-Thank You Video-

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Sticker Donations Thank You Video

Pacific Friend on Semester at Sea

Hey Everyone. I am finally back on my blog. I know it's been a LONG time. I have been so busy with graduation, post graduation celebrations, work, and more school. I will have an update very soon, maybe even a video update~
Right now I am working on the pictures and thank you's for all of the sticker donations. It has been so awesome to go through my photo library and see so many kids with stickers on their hands and faces, all because of you!

I'm posting because a a good friend of mine and sorority sister from Pacific, Megan MacLeod, is currently sailing on Semester at Sea's Summer 2011 voyage. I am so excited to start reading the blog she has set up, and wanted to give you all the opportunity to continue reading about the amazing adventures of Semester at Sea.

 megsmacleod@blogspot.com

Amazon Night in the Jungle Video

India 2011 Video

CALIFORNIA

We are home! It is so weird to be back. For some reason my Taiwan and Hawaii posts were not added onto here, so I guess you guys are a little behind the loop. We docked in the San Diego Harbor at 8 am yesterday (Sunday) morning, and there were hundreds of excited parents waiting for us and yelling our names. We had stayed up all night hanging out for the last time, which was just surreal. We've been with this community for almost 4 months, away from our family and friends at home. Thinking about leaving each other after being together 24/7 in a confined space was a little shocking for us. We spent our last couple hours saying goodbyes and packing up the final things. Our luggage was taken the day before and put together on an outside deck, so it was nice to not worry about it during the last couple minutes. My parents and Connor, the Stones, and Grandma were all waiting for us to get off the ship. I can't explain the feeling of getting off the ship. It was so bittersweet. This is the longest I have ever been away from my family or home, and seeing them was just so exciting and fun. At the same time, we were leaving this ship that HAD become our home. When our group of friends walked off, and the security guards we had become friends with asked us to give them our keys, we all just broke down. I couldn't help but wonder when I will ever get the opportunity to sail on a ship with 800 other people and circumnavigate the globe. I have so much to write about the trip and what it meant to me, but I just need a couple days to settle down and think about every incredible story that needs to be told. The trip is over, but it is definitely just the beginning of a much longer journey. I've learned so much about myself during these four months, and this trip has opened my eyes to many problems throughout the world that before I would have overlooked. But it also taught me that there are two ways I can go about solving a problem. I can watch it from afar and think that someone else will do something to solve it, or I can take the initiative and put forth every effort to make a change. To be honest, I don't feel like the voyage changed me. But it did allow me to reevaluate my values and give me the choice to stand on the sidelines and watch people around this world suffer, or stand up and do everything possible to give every human the opportunity to be happy and feel like they matter. This was something I learned from professors, life long learners, students, and citizens of every country we visited. Something that people with different religious, political, and academic backgrounds all encouraged. I have never experienced so many views on the need of service and respect of differences, as well as encouragement to find the similarities within completely different cultures. I will never forget what this voyage has taught me, and I am so excited to share it with all of you.

These next 10 days are incredibly busy, but I will try to update this blog as often as I can. We had 35 people come to Easter dinner, including family, Semester at Sea students and professors. We had the most amazing day, and my parents were just so fabulous. 6 SAS students are staying for a couple days, and then Matt, Catherine, Gavin and I are going up to Northern California to begin the graduation stuff. May 7th is the actual graduation, but we are so excited to see all of our Pacific friends this week! This trip has been life changing in many ways, and I am so excited to tell you all about every story from every country as I de-stress from this overwhelming experiencing of leaving the ship. I love you all, and hope to hear from you soon as I integrate myself back into a world with facebook and cellphones 24/7!
Peace & love
Bridget

China

Singapore

Neptune Day-March 12, 2011

Right before (Liz's getting hers done in background and Gavin is freshly shaved on the right

After the main chunks are chopped

Post head shaving with Francis and Liz

Updated Blog!

