A Typical Day on the MV Explorer

I have spent a lot of time talking about what I have done in countries, but what is there to do on the boat?  All of the students on the ship have to take 4 classes.  Many people have mostly easy classes that don't involve a lot of work, but lucky me, that is not my case.  I am taking Marine Biology, International Law, Cognitive Psychology, and History of Modern China.  All of these classes involve spending hours reading the textbooks.  The professors have to try to cram a whole semester's worth of education into just 23 days of class.  It is insane.  At BW, I do not come close to reading an entire textbook over the course of four months, but on the ship, I am almost finished with two books, and we did it in just 23 days.  The course load I have takes up most of my time on the ship.

The cabins on the ship are nice, depending on the amount of people you have in them.  A double, which is standard, comes with two beds, three closets, a TV, dressers, a desk, and wall mirror.  If there are only two people in the room, it is rather cozy.  Many people are in triples though.  A triple is just like the double, but a bed folds out of the wall.  That many people in the room makes it a little uncomfortable and cramped.  My room is a quad, so there are four people that stay here.  The only difference is that the quad has two rooms, and not bunk beds.  We have the standard double room, and then an adjoining door which leads to two more beds, another desk and dresser, and two more closets.  Our room has the most space, and we paid the least amount of money for it.  I love it!

Food on the ship is pretty bad.  Everyday for lunch and dinner there is a type of pasta, a type of fish, a type of beef or chicken, a type of soup, salad, rolls, and vegetables.  Having this type of meal two times a day everyday gets very repetitive, and we welcome the peanut butter and jelly that is also put out.  PB&J is the go to food when we can't stand to eat the same food anymore.  I eat PB&J pretty often now.  Meals are offered in two places on the ship during specific times of the day.  Breakfast is pretty bad.  There is normally pancakes or french toast, sausage or bacon, biscuits and gravy, a type of egg, fruits, yogurt, and breakfast pastries.  It sounds like it might be good, but the way the food tastes and is cooked for all 800 of us is terrible.  You can order food from the Deck 7 grill or the Snack Bar on deck 6, but it can get pretty expensive, especially if you eat there often.  I have only done it once.  I got a burger, and that too was not so great.  There is also something called special dining, which costs 30 dollars a person, but the food is supposed to be the best on the ship.  It is a gourmet meal cooked by the chefs.

There seems to be a lot to do on the ship, but I feel like there isn't really anything for me.  Other than going to classes, you can hang out with your friends in the piano bar or up on the deck.  There are also plenty of clubs to join, but I did not have an interest in any.  I had joined a community service group, but they have not done anything yet.  Other groups include a passion group, balloon animal group, a singing group, a church group, and the list goes on.  There is a gym on the ship, but it is rather small.  It is often full of people who spend their time working out.  There is enough space in my room, that I just do workout videos in the room.  Just recently we had Neptune day, which was the day we crossed the equator.  I made a post about it previously.  We also just had the sea olympics.  All of the rooms on the ships are located in certain "seas."  My cabin is in the Baltic Sea, and other seas include the Red Sea, the Bering Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Persian Sea, etc.  The seas all competed against each other in different events from a ship wide relay race, to hula hooping, rock paper scissors, Sudoku, backwards spelling bee, jeopardy, and more.  It was a lot of fun.  They had a lip sync competition and a cheer competition.  My sea came in first place for cheer, but our overall placement was 6th out of 9.  I was sick for the competition, so I only saw a few things.

My favorite thing to do on the ship is sit on the deck as we sail through the ocean.  The sound of the water is so relaxing, and that is what I will miss the most about this.  The experience has been so great.  Life on the ship is truly incredible, despite the work and lack of things to do.  I am in love with this kind of life, but I do miss home as well.

The first picture shows my bed and part of the desk.  I have pictures and postcards hanging up on the walls with magnets.  The second picture is of the bathroom.  On the left is the shower and the right is the toilet.  The third picture is of my side of the room; the adjoined room is exactly the same.  It just does not have the window.  And yes, Jackie's side always stays that messy.  She sleeps underneath the pile, which we call Phil.  That is the name of her boyfriend back home.

