Dixon Donnelly in Asia

Dixon Donnelly in Asia—Reprise

2009-12-31T06:12:00.000-08:00

By Kathleen Dixon Donnelly

Perhaps as a result of my experience teaching throughout Southeast Asia on Semester at Sea in the summer of 2006, at my university I have recently inherited the role of Link Tutor with Guilin University of Technology in China. Three times each year I will travel to Guilin to recruit students to join the marketing course with my university in Birmingham, UK, teach classes, and then oversee the academic results of the students who will come. On each of these trips, My Irish Husband Tony can come with me [at our expense, of course].
So, as an addendum to the Dixon Donnelly in Asia blogs I wrote on Semester at Sea, below are two blogs to cover the two weeks we just spent in Beijing and Guilin.
I'd love to know what you think-- kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Saturday, 28 November, 2009, Guilin: Getting Out of China

2009-12-31T06:05:00.000-08:00

It’s been an interesting week in Guilin, southern China…

Sunday

We arrive in Guilin after a three-hour flight south from Beijing. Much warmer. And the Sheraton is five star, and all week proves to be a little touch of Park Avenue right in the middle of Guilin.
As advised by all, we spend the evening on the city river cruise, narrated in Chinese, and discover a real wine bar—with real wine!—operated by Clarence, born in Shanghai, who moved here after years in California, and end the evening listening to the jazz duo in the lounge bar of the hotel.

Monday

I finally get a reply to my messages to my liaison with the university, Echo, who tells me she missed us at the airport and didn’t know we would be gone all day today on the highly recommended River Li day cruise. I assure her I’ll be back first thing Tuesday morning. Well, haven’t I made a good first impression on the new job?
The cruise takes us through the beautiful mountains of southern China, pictured on the 20 yuan note. We meet an American woman who has fallen in love with the country while teaching English in Szechuan province for five years. Tony and I imagine Szechuan overrun with Chinese kids speaking English with Arkansas accents.
Because of the drought, the ‘river’ is so low that we finish the trip to by bus. Our tour guide has arranged a terrific hotel for us in Yangsho, and smoothes things over when we discover we were expected to bring our passports with us. We have the local delicacy, fish cooked in beer, at the recommended restaurant, which appears to be a hang out for some interesting Chinese mafia characters.

Tuesday

We awake early to the sun rising over the local McDonald’s and get the bus back to Guilin so I can start work. The dusty air on the road doesn’t help Tony’s cough, which is spreading to me; the air feels worse than in Beijing.
My fellow teacher from Birmingham, Kathy, who has been doing this gig for the past few years, meets me in the hotel lobby and we are off to the university in a van with Echo. Guilin University of Technology [GUT], 20 minutes away, has a large modern campus behind a big gate. We meet with Jeffrey, the head of the management school, in his office and discuss our schedule. He invites us all to the first of many dinners.
At a lovely restaurant, across the street from the local Wal-mart, Tony and I meet other faculty and assure Jeffrey we’ll try new foods, but not pigs’ stomach. The director of the university’s international programs, Judy, invites us to lunch the next day.
The chili pepper that lodged in my throat doesn’t help the cough that is seeping from Tony to me, so we opt for bed early.

Wednesday

At a pharmacy around the corner I buy herbal remedies for our colds, but then, off to campus for lunch. Kathy steers clear of both of us, worried that she will catch our germs and not be allowed to board the plane home on Saturday.
Judy, our hostess, leads us through the student cafeteria, then upstairs, past the restaurant where the students with more money eat, and upstairs again to a private dining room she has reserved. Tony and I hide our coughs by swilling Diet Coke.
Kathy and I go back to her on-campus apartment to work on the presentation—from opposite sides of the room—that we’ll give the students that night. Even so, after I change at the hotel and come back to campus, she tells me she doesn’t think I should go. I’m terribly disappointed but she is right—I’m in danger of infecting Kathy and all the Chinese wearing face masks, and also, I feel like crap.
After a long rest at the hotel, Tony convinces me I need to get out, so we end the evening at Clarence’s wine bar down the street. And then to bed.

