I went skydiving, I went skydiving, I went skydiving! Okay, so I’m still high off the fact that yesterday, within three hours of being in Cape Town, I free-fell from 10,000 feet. So cool. I got off the ship with two other girls, Alyssa and Lindsey, who I barely knew before hand, without any pre-arrangements to skydive, and within fifteen minutes we were signed up and heading towards the pick-up spot for the 10:30 skydiving group. We had worried that all the tours would already be full, but instead we were the first group on Semester at Sea to take the forty-minute drive out of Cape Town to the field where our plane took off. It all fell together so well.

There ended up being nine of us total in my group, as some other SAS kids had reserved spots beforehand and as soon as we arrived at the giant silver shed that sat alone on a plain, they were rushing us. I happened to be the first one to hit the bathroom, and in turn, the first one ready to skydive, so they called me over instantly and I stepped into my harness. My guide, or I guess my “tandem-master”, Hugo, introduced himself to me and walked out of the shed, motioning for me to follow him. It all happened so fast and before I knew it I was in a tiny, rickety plane ten thousand feet above the ground freaking out silently. There was another SASer skydiving with me as well, Eric, and we both just kept looking at each other, wide-eyed, saying nothing. The only training I received for skydiving consisted of Hugo telling me to stick my legs out of the plane when he opened the door, which was right beside me. He also told me to look up, hold on to my harness, and take a deep breath when the door was opened. And that’s what I did…and it was amazing!

Hugo and I sat on the edge of the plane, feet dangling, ten thousand feet above civilization. I didn’t look down, I was afraid I would fall before he was ready. Instead I held onto my shoulder harnesses as though I were squeezing a bookbag to my back, and looked up at the plane wing which was above my head. And then we rolled out of the plane and fell. Only it doesn’t feel like you are falling. In fact, I didn’t have the type of adrenaline rush you get when you do free fall rides at amusement parks, because it doesn’t feel like you are falling. Instead you are flying, the wind rushing at your face so loudly that you can’t hear yourself screaming. It’s a completely different type of rush. For about thirty-five seconds I screamed and cheered, my arms outstretched, staring straight down at the ground. I was so happy I didn’t even think about my parachute opening, or worrying that it wouldn’t. When Hugo finally pulled the cord and the parachute slowed our descent it felt as though we were barely moving anymore. My legs shot up in the air and my body bounced like a rag doll as we were caught. “Thank you so much! Oh my gosh! That was awesome!” I kept telling him for the rest of our descent.

Back down on the ground there were about twenty SASers total now, all anxious to hear what I had to say. I loved being the one to go first because it gave me the chance to talk about the experience right away with those who hadn’t gone yet. I was talking a mile a minute. Oh and I thought about it, and I was the first SASer off of our voyage to skydive! Go me! By Sunday at least half of the students will have.
I still can’t believe I skydived. It’s one of those things I’ve never wanted to do, even thinking about doing it used to make me sick to my stomach. Man.

I spent today drinking wine. I took a tour of the winelands with four other people, stopped at four wineries and tasted over 20 different kinds of wine. Pretty cool. More about that later.

In other news, we have an extra two days in Cape Town now in order to make up for Kenya. After that we’re heading to some island off the east coast of Madagascar…starts with an M I believe. It’s a resort island, not exactly where I want to be going, but oh well.

Oh, and my family is crazy and I love them for it. I also love them for sending me pictures that make me laugh out loud.…

Plus my favorite quote from mom’s last email “ i know you're having the time of your life. reminds me of that song from the movie where patrick swayze says, "nobody puts baby in the corner!”

One more thing, I’d like to give a shout out to the one and only Shingle Shirl…love you, hope you get better soon!

K. I miss you all. Cape Town is awesome. I went skydiving.

No More Kenya

I’ll be in Cape Town tomorrow and yes, I’m very excited to both be in South Africa and get off this ship at last. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or “The Tuts”, as everyone calls him, will be getting off the ship once we get to port, which is too bad because although I never really talked to him, I loved his presence and his loud laugh that could be heard across the dining room at meals. This past week I learned about apartheid, which beforehand I knew nothing about, and have really grown to appreciate who he is and what he has none for South Africa. I finally realize what a big deal it is that he has been on our ship for the last week.

In other news we are no longer going to Kenya!! Yeah…bummer. Apparently another safety warning has been placed on the country and tourists are urged to avoid the entire west coast of Africa. The U.S. Navy isn’t even docking in Kenya right now. I refuse to complain too much about the safari I won’t be going on anymore because regardless, I’m still traveling around the world and seeing more than I would ever see in Chicago. But yeah, still a disappointment. They haven’t announced what country we will be going to instead, but everyone is pretty excited to find out. For the last two days all the students have been gossiping about where we could possible port between South Africa and India, a lot of people are rooting for Madagascar, which I don’t even think is a possibility.