Hi Guys-

I know I haven’t updated this in FORVER. We left Vietnam on the 24^th, and arrived in Hong Kong on the 26^th, and just got back on the ship yesterday, and arrive in Taiwan tomorrow. Everything has been packed in, and it’s been really busy on the ship trying to get assignments done in one day. First of all Vietnam and  China were fabulous. I spent all of my time in Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City. My roommate Sarah and her childhood best friend Melissa had their mom’s fly in for the SAS Parents trip. I spent my first day in Vietnam with the four of them, and we had sooo much fun. We went to the Pagoda, which was interesting. There was a turtle sanctuary there, with hundreds of turtles swimming. And I got to see baby turtles that were smaller than my fingers, which was soo cute. We went shopping after, and went to this really nice dinner. I spent the next three days doing a little sight seeing and LOTS of shopping. I took the term “shop til you drop”  to heart. There were so many cool markets, and I started to get pretty good at bargaining. We also took motor taxis everywhere, which was my favorite part of HCMC. My friend Liz and I bought fun wigs for our bald heads and we wore them out later that night, which was really fun. Hmm…what else is Vietnam…

We ate a ton of really good food. I had Pho, and loved it. And we had lots of spring rolls and some crazy things like ostrich.

The weather was really hot in Vietnam….I lucked out with my new haircut, which kept me from melting in the sun.

Vietnam was a nice break for me from the crazy filled trips I’ve been doing in other countries. It was nice to take a break and do shopping and get to know the locals for a couple of days.

On to China

We arrive in Hong Kong on Saturday the 26^th. We had one day free before our trip with the China guide began. We didn’t have plans for Hong Kong, and started walking around a little bit. After getting a map, we saw Mickey ears on it, and there was no question about our plans for the rest of the day. Catherine and I pretty much forced our group of friends to make our way to Disneyland Hong Kong, which was like the best day ever. It looked like Disneyland, but didn’t have as many rides. We went on Space mountain, and walked around the park all day. They had the tea cups (my favorite), and amazing fireworks. It felt so weird to see Disney in China, but we loved it so much. We stayed until it closed at 8pm, and then made our way back toward the ship. We went to a nice restaurant for dinner, and got back to the ship around midnight. We still had to pack for our trip that left next morning for Beijing. I had gotten a new Northface backpacking backpack while we were in Vietnam, which was so nice to have for this trip. We had to pack 6 days worth of clothes, a lot of it being jackets and sweatshirts for the Great Wall. We left around 10 am to make our flight to Beijing. We got there around 5pm with about 90 other Semester at Sea students. The China Guide piled us into buses and brought us to our hotel in Beijing. We had the night free, so we walked around our hotel to a night market, and went to dinner at this restaurant. No one spoke any English, so we had no idea what we were ordering. These are always the hardest to make sure about my food allergy to nuts, but Catherine always does an awesome job of finding a picture of a peanut, showing it to the waiter, pretending to put it into her mouth, and then dropping to the floor like she’s dying. The waiters always look at her like she’s crazy, but I haven’t eaten anything with nuts yet so I guess it’s working! We only have one more international stop before I can say I’ve made it around the world without having an allergic reaction. Maybe I’ll take a video of Catherine’s little “scene” and put it on so you can understand how ridiculous and funny it is to watch.

