Hawaii and Home

Hey All,

I am so sorry that it has been ages since I checked in! We sailed from Japan to Hawaii and I got sick and was laying low. Time flew by and I didn't actually get out and about very much in Hawaii. However, it was sunny and beautiful and I did make it to the Duck game with the Oregon Semester at Sea group! We had a great time and the Ducks won! I visited Pearl Harbor and was able to check in with home.

From Hawaii to San Diego we had finals and the ambassador ball. It is always a hectic time to be packing and getting ready for home. I found things in my cabin that I had gotten ages ago and had to make room for. Fitting the world in 4 bags is hard.

This trip has been incredible. The world has opened my eyes and my heart. I feel so fortunate for all that I have. While I am excited to be home, it will take some time to adjust. Semester at Sea is a life changing experience and I will miss my friends and community on the ship and the people and places that I have visited all over the world.

I hope that this blog gave you a small taste of the world through my own personal experiences. I wish everyone a very merry holiday and peace on earth.

Love, Rudy
(Sam- thank you for this B-E-A-utiful sunset pic!)

Thankful for you!

Hey all,

This note is a little late…but it takes a long time for a turkey to deliver a message from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This was the first year in my whole life that I have missed out on Thanksgiving dinner with my fam! However, I did have turkey and as I sat around the table with my “ship family” I thought of all of you. I am so thankful to have all of you as friends and family. Without you, I would not be who I am. This trip has been an absolute whirl wind and I will come home the same…but different… or as they say in Vietnam, “same, same, but different!” The things I have seen are hard to define in one word, hard to explain in once sentence and impossible to imagine without having been there yourself. That being said, I feel so fortunate to be able to sail back to my little nook in Portland for the holidays and come home to all of you. I have learned so much about the world and myself on this trip, but more than anything else, I know that family and friends, community and love are the most important things in life. I have seen, met, hugged, cried and laughed with people who have nothing–except family, friends and love. When there is nothing else, we have each other. That being said, I want to wish all of you the happiest of Thanksgivings and I can’t wait to see all of your faces in a few weeks! Love and peace from the ocean! xoxoxo

Tokyo

I don’t know how many of you have seen the Kill Bill movies, but I was really excited to go to Tokyo and pretend I was Beatrix Kiddo. We got up early and caught the train from Yokohama to Tokyo. The trains here are amazing. Everyone gets their tickets and waits in single file line for their train. When the train arrives, everyone waits for the arriving passengers to get off before everyone boards. Along with regular cars they have cars exclusively for women, children and senior citizens. We got to Tokyo and it was raining, which reminded me of home. For those of you that have never been to Tokyo it is like a giant NYC except in Japanese. They have the biggest intersection and crosswalk in the world! It was nuts. We found a few temples and had lunch at a really yummy restaurant that reminded me of St. Honore except with a self-serve salad bar that was SO GOOD! It was super green and organic and such a nice change from all the foods I have been eating the last 4 moths. Tokyo had a 4 story H&M and so you can imagine my excitement as we ran toward it! We visited the China town in Tokyo and then headed back to the ship in Yokohama.

Yokohama

Yokohama is much smaller. This was our last day in Japan and so me and my roomie Clara went with some friends to the Starbucks in little China Town to Skype our friend Genna who had to go home in India because she had malaria. We miss her so much and so it was so good to catch up with her and hear her voice! Then we got lunch in China town and walked around town and had coffee. It was nice to just soak up the last couple of hours in Japan and be in our last international port. I didn’t have any expectations for Japan and I didn’t know what to expect, but it exceeded the expectations that I didn’t have and I really liked it. Japan has so much style! One thing that I loved about Japan was their attention to detail, especially in shopping malls. When you make a purchase they ask you if you want your purchase gift-wrapped? I always say no. If you buy something like stationary without gift-wrapping, they take the paper and wrap it in tissue. Then they fold it into a decorative paper, take a ribbon and make a loop that they stick with a sticker. Then they put it in another small paper sack before putting into a sack with handles and then tape that sack shut. If you have ever seen the movie Love Actually (my favorite movie of all time) and have seen the scene where he is gift-wrapping with cinnamon and holly with candy on top, it was just like that! It made me wonder what a purchase with gift-wrapping would look like.
Speaking of gift wrapping and the holidays, I busted out my Bob Dylan Holiday tunes and we decorated our room with holiday garlands and Thanksgiving is tomorrow! We actually have two Thanksgivings because we are crossing the international date line and will finally be back from the future. For the past few days I have been living in the future…a day ahead of all of you, and as I told my grand dad on the phone, I have known all about your tomorrows since I have already lived your yesterdays. This also means that with two Thanksgivings I will have extra time to think about all the things I am thankful for, but I will share a few with you now. I am thankful for all of my friends and family. I am thankful to have the opportunity to travel the world, to learn and explore. I am thankful for clean water, for food, for shelter, for happiness, for safety, for health. I am thankful for you–Happy Thanksgiving from the Pacific Ocean. xoxo

