Infinity

Last evening, right around sunset, the shipboard community held a memorial service for Wade Lancaster. Professor Lancaster was the faculty member who died suddenly while we were in port in Shanghai. His wife, Jeanette, has been a beloved nursing professor and dean of the School of Nursing at UVA. We were all so pleased to welcome Jeanette back to the ship in Singapore, where she rejoined us after returning home to Tennessee to be with family and friends. 

The image below is the path the ship took, in the shape of an infinity loop, following a service led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu with readings of Bible passages and poetry by a lifelong learner, students, and a faculty member. As the ship followed the choreographed  loop, we filed down in silence to throw roses over the aft railing. There was a spectacular sunset at the same time, and nearly the entire shipboard community was on one of the three aft decks watching and providing silent support to Jeanette and her brother Michael. Archbishop Tutu talked about the shipboard community as a family during his remarks, I think that resonated with us all. It was a particularly poignant experience for my real family onboard, since today is the 11th anniversary of my mother's death. Thank you, Jeanette, for sharing this remembrance of Wade with your shipboard family. 

Singapore in 34

The ship was docked for a total of 34 hours in Singapore. With that amount of time, impressions might be more appropriate than a full blog posting. Here goes:

• Brand new, beautiful cruise ship terminal in the middle of a construction zone
• Taxi rides in clean cabs with polite drivers to get out of the construction zone to the subway
• Asking directions in English and being walked to the place we wanted to go
• "Hawker markets" and food courts at Maxwell Road, Raffles Place, and near Chengyi Dock with cheap, delicious Chinese, Indian, Korean, and Japanese food. We ate well and cheaply in expensive Singapore! (Thanks Mary, for the tips).
• Splitting up into smaller configurations to explore a safe, modern, English-speaking city-state
• Mountain biking on the island of Palau Ubin. Those pedals and shoes got used!
• Singapore Art Museum and the 8Q SAM modern annex down the street, small but full of contemporary works from artists around Southeast Asia.
• The Science Centre museum with interactive displays enjoyed by Grandpa and Jr on their own excursion.
• The Botanic Garden with an amazing National Orchid Garden visited by Sr and me while Jr and Grandpa were at the Science Centre.
• A huge and wonderful bookstore on Orchard Road where we restocked Jr's graphic novel and chapter book supplies (another fabulous tip from Mary)

We are back on the ship and heading for Burma, where we will arrive after 3 full class days.

Jr eating the world's biggest ice. He liked it until he got to the beans and jelly at the bottom.

Sr and me in the National Orchid Garden at the Singapore Botanica Garden.

Happy Lunar New Year from Vietnam

Vietnam has been a great experience. It is our longest port so far without the ship moving from one city to another (we did two cities each in Japan and China). Remember we left Hong Kong right before the lunar new year, or Chinese New Year? We were at sea on the actual new year's eve and day, then arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), which the locals still call Saigon, on the day after Tet, as the new year celebration is called in Vietnam. While some things have been closed because of the holiday (think Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years rolled into one), other things happen only at this time of year.

The ship docked in HCMC a little after lunchtime on Tuesday, February 12. Since we had to sail way up the river to reach our port, we spent the morning looking at all of the ship traffic, buildings, and activity along the river. As we have found out over the next few days, many things in the southern part of Vietnam happen on the rivers.

Because of the Tet holiday, and because none of us have been to Vietnam before, Jr, Sr, and I signed up for a Semester at Sea-sponsored trip to the Mekong Delta area, while Grandpa went on a different trip to Cambodia and Angkor Wat. We left by bus on Wednesday morning, while Grandpa went on a short plane ride to Cambodia. There were 36 of us on the trip, including one other faculty member and his family, a couple of lifelong learners, and a wonderful group of students. 

