India and Malaysia

APR 5

I’ve officially had my first 3-day stretch at sea. Yep, that means I only had three days between ports!!! And, to top that, I have another three-day period starting tomorrow! What do I have to say about these really short periods at sea? Advantages: don’t have long enough to get sick of the ship food. Disadvantages: don’t have long enough to digest all the experiences from the last port and get excited about the port to come, and it’s really hard to get back into ‘the homework mode’ and get much stuff done.

So, to catch you up, everything about India is absolutely amazing, but if I had to choose just one thing to take back home with me, it would definitely be the food. Mom, when we get home, the first lunch is going to be a Cajun chicken salad with feta cheese and sundried tomatoes, the first supper is going to be your amazingly delicious salmon…with more dressing-free salad, and my second lunch and supper are going to be at the two Indian restaurants at home. Mmmm…naan and channa masala and eating that all with my fingers. :D Yes, the food tastes better that way – trust me.

Off the topic of food, what else did I do in this wonderful country either than eat absolutely delicious food? Well, the first day Ivan and I had our wonderful first experience with a rickshaw driver – we asked to go to the local market (after we’d had lunch, of course) and went everywhere but…we stopped at ~5 little stores where the driver gets tokens for brining us there (he gets everything and anything from t-shirts to gas to cash). By the time we’d gotten completely frustrated with him and FINALLY threatened not to pay him enough that he stopped taking us to these super-touristy and expensive places, we had to get back to the ship for the Welcome Reception. The reception for this country wasn’t the best, but could have been worse (not worth talking about). The next morning Ivan left for his Taj Mahal trip and I was so exhausted from the 7-day stretch of class plus all of my adventures before India that I simply slept in, sent e-mails, and did a bit of homework on the ship. That night I left for my homestay.

I knew this experience was going to be great as soon as I got on the sleeper train. Yes, I slept on a train in India, and it was surprisingly comfy. We were woken up at the ungodly hour of 5 in the morning to take a 45 minute ride out to a little farm. Okay, so little was definitely the wrong description for this house…the house itself – not including the land they own – covers ¾ of an acre! The family has been hosting SAS students for 18 years now, so they were pretty experienced in what they were doing, and it was obvious. They gave us just enough time each day to unwind and relax, gave us interesting tours around the area including a sugarcane processing factory and a coconut processing factory – they do some amazing stuff with these two plants! The hosts were really easy to talk to and we talked about everything possible. I spent two days and one night in Erode, then took the sleeper train back home.

My last day in India was another great day. We went shopping for gifts for people and ate some more great food. Oh, but I have some bad news: after an amazing supper at this 5-star restaurant we had called for us the only rickshaw driver in India who did not know where not only the ‘student ship’ was, but also the Chennai Port! Umm… it took us 45 minutes for a 15 minute ride…this extra half-hour is how late we were for on-ship time. For anyone who knows the system on the ship, this gave us 8 hours of dock time!!!! What’s dock time? When you have to stay on the ship for the number of hours allocated to you based on how many minutes you were late. I was late 23 minutes….I checked the student handbook and that was only supposed to be 4 hours. I definitely got the number of dock time hours changed.

Penang, Malaysia was a pretty cool place. I went on three SAS trips…parts of them were kinda a waste of time, but I didn’t really know what else to do before I got here, so they were okay. With the rest of my time I ate some more good food, some okay food, and some great food. And when I wasn’t eating I was at the mall shopping. Yes, I spent much of my time at a mall in Malaysia, but Ivan and I got some much needed groceries (I’m sorry, but the same fruit mix and buttery salted scrambled eggs for breakfast EVERY morning cannot be healthy) and a few more gifts. In total we weren’t at the mall for very long at all, just long enough to waste some time. Because one of our trips was first thing when we got to Malaysia we had to serve our dock time at the end…so I’m on the ship right now wasting time just after supper.

Well, that’s the summary of what happened. Sorry it’s not very detailed this time. Post next when I have more time. Right now I’m off to Vietnam to meet with Mom and Dad!

Lindsay

APR 7

Happy Early Easter! Passover supper tonight, and mass with Archbishop Desmond Tutu tomorrow morning – bright and early.

Lindsay.

P.S. We get to move our clocks BACK an hour tonight!!!! Yay!!!