Thursday

Jeffrey takes me to meet the other marketing faculty, where I try to hide my cold by coughing into Kleenex. As we chat about what I’ll teach next April, in walks Kathy, coughing into a handkerchief. She’s got it too.
She hands me the presentation to give to the second group of students tonight.
But it’s Thanksgiving! Determined to have a traditional dinner, Tony and I wolf down tough turkey, crispy Brussels sprouts and some weird but tasty ‘mashed’ potatoes at the hotel before I take off with Jeffrey, out to GUT’s more modern campus.
The 100 or so students are interested in our program, but I’m not sure they get all my jokes. They love the video Kathy brought showing the GUT students currently in Birmingham enjoying themselves in class and in their western apartments. Afterwards, a few of those planning to enroll in the program chat with me, and leave saying, ‘Thank you for your fabulous presentation.’
On our way out, Jeffrey and I walk past students practicing hip hop routines.
On the drive back, along the dusty road from Yangsho, I ask him about the background of the students who go to GUT. Education isn’t free, and coming to our program in England is even more expensive. How do their parents afford it?
The GUT students, he explains, did not have high enough marks to go to prestigious schools, like Beijing University, but studying in England will open up new opportunities for them. If their English is good enough.
‘Their parents have done well with the new economy,’ he explains. ‘Some would have started businesses at the very beginning, and want to invest in their children’s future. With an English degree they will be able to live and work in other countries, but could also get good jobs in western companies in China.’
Jeffrey also mentions that, when he visits our campus in February, he would like to discuss enrolling in our Ph.D. program.

Friday

Jeffrey has invited Tony and me to ‘Sports Day’ on campus, where the faculty and staff take part in basketball, rope skipping and relay races with the students serving as referees.
While waiting outside Jeffrey’s office, we meet the American who teaches English at GUT. When I explain that I’m recruiting for the Birmingham program, he asks what kind of support we give the students to help them with culture shock. I realize that, except for intensive English classes for the few weeks before the semester begins, we really don’t do much to help these Chinese students, many away from home for the first time, make the transition to western life. No wonder they socialize only with each other and cluster together in classes.
At the games, we meet Jeffrey’s wife, an accountant at the university, and their two-year old son. They’re thrilled with the Aston Villa and England football shirts we’ve brought for them. There’s another lunch, at a restaurant near campus, and one last dinner invitation for our last evening.
Our coughs are subsiding, and we feel better in the warm sun, but it’s been a long week and we’re leaving tomorrow for Beijing. Tony and I buy all the souvenirs we need for some of you lucky readers back home, and see Kathy and her family for the last time at the dinner. The evening ends at Clarence’s, with real red wine.

Saturday

Off to the airport, still hiding our dwindling coughs, for the flight back to Beijing. Along the way we pass miles of construction, new apartment buildings going up, highways connecting. Lots of dust.
Over the next few years, how many young Chinese will feel the need to leave when there is more opportunity for them here at home?
Watch this space.

Epilogue

Often the last night of a long trip produces the biggest surprises.
On our first trip on the Beijing subway, we were helped by a lovely young woman with good English named Camille. As we parted, we gratefully asked for Camille’s e-mail address. We contacted her during the week and asked her to meet us at our hotel on Saturday, our last night in Beijing, so we could treat her to a meal.
Camille showed up with her friend Iris, and we invited them to join us for dinner. Once again, Chinese women live on air and water. Cheap dates.
Camille is a photographer and shares an apartment with Iris, a student at the Film Academy. They grew up together in a small town south of Beijing and their Chinese names are Chen Chen and Yu Yu. Really. We had a chat about popular culture; Iris is fond of European films like Trainspotting and Amelie. Good taste, Iris.
Then they asked, ‘Do you like coffee? Our friend has a coffee shop and very good cheesecake.’
Ever conscious of our advancing age and our long trip back home tomorrow, we asked,
‘Is it close by?’
‘No, we will take a taxi.’
‘What the heck!,’ I said to My Irish Husband Tony.
So there we were in a taxi with these two gorgeous young Chinese women, racing through expressways heading north in one of the largest cities in the world, with no idea where we were going. Tony turned to me and said, ‘Should we be worried?’
‘I don’t think so. But if he pulls into a dark alley, and they start speaking perfect English and get out whips, we’re in trouble.’
The driver did indeed pull down a dark street. We followed Camille and Iris past a brightly lit store to a funky coffee shop with wicker chairs, couches, very few customers, soft jazz in the background, and a big fat adorable white cat. We sat in a booth, had coffee and the best cheesecake ever, and Iris confided that it was Camille’s birthday. They had celebrated with friends the night before so she could spend time with her new friends from England tonight.
Safely back in our hotel, hugging us in the lobby, Camille and Iris volunteered to come with us to the airport the next morning. We told them we would be fine on our own, but we promised to keep in touch by e-mail and see them the next time we are in Beijing.
The perfect ending to a perfect trip.