            We left at 8am the next morning to do sightseeing. We went to the Forbidden City, which was so much bigger than I had imagined. Very cool to see. We also went to Tiananmen Square (KK I made a video for you with Tenacious D karate songJ) After that we went to a silk market, where a lot of us bought warm clothes for the Great Wall. I got a really warm Northface jacket, which pretty much saved my life. I also bought a Panda Hat that I am seriously in love with. Our entire group of thirty ended up buying panda hats too. The three groups of thirty each had a name, and we became the Panda group. We had a 2.5 hour drive to the great wall, and it was dark by the time we got there. We had dinner and then got sleeping bags and a mat from the company before beginning the 15 minute hike up to where we would be sleeping on the wall. We were right on the border of Chinese side and the Mongolian side, and actually slept on the Mongolian side, which I think is so awesome. The night on the Great Wall was one of the best nights of my life. And definitely the coldest. It was below freezing, and all we had were our sleeping bags and clothes on the stone wall. It was so surreal being up there. My friends Melissa and John hiked up with me away from where we were sleeping, and we stayed up there talking and constantly reminding eachother that we were sitting on the Great Wall of China. I was so cold that I got maybe an hour of sleep that night. Luckily we woke up early to start hiking, which warmed me up. The wall has some really steep parts, and it took us about an hour to hike to 15 towers. There were Mongolian women walking with us, and one of them grabbed my arm and started pulling me up and down steps, which was funny at first. Then I realized about half way through that she was going to ask me to buy something from her as soon as we got there. She was funny though and kept me entertained during some of the scarier parts when my fear of heights kicked in. We took lots of pictures on the wall, which I’ll try to upload in Taiwan. We had some of the most spectacular views ever from that hike on the Great Wall, and I think it was the best 24 hours of the trip.

   After the wall, we got back onto the bus and went back to Beijing. We spent our last day in Beijing at the Panda exhibit, where I got even more Panda gear. I just love them sooo much. We also went to a Tea house, where these women showed us all different kinds of tea, and we got to try them. It was like a big tea party, and the place was so cool. They had all these different mugs that changed colors when hot water was poured into them. We also went to lunch in the same area with the family of _______, the famous Kung Fu fighter. The family was also good friends with Jackie Chan, and they had pictures of them together in their house. They taught us how to make dumplings, and then we ate lunch in their house.

     We had a sleeper train that night to go to Xi An (prounounced Chee Awwn). The sleeper trains were actually really fun. It was like a big party filled with students. We were on it from 7pm until 8am, and got picked up by a new guide in Xi An. We went directly to the Terracotta Warriors, which was so awesome to see. They were founded in 1974 I believe, by 12 farmers. We actually got to meet one of the founders, and get pictures and a book signed by him. If you have time, google Terracotta Warriors so you can learn a little bit about it. It was so awesome to see, and we actually watched as some of the warriors were still being dug up. It was amazing. After the Terracotta warriors, we went to the city wall, and we rented bikes and rode the entire 8 mile perimeter of the wall, with the city down below us. It was so beautiful and a good end to our trip. Melissa, Sarah and I took our time riding around the wall, and stopped to take pictures of the ridiculous amounts of people down below. We went straight from the wall to the train station, where we had another sleeper train to Shanghai. We arrived in Shanghai in the morning, and got back to the ship by 8am. We couldn’t get off the ship until we were cleared by immigration, so we started exploring Shanghai around 1pm. Catherine and I found a Dunkin Donuts, which was like a dream come true. We have been in Donut withdrawals since Ghana I think, so it was nice to sit there for a little while and also get to skype with our parents. We went around for a coulpe of hours, and then had to get back on the ship before On Ship time!

We are currently stopped right off of the Ryukyu Island chain south of Japan, because we cannot go directly to Taiwan from China due to political tension between them. The islands are really gorgeous- I wish we could get off for the day and visit them, but we’re making our way to Taiwan and will get in tonight. So far I don’t have any plans for Taiwan, but it’s supposed to rain while we’re there so we’re hoping we’ll still be able to visit beaches.

India Pictures

Taj Mahal

Indian "friend" from two years ago

Reunion with Rajan and Namrata

In the slums

Giving stickers to kids in the slum

My favorite little kid in the slum

Hi Guys-
We've been busy these past two days on the ship. Singapore was fun-I felt like I was back in the U.S.
Catherine, Matt, Gavin and I just walked around for the day and explored different places. The water there is a beautiful teal color, and we walked along a beach resort. We had lunch in China town, and ate all kinds of wierd foods like octopus and duck gizzards. The mall right by the ship felt like home. We got french fries from McDonalds....I've missed them soo much. I also had my first starbucks coffee in 2.5 months. We did a little bit of shopping and then got back on the ship. It was a really short day, and I wish we had a little more time to go around Singapore.