My Last Day in Cape Town

        Today, Jackie and I went to Long Street.  This is a street in the center of the city that is full of shops and restaurants.  After stopping at a few clothing stores and buying nothing, she and I decided to get lunch.  We stopped at an Italian restaurant called Di Capo.  The food was delicious.  I had a type of fried chicken with potato wedges.  They were really thin and were full of grease, so I had to eat them with a fork.  The chicken was perfect; it was so tender I did not need a knife to cut it.  Jackie had a tequila, and she got tipsy after one glass.  At least that’s all she had.

          We kept walking up the street, looking for a bookstore that I had seen.  It had a couple of books on South Africa that I wanted to get, but I must have confused which street it was on, because it wasn’t there.  It wasn’t too upsetting though. 

          After, we went up the hill into Bo Kaap.  This is a Muslim area of the city.  The homes and buildings there are painted in fun, bright colors.  We saw purples, blues, oranges, and other colors.  The two of us went into a store called Monkey Bizness, and it was so cute.  The walls were brightly painted, and they sold different things made with lots of beads.  The artist had taken all different colors and made different sizes of elephants, lions, people, and lots of other things.  After this we went back to the waterfront where we saw one of the outside bands dressed and painted like old Africans.  The music was so fun and catchy; I wish I had gotten a cd.  At least I have video.  I am very sad to be leaving this city.

Boulder's Beach Pictures

Simon's Town

        Jacqueline (one of my roommates) and I made plans today to go to Simon's Town on the southern peninsula.  We got to the train station with about an hour until the next train left, so we stopped at McDonald's.  There was a family next to us, and they noticed that we were not from South Africa, so they asked where we were from.   This led to a long conversation with them about what we were doing around the world, and also how much internet and cell phone service costs in the States compared to South Africa.  Things are very expensive in their country, because the companies are owned by people in England.  To make money, England charges them crazy prices to make profit which gets sent to England.  To make a phone call from a landline, you will pay 1.20 rand a minute.  That’s not even an American dollar, but for them it can get very expensive.  An unlimited data plan could cost about 1000-2000 rand a month, which is 100-200 dollars.  To own a cell phone, they also pay 80 rand a month just to have it.  That does not include the minutes, texting, or data.  It is ridiculous.  We talked throughout the whole train ride as well.

          When we got to Simon's town, we stopped at a store where men were making art from recycled pop cans and things.  It was very interesting.  The two of us walked down and ran into some more stores, and then made our way to Boulder’s Beach.  This is where you can see penguins in the wild.  We walked on a boardwalk through bushes and trees, with penguins only inches away from us.  There were penguins all over these boulders, and we took another dirt path over to the rocks.  They penguins were so cute; I was afraid to get near them, but they were not mean at all.

          After this we stopped and got an early dinner; I had a salad and got ice cream.  It was so delicious.  From there we took the train back to the city, and headed to the wharf for some more free internet usage.  I will post pictures of this soon!

Robben's Island

        The first thing that Jessica and I did today was take a cab over to the Company Gardens.  This is an area in the city that is surrounded by Parliament buildings, the governor’s house, and the National Library of South Africa.  Nearby are also the Jewish Holocaust museum and the South Africa Museum.  The first part of the gardens is an area full of different colored roses.  The buses were very large, and luckily, the flowers were in full bloom.  As I was walking through, a bird flew at me unexpectedly and I gasped so loudly a native laughed at me.  I was laughing too.  The next parts of the gardens were shaded by trees and had lots of green lawns and native/invasive plants.  It was very peaceful, and there was a cool breeze blowing, making it a great place to relax a little. 

          Because it was so close, we went to the South Africa Museum.  I got to learn about South Africa rock art.  The most common way to engrave in the stones back then was hitting another rock against it.  Many of the rocks were also painted.  The most common colors used were red, black, and white.  The white paint is the one that comes off the fastest, because it does not stick to the rock like the other two colors.  The red color is a powder mixed with an animal’s blood; this is the color that stays on the best out of them all.  They had on exhibit an old container that had been used to store the paints that were used.  It was dated back to 100,000 years ago!  This was one of the first things that had been found suggesting that people stored things at that time.  It also showed how important the paintings were that the paint was saved for so long.  It had been found in a cave underneath layers of dirt and dust that had protected it.  Other exhibits included marine life, including whale bones, sharks, dolphins, and sting rays.      