Oh yeah, and I got the role as an executive producer on the ship’s television station, SeaTV! Four of us (2 guys, 2 girls) were selected out of over forty applicants so I feel pretty honored. We had our first meeting with the rest of the people on board who want to be involved last night and it went really well. Afterwards I sat down the other execs and arranged interviews for producers for our news program, which will be tonight, and got notes out to all those interested in being anchors for the news program about auditions which are right after Cape Town. I can already tell that SeaTV is going to take up a lot of my time, especially in the evenings, but all the same I’m really excited about this opportunity and am crossing my fingers that it doesn’t overwhelm me.

So yeah…Cape Town tomorrow! Hope all is well.


P.S. I’ll email you back right after South Africa Mil!

I'm a shellback!

Today was Neptune Day. Really it should have been celebrated the day we crossed the Equator, but due to our having just started classes the deans didn’t want to give us a day off until now. So classes were cancelled for the day and the entire student body slept. Well maybe not everyone, but Kathryn and I definitely did. We took a two hour nap after lunch which has left me feeling quiet revived.

But anyway, so it was Neptune Day. At 7:45 all the students were awakened by the sound of drumming and whistling up and down each hall. Crew members giggled as they paraded the building, their faces painted, wearing silver hats made of foil. The drumming and pounding on the door didn’t get Kathryn and I out of bed for long and we were soon passed out again. At 9:00 “Queen Minerva” sang a tune over the loudspeaker about how the opening ceremonies were about to begin on deck seven and that all the pollywogs who were brave enough to become shellbacks should report. We pulled ourselves out of bed and still wearing our pajamas, climbed the stairs to seven. Have I mentioned yet that I live in the basement of the ship and that I walk sooo many flights of stairs each day?

The captain of our ship was painted completely green wearing a long wig and a crown and one of the deans had creepy red paint on his face and he too was adorned in some type of “sea god” outfit (really though it was a white robe with bows stuck all over him). Anyway, they made this big deal out of Neptune Day and all the shellbacks talked in deep voices about how we were entruding on their territory.

Eventually the initiation started and student after student lined up to have “fish guts” poured on them. No one’s really sure what the fish guts actually were, we’re thinking a mixture of oatmeal, water, and something else…but regardless, they were being dumped on all these people who would then jump into the pool immediately after. Before leaving the pool each student, or teacher as there were many of them getting in on the action too, had to state that they honored the ocean and kiss a fish, which was probably the most disgusting part of it since it was a real fish and we had to kiss its head. Kathryn and I stood watching as more and more people were convinced to join in on the ceremony by peer pressure. We refused. We hadn’t worn our swimsuits up to the deck like everyone else had and that was our excuse.

But then Carrie arrived and I could tell that she sort of wanted to be a part of it…and I did too. So we sprinted down to our rooms and threw shitty clothes on and made it back up to the deck as the line had ended and the sea gods were searching for more victims. The fish guts were dumped on me, I jumped into the pool, and I kissed a fish…I am now a shellback!! Kathryn eventually gave into the pressure too and had fish guts dumped on her as well.

After the initiation, the head shaving began. Crowds of students gathered around as a variety of people, both boys and girls, had their heads shave. One family of two boys all had their heads shaved, including the mom. It was hard to watch some of the girls become bald in a matter of five minutes. Don’t worry, I didn’t give into this method of initiation.

So yeah the rest of the week will be somewhat monotonous since our “no classes” day is over and we don’t arrive in Cape Town till Monday.

Oh and they covered our porthole again!! It’s so frustrating. It’s hard enough for me to stay awake on this ship as it is, but now to have no sunlight whatsoever? I took a nap in complete darkness today and slept an hour later than I had planned, I blame it on the whole no window thing.

K. I have to watch a documentary on Guns, Germs, and Steel; a book I have not yet read. They’re airing the second part of the documentary tonight and I’m totally hooked by the theory that geography has determined the fate of all societies. Read the book.

Much love.

Brazil!!

It’s nearly midnight and if I stand to look outside of my porthole I will see Brazil slowly vanishing. Kathryn is on her bed across from me, laptop in front of her, hood up on her pink Semester at Sea sweatshirt. I’m exhausted and can’t decide whether or not I should even begin describing the last five days right now. I’ll try.

I never ended up sleeping on the deck like I had planned. The idea of waking up and seeing Brazil immediately sounded romantic and all, but the rain kept us from sleeping outside. Instead Kathryn and I pulled ourselves out of bed at 5:15 am and made our way to the top deck where Carrie already was and watched the sun rise over the distant city of Salvador. It was the first sunrise that I can ever remember seeing. Sam and I attempted to see the sun rise when we were in Maine last summer and woke up at 4:00 am to drive to a lookout point. We waited for nearly two hours before we realized that the clouds were covering the sun and our chance to be one of the few Americans to see the sun rise first that morning.