Kobe

The next day we got up bright and early and took the subway into town. We didn’t have any plans except to just walk around and explore. It was so early that all the shops and houses were buttoned up, but we walked through neighborhoods and got a glimpse of Kobe outside of the busy city center. Around lunch we headed back to the city center and did some shopping and visited China town. It is funny to visit China town after just being there! We got these amazing pot stickers at a street vender and people watched. Then we walked around and found this dessert called a dessert burger. It was a doughnut for a bun and had a cookie crunch inside and was packed with yummy fruit and hot chocolate syrup. It was SO good. I felt like I was on splendid table and so I took a video of us eating it and we gave a great NPR narration of the goodness. That night we were back on the ship to transit to Yokohama. Our transit day was nice, because transit is optional and so there were only about 250 of us on board and so it is quiet and you can catch up on journaling and school work and just watch movies and relax. It was a good day.

Kyoto

We arrived in Kobe and had a LONG debarkation process. We had to wait in line for about 2 hours to get pictured, finger printed and all of your forms checked. It was about 5 minutes per person, but they have to process 700 people and so it was a long morning. We also had to pass temperature checks in order to be let into Japan and I was so happy to pass since the whole ship came back from China with colds. Once we got through immigration we headed right onto the subway line that took us to the train station. We grabbed Chai Tea Lattes and headed for Kyoto. It took about an hour to get there and so by the time we got there the sun was setting. The station had a HUGE mall and so we wandered around and looked at clothes and stationary and accessories. Japan is super hip and trendy and so everything is cool, right down to the shoelaces that they wear—stylish from head to toe.
Then we went and found where the bus station was and got on a train into town. We got on the train, which was JAM PACKED with people. Nothing was really in English and all we had was a map and we were traveling at rush hour. We had an idea of what stop we wanted to get off at, but we weren’t exactly sure. When we got on the train I did make out an announcement that said the bus didn’t accept anything but exact change and so by some miracle I had what I needed. However, for a future note, if you are ever taking a bus in Japan, know that you need EXACT change. And, as I was on the bus with all my bags and was digging for change, I thought how smart it would be to bring those change holders like you can buy at IKEA to have in your car, and that way, on a trip, you don’t have to be digging deep in your purse in a crowded space in the dark. Anyway, we were on the bus for what seemed like an hour to move 3 stops, but we finally made it to the exact street where we wanted to be.
        We went to a temple that is open at night and it was SO beautiful. All the lanterns were lit up and it was quiet and peaceful. I think my favorite part about the temples is that you can be in rush hour traffic, surrounded by wall-to-wall people passing on the street, walking by food stand after food stand with yelling and crowds, and then you make one turn and you find yourself in a temple that is totally tranquil... you could hear a pin drop. This temple backed up to a huge park and a pond and so we just wandered around. Then we went back to the main street and wanted some food. I found a stand on the street and this guy was deep frying something that looked yummy and there was a line, which was a good sign. When I got up to the counter I asked what was in the fried dough and he walked back into his little kitchen and came out with a HUGE BOWL of octopus. He spoke absolutely no English and pointed to the pile of octopus guts.  Then I pointed to another fried thing and he pointed to the bowl again. I have to say that while I didn’t eat any, I bet it was good. Instead we kept walking. We found a big open grill on the sidewalk and a tiny little hole in the wall restaurant behind the grill. An old man was making these amazing pancakes filled with eggs and veggies and spices and seaweed and all this yummy stuff. We watched him make them and decided to eat. It was SO GOOD! After dinner we stopped in some shops before taking the train back to Kobe that night.

Last Day in China

Today we spent the day wandering around Shanghai. We wanted to take a cab to the old part of the City and had no map and no idea where it was. We asked like 4 door mans where we were and where we were trying to go and all of them said they didn’t speak any English. However, they all know how to say, “I don’t know English.”  We finally got in a cab and the driver had no idea what we were talking about and so we got out and found friends that had a map. Then we went to the metro station and got a ticket to the old city. When we got out of the metro we left our friends who had the map and were standing looking lost and a little old lady came over to me and asked if we wanted to go to the old city? I said yes and asked her if she spoke any English at all and she only spoke a tiny, tiny bit. She took us to exactly where we wanted to go and tried to explain to me where she lived and that she had lived in Shanghai all her life. She was so sweet. I just wanted to fold her up and put her in my bag and bring her home with me! She was SOOOOO cute! Sometimes when you are traveling, it is easy to get worn out with the language barrier, the overload, the unfamiliar, the everything new, the here, there and everywhere…so when you find those kind people (the mom in South Africa who gave me a hug, the school teacher in Vietnam and the sweet little old lady today) they make everything better, they make the world seem small, and they make everything seem possible. It was just what we needed! We got to a long street of vendors and we have now been around the world and so we are pros at cutting the prices in half. We saved a ton of time by naming our price and walking away. Actually, the language barrier was so fuzzy that we typed prices into calculators and then walked away! But it was a success! The weird thing was that I heard Christmas music playing in English today, but I didn’t meet a single person who spoke English…go figure. Tonight we are all back on the ship and heading for Japan. Classes are back in session tomorrow! Hope all is well! Love from China! xox