          The two of us then met up with a friend and took a ferry over to Robben’s Island.  This is where Nelson Mandela had been held as a political prisoner for 18 years.  The other 9 years of his captivity were in two other prisons.  He was held in prison block B.  In prison block A, 30 to 40 men were kept in one room and had to sleep on the floor, until the 1970s when beds were brought in for them.  This was done because of the many back problems the prisoners had.  They were locked up from 4pm until 6am.  In the morning they had porridge for breakfast and were sent to work.  When they finished working it was dinner time and that concluded their day.  In the mass rooms, the prisoners would secretly teach each other how to read and talk about the things that were happening during Apartheid.  The worst area for prisoners was block C.  This is where they were sent as punishment for acting out.  They were trapped in their cells for 23 hours in a day and starved most of the time.  A typical stint in this block was about 4 months long.  The guards were very abusive and would beat them with their batons or they would put rags over their faces and dump water on them.  To humiliate the prisoners, they would be kept naked in the offices handcuffed to chairs, where people were constantly coming through.  The worst thing that happened to them was they would be buried up to their necks in the dirt and would then be urinated on.  The stories were horrible.  While imprisoned, Mandela was sent to work in the limestone quarry.  They were not provided protection from the sun and dust.  Many people went blind from it; Mandela had his tear ducts removed because they were filled with dust from the rocks.  As punishment, they had to chip away at the limestone and carry it to point b.  From there they would have to carry it back to where they originally chipped it from.  There were no bathrooms for the prisoners, so they all went in this cave in the rocks.  It smelt horrible, but they could not use the bushes because they feared the guards would think they were escaping.  If this happened, the guards had the order to shoot to kill.  This cave is also known as the “University.”  It is where Mandela taught his co-prisoners to read in the dust.  The guards never went down there because of the smell.

Today, the island is used as a museum for what happened.  We saw where the 200 inhabitants live, who are former prisoners and guards (ironically the crime rate is at 0% here), the church, a lepers graveyard, and an old military radio station.  Before the island was used as a prison, people with leprosy had been sent there to die.  They were separated by both race and gender while there.  The prison was built on the mass graves of the dead blacks, while the whites had a graveyard with markers.  The children that live on the island go to school on the mainland, so every day they have a 30 minute ferry ride back and forth.

Pictured are some roses from the garden, an outfit from a tribal dance, and Nelson Mandela's cell.

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Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

        This morning, Jessica and I hopped back on the city sightseeing bus.  We got off shortly after in District 6.  We wanted to go to the museum; it was well worth it.  There were plenty of stories about the people that had been living there and what it had been like to be displaced.  This really rocked their whole world.  They grew up in their homes facing Table Mountain, only to be forced out of the new “white only” area.   These same people are also mad that the homes they were forced to sell to Awhites at dirt cheap prices are worth more than they ever had been.  The government still has to figure out what they want to do with the land that is left from the time.  Groups that the people joined as recreation groups were even segregated.

          After that we stopped shortly at the Castle of Good Hope and walked through the garden.  From there we walked to the next bus stop, and we hopped on a bus for the botanical gardens.  The gardens are ranked 7^th in the world!  It was a 40 minute ride through the hills of the mountain and past beautifully preserved land.  When we got there the views were amazing.  The garden was so large; it would have been easy to get lost there.  There were sprawling lawns with flowers and trees all over the hills; there were some ponds and a natural ampitheater.  In the background of this all was Table Mountain.  I would love to return here someday.

          The next bus stop took us to the Mariners wharf, where I got some ice cream, but there was not much to see there.  We got pictures at the oldest lighthouse in Capetown.  Despite the lighthouse, over 2000 ships have still sunk off the southern coast of the country.  The rocks there are very treacherous.  Then we stopped at Victoria’s wharf to get some food and use the internet!