Kathryn and I spent the day exploring the markets in Salvador. Two other girls, Cynthia and Sheryl, started the day off with us but we lost them at some point. The markets were within a ten minute walk from our ship and were, to go along with the general theme of this semester, overwhelming. There was stand after stand of jewelry, hand-made earrings, necklaces, and it was all so cheap. I was buying earrings for less than $1.50 American dollars. I got really good at bartering too and through my stubbornness was able to lower the prices for nearly everything I bought.

I fell asleep. And it's Sunday now...but I'll resume...

So we basically roamed the city all day. Salvador is split up into two sections, lower city and upper city. You have to ride an elevator to get to the other half of town by foot. It was only like a 5 cent ride but they squeeze as many people as possible into it.

Upper city was beautiful. The buildings surrounded a center square and around each corner there was yet another large center. And the architecture was beautiful. Pretty much every building in upper Salvador was built by the Portugese how ever many years ago…I wish I had done the city orientation because I found myself fascinated by the beauty and wishing I knew more about the city’s history. Although I have never been to Europe I felt like I was walking down the streets of London based upon the buildings that surrounded me. The streets were full of Brazilians walking around, holding out boards of their jewelry. A capoiera group was performing in the main center of upper city, beating their drums, playing their barimbas (it was called something like that), and bending their bodies as they danced around one another.

For lunch Kathryn, Sheryl, Cynthia, and I ate at this buffet which had way too many types of meat for my liking. Kathryn is pretty sure she ate a piece of what we soon realized was cow intestine. I have slowly had a falling out with meat. I still eat it, but if it’s not chicken or fish I’m pretty iffy about it, especially if it’s ground.

Our first night in Brazil was spent attending this welcome reception through Semester at Sea. About three hundred SASers were there and another fifty Brazilian students. They drove us in buses to this old building that had an open, but covered courtyard in the center. My bus was the first to arrive and when we entered the courtyard it sort of felt like a middle-school dance. The Brazilian students were scattered among the tables, talking to one another, but definitely noticing that we had arrived. I sat down at the first table, which was also the table with four cute guys, and the girls I was with followed. I ended up talking to the boys for quite some time; it was really entertaining. Only a couple of them could speak clear English but they translated what the other guys were trying to say to me for them. It was a lot of small talk since you can only go so in depth with a conversation when the language barrier is evident, but I had so much fun talking to them.

So yeah, the welcome reception was awesome. A capoeira group performed for us and taught us their chants so we could join in. For the record, capoeira is a type of dance-I guess you could call it. Or maybe it would be best to refer to it as a type of movement. Two people stand in the center of a circle as everyone else sings and plays instruments. The men in the center basically look as though they are fighting, making aggressive but fluid movements, but barely ever touching one another. They do cartwheels over each other. Stand on their heads and kick their legs, and bend their bodies around one another, ducking and backing out of the way as the other makes an “attack” motion. It’s really cool to watch and definitely a skill that takes years to acquire. Capoeira is part of African culture, I think I learned that Brazilian slaves used it as a means of letting out aggression during times of slavery and it has just been passed down ever since. It seemed to be a big part of Salvador as it is primarily Afro-Brazilians.

Anyway, enough about capoeira. There was also this drum band made up of young children that performed for us. There were about fifteen of them, ranging in ages from like seven to fourteen, and they were really talented! An older singer accompanied them and the kids played their snares and bass drums like experts as they did a routine around the floor. I got a kick out of the Chucks I saw a lot of the little boys wearing.

The final performance was by this amazing band called Sudaka. Apparently they just released their CD in the U.S. I don’t know if it’s because I was in the mood to dance or for lots of bass but I was in love with the music they performed. There was no singing, well there was but it was all prerecorded loops and they played a variety of rhythm instruments around the loop with a guitar being used every once in a while. The strobes were going and all the kids at the reception were dancing to the loud technoish music. Ahhh it was so cool. So yeah let me know if you can find any info about them on the internet, as I’m too cheap to use my internet minutes on looking it up. Dad, I’m sure you’ve already googled them.

I spent the next three days in Lencois (pronounced Len-soyse), which is this tiny town in central Brazil on the outskirts of a national park. The main guide for our trip, Roy, had a really cool story. He’s from New York and headed down to Lencois for Peace Corp. about twenty years ago. He fell in love with the area and convinced Brazil, or the national park service, or something like that, to turn the area into a national park. About ten years ago it became an official park and, in turn, he became the director of it until he stepped down from his position a couple years ago and is now a tour guide.

