China...

I have contemplated for quite a while now how I was going to go about writing this blog entry.  As many of you know, a fellow shipmate, hall-mate and friend of mine, Kurt Leswing, was struck and killed by a drunk driver in Hong Kong early in the morning on November 8^th.  Besides having to deal with the pain of losing Kurt, I was incredibly sick with something flu-like for my entire stay in China.  Despite the emotional and physical issues I had to deal with, I still managed to have a good time for the most part.  Unlike all my other blog entries, I don’t think this one will contain the detail and vivid imagery as the others.  I apologize.

 

I want to save what I have to say about Kurt’s death until the end of this blog.  For now, I will tell you about all that I did over my five-day stay in China.  First off, for any of those who are planning on doing Semester at Sea sometime in the future, I want to tell you that if you do any trips through Semester at Sea in China, be prepared to be emotionally, physically, and mentally drained afterwards.  Almost every person I know who was on my trip was drained in all ways possible come day 5.  Our itinerary was packed and I felt that we were in constant motion.  With this being said, I wouldn’t have wanted to do any other trip in China because the things I saw and the things I did were amazing.  Here is a list of the things I did (hopefully I didn’t skip any): climbed the Great Wall in Beijing, visited the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, a few different pagodas and burial sites, and I spent a few days in Xi’an Province where I saw the Terracotta Soldiers.

           

Climbing the Great Wall is definitely one of the highlights of my trip.  I was pretty sick the day we climbed, so I didn’t think I was going to make it very far up the wall but I pushed myself (probably shouldn’t have) and I made it almost to the top.  There was one section I did not climb and I’m glad I didn’t because I probably would have collapsed.  It is amazing how much less you can push your body when you are sick.  I cannot remember what days we did what activities for the life of me, but I know what I did nonetheless.  Our group visited Tiananmen Square and I was amazed at how prominent Mao is in China.  It’s as if there is an obsession with him.  Everywhere we went in the area we were swarmed with vendors selling little red Mao books.  I passed on the purchase.

 

The day after we visited Tiananmen Square, we spent a few hours walking through the Forbidden City.  It was a very interesting place- the architecture was beautiful and I was awe-struck at how immaculate the grounds were.  I wish I knew more about Chinese history- I would have had a better understanding of the dynasties, their emperors and their reigns.

           

I wish I could remember the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace in greater depth than what I do.  I can look back on my pictures for help, but it’s just not the same as it has been in all the other countries I’ve visited.  The five days I spent in China are so foggy in my memory that I can hardly make sense of what days I was in Beijing and what days I was in Xi’an.  I do remember the Terracotta Soldiers very well.  There are three separate pits that they have excavated…the first being the largest and the third being the smallest.  The shear size of the pits was astonishing.  It’s amazing that each one of the terracotta soldiers were crafted to be life sized and each one has distinct facial features.  Something like 6000 soldiers have been excavated to date and there are still more to be unearthed. 

 

I’m sure when I look through my pictures in a few weeks, I’ll be able to recall the things I did in China in a bit greater detail, but until then I won’t keep trying to dig in my memory.  I do want to say that I had some amazing food in China but I am definitely looking forward to American Chinese food when I get home.  All I want is chicken and broccoli and pepper steak :-)

 

Kurt’s death hung heavy on my heart for quite a few days and I can still see his face in my memory as if he is right in front of me.  I’ve known very few people in my life who have passed away and they were all older and had lived a good life.  Kurt had his entire life ahead of him.  His death made every single one of us here on Semester at Sea realize that any one of us could have been him that night.  It could be my parents having to deal with my death as easily as it could be anyone else’s child.  I would never wish that pain on anyone.  I have never been one to take life for granted but I am guilty of forgetting to pay attention to the little things life offers on a daily basis.  I realize more so now than ever that our time here on Earth is never guaranteed.  We can’t live life thinking that we’ll have another day to do what we didn’t do today or say tomorrow what we didn’t say today.

 

Our entire shipboard community has pulled together over the past few days and we’ve all shed tears, hugged strangers for comfort, and communicated into each other’s souls without ever saying a word.  Death is never easy to deal with but living in such close quarters with over 650 students made it nearly impossible to feel its affects.  Even for those students who didn’t know Kurt, they still were feeling the pain of others hovering in the air. 