It took about two hours on the bus to get to the first part of our Mekong Delta trip. The area we visited grows much of the rice and fruit in Vietnam. We went on many different small boats, some with engines, some with a person rowing from the back. Boats are the best way to see things on the Mekong river, where many people live, fish, and farm. In an area called Vinh Long, we went to a local meat and produce market. Let's just say the vegetarians in our group felt pretty good about their eating habits after seeing the way meat, fish, and poultry were displayed and sold. We stayed in what the Vietnamese refer to as a homestay, but is more like a bed and breakfast run by a local family. I had read about the place we were staying, so was not surprised, but some of the others on the trip were a little disappointed we weren't staying in homes of local families. In any case, for us it was the highlight of the two nights. The photo below shows the guesthouse owner and her children in front of the house where half the group stayed. Jr, Sr, and I stayed in another similar house across the walkway. 

The second day included a lot of sight-seeing including a stork preserve which was a long walk down a rural road lined with people's home. We stayed that night in a modern hotel in the capital of the Mekong region, in a city called Can Tho. Over the next two days we visited a historic home, a stork preserve, and a floating market. The stork preserve was a natural roosting area for black and white storks, but perhaps the most interesting part of it was the mile walk through a rural village to get there and back. We saw people's homes, rice being harvested, fruit being dried, and daily life going on around us. Many people were at home since it was the Tet holiday, and were friendly as we walked by.

We came back to Saigon on Friday evening and basically did errands on Saturday. Jr, Sr, and I all got our hair cut in a tiny shop behind the Ben Tranh market, which was a funny and nice experience. The women in the shop really wanted to cut Jr's hair, and eventually Sr convinced him to get a tiny trim (I'm still unclear on the details of that negotiation). I made sure to point to the picture in the book they gave me of the model with the most layered, curly hair and got a great cut. Sr was also happy with his. I'll have to arrange a picture of all three of us, I don't have one yet.

On Sunday, two of the students arranged to take Jr and two other dependent kids ice skating and bowling at a place they found! Sr went with them to chaperone and bought everyone lunch at Pizza Hut. Yep. In Vietnam. Go figure. While they were off on what I am calling "American Day" Grandpa and I had a grownup day, with a very nice lunch in a restaurant above downtown Saigon and then a visit to the former presidential palace. I have a lot of thoughts about being an American in Vietnam, but I'll save those for another day.

We have just today and tomorrow on the ship, then we reach Singapore.

Photos below are of the floating market in the Mekong, a Tet flower display in Saigon, and the homestay family and their home.

Student Profile: Katelyn

We are at sea today, it is our third class/sea day since leaving Hong Kong. Around noon tomorrow we will arrive in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. It is the first port since Ensenada, Mexico on our itinerary that will be completely new to me, and I am really looking forward to it. It will also be our first overnight trip organized by Semester at Sea--starting on Wednesday, we will be on a homestay in the Mekong Delta area. Apparently, much of Saigon is very quiet right now because everyone is home visiting with family for the Chinese New Year, called Tet in Vietnam, so getting out of the city for a couple of days is what is recommended. 

In the library, we are answering a fair number of research questions. I am getting pretty good at limiting databases to geographical areas, and at having long conversations with students as we wait for the search results to load. I am quickly realizing how much of our searching at home is trial and error--the stakes are higher when one poorly chosen click can create four or five minutes of waiting for no results.

Today's student profile is about Katelyn. From Grand Prairie, Texas, she attends Trinity University in San Antonio. She is a junior double majoring in history and religion, but actually has two years left to the completion of her combined graduate education program. When she is done with all of that schooling, Katelyn plans to teach either middle school or high school. 

Her favorite part of Semester at Sea so far is making new friends on the ship, then getting to travel with them and have experiences none of her friends have had before. She finds that getting lost is one of the best ways to travel, and actually enjoyed being lost in Shanghai for several hours until her group of friends finally ended up at the Shanghai Museum.

Her least favorite part of they voyage so far has been the challenge in keeping up with all of her coursework, especially since she is taking 15 hours (the maximum allowed) and there are always so many other things to do on board the ship and in ports. Budgeting time is hard. 

Katelyn is one of our quieter students in the library, but she is a great worker who is always on time. She is currently finishing up a project to redo signage for the stacks after helping shift books to make more room in the reference shelves.

I took the photo below on the very first day students came aboard. When Katelyn looked at the photo yesterday, she said it felt like a long time ago! Thanks, Katelyn, for being interviewed.