The park was beautiful. We hiked each day that we were there. On the first day we took a short hike to these water holes where we swam for a while. Afterwards we got a tour through the sand caves nearby which essentially are huge boulders wedged in a way so as to form caves. On day two we did a full-day hike, which wasn’t as hard as I had expected. The trip description had said the hikes would be “strenuous” and in my mind I was picturing climbing a mountain, like in Alaska, so I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that the hike wasn’t very vertical. We were basically jumping from boulder to boulder, making our way up a river. There was a lot of leaping from rock to rock and pulling oneself up onto large boulders. Around lunchtime we reached this amazing waterfall with a huge swimming hole. We spent about an hour there, jumping off the cliff (which terrified me), walking underneath the waterfall, and eating our lunches, which included a mango (it made my day). We left the waterfall and headed back after lunch, going a similar way to get back to town but took a slightly different path which led us to a natural waterslide that was about thirty meters long and ten meters wide. It was huge and there were already a bunch of SAS kids sliding down it when my group arrived. So after changing back into my suit I hiked up the side of the waterslide with Megan, one of the girls I hung out with during my time in Lencois. Three local guys stood at the top and guided me as to where to sit down. Then they basically pushed me for a few seconds before the water picked me up and rushed me down the slide. It was really scary because I was just waiting to hit a sharp rock, but it was surprisingly smooth as I flew down and crashed into the water.

On the last day in Lencois only half of the people on the trip turned out for the hike. A lot of people had gotten trashed the night before and others were too worn out from our previous hike. We drove through the park for about an hour until we got to this huge rock that sat alone in the valley. A cross sat on top of it and Megan and I wondered how on earth that cross got up there. “How would you even climb up there?” I wondered outloud. I couldn’t help but laugh when I found out that we were about to hike up the back side of it. It turned out to be a pretty easy hike for me though and the view up top was amazing.

So yeah, Lencois was definitely a good time and was totally worth the six hour drive to get there. My roommate for the two nights that we were there, Leslie, turned out to be really cool and we spent most of our time together. And our hotel was sweet. Each room came with a hammock that hung outside the door and they served us meals, which were a little too American for our liking, in this huge covered room that had no doors and allowed the warm air from outside to flow in.

The town had tons of little shops, diners, and bars…all of which were open till at least 11 pm. On both nights we ventured into the town, which was unbelievably safe, to have a few drinks. In the spirit of Brazil, I stuck with Caperinas, a lime margarita type drink that’s loaded with vodka. The town was full of SAS kids and it was especially evident at night. About seventy students went on my trip but probably another fifty or so traveled independently and were staying in hostels for a few days. That was probably my only complaint for the entire trip and I’m sure it will be consistent in each country. It’s just really hard to get away from the mobs of American students when we’re in port. It’s most evident at night because there are fewer places to go.

So anyway, we got back to Salvador on Friday at about 8:00 pm and after showering, Leslie, her roommate Casey, and I headed into the city to check out the night life. Don’t worry mom, we didn’t go alone. We traveled to upper city with this guy Adam who doesn’t look intimidating at all, but is super tall, and a bunch of other girls as well. There was sooo much night life! Most of the stores were still open and people walked around outside as groups with guitars played in various locations. A drumband headed down one of the alleys with a group of Brazilians dancing behind them. We jumped in and attempted to dance as well. Eventually we reached the reggae bar we had hoped to find and spent the rest of our night there. After a few drinks I was on the dance floor, as were quite a few other SAS kids, but there were still a lot of locals hanging out. This skinny old man, probably about 70 years ago and dressed from head to toe in flowing white clothing, danced for us and with us practically the entire night. He was hilarious. He was moving around randomly, getting low to the ground, waving his arms, and clapping every once in a while. I made it a point to dance with him.

I also danced with the one Brazilian boys at the bar that I definitely found cute. He was wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt and a Rastafarian type hat and kissed my cheeks when he introduced himself. Our dancing basically consisted of him doing some type of step and me trying to imitate him and failing numerous times. At one point we were skanking together in circles though which made my day and made me think of how much I miss skanking with Kari. We left the bar around midnight, since a bunch of us had to get up in the morning, but I heard a rumor that later on that night Antoinne, one of the guys who went on the Venezuela trip with me, got his head smashed into a wall while he was waiting to use the bathroom. I ran into him this morning and we didn’t talk long but he said it wasn’t that bad and he was just a little bruised. Pretty scary all the same. There are a lot of stories traveling around the ship, apparently some girls got mugged the first day we were in Salvador in broad daylight, but the guy was caught and the camera that was stolen was returned.

My last day in Brazil wasn’t much to write home about. I had to do an FDP, which is basically a field program that’s required for a class. I spent my day on the “Coastal Environments Near Salvador” excursion and learned nothing. It was a pretty big disappointment. I’m in Geohazards and nothing we learned applied to any of my classes. On top of that, I couldn’t even hear what our guide was saying most of the time. So yeah, I’ve already decided that I’m not attending the other required FDP in Cape Town, because I got nothing out of it and it took up an entire day….Oooh but hold up, there was one cool part of the day. We went to Praia de Forte, this beach up north, and got to walk on exposed coral reef because it was low tide. I don’t totally agree with the idea of walking on the reef because there are soooo many habitats within the reef and I felt like we were disturbing them. But I did see crabs, sea slugs, and tiny tropical fish, which was really cool. I got down on my haunches at one point and stared at the reef and within one tiny section I could see dozens of baby crabs walking about and larger ones peeking their heads out of crevices to see if I was still there. Without a doubt, the highlight of my day.