 

Tonight, my hall, the Adriatic Sea, had a small gathering to take a picture to send to Kurt’s family to let them know that we are thinking of them and of Kurt.  As one of our fellow hall-mates said tonight in our Logistical Preport, Kurt will be a permanent character in our life’s story as will everyone else whom we’ve encountered along our life’s path.  We need to remember him for the role he played, whether it is as simple as a fellow SASer, a person who was able to make us all happy with a flash of his smile, or a life-long friend.  For me, I will always know Kurt as a warm-hearted, genuine guy who went out of his way to make sure others needs were met before his own.

Rest in Peace, Kurt…

The next four years...

Hello everyone.

 

Thank you all for your wonderful comments. Semester at Sea has definitely given me the opportunities that I’ve needed to become a more informed and better educated citizen of this world. Not only have I been able to experience many different cultures of our globe, I’ve also been able to experience different facets of American culture through my peers. Some of these facets are much different from the culture that I know to be American and others seem to mimic my own. 

 

Over the past few weeks, students and faculty members formed an election committee in order to keep us well informed of everything going on back home in the political realm. Today will be a day that every single American will remember, much like September 11^th. I have mixed emotions about the outcome of the election, but I think many people feel the same way I do. Unfortunately, over the past few years, confidence in our President faltered and I feel that Obama will have his hands full when trying to make up lost ground. Party politics aside, the next four years will be an interesting turning point in American history. It is up to Barack Obama to put his right foot forward and not to let all those who believe in him down. Four years from now, I want to be able to say that America chose the correct candidate, not that they wish they chose a different name on the ’ 

As a college student growing up in a time of war and visiting both Viet Nam and Cambodia, I want our troops to come home as safely as possible. The men and women that serve in our military deserve the utmost respect from their fellow Americans when they arrive home. Obama says that he wants to withdraw troops as quickly as possible, but he really needs to make sure he understands the complications and potential dangers of doing so. I am all for every single soldier coming home to their families but I am also for them believing in the work that they are doing in the Middle East. Unless you’ve been there, you really haven’t the slightest idea what it’s really like.  Americans need to stop relying on biased news channels for their information. If you want to know what is going on, turn off your TV, turn off your party politics, and turn on your hearts and minds and listen to what our men and women who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq have to say.

 

As Obama said tonight, “Our stories are singular but our destinies are shared.” Whether you are a democrat or a republican, male or female, black or white, we are all American and we all suffer together and we all celebrate together. We may be individuals in person but we are a community in spirit. Although we should look forward to the potential of the future, let us not forget the progress we have made in the past. I am where I am today because both parties believed in evolution and change. 

 

I have six weeks left on Semester at Sea and then I come home to the life I’ve loved for twenty years. I will come home to my biggest support- my family, I will come home to friends that I will have for the rest of my life, and I will come home to an America that will appear the same from the outside but will be completely different from how I knew it before I left in August. It will be bittersweet.

 

Tomorrow we reach China…I’m off to Beijing and Xi’an province and I’ll be seeing history on a physical scale that I’ve never experienced before. I can’t wait! When I get home in December, I’ll load my pictures onto a picture-sharing website and then post all the links onto my blog for you all to look at.

 

I hope all is well back home and I wish I could be experiencing history while on American soil, but I suppose a ship will have to do J 

 

-Amanda

Viet Nam, Cambodia, and My Thoughts on Both

*WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC DETAILS THAT SOME MAY FIND HARD TO READ. MY INTENTIONS ARE NOT TO UPSET, BUT TO EDUCATE*

 

I cried today…my emotions finally overflowed and the feelings I’ve felt over the past few days have finally come to a head. I’ve seen pictures of torture, stood on top of dirt that hundreds of thousands of people were killed on, learned things about the Viet Nam war that I never knew before, and realized things about myself that I was never aware existed.

 

This past hour, about a dozen of our faculty, staff, and Life Long Learners formed a panel and spoke of their experiences during the Viet Nam War. The entire reason for having this panel tonight was because students like me visited the Cu Chi Tunnels, the Reunification Palace, or the War Remnants Museum and were deeply touched and even changed because of our experiences.