Leaving Hong Kong

Did we really just leave Hong Kong after a mere 36 hours? Did Olivia and I really do orientations for international business courses at 0800 and 0920 this morning? Will we really be in Vietnam 2 days from now? The answers to all these questions and more will be revealed in time!

An unbelievable number of things happened in our short stay in Hong Kong. I'll try a list instead of my usual narrative to keep this post manageable. Here goes:

• Our bargaining skills did not improve, but our enjoyment of the market (this time the Temple Street Night Market on Hong Kong Island) did.
• Invitations to museums not yet open to the public are not to be turned down, especially when issued by interport lecturers in the faculty lounge the day before landing in Hong Kong. We spent an amazing couple of hours on a private tour given by the director of the new Hong Kong Maritime Museum, right on Victoria Harbor. 
• Dim Sum is just the right snack after a private museum tour, or any time, really.
• Trolling around Hong Kong on a Chinese "junk" boat for plastic debris is an interesting way to spend a day, especially when the collection process is part of an SAS field program run by a very engaging SAS biology faculty member and several specialists from an ocean recovery program.
• Grandpa came back from a wonderful SAS trip to Yunnan and agrees that two days before Chinese New Year is a pretty exciting time to be in any part of China.

We are back on the ship today, sailing toward Vietnam. The seas are not as calm as they were on our transit from Shanghai to Honk Kong, but the swells are large and rolling and we should be used to it by now!

Here's a photo taken right in front of where the MV Explorer docked in Hong Kong. The drums are decorations for Chinese New Year, lots of people banged on them for luck as they walked by. Funny that my outfit matched the color scheme, it was not planned!

Shanghai

China! We were in Shanghai yesterday and today. It felt odd to be back in China for the first time since 1996. While I had only been to Shanghai once before this trip, and that was only for a few hours between meetings, the amount of development was clear from the fantastic buildings (see below) of which I think only the Pearl Tower (looks like a big Q-tip) was under construction in '96. Someone with better internet connectivity than I have can fact-check me on that one. We went to the Shanghai Museum (lovely and free), the Bund (historic and futuristic at once), the French Concession (Korean food?!) and many shopping spots. We bought a watch for Jr so he can stop asking when we need to be back to the ship, a hat for me, and some yummy snacks and meals.

Most of the voyagers are traveling overland from Shanghai to Hong Kong, but we opted to travel with the ship. We knew we'd be tired after having been away from home for just over a month at this point and thought the two quiet days on the ship would be welcome. We underestimated how welcome it would be. Yesterday, one of our faculty members sadly died of what was likely a heart attack as his tour group was leaving the museum we had visited earlier that day. While we had only met him on the voyage, he was a charming person, and his wife is the retired dean of the UVA School of Nursing and someone we know and admire. We are not yet sure if she will rejoin the ship after arrangements are settled. Plans are in place for a memorial service onboard the ship in coming days (probably after the students reboard following Hong Kong).

I hope I'm finally getting rid of a cold I've been carrying since before Japan. We are looking forward to sailing into Hong Kong. In both Shanghai and there, our docking spot is very central. The night cityscape shot below was taken from the deck of the ship on the evening we arrived. It will not be quite as spectacular tonight when we sail out as it has been quite hazy today.

Japan, Part 1

Continuing to work backward through our Japan travels, with a few parts out of order.

We spent Wednesday afternoon in Hiroshima. In the days leading up to Japan, we had a kind of viral origami movement take hold on the ship. It started with my offering to read the library's copy of Sadako to the dependent children and fold paper cranes with them. If you aren't familiar with it, the story is about a 10 year old girl who developed leukemia after being exposed to the Hiroshima bomb blast at the age of 2. Following Japanese custom, she attempted to fold 1000 paper cranes to grant her wish to get well. The student life team and many others on the ship heard our plans to fold cranes, and donated time, paper, and publicity. We ended up with more than 600 made, or about one for every S13 student. Some were transported to Hiroshima by students and staff, and a few by our family. We hung them at the children's memorial there, which has become the tradition. I did the same thing when I was here at the age of 15, and was very pleased to share the same experience with Jr. There is a picture below of him hanging a string with many others at the memorial. 