So yeah, back on the ship. There’s so much more I could type into my blog but I don’t want to bore anyone more than I already have and I kinda like keeping it to myself.

Last night Kathryn and I stayed up talking about what we do and don’t want in a guy and then after being as picky as possible, laughed at the fact that we were single.

This morning at breakfast Archbishop Desmond Tutu was sitting at table near me. He’ll be on the ship with us for the next week, taking over several global studies lectures, until we reach South Africa. It’s a pretty big deal and Carrie has been picking which dining room we eat in based upon where Desmond is most likely to be.

Oh and during global studies today I noticed a girl wearing a Wahlert High School shirt so I approached her as soon as class was over and as I had hoped she’s from Dubuque. She knew all the Galena Wahlert kids, including my Brenda Houy and is best friends with Abbie Hillard. She was listing all these names of people that I haven’t heard in such a long time: Cole Newcomer, Brad Walsh, Dayna Lapidus, even Alicia Fleege. We were both pretty excited to meet someone else from our area.

I applied for the position of Executive Producer for Sea TV, the student channel aboard the ship. It’s the first time they’ve ever had a student-produced TV station. Anyway, I have my interview tomorrow and I doubt I’ll get it, but as long as I get to host a show here and there I’ll be happy. Although I’m pretty psyched that I get an interview. The daily Dean’s Memo said that over forty people applied and only eight are being interviewed. So even if I don’t make it I at least know I made it somewhat far.

Tonight is our “sea social.” The rooms on the ship are broken up into sections known as seas and so my sea, the Aegean Sea, is supposed to dress up and hang out in the faculty lounge tonight I guess. We’re allowed to order drinks if we want but Kathryn and I already decided to play it cheap and stay sober.

I have so much to do. I have three papers due soon, deadlines are very vague for some of my classes, and I haven’t even started my readings for tomorrow.

Oh and get this, in the next week we will lose five hours as we cross the Atlantic! Tonight marks the beginning of it all and we have to set our clocks forward an hour. Just what I need…less sleep.

K I’m done rambling.

But in case I don’t blog before the 21^st…everyone needs to make sure to wish my mom, Kimberly Sue Kelly a happy 55^th birthday on Wednesday!! Whoohoo! Drop her a line…annies.mim@hotmail.com

Hope all is well.

I’ll be in Brazil tomorrow. The ship and all the reading I’ve been doing is getting to me so I’m looking forward to it even more so than I should be. I’m sleeping on the deck tonight so I can wake up tomorrow morning and see Brazil instantly.

Oh and they put a cover on our porthole. I live on the second floor and the waves are getting too high so as a precaution they covered our windows and screwed them so tightly shut that not even an ounce of light leaks in our room. What’s worse is that I totally wasn’t decent when they came around to our room the other night, pounding on the door. Kathryn let the woman in and behind her followed two other men. “I’m not decent,” I attempted to say as they walked in but it was too late. So I just sat there in a sweatshirt and my underwear as they sealed the window and carried on a conversation with me. Kathryn got a kick out of because just that night her and Carrie had been giving me a hard time about my love for lack of clothing.

Our first global studies exam was this morning and everyone made such a huge deal out it. I studied way more than I needed to.

The waves are picking up now. I have natural curve in my walk because it’s near impossible to walk in a straight line here. Working out is a joke, especially on the treadmill.

I miss home, particularly Galena lately for some reason. But once I’m in Brazil I’ll be great. I’m going on a hiking trip for a few days and I’ve already decided that it will kick my ass.

Hope all is well on the homefront. Much love.

I'm crossing the Equator today! whooohoo! I made sure to lay earlier so as to feel the full effect of the sun.

Venezuela!!

I spent the last four days of my voyage in Venezuela and honestly, I have no idea how to even begin describing everything I got to do and see. It was amazing. I didn’t do any trips through Semester at Sea for this port and instead did an organized independent trip into Merida, which is an Andes mountain town about twelve hours away from the our port city, La Guaira. I bolded the coolest parts of the trip in case anyone is like me and doesn’t have much of an attention span…Millie.

We got into La Guaira on Saturday morning. Rolling green hills covered in hundreds, maybe thousands of favelas (shanties) made up most of the landscape. The favelas varied in color, yet were all finished off with a tin roof and obviously had no plumbing of any sort. We learned in global studies days earlier that LaGuaira was a much more colorful city before a mud slide killed thousands of residents years ago. After looking at the arrangement of homes on the mountains it didn’t surprise me that a mud slide could bring so much damage to this city. Those who didn’t live in shanties lived in huge apartment buildings that had bars on every window. Hanging from the bars were wet t-shirts and other laundry. I had expected to see poverty. After all, in our pre-port lecture that we had the night before reaching Venezuela they warned us over and over about the risk of being mugged in the city due to it. They really worked to scare us, telling us at one point that Venezuela has a higher murder rate than any other Latin American country.