So the verdict is in, and the MV Explorer will be making it's final international stop Taiwan. Radiation was detected in South Korea, and the Phillipines was knocked out for safety issues. We're trying to stay positive and get very excited about Taiwan, but everyone's still super bummed about Japan. If anyone has time and wants to google things to do in Taiwan, or info about it, we'll be there for 4 days and have NO idea what to do-
We arrive in Vietnam tomorrow and I am SO excited to be there. It sounds so amazing. My roommate and her best friend from home have their moms waiting for them in HCM city, and we're super excited to hang out with them tomorrow. We're going to shop and get outfits made, and go out to dinner with them. We're all happy to have moms around, it's been a long time!
I'm planning on spending the rest of the week with a couple of my friends on the ship-going to a temple and beaches and other fun stuff.
I'm starting to get excited about this last leg of the voyage. We have only a couple of classes, and a lot of time in ports! I think I have like 3 days of classes in the next two weeks.
I miss all of you guys so much-a little over a month before I see you all!
<3 peace

I’ve got a lot of updates for all of you. I know most of you have been following facebook since “Neptune” day, but a lot has gone on on the ship. First of all, India was perfect. Everything went so well. We did end up missing our flight on Sunday, but it gave us a day to explore Chennai and we still got out by Sunday night. We arrived in Delhi after midnight and Rajan had a driver to take us to his apartment. Namrata was in Jaipur for the night, so we stayed up with Rajan for a little while and gave him his gifts. Catherine and I had brought both of them Semester at Sea shirts, and Joellen and Gavin had Maple syrup from New York, plus Saratoga racetrack gear for them. We fell asleep around 2, and had to get up at 6:30 the next morning for our drive to Agra. Manoche, my driver from last year, was our driver again! My mom and I loved Manoche, and I had fun catching up with him while the C, J, and G slept in the back. Monday was just a seriously perfect day. We met up with Salim, the same hotel manager as last time, and dropped off our stuff. Then we saw the red fort and had an amazing Indian lunch. Afterwards, we held snakes (one of Catherine’s fears conquered), and made our way to the Taj. The Taj Mahal was sooo beautiful. I love it so much. We took a ton of pictures and our guide really made it 20x’s better. Catherine and I had our first motorcycle ride back to the hotel, and then Salim took us to see his sisters! I was so excited to see them. Joellen and I had brought a semester at sea shirt for each of them to have. I brought pictures of us together, and we stayed with the family for a while. They did henna on us, and we listened to one of the little girls in the family sing us English songs. It was so cool to be back there with them and see my “friend” two years later.

We left for Jaipur the next morning, where we toured forts and did LOTS of shopping. Catherine and I got our outfits for the ball. The theme is International Royal Masquerade, and we’re going as Jasmines. Matt and Gavin got pants and will be going as Aladdins.

We spent our third and fourth day in Delhi with Rajan and Namrata, and visiting a slum.

Overall India was so fabulous and everything I expected. Catherine, Gavin, Joellen and I were a great traveling group and had lots of fun pictures and videos together. We were also able to use a lot of your stickers, so thanks so much!

Sorry India blog is so short, things have been crazy here and I’m trying to get done as much as possible before Singapore in a couple of hours.

Ok-now most of you are avid facebookers and have already posted a bazillion comments, but for you dinosaurs out there, if you haven’t heard, I donated all of my hair along with like a hundred other SASers to Locks of Love. And when I say all, I mean ALL of it. I look totally different, but I love it! Thank you so much for all of the amazing comments you guys have posted on my fbook pic and wall…a couple people have forwarded them on to me through email and it’s been really cool to see how much love I’ve gotten from family, friends and even strangers! Friends on the ship have given me girly clothes and jewelry and scarves to borrow, and I’ve had so much fun dressing up every day with my new style. Definitely no regrets, although I have heard of some girls being super upset by their new do’s.

On to Japan…

Unfortunately, due to the devastating tsunami that took place earlier this week, Japan has been taken off our itinerary. We are all sad that we will not be able to visit our last country, but our hearts go out to all those affected by this tragedy. We will be going to another country, but there is no official word of where it will be. So far, ISE is saying that the decision will be made between South Korea, Taiwan or the Philippines. Not sure if I have a preference, so we’ll just have to go with the flow I guess.