Saturday, 21 November, 2009, Beijing: Inside China

2009-12-11T14:36:00.000-08:00

As we braced ourselves against the wind on the most accessible part of the Great Wall, I said to My Irish Husband Tony, ‘Remember that you put on our annual Fantasy List, Stand on the Great Wall on 5th May, 2005 [05/05/05]. You only missed by four years—that’s not too bad!’
Although it was bright and clear, the wind and the cold limited our upward hike and we took a break to have tea in an overpriced coffee/gift shop.
Tony kept checking his phone to see if he had another text from his friend Shinny. When she had contacted him that morning, she was taking the train to Beijing and would be there about 1:30. He texted back that we were already heading for the Great Wall and wouldn’t be back at our hotel until early evening. That was the last we had heard from her.
Tony had met Shinny via Skype about three years before. She wanted to improve her English and he wanted to know more about China, firmly believing that we would get back there some day.
And here we are, with four sightseeing days in and around Beijing before I start my work at the university in Guilin next week.
We had told Shinny that we wanted to see her city, Heng Shui, and could visit on a day trip, three hours each way by train. She insisted on coming to Beijing to meet us.
When Tony and Shinny first met on line, she was working in sales at a wire factory, and living in the dormitory for the workers. She hated the conditions there, and her father, a teacher, got her an administrative job with the local government. Shinny, in her late twenties, says she works seven days a week and, ‘It’s boring.’ Her workaholic boss has given her these two days off to visit her friends from England.
Just as I was about to give in to Tony’s plan of heading for the huge Beijing West railway station, one of the largest in Asia, to see if we could find her—Shinny called! She’d never been to Beijing before, but, after a phone call to our hotel, found her way across the huge city by bus and taxi, and was waiting patiently in the lobby.
Tony recognized her instantly from her pictures on Skype and Shinny was thrilled to finally meet her internet friend in the flesh. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant—Chinese women apparently survive on air and water—and got her a room near us.
We had brought presents for her, including Birmingham’s own Cadbury, and a Marks & Spencer scarf for her mother. However, Shinny explained that her home was two hours beyond Heng Shui, and that her parents were shy and didn’t speak English. We were disappointed that we wouldn’t get to meet her family and see her home, but still excited for the opportunity to go into a China where tourists rarely ventured.
So this morning we got up early, squirreled away a croissant and some orange juice from our breakfast, and headed to the Beijing West railway station. Shinny directed us to the correct waiting room, which had four gates around its perimeter, and a big thick queue already forming for our train. I said to Tony, ‘The phrase “seething mass of humanity” comes to mind.’ Feeling like extras in a scene from The Good Earth, we inched forward with the others and were propelled into the upper floor of our assigned carriage.
Shinny had bought her ticket at the last minute, so it was SRO for her, but soon some passengers shifted and she was able to sit most of the way.
As the train pulled out of the station at 10 am—on time—Western classical music began to play throughout the carriage. It felt as if we were floating into the Chinese countryside, passing other trains with lace curtains in their first class windows.
We left the outskirts of Beijing behind and saw acres of dry farmland. There has been a drought in China, as evidenced by the few patches of green the train passed. I remembered from our lectures on Semester at Sea that the country has lots of land for its one billion people, but too little of it is fertile enough to feed all of them.
Shinny talked to a family of three sitting across the aisle. The mother was breastfeeding, and the father was fascinated by us Westerners. He stared with a big grin, and asked Shinny questions about us. Eventually he took a picture of Tony holding his baby.
A uniformed woman stood up in the carriage and began giving a sales pitch for an educational project to teach children math, using a whiteboard and marker to demonstrate arithmetic examples. She must have done a good job because the staring father across the aisle bought one for his growing family. She was soon followed by another woman selling toothbrushes and toothpaste.
About an hour into the trip, a large group of people got on the already full carriage. They were obviously ‘country people,’ or ‘culchies’ as the Irish would call them. They carried huge burlap bags, the kind that rice is shipped in, filled with clothes and other belongings, which they used as seats and pillows in the aisles. We could see the dirt on their hands, and both Shinny and the middle class couple across from us visibly turned their noses away. I didn’t notice any particular bad smells; what caught my attention was that these people had perfect teeth. Not sure what kind of dental plan China has, but it must be better than that of our NHS.