Monday afternoon and Tuesday was Kyoto. We stayed in the quietest hotel we've even experienced there. It was connected to a Buddhist temple complex, and is used as a retreat center by people who visit Chion-in temple.  It was simpler than the ryokan in Miyajima, and definitely did not cater to tourists of any type, especially western ones, but we felt welcome and enjoyed our stay immensely. In addition to a very nice Japanese dinner and breakfast service, Sr, Grandpa, and I were able to attend the early morning Buddhist service. It was a real exercise in trust to show up at the appointed meeting spot and follow the young man who led us to the service when we had no idea what we were in for or exactly where we were going. It turned out to be a walk to the temple complex across the street, where we sat in two different buildings for about 20 minutes each while monks chanted and incense burned. No one else from the hotel came along, in fact we were probably the only ones there except for a Japanese couple we saw a few times since the major part of the temple complex is being renovated until 2019. We wandered around Kyoto for a few hours looking temples, a historic street of houses and tea shops, and a little market before leaving by train for Hiroshima.

On Sunday Jr, Sr, and I had taken the train from Yokohama, where the ship docked, into Tokyo which was only a half hour away. Grandpa had a field lab for one of his classes, so spent the day with his professor and classmates meeting the former Japanese ambassador to China and his wife in their home outside Tokyo. We had some fun Tokyo experiences that first day including ending up in the famous Ginza shopping district when it was open to pedestrian traffic (Sunday afternoons only) and find ing what Jr called "the best toy store ever" with 4 stories of fantastic Japanese games, gadgets, and a slot racing setup where Jr raced a rented car on a giant track for a couple of dollars. 

By the way, all of this popping around Japan was made possible by train passes we had purchased before getting to Japan. Much like you can do in Europe, it is possible to buy a rail pass for the major inter-city routes. 

Japan Part 2

Since we left Japan last night and are headed to China this morning, maybe it makes sense to tell about the last few days in reverse order, so this post is titled Part 2. Our experience in Japan was wonderful, intense, exhausting, and highly memorable.

Yesterday (Thursday), our last day in the country, we were based from the ship which was docked in Kobe. We had done a lot of touring of historical sites up until then, so we gave Jr a break and went to the Osaka aquarium, which was about an hour and a half away from Kobe by the time we took the 4 trains necessary to get there. We have been to quite a few aquariums in the US and elsewhere over the years, this one definitely rivaled the best in size, and probably exceeded them in the quality of the sealife exhibited. Jr loved it (Shawn, you would have, too!). He liked the cuttlefish best. Right outside the aquarium was the world's tallest ferris wheel (think London Eye then add Miracle Gro). We convinced Jr to go up it even though he claims to be afraid of heights. Osaka is a huge metropolis that spans a river, the views did not disappoint. The final, exciting moments of our trip to Japan happened when Grandpa realized he was missing his wallet just as we were standing on the train platform to go back to the ship at the end of the day, with only a little more than 2 hours to spare before we absolutely had to be back on the ship. Many tense moments later, he and I arrived back at the last shop we had visited near the aquarium, to be greeted by the shop owner who took us to the complex's information center to retrieve Grandpa's wallet. Only in Japan! Jr and Sr had waited on the train platform, sweating bullets. We made it back to the ship on time and in tact.

On Wednesday, we split the day between Miyajima Island, where we had arrived Tuesday night, and Hiroshima, where we spent the afternoon. Miyajima is a small island near Hiroshima that was recommended to us by our friend Mari. At one time, the shrines there were reserved just for the emperor, and commoners could only get close by boat, rather than set foot on the island. We got the chance to spend the night in a lovely traditional Japanese hotel ("ryokan") and climb a mountain on paths several hundred years old. Along with the hotel stay came two Japanese meals. The picture below is of our traditional Japanese breakfast, dinner was even more beautiful and complex. We took a ferry to the island on Tuesday late afternoon, then on Wednesday afternoon we left via rapid ferry for Hiroshima. I think I'll stop this post here and write Part 1 about Hiroshima and Kyoto a bit later.