Ok that’s it for now, pictures will be up soon hopefully. Only a little more than a month left….wierd.

Hey Guys-

It’s midnight, and we are about 7 hours away from arriving in India! I can’t believe I’m going back-this is so crazy. Catherine, Gavin, Joellen and I have a flight to Delhi in the morning that we are praying we’ll make. Rajan and Namrata, the couple that my mom and I stayed with when we volunteered last year, will be picking us up at the airport and bringing us to their apartment. Rajan has been amazing and planned almost all of our trip in India. We’ll leave on Monday morning to go to Jaipur, where we’ll see forts and ride an elephant (Gavin’s one request), and get our traditional Indian outfits. We’ll go on to Agra on Tuesday and spend the day at the Taj Mahal, which I am so excited to see again. I have a feeling it’s going to be even more amazing the second time, when I can see the reactions on my friends’ faces as they make their way out of the tunnel and see the Taj in front of them.

 We’re all super excited and we have a really fun group going. We bought gifts from the campus store today to give to Namrata and Rajan. They’re each getting a semester at sea shirt, and Joellen also has some maple syrup from New York, which I know they’ll love. I’m also bringing them a couple of small things I picked up along the way from Brazil and Africa.

It just doesn’t seem real that we’ll be in India tomorrow. I’m printing out a couple of photos to bring with me. When my mom and I were in Agra last year, the hotel manager brought us to his “house” so his little sister could do henna on us. We were brought on a rickshaw to these shack like houses, where his excited sisters waited for us. They couldn’t afford to send both to school, so the youngest daughter, who they thought was prettier and smarter,  got to go while the older girl stayed at home. The younger girl did the henna on the arms, and the older sister literally stared at me the whole time. She told her brother she thought I was a movie star, and she just sat and smiled at me the whole time. Right before we left, she took a ring off her finger, pointed to herself and said “friend," then put the ring on my finger, and said “friend” again. It was so adorable, and something I’ll never forget. We took a picture together, showing the ring on my wedding finger. We’re staying at the same hotel, and I’m hoping that Salim is still there so I will be able to bring the picture of me with his sister back to her. She probably has never seen a photo of herself, and I want to bring it to her with a piece of my own jewelry to give her. I never thought I would be going back there, so I’m really excited and hoping everything works out. Alright-I’m going to get going. We’re waking up at six to watch the sunrise and our ship get into port. Hope everyone is doing well at home-

Wish me luck in India and think good thoughts so I don’t get sick like last time!  

Hi Guys,

Sorry I haven’t been updating. This week has been ridiculous. We’ve sailed away from South Africa, spent a day in Mauritius, and are now making our way to India. Once we hit India we will only have about two days between each port, which means little time on the ship to do things like update my blog! I’ve been getting emails from a lot of you asking about my village blog, and I swear I will get it up there. It’s a really important one to me, and I just don’t want to write what I did, but rather what it meant to me. Unfortunately I seriously have had no time to do that. Maybe sometime this week, or after my test tomorrow. South Africa was so awesome, and SO beautiful. It is definitely the most beautiful country I have ever been to. Catherine and I went to Robben Island the first day, which is the high security prison where Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners were held during Apartheid. Our guide was a former prisoner, and listening to him talk about the cell he stayed in for seven years was really amazing. We stayed after and he talked to us about Mandela’s influence on him. Mandela was talking to a group of them, and told them that they might be freed in the future. Our guide told us that he said he wanted revenge on the men who captured and held him, but Mandela said that would get their country nowhere. He said they needed to respect and love their enemies. Our guide said that Mandela’s leadership was there from the beginning, and helped them all move forward. It was so powerful to hear all of this from someone who experienced it during my lifetime. It was also surprising to me that I knew so little about something that is so important. I wish we learned more about Apartheid in school, even if it doesn’t directly relate to Americans.