 

Most people I talked to prior to Semester at Sea about what I would experience over these three and a half months told me that India would be the country that would change me. I left India and was happy that I experienced it but I didn’t feel the connection that I was expecting. I tried to tell myself that I was changed the first few days after I left India, but I had to stop lying to myself. India didn’t change me. Viet Nam did. Yes, India was an eye opening experience for me and I am much more aware of the privileges I have and the comforts that I take for granted way too easily. However, I don’t have the desire to go back to India like the desire I have to go back to Viet Nam. I will forever have memories of thousands of Indian men, women, and children sleeping on the streets at night but they won’t be as vivid as the pictures I will have engrained in my mind of the photographs that I saw at the War Remnants Museum. I choked back tears as I sat in our air conditioned bus as we drove alongside water buffalo through the streets of Delhi thinking about how lucky I am to be cool while the people on the street were sweltering but I’ll always remember the taste of my tears as I cried on the bus sitting outside the Genocide Museum in Cambodia thinking about how lucky I am not to have lost limbs from landmines, have a face that wasn’t melted off from chemical warfare, and having been born without any mental handicaps or physical deformities because of Agent Orange. 

 

In Viet Nam, the minute I stepped foot on the ground, I felt a connection that I haven’t felt in a long time. Let me preface this by saying that in my 16 years of education I think I heard about the Viet Nam War a total of one hour. Tonight at the Viet Nam War panel, one of my peers spoke in front of all of us about how she is a smart girl but didn’t even know why we went to war with Viet Nam. I, too, didn’t know the first thing about the Viet Nam war until the day before we got there and had a crash course Viet Nam war lecture. And it wasn’t even in a history class! It was my Race and Ethnicity class. I learned more about Viet Nam and the war and Cambodia in a matter of an hour than I have ever learned in my entire academic career.

 

I don’t know if it’s because my brother spent some time in Viet Nam earlier this year and told me so many wonderful things about Viet Nam, or that I dated a Cambodian guy whose family was affected by the Pol Pot regime (a United States Marine might I add), or that I know a countless number of United States soldiers who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq over the past few years…some of them serving once, twice, or even three times (Eddie, thank you from the bottom of my heart), but I felt and still feel a bond with Viet Nam that I’ll never be able to let go of or completely understand.

 

Visiting the War Remnants museum affected me more than I initially thought. I began questioning certain beliefs that I’ve had ever since I knew about politics and I’ve had an extremely difficult time trying to make sense of everything that is going on in my head. I heard from second-hand sources about the Viet Nam war over the course of my lifetime, but they were usually just short snippets of information- none that ever made me ask “why?” Yes, I knew that hundreds of thousands of people were killed and I knew that Agent Orange was used but I never saw pictures of the atrocities that occurred nor did I know that there were over 5 million Vietnamese, Cambodia, Laotian, and Thai military were killed. I also didn’t know that over 3 million American soldiers served or that 58, 159 of them were killed. It was never something that I was made to think about.

 

I also know that my dad could have easily been drafted and sent to Viet Nam and I am sure some of his friends were, but that is all I know. I never thought to talk to him or to people who lived at that time about their experiences either directly or indirectly with the war. Dad, we have a lot to talk about when I get home. I hope you are ready. Everyone else who lived through the war or that has an opinion or any information that they would like to share with me or educate me on, please send me an email: ALVeinott@semesteratsea.net. I really want to learn about this subject and I feel that hearing stories and information from people who lived through the Viet Nam war are the best sources for doing so.

 

I mentioned above that I visited the Genocide Museum in Cambodia but I didn’t mention that I also visited the Killing Fields. The experience that I had with both the Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields is similar to the experience that I had at the War Remnants Museum. However, I feel that the places I visited in Cambodia evoked more emotion from me because I was standing on top of areas where thousands of people were ruthlessly murdered by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I breathed in air from the same rooms where 17,000 people were murdered at the Genocide Museum (the museum was first a high school and then converted into a prison by the Pol Pot regime where “bad”Cambodians were brought to be “retaught”how to act like “good”Cambodians. However, when someone was brought to the prison, they were either killed by torture there or if they survived torture, they were brought to the Killing Fields (a twenty minute drive) and executed on the spot and dumped into mass graves. The Pol Pot soldiers who massacred thousands of Cambodian civilians lived just outside of the Killing Fields and in order to keep the stench from rotting flesh to a minimum, they would pour acid onto the bodies to neutralize the odors, sometimes pouring the chemicals onto people who were still holding on to life.  Very few people made it out of the prison alive.

