

The mission of Operation Hunger in South Africa is pretty basic: to feed the hungry bellies of children.

They don’t have a grand scheme for ending hunger or eliminating the cycle of poverty (at lease that I saw)—they simply see a need and work to meet it.

Bless them for it.

It looks generally like this: Operation Hunger seeks out people in a community who are working to provide sustenance to its youth. Mostly these are women who get knocks on their door from starving children. This is where Operation Hunger comes in and provides resources—everything from money to nutritional powder that can be added to pots of soup they prepare—to these women as they open their homes.

In the shantytown that our group visited, Operation Hunger is in the process of doing a nutritional assessment. So our job was to weigh and measure about fifty or so children, ranging from 6 months to twelve years of age.

After this task was completed and we charted the results, we went to a local church that opens it’s door for three or four older women to prepare food and serve children after school who haven’t eaten in awhile. We ladled soup and sat with the children who were quietly sipping their lunch from Tupperware containers.

My brain is still cranking through this experience…but it was absolutely worthwhile, and I’m glad I set aside time for it.

In other news, we’re hitting very rough seas going around the cape. When I woke up this morning, we had rocked and rolled enough to displace everything on our bedside table. The good news is that we were exhausted enough from being in port for six days to sleep through the night without being bothered by it.

Daytime, of course, is another story.

Hello seasickness pills.

Love. Anna

Dear Friends,

Meet Allison Jean Hart.



I'm not gonna lie...you have to be pretty fantastic to sport those sunglasses around the world.

And please do excuse my hair.

Love. Anna

Day Three in Cape Town

Highlight of Day Three: the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden.

Sprawling and set against Cape Town’s famous Table Mountain, these gardens were the perfect way to spend our dewy morning. I was stunned and completely refreshed by how quiet the gardens were (quiet is an adjective easily forgotten with all the engine noise and close proximity to five hundred other human beings).

We could have hiked these gorgeous grounds for hours and still had more to see, but after our fair share of peace and greenery, we had a lunch of ostrich burgers (almost as good as an ostrich steak).

Yes, real ostrich.

I feel so completely bizarre confessing to you that I am loving this meat!

It has a completely unique flavor and a very different texture than beef (and supposedly it’s much healthier, but I don’t have any facts to substantiate that one). It is light and tender and something I would highly recommend to any and all who get the chance to sample it.

The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring around the heart of Cape Town, and shopping at Green Market Square, finishing off our day with dessert and Mrs. Doubtfire (gets me laughing out loud every time).

Cheers to a very fine Monday!

Love. Anna

Day Two in Cape Town

Sunday in South Africa was quite nice.

(Minus, of course, my two friends Mucus and Flem that have made their way from my nose to my lungs.)

Months ago, I signed up for a Cape Malay cooking adventure, and I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a hit or a miss (you never quite know when you choose SAS trips), but it turned out to be a huge win!

“Malay” is a blanket term used in South Africa to describe any peoples from South or Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia…to name just a few countries) brought over as slaves during the spice trade, and who are primarily Muslim.

During the apartheid, the Malay people were assigned their own quarter or district of town, and were forbidden to paint their houses. Once the apartheid ended, families in the neighborhood began to paint their homes all kinds of bright colors to mark special events like a wedding or a birth.

Today the neighborhood looks like an easter basket of sorts, with each house painted a different taffy colored hue.

We walked around the Malay district for awhile, taking in deep breaths of turmeric-scented air. And as for the highlight of my day, we got to go into the home of a local for a cooking lesson. There is a small South African tourist agency that has contracted with different women in the Malay community who, by hosting small groups for in-home cooking classes, are empowered to contribute to the financial well being of their families.

Hamida is a wife and mother to three girls (a gender combo I’m partial to myself) ages 13, 9, and 4. She told us that she got bored of mundane housewife tasks, and decided that she wanted to host international students and teach Malay cooking.

We all chatted about Ramadan and rugby and our thresholds for onion chopping, while attempting to fold samosas just as Hamida had instructed us.

After our fill of chicken curry and samosas and chili bites and “twist sisters” (which is like a South African spice doughnut), we said our farewells and headed back to the waterfront.

For the evening, my friend Lila (this girl truly should be the textbook definition of lovely) and I had some much needed conversation and (for very different reasons) shed a few much-needed tears, while sipping our not-needed but profusely enjoyed pots of red tea.

A day of warm scents, full flavors, and a new (and already dear) friend is a day I’ll take anytime.

Love. Anna

Day One in Cape Town

Yesterday was a strange day.

We disembarked the ship to find the beautiful waterfront, just as we were told we would.

If you took elements of the Glendale Galleria, Downtown Disney, and Pier 39, and mixed them together with a stir stick, you’re able to get a ruff picture of what I am talking about.

Everyone relished in the comfort of the familiar, enjoyed some retail therapy, and walked around taking pictures and eating ice cream cones (along with some of the ten-percent white South Africans).

That afternoon, I had an FDP for my Warfare and the Modern Era class to three different black townships, as well to the District Six Museum, which preserves for the world the reality of apartheid in South Africa (officially revoked in 1994…I was five years old. If you’re not quite sure exactly what apartheid is, please google.)

So we got on our coach bus, drove 10 minutes, and got off our coach bus in a shantytown where one million men, women, and children make their homes out of cardboard and variegated tin. Others live in horribly dilapidated government housing with two families to a room the size of a master bath.

We walked through these streets like a herd of little, white ducks following our tour guide like mother hen, our professor reminding us to stay close and to hurry up, as we had a schedule to keep. Pictures were snapped, smiles exchanged, a few darling little black children held, and back on the coach we went.

Back to the waterfront.

Where everyone relished once again in the comfort of the familiar, enjoyed some retail therapy, walked around eating their ice cream cones and waiting anxiously for the clubs to open for the night.

I’m troubled.

And wrestling.

The world is such a lot for my heart to handle.

Love. Anna