We left the second day for our bungee jumping/shark dive adventure tour. I think the pictures really explain it all, but I will say that they were the most Legit days of the trip. It was a seven-hour drive to the Bloukrans Bridge, but the drive was so gorgeous. We asked about the houses overlooking the beach on the coast, and they said the most expensive ones were anywhere from 300,000-700,000 US dollars. I’ve decided I’m going to retire there….or maybe I’ll force my parents to and then I’ll just go visit all the time!

Jumping off the bridge was kind of scary. I was the first in our group from the ship, which was almost better because I didn’t have time to walk away. They strapped me up, brought me to the edge, and did a countdown from 5 for me to jump. I thought I was going to close my eyes, but that would have been silly for me to pay all that money and then not watch myself dive into the river and see the trees and boulders below. The whole thing lasted about 2 minutes, and I was terrified by the end. I felt like the strap was falling down toward my feet and I was so relieved when the guy came and strapped me to him to make our way back up. They had a party for us after, with a DJ and drinks. We had to get up at 4 am the next morning to leave for shark diving, so we were in bed by midnight.

Shark diving was surreal. I never thought I would come face to face with a Great White. They had a cage attached to the boat-the top half of the cage is above the water and the bottom half is below. They have seven of us line up next to each other in the cage, with our knees on a bar half way down and our heads above the water. We hold on by putting our hands on top. I think there’s a picture on my blog somewhere. When they yell down, it means they’ve seen the shadow of a shark so we hold our breath and put our feet on the bottom of the cage. We have a weight belt on, and we hold on to the bar that our knees were on before. The shark eats the bait that they put right there, so we get an up close view of the shark. Sometimes the shark can get really close…like really REALLY close. On our last shark viewing, we went down and the shark was coming at the cage. There’s only about a foot between the front of the cage and our faces, and it’s just a couple of widely spaced bars that keep the shark from getting completely into the cage. So on the last one….the shark got the bait, and then started swimming straight at our cage. Catherine and I both let go of the bar, and tried to push ourselves away from the front of the cage. The Great White hit the cage and then turned around and whipped her tail against the cage as she swam away. We were all screaming under water and grabbing each other. Everyone was freaking out, but it was so cool! I wish we had it on video. Our friends on the boat said they were actually scared for us!

I can’t even try to compare the bungee jumping with shark diving. They were two completely different feelings. Jumping was a huge adrenaline rush, but shark diving was one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced. A pretty awesome two days to say the least.

The rest of our time in South Africa was spent hanging out around Cape Town. I went to a meeting with 5 NGOs who have been recognized by Rhoda Khadalie’s organization called Impumelelo. Rhoda is a really inspiring woman who has worked for Nelson Mandela, and to put it nicely, doesn’t take shit from anyone. The NGOs talked to us about the work they have been doing in South Africa. It was really inspiring, and I talked with Rhoda about coming back and doing an internship for her in the future. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it work, but it was still fun to consider.  Rhoda is a well-known author on politics (she reminds me of a female, South African Michael Moore), and she gave me a signed copy of her most recent book.

We celebrated our friend Lauren’s birthday that night at an awesome restaurant called Africa Café. It’s a restaurant you go to with big groups, and it’s a set menu. They have 20 dishes that they bring out, all from different countries on the African continent. We took lots of pictures, but I don’t think I got any up on the blog. The food was amazing, and they were really good about letting me know if there were nuts in anything. And we got to eat with our hands!  Everyone who works there wears traditional African outfits, and they sang and danced for us. And they even painted our faces! We had so much fun, and I want to bring all of you back here just so you can go there! We took the party from there to a local bar, and celebrated until morning. Alas, I spent my last day in Cape Town recovering…. I did some picture updating on my blog, and a lot of Internet research for my South Africa project in Abnormal Psych. Everyone else rallied and went to a winery for the day….it wasn’t going to happen for me.

All right, that’s it for South Africa! I’ll update you on Mauritius a little later, and the village blog! Miss everyone. <3 B

Ghana