As we neared Heng Shui, Shinny pointed out the window to one of the many cities we had passed. ‘That city is nicer than mine.’
‘Why?’ I asked her.
‘It looks better. My city is old and poor.’
‘I bet the people in that town think yours looks better!’ I told her. ‘And we’ve never been to your city before, so to us it is new, not old.’
The country people were thrilled that so many of us got off in the big city of Heng Shui, giving them more room for the rest of their journey, two more hours along the track.
The station at Heng Shui, like the city, is old and crumbling. We walked out in to a cold but bright and sunny day, with cleaner air than Beijing.
On the wide and mostly empty street to the left of the station, Shinny tried to find a suitable restaurant for our lunch. Locals were selling all types of objects on blankets on the sidewalk. As a marketing professor, I was fascinated to think how much they could possibly gross; they all sold the same products without much evidence of demand.
Shinny decided that all the restaurants were too dirty for us, and so we took a taxi for a short ride into the city center. After a few tries, she found a suitable place that was open, and we had only a short wait for a private room. I figured they put us back there so the regulars wouldn’t see foreigners eating in their restaurant.
After we vetoed certain items based on the poorly translated ingredients and the photos, Shinny ordered from the menu. We definitely vetoed the dog stew. I remembered reading that the authorities had banished Fido from Beijing restaurants before the Olympics, in deference to Western tastes in pets, but here we were way outside the Olympic zone.
As usual, the food was fabulous and there was too much of it. Tony and I had weak beers but Shinny just had Coca Cola. She managed to sneak out long enough to pay the bill, despite our protests, and then took us on a walking tour of downtown Heng Shui.
We gathered many stares as we ambled down the crowded street. Tony at first enjoyed his newfound celebrity status, but soon felt uncomfortable at the pairs of eyes looking back at him. We might be the only foreigners here today, but not the only ones they had ever seen. Two of the shops on the street were Nike and the NBA—basketball being hugely popular throughout China. Close to these two stores was obviously the best hotel in Heng Shui, with a well-stocked bar, probably for the Nike regional manager’s visits. And thank God, they had a Western toilet, not the Asian hole-in-the-floor that is ubiquitous in that part of the world.
Shinny took us to a big department store where we rode the escalator through five floors of clothes, jewelry, housewares—the same stuff they ship over to us. It’s even cheaper here. I pointed out to Shinny that the appliances were almost all brands from countries China had warred with in the past—Japan’s SONY, Korea’s LG—and that all the brightly colored posters and advertisements, as well as the mannequins, featured Western models. Blue-eyed blondes—where were all those beautiful Chinese women we saw everywhere? Would sales fall if the clothes were advertised using Asian models?
Shinny said, ‘But foreigners are taller and thinner…’
‘Thinner!’ I said. ‘Americans? Are you kidding?! We’re all a bunch of porkers compared to you!’
Leaving the department store, we had time to wander back to the station before our train left for Beijing. Shinny kept asking what we wanted from the street vendors selling fresh fruit and vegetables, but we told her we were full and didn’t want to take anything back. She settled on a bag of fresh chestnuts as our souvenir from Heng Shui.
We took pictures of each other outside the train station, and bought me a Diet Coke for the trip back. All the signage throughout the station was only in Chinese, and I didn’t feel confident that we were getting on the correct train until I clearly saw the same number on the platform sign that was on our ticket. After big hugs for Shinny, with promises to come to her wedding next year and pleas for her to come visit us in Birmingham, we crawled back on to our train with our SRO tickets.
As Shinny predicted, there were seats which we staked out right away, figuring occupation would be 100% of possession.
With everyone heading into Beijing on a Saturday night, the atmosphere in the train was lighter than before. This time the sales pitch was from a young, short woman with a gamine haircut, who was shining a little flashlight on paper currency. Was the light a way to detect forgeries? Our fellow passengers were fascinated.
In the dark sky outside we could see a silver slip of a moon.
Back in the Beijing train station, which we had made our way through twice before, we knew where to get the bus to the subway that would take us across the city to our hotel near the Olympic Birds’ Nest stadium.
It felt good to be back where we knew what to do and, while not natives, were not looked at as quite so ‘foreign.’
Leo, the hotel manager, convinced the restaurant to stay open long enough to serve us some food, and, after catching up with BBC on the telly, we got organized for our trip the next day to Guilin in the much warmer south.
Watch this space.

