Pictures!

Tokyo

Friends in Tokyo

How we ordered our food 

coolest sushi place ever!

food slides right to you

more friends we made

place where no one spoke english

Arriving at Mt. Fjui

Hotel room at Fuji

Hiking 

Floor tables

Night bus

ark where we stayed to catch our bus

School kids in Nara

Buddha 

Candle for Ryan

Friendly deer in Nara

China days 1-4

For my time in China I went on a field program that took me to both Xian and Beijing. On day one we got on a plane and landed in Xian a few hours later where we were greeting with a massive meal of all kinds of dumplings. They were the best dumplings I have ever eaten, and I tried all the different ones including the spicy ones, which I immediately regretted since the only thing to drink was hot tea which made it hurt more. Our hotel was amazing, much better than what I experienced in Japan.  The beds felt like massive feathers, I wanted to take it home.

 When the U.S. was watching the super bowl I was just waking up and on my way to an art museum where we learned some Chinese calligraphy. After our art lesson we were on the way to the famous Terra Cotta Warriors. When we got there I actually started to cry because I was so excited. This was the thing I wanted to see the most in China and I saw them! Even though it was freezing and I could not feel my hands or feet I had the best time ever at the museum. There are three pits. Pit one has the most warriors (about 2,000). Pit two has about 35 and is in a much smaller building. Pit three had no soldiers but the clay the covered them, but then they had soldiers in glass cases explaining what each soldier stood for. Total there were about 8,000 warriors made but not all of them have been recovered yet. They have a “soldier hospital” where they are still piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle. After being completely dumbfounded from the amazing sight we went into a side shop where we watched a short film on the history and you would never believe who was there! One of the farmers that discovered the soldiers was at the museum and I got his signature! He is extremely old, and grumpy, but it was so awesome to see him. From there we went to an orphanage. The area was completely smog and you could hardly see much in front of you, the bus ride there was definitely sketchy. We did not really get to play or interact much with the kids. We stayed for about 25 minutes and I think they only took us there so we would donate money. For dinner we went to the Tang Dynasty Dinner and show. It was a super fancy venue that gave us a five-course meal with live music playing. The dinner was so good and I definitely ate everything in front of me. After dinner they put on a show acting out the Tang dynasty of hundreds of years ago. It was extremely colorful and exciting.

Side note: China was not as dirty as I was expecting, but it was definitely run down and had its low points. The smells were not bad all the time, it was only in certain areas and it never lasted long. The bathrooms on the other hand were very different than what we are all use to. They are holes in the ground but sill made out of the ceramic that toilets are made out of. Some places on the other hand were just metal holes in the ground and were extremely dirty. I even went into one place where they had no stall doors. It is already awkward to be in a bathroom with no stall doors but it is even more awkward when you have a Chinese lady staring at you as you try and use the bathroom because she does not see Americans often. Definitely an experience I will remember.  

Day 3: Today we went and visited the great mosque and after walked through the bizarre market that was filled with fake products. I was grabbed a few times which was expected but different since they yelled at me in Chinese. After our loud and crazy market experience we went to the Xian City wall and walked across the top that over looked the town inside. Next stop was a traditional teahouse. We tasted 5 different teas and were told how to drink the tea properly. We drank out of very small cups and it was recommended to drink the tea with in three sips; one sip for happiness, one for health, and the last sip for good luck. We then went to the airport and were on our way to Beijing. The day was long and action packed. Each day on the trip they keep us extra busy and show us many things and tell us about a lot of history. So far so good!

Thoughts of the day

I wake up every day on this ship and am still amazed that this is my life. Everyday I walk up the stairs of a ship that is floating in the middle of the ocean where land is nowhere to be seen. This is my life, taking classes while swaying back and forth with hundreds of kids just like me. Their goal: travel the world. This is my life, loving everyday as it comes and doing work while watching the waves crash around me with salty wind in my hair. This is my life, traveling the globe by ship and calling it school. This is me, living in a world where everyday is so amazing and so inspiring. This is me, trying to describe a feeling that I am still trying to unscramble myself. This experience is impossible to explain and each moment I become more appreciative of what this life has to offer. The realization of what I am doing hits me everyday as I try and wrap my head around it. Processing everything that has been occurring has been difficult and it is even harder now that we are jumping from port to port. Loving life, loving my journey, loving the opportunity I was given to be able to experience so many places in such a unique way. This trip allows me to make my own conclusions about cultures and generate a perspective of the world that is significant to my life. I can begin to appreciate different beliefs, living standards, and norms that are very different to what I have been use to and enjoy them myself rather than trying to understand them from someone else’s eyes. My life right now is filled with more joy than I have ever felt, and more happiness than I ever thought could come from a trip. These memories will forever be irreplaceable and this voyage will continue to help me grow.

