Cara Cambardella '08

...a bit of blogblock. How many hits did we get, again, sir Jim who sends me emails? A few thousand? Huh.

Zoya and I have successfully moved into room 3033 on the MV Explorer. We share meals, hallways, and classrooms with some of the brightest professors I've ever met and some of the most interesting students in the nation (and Ecuador, Colombia, Mauritius, India, Mexico and, of course, Bulgaria...) Our room is small, but not unbearably so. We have two twin beds, a bathroom and "large" window in our cabin. Some students paid a slice more and have a "sitting area" or even their own singles. Others, who paid less, have no window or sitting area. Cave life, anyone?

I woke up yesterday morning around five. Still dark outside my porthole. I stumbled and tripped on my roommate's and my own piles of things scattered on our bitty floor. She's still sleeping. My porthole blinds pulled apart - Honolulu's lights in the distance. Land ho! The first land we have seen since leaving Mexico. What an unfamiliar excitement.

feeling like my body has slept 10 hours or more. We are now 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. We're living in your future.

Every night I tried to write in my journal as much as I could before falling asleep. The first night is brief, the others are more substantial. Here's what I wrote:

Qingdao, China. At the tip of a typhoon for two days: sightseeing in the city, food food food, wandering, home visit, sightseeing, food food, coffee wow, poverty, smells, yum food and beer --friends, ice cream, kids and cats.

Photos from Japan. Please see Japan post for explanation/stories.

Four days, three nights in Chaiyaphum, Thailand.

Before any kind of explanation about why I will probably move to rural Thailand for a few years of my life, why I can't stand Pattaya City, and why I left with no more jewelry, here's the cold bony skeleton of my time there:

India. Hot, hot, sandy, dirty, dusty. Eucalyptus, coconut-banana, exhaust, open sewer under bridge. Delicious everything -- soft breads, honey sweets, curries, sour yogurt, fruits. Overflowing. Loud, chaotic, peaceful. Busy, buggy, sticky, bright, full. Kids barefoot, naked, dirty. Smiles. Old men starving. Women beautiful in orange. In pink, blue, green, gold, purple, red, yellow. Rags, injuries. Kids with gold necklaces and silverbell anklets. Dying dogs. Men asleep or already dead on the sidewalk. Families on the dirt. Their sheets on the dirt. A beach for walking. Beautiful things. Thatch roofed huts. Cows crossing a bypass. Skin shades white to black. A man's bus, a woman's. Eyes black and starving, eyes fat -- all staring. All of that, all at once.

Eleven days at sea will make a person crazy. Sockwrestling, Halloween parties (I was a tree, Emily was my squirrel, Zach was my bird, Mike & Lindsay were frat/sorority dude/chick, Benjamin was Waldo, Zoya was a gypsy, Becky was Josh, Margo was Tiger Lily, Alan was Dr. Cecil...), Sea Olympics, dancing on the deck...

We rode the gentle Suez our last day before docking in Alexandria, Egypt. To our right, the Sinai Peninsula, to our left, the Egyptian desert. Like a caravan of Thai elephants (poor elephants in Thailand...), the ships sat single-file on the northward pulling current spilling into the Mediterranean Sea, which is now rocking and throwing our ship like the Pacific did before Hawaii. Before that, India. After that, Egypt. Now, we're almost in Turkey.

Appropriately, superstition makes its entrance. I lose three things: my umbrella (of course it rains nearly every day), an earring (which, according to my Balkan ship sister, means I'll return to Istanbul), and my glasses. (Note: don't tuck semi-valuables in flowy scarf.) The first photo taken of me in front of the modern art sign is the last I'll see of all three. That morning, we docked in Istanbul, a city bridging two continents, the day after my 22nd birthday, in the chill and damp of a far too long absent autumn. We returned to a moderate climate just in time to celebrate.

A few chilly days in one of the most visually stunning places in the world: rocky mountain hikes, stony beachside walks, long meals of local cheese and bread and soup, climbs on forts and castles and towers centuries old, interaction with people as cold as the breeze from snow topped mountains who eventually welcomed us with sweet wine and kisses. We all loved what we saw of Croatia, even if it meant nearly freezing to death for some of us (especially Zach, who, without money, was saved from sleeping in the snow by a benevolent stone-hard-faced hotel owner) or breaking into mountain huts (Paige, Emily, Jake and almost me). The parks are closed, we found out or traveling far for others (10 hours to Zagreb for Jesse and Ben.) For me, it was two "cities," Dubrovnik and Split, whose season is not mid-November, but the rest of the year.

I can do this now because I'm in a cafe where wifi is free. More writing to come.