 

The time I spent in both Viet Nam and Cambodia wasn’t all emotional and I promise that I laughed as well as cried. Jen and I had a wonderful time in Saigon those first two days and the Cambodia trip I did through Semester at Sea may have been on of my favorite trips thus far. I saw Angkor Wat at sunset, sunrise, and in the middle of the day. All three times it was beautiful. There is something majestic about Ankgor Wat and I can’t wait to upload pictures for you all to see. We also visited Angkor Thom and the temples and memorials that were built hundreds of years ago that you probably all have seen if you’ve seen Tomb Raider (parts of Tomb Raider were actually filmed at these sites!). Needless to say, I experienced beauty and sorrow in equal amounts.

 

China is coming up in two days and then in a week I will be in Japan. It is hard to grasp that I only have six weeks left in this semester (40 days). I am looking forward to coming home to the life that I left behind but I am also worried about how the transition will be from Semester at Sea back into “real life”. The first few days home are going to be insane and then Christmas comes, and then New Years, and then the start of next Semester…which I still need to find housing for. After next semester, I’ll have a year left in school and then god knows what will be in store for me. With the way my life has been going the past few years, I have a feeling that I’ll have one hell of a rollercoaster ride ahead of me. It feels like I just got into college, and now I’m over half way done. Grad school maybe? The Peace Corps? Backpacking around Europe for a few months? Picking up and moving out West? They all sound like good ideas! I wish I could do them all…maybe I will.

 

On that note, I hope you all enjoyed what I had to say. I had a bit of writers block (I’m not sure if it was apparent or not to you) while writing this blog so if I wake up in the middle of the night tonight and have the urge to write some more, I will do so. I am still attempting to finish my India blog, and hopefully I will have it done before China…that way I’ll be all caught up. Bye for now,

 

Amanda

 

Good Morning, Viet Nam!

Okay, now that I’ve got that movie reference out of the way…J

 

Well, I can officially say that I absolutely LOVE Viet Nam. Now I can see why my brother wants to come and live here (for those of you who don’t know, my brother spent a few weeks here in Viet Nam in the spring and is planning on moving here at some point to teach ESL). The people are wonderful…they are friendly, helpful, and full of smiles. I just wanted to write a short blog update before I have to meet up with my group heading to Cambodia (Group C, Phnom Phen and Angkor Wat).

           The first day here in HCMC, I did an SAS FDP called Temples and Churches and I had a wonderful time. It was extremely informative and I learned a lot about the religiosity of Viet Nam and in particular Saigon. The pagodas, temples, and churches are architectural masterpieces and the beauty emanating from them is unbelievable. Did you know that over fifty percent of Viet Nam doesn’t practice a particular religion because under Socialist rule practicing religion was extremely frowned upon? However, today, most of those people are “closet practicers”and they do indeed have a religion, they just aren’t religious on the outside.

           Yesterday, I spent the entire day with my roommate Jen. We had a wonderful time together. We met up with my brother’s friends sister, Tu, and we had a short tour of her University before heading out to the War Remnants Museum. I can’t even describe the emotions I felt when reading the plaques on the walls or looking at the pictures in the museum. I’ve never had to fight back tears harder than I did yesterday afternoon. I can’t understand why anyone can do what was done during the Viet Nam war…on both sides. I don’t want to get into detail with my thoughts and feelings right now because it could take me hours. I will most likely come back to this topic after Cambodia…

           After the War Remnants museum, we went to Ben Thanh market and grabbed some lunch at a small shop within the market. Once we had some food in our systems, we were ready for shopping and shopping is what we did. I made sure not to buy little knick knacks that are useless. Instead, I bought small gifts for people that they can actually use. I can’t wait for Christmas! I love giving presents J

           After the market, Jen and I had a few hours to spare before dinner so we decided to get massages. I was a little apprehensive at first because I’ve heard some “things”about Vietnamese massages. My apprehension was unneeded though because it was 100% legitimate. And it was also quite possibly the best massage of my life. It was a little awkward though when my masseuse climbed up and stood on the table to massage my back! All I thought was, well, this is Viet Nam…Haha. Any who…I really need to get going. I just wanted to say hello and let you all know that I’m alive and well and having the time of my life. I miss you guys! Be prepared for an emotional blog after Cambodia…

 

Amanda

 

P.S. I'm still working on my India blog but I promise I'll have it done ASAP