So anyway, we got into LaGuaira and within an hour or so thirty SAS kids and me boarded a bus for Merida. The tour agent who organized the trip for us, Ben, was a really nice guy. He got us our hotel in Merida, set up the canyoning, the cable car ride, and the paragliding, and made sure we got everything we needed along the way.

The drive that afternoon was interesting. We drove through Caracas, which was basically just like LaGuaira but much larger. Then as we neared a tollbooth shortly after we were met with dozens and dozens of people standing out on the streets selling anything and everything. They were walking up and down the highway holding up life jackets, cloves of garlic, huge lollipops, etc. Since we had such a long drive to Merida we got to drive through country neighborhoods as well. There were children sitting on the sidewalk, a man having his head shaved in his backyard, raw meat hanging from various booths, fences made out of twigs, etc.

We stopped for “lunch” at 4:30 pm and by then we were all starving, as we had assumed the lunch included on the trip would occur by 2 at the latest. Three huge tables were set and waiting for us, taking up the entire roadside restaurant we stopped at. The meal was definitely authentic. One of the dishes, the main one, was basically a huge plate of meat, and not just one type of meat. There were like four or five different types all mixed together on the plate. I just couldn’t do it. Ha if only Allison could have seen it. I dug into the meat though and uncovered some hidden chicken which made my day. Oh and then outside, in the backyard of this restaurant, this family had a garden and in it were two cages that held about five or six green parrots. I was standing around alone taking pictures and the bird greeted me! “Hola!” It said loudly. This bird turned out to be the talker of the group and for the remainder of the time we were there it kept saying “Hola!” followed by this sing-songy tune that sounded like it was laughing at us. Seriously, over and over until we left. I totally thought of the birds back home, Ollie and Jesse, and I really wish you guys could have heard how hilarious these parrots were. Mom you would have loved it. I could not get enough of it. Before we left the restaurant the owners got a picture with all of us and we were told that the picture was going to be in some newspaper. Ben is planning on scanning the article and sending it to us soon.

After lunch we drove a while more and headed to the Maria Lionsa Mountain that night and spent a good three hours there. A village of people live within the mountain and practice black magic as part of their religion. Ben told us that we were the “first organized group to visit Maria Lionza” and in turn, the state made a huge deal out of it. They loaded us into these smaller buses and we drove into the mountains surrounded by police escorts. The ratio of police to students was about 50:50. We were all freaking out with excitement because these state police had guns and their lights were flashing as they led us, and followed us, into the mountain. None of us knew what to expect when we got there and it just made us even more anxious. Before going I knew very little about Maria Lionsa, but today in global studies I learned that it is best summed up as a cult of African, Indian, and Christian beliefs and cultures and that it is mainly practiced by those who live in great poverty within Venezuela.

I don’t even know how to explain what we saw. It was unreal. We got there on a Saturday night which I guess it like the big spiritual night for those who live there and there was so much going on. There was drumming going on in the distance when we arrived and eventually we were led to it. A row of young men sat on the ground with drums while made fifty other Venezuelans stood around behind them, many puffing cigars. In front of the men were two cages, for lack of a better word, full of candles, images, crosses, etc. Within a half an hour we were getting cleansed as a member of the village hung a black pot of coals and incense from his hand and moved it around our bodies. One man gestured to me, allowing me to go into one of the cages to pray, after I took my shoes off of course. While this whole cleansing thing was taking place there was a woman dancing frantically within a circle of people, she was in some sort of a trance. Later an older woman who had been cleansing us earlier went into a trance, dropping her cigar on the ground and moving her body around spastically while others sang. There were a lot of rituals going on throughout the small village, made up of tents by the way, so we moved on to another area after a while. The second ritual was crazy and I almost laughed at one point because this man was soooo scary. He was stomping around in a red cape, sniffing the air, and then walking up to random SAS kids and saying something to them in a deep devilish voice. One girl was totally caught off guard and nearly cracked up. It turns out he was blessing us, but at the time we didn’t realize this. He kept saying the word “babies” in his speech. Like he would speak in his native tongue yet was using the word “babies” while talking. Ben later explained that he must have asked someone what the English word for children was, referring to us, and babies was what he was told. Either way, he totally scared me and I purposely stood in the back for this ritual to avoid his coming up to me. The third ritual we saw right before leaving was for this woman’s birthday and there were people standing around her, chanting some song over and over, as she danced. Someone sipped wine and blew it on her back, and at some point she went into a trance and was moving around as though she was possessed. We left soon after that. One student remarked, “Wow, they’re drunk,” as we walked away. And yeah, I’m pretty sure they were. The whole night up at the “magic mountain” as it’s called was just so surreal, I don’t know how we could be so lucky as to see as much as we did while we were there. I mean, we went to an area where few tourists venture and there were hundreds of people in this village just doing their thing.