Japan days 3,4,and 5

For breakfast we found food on the street to eat because breakfast didn’t really exist in the area we were, so I ate spring rolls to start my day and off to Mt. Fuji we went. The place we stayed at was called Fujikawaguchiko, and there was snow everywhere! During the day we hiked up a small mountain and soaked in the view of the small town with Mt. Fuji in the background. I decided to jump in the snow at the top and ended up falling because it was much deeper than expected. I ended up falling in the snow up to my shins.  That night was extremely cold and it was hard to find a place to eat. The place we chose was wonderful though. There was a little platform with a small table and we sat on pillows. The table was just tall enough for us to fit our legs under. That night we slept in a hostel type place and it looked very traditional. The floors were bamboo strips and there was another tiny table in the center with pillows and free tea for us to drink. We had to set up are own beds which consisted of a thin padding, a feathered blanket, and a blanket to sleep under, and the pillows seemed to be made out of rice. Even though it was not the most comfortable nights sleep the view from the room was stunning. The window looked directly at Mt. Fuji. That night I tried my first bathhouse! This is a communal bathtub, separate rooms for each gender. I was odd to try out but definitely a fun experience. 

            Next stop… Mishima, another very small town that we stopped in to wait for our night bus. The town was filled with little parks and there were stream running thought the streets. We saw a lot of school kids in their uniforms and they loved to stare at us. That night we caught our sleeper bus to Osaka. The seats were actually very larger and reclined back farther than expected. Each seat came with a blanket and attached to the headrest was a cover type thing. You pull it down over your head and it looks like an astronaut helmet.  The bus arrived to Osaka at 6AM and we took a connecting train to Nara. There we went to Todai-ji temple, the largest wooden structure in the world housing the largest Buddha in Japan. It was absolutely amazing and took my breath away. Not to mention that the park was filled with deer that loved people. We were able to pet them and hug them and they would love it. Everywhere you looked there were deer, hundreds of them.  In the temple I lit a candle for my brother Ryan and his well being, I told Buddha I missed him and to keep him safe. When we left the temple we walked up a massive hill and into another temple to see the view of the city and it was beautiful. We had a clear day and it wasn’t unbearably cold. While up there we met an older man named Yoshi. He loved talking to us because he wanted to practice his English. He ended up taking us around, and showing us places that other wise we never would have seen.  He then took the three of us to lunch and paid for our meal! He also helped us find our train to Kobe and sent us off in the right direction. 

            Leaving Japan was very sad; their culture was so amazing. As the ship was pulling away they had a band playing and huge posters of hands waving us goodbye, although leaving was sad they made it fun. Although there were cars every where not a single one honked their horn, and even though there were hundreds of people in the trains and the stations, it was quite. Japanese tend to keep to themselves and I loved that. Not to mention that every single person was extremely friendly even if they couldn’t speak English. Instead of pointing to where a place was they would actually walk you there even if it was out of the way. 

Japan days 1 and 2

I traveled with two of my close friends around Japan with no plan. We hopped off the ship, grabbed a train and off to Tokyo we went. We ended up in Shibuya, it was absolutely incredible.  The streets were like nothing I have ever seen before. It was like Time Square on drugs.  The signs were flashier and brighter. It was night time, but looked like daytime with all the flashing lights. There was also music playing blasting out of almost every store.  Instead of the streets being filled with cars, they were filled with thousands of Japanese kids our age. It looked like a massive party out on the streets. After walking around for a while we stopped in to a restaurant. When you walked in there was a vending machine looking thing in the corner and what we had to do was insert money and chose our dinner.  It was harder than it sounds because everything was written in Japanese. So the three of us chose meals and out came a ticket that we then had to hand to the chef behind the counter. When we got our meals we actually had a slurping contest with a local sitting next to us (he didn't know it was a contest). It is good adequate to slurp your food, symbolizing that it tastes very good. Later we decide to do what the locals do and we went to karaoke. It is huge in japan! It was definitely not what I was expecting. They give your group your own small room, when a song starts the lights turn off and the walls become a crazy mural under the black light . Since we were Americans they were excited to give us a massive book filled with American songs. We spent an hour there and it was a blast! After singing our hearts out, we ran into a guy named Ray and his girlfriend chi. He was born in California but has been living in Japan for three years now. He showed us places that the locals loved and bought us dessert, which was super friendly. As the three of us were walking back to our hotel it started to snow! It was the perfect ending to our night.

            The hotels in Japan are also very different. Each person gets their own bed and slippers for your room. Not to mention that the beds came up to about your shins, very low to the ground. The day was amazing but then disaster struck. I got food poisoning. I was up from 5 to 8 losing my weight out of my mouth. It was awful but I did not let it slow me down. We went to the store in the morning got some crackers and were on our way. We ended up seeing Ray again and he was nice enough to walk us to the train station. On our way we actually ran into one of his friends. They decided to take us to lunch and it was amazing! The place was super high tech. It was a sushi place that when you sat down each person had an electronic menu and when you ordered, the sushi came out from the sliding wall in front of you and stopped at your seat. You then had to press an angry looking face and that sent the tray back to the kitchen. Even though I was sick there was no way I was going to miss out so I ordered some Sushi and loved every bite.  During that meal I would eat, throw it up, then order a little more. It was just too cool and too good not to keep trying the different kind of sushi they had. After lunch we got on another train, said goodbye to our new friends and was off to our next destination, Itabashi, the suburbs of Tokyo. No one spoke English there and almost everyone was on bikes. Attempting to talk with locals was a riot.  It is like a massive Pictionary game trying to guess what their hand movements meant.

            Japan is incredible and at this point I can not get enough.