….so yeah, amazing. We got back on the buses and drove through the night, arriving in Merida at like 9:00 am. A third of us went canyoning, another third went off for the cable car tour, and my group was left waiting around for our turn to do something. Before I go any further, can I just say that I waited around in Venezuela for a majority of the time I was there. To go to breakfast with Ben we waited outside for nearly an hour past the time we were scheduled. For canyoning they drove us to the bottom of the mountain only to wait for almost two hours for our turn. When I went paragliding I was up on the mountain for three hours before I got in the air. I think that was the most difficult thing for me to get used to: the perception of time in Venezuela. Nothing was on schedule and when we were told that we had to wait an hour for lunch, it really meant three hours. I’m so used to everything being on time and happening at the time scheduled that to arrive in Merida three hours later than expected was surprisingly off to me. It became a joke to us eventually, and I became a pro at shrugging it off and saying “ah Venezuelan time”.

So moving ahead in the day, we eventually get to go canyoning. By the time the first group walked out of the woods in their wet suits it was 3:00 pm, we were scheduled to go begin at 1:00 pm. I’m mentioning this because they still took us canyoning and because we were two hours behind schedule the sun went down and the forest became a pitch black while we were canyoning. On top of that, they didn’t pack a flashlight! No joke. I had to repel down a dark drop off while being yelled at in Spanish. I was basically completely terrified at that point. Someone hiked the trail from the other direction to find us eventually and the twelve of us shared one flashlight as we attempted get back. There were kids falling off the trailer and tripping on rocks. It was definitely an experience. I learned how to say “I’m scared of the night. I want some light,” in Spanish, too!

Okay, so anyway, about the whole canyoning thing…the group that went before us got back, warning us that it was ‘really scary’ and refusing to tell us much more. We piled back into the back of some small SUV’s and were driven up this mountain. The drive got sketchier and sketchier as we went. We were so close to rolling over a cliff that I had to rest my hand on my forehead and close my eyes at one point because I was freaking myself out. I’ve had so many “Don’t tell mom about this,” moments because I know she would just gasp if she saw some of the stuff I did this last four days. You would, mom.

So to get to the beginning of the canyoning trail we first had to hike in our swimsuits for about twenty minutes. It was nothing too demanding, but there was cow shit all over and to fall would have been horrible since we were all half naked…all the boys were just wearing boxers.

Once we got to the river we stepped into wetsuits and started our hike down the river. To sum up the canyoning experience, it basically involved repelling down waterfalls, jumping off small cliffs, rock sliding…aka hiking down a mountain via a river. It was awesome. The first waterfall we got to was only like ten meters, nothing too big, but I went first so as to not pysch myself out while I watched others. I barely even knew what I was doing because the only training we got was right before we repelled and I couldn’t even understand what the guy was saying. Man, it was so cool. I was underneath these waterfalls, being blasted by water, on multiple occasions. The highest waterfall we did was thirty meters.

We eventually made it back into town and we were served dinner by the company that took us canyoning. Thomas, the owner of the company, hung around and talked to us for quite some time. He got started on the whole New Orleans situation, updating us since we hadn’t heard anything since entering Venezuela, and soon enough he was going on about Bush and our government and the problems within it. It was really interesting to listen to this man talk. He knew more about our government than any of us did and he had a definite opinion. So of course we were curious about his view of Hugo Chavez. He said quite a bit but overall he seemed happy with Chavez because he’s actually done something, as he put it, as opposed to past leaders who have accomplished nothing.

By the time we were done with dinner I was exhausted and ready to shower and get to bed, but everyone was planning on going on and drinking cheap beer. So I sucked it up, showered, and took a rickety taxi to this pub with a group of girls. There were already at least 30 SAS kids there when we arrived. Beer was sooo cheap! I drank five beers and paid $2.50 American at the most. Some of the guys got carried away though and were so sloshed the next morning that they missed their canyoning excursion.

The next day was another eventful day. We rode “the world’s longest cable car” up to the top of this mountain. It seriously was the longest cable car ride ever. There was a pretty view, but overall it didn’t do much for me since I saw a similar view while paragliding.

For lunch the group of about eight people I had split off with decided that we needed to eat a real meal. For much of the trip I just didn’t food because we were running late or the food available didn’t look sanitary. So we went to a decently nice restaurant and because we didn’t know what anything on the menu was we decided to just be adventurous and order something random. But no one else followed through! Everyone ordered “pollo” because chicken is a safe bet and some other girls ordered pizza. I ordered “Truchas cuatro queso” and was excited because “four cheese” sounded like something I could handle. So when a plate with a fish, complete with head and tail still on the plate, was set before me, I couldn’t help but jump back. Carrie saw my reaction as I tried to act calm. I did try the fish, but there was no way I could eat it anymore than one bite. So I passed my plate down and attempted to get food from everyone else.

The rest of my day was taken up by paragliding. I didn’t get to shop much but decided that I would much rather paraglide then continue walking around markets. A lot of people bailed on it and kept reasoning outloud for why they didn’t want to paraglide and for a while I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do it anymore. But I’m so glad I did.

We were driven to the top of this mountain, 3000 feet up, where about seven other people were waiting to paraglide as well. They were all SAS kids who had traveled independently to Merida. It took hours to get everyone up into the air because it was too windy at first. When it was my turn they basically put some harnesses on me and attached me and this guide to a parachute. I stood at the edge of a cliff and soon the parachute picked us up. I didn’t end up paragliding till 7:00 pm and by then it was night, but it was amazing because of the city lights glowing in the distance. My flight went really smoothly. I was up in the air right away. The feeling of floating overwhelmed me along with the calmness of the night and I totally teared up for the first five minutes I was in the sky: I was just so happy. It was just so amazing to me. I felt like I was in a dream as I flew above the mountains and felt the wind rush at my face. I closed my eyes several times to open them and relive the shock that I was floating 3000 feet above ground. I got to paraglide for about thirty minutes and was lowered back down to the city. As soon as I landed I was surrounded by about four little Venezuelan boys who grabbed at my harnesses and helmet, taking them off for me without saying much. They ran off to assist the other paraglider who had landed immediately afterwards.

As soon as we hit the ground we were rushed to meet up with the rest of our tour and we boarded our bus and drove through the night, back to LaGuaira. We ended up roaming around the port city for our final day in Venezuela. We ate a restaurant that our interport lecturer had recommended and ate the national dish called “peblano criollo” I believe (basically a plate of rice, black beans, shredded beef, eggs, and plantains). Then we headed out into the streets. Markets lined the poverish city, but unlike the hand-crafted items in Merida, everything sold in LaGuaira was American. Nike, Billabong, Reebok, Von Dutch…nothing any of us had much interest in. Instead it was interesting to walk up and down the streets and see the rows and rows of people attempting to make a living. Young children yelled “Chica!” and waved to each one of us as we passed by them, at one point there were all these kids running out from behind booths to greet us. I had nothing with me to give them either as I hadn’t expected to run into so many children while walking around. Three different people in LaGuaira remarked on my red cheeks. One man touched his cheeks and said “Bonita!” to me while the other two people just remarked that I was “Muy roho!”

By 7:00 I was back on the ship, although I technically had two more hours in Venezuela. They are extremely strict about being on the ship on time, however, and even if you are waiting in line to board and that is your reasoning for being late, you can still receive “dock time” (aka not getting off the ship right way at the next port).

So I’m back on the ship and exhausted. Kathryn, my roomie, and I got up at 6:45 this morning in order to add/drop classes because we knew the line would be super long. I was able to drop biogeography and replace it with another science course, which rocked my world. Biogeography turned out to be an upper-level course for biology majors and our professor decided to teach it at a graduate level and have each one of us conduct a class period, lecturing on a specific topic. I was one of the only two people in the class without a science related major and the one other boy who was in the same boat as me fell asleep on the first day of class.

I’m still overwhelmed by everything. I’ve learned so much in global studies and I am working hard to embrace it all. Our professor is awesome, encouraging us to take home with us more than pictures of things we saw. He reminded us today of how quickly this voyage will pass and that it is up to us to take in what was can, using a line from a poem I once read in high school “We can not make our sun stand still, but we can make him run.” I’ve taken so many pages of notes, trying to catch everything he teaches. Just today we learned about the economy in Latin America and why it is so unstable. I find it all so incredibly interesting. There’s just so much to learn and I want to get as much as I can out of this semester…I’m actually doing my readings, which back at Columbia I rarely do.

I wish I could have been in Venezuela longer, but I’m guessing I’ll have the same feeling after each culture I visit. From the cups of coffee that were the size of a shot glass to the lack of toilet paper in the public restrooms…everything was so different. I felt what Professor Murphy refers to as “the rush of unfamiliarity.”

Right now everyone is sharing their Venezuela stories. Kathryn went south to the Caura River and 24 out of the 28 people in her group ended up throwing up from food poisoning from a meal that Indigenous people served them. Some other people went to orphanages in Caracas. There were groups of people that traveled to Margarita Island and laid on beaches, something I wouldn’t do as our time in Venezuela was so limited. I heard a group of kids were even playing beer pong in the ship terminal one night…I’m really glad I got away from the ship for the majority of my visit.

So yeah. Hope all is well back in the U.S. Sorry to type so incredibly much, but I have so much to tell. I don’t even feel like I covered a fraction of everything I saw. I’m about to go do my readings on the back of the ship and maybe get a tan at the same time. I miss everyone a lot and love the emails…keep em coming! And just to put it out there, I take forever to respond because I only sign on to the internet every three days or so (I’m super cheap with my allotted internet minutes on here) and when I do I only check the Annabelle03 email…so you know.

K…Much love from the Atlantic Ocean.