Wednesday, 30 August, 2006, Birmingham, UK

2007-07-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

What We Have Learned

I arrived home yesterday morning, one day late and one suitcase short (although it did show up today). My Irish Husband Tony arrived home this morning, having driven back from Dublin (yes, there’s a ferry). The cats are fine, the apartment is fine, the new grandson is fine, work is fine, and the weather stinks. We’re home!
Our Executive Dean Don reminded us throughout our voyage that we are ‘Academic Adventur-ers,’ and the point of traveling on Semester at Sea is to learn. So what have we learned?
Tony says he learned that you should never judge people by your preconceptions before you actually meet them, and how to make a puppet.
I learned that…

I like wine better than beer. Like beer, but like wine better.
Forks are better than chopsticks. Really.
I pride myself on being a risk-taker, but not when it comes to food. I don’t buy food from street vendors in America or the UK, so I sure wasn’t going to do it in the Asian night markets. Even in restaurants, I reverted to my childhood fallback position of fried shrimp if everything else made me think ‘Eeeuw…’
Yes, when you stand by the door with your coat on you are rushing me.
I am able to fall asleep without BBC World Service on my headphones, but being on a rocking ship helps.
When riding in the back of a speeding taxi in a foreign country, look out the side window, not the front.
When looking for a bathroom in a foreign country, there is always a disabled toilet, because they don’t expect them to do that. And I can’t, so I am disabled.
Invest in 7-11. They’re everywhere.
The second Contac capsule never works as well as the first.
Be nice to everybody. You don’t know who might someday be assigning rooms, and I must have been really nice to the person who gave us the big balcony.
It’s good to have family and friends, even if you only show up once every few years to do your laundry, eat their food, and exchange stories.
There are too damn many people in this world. The most telling statistic we were given was that, if all 6 billion+ inhabitants consumed as much per capita as Americans do, we’d need two more planets to hold all of us.
Westerners look at those high-rises in huge, burgeoning Asian cities and are stunned that there are so many people living there. But there are a lot of people living in high rises in London and Miami Beach and San Diego as well. Why are Asian high rises such a shock? Because the people in them are not us? Because they are all eating raw fish and practicing Buddhism?

But here is the most important thing we both learned.
The oldest passenger on the ship was ‘Chief’ Al, our next door neighbor on Deck 7, who is 91. He had been to many of these countries during his long career in the US Navy, and was able to get off the ship and travel around in most ports.
As we approached China, Chief found out that he hadn’t signed up for an overnight trip to Beijing, to see the Great Wall. One of the adult passengers knew two students who wanted to go, but didn’t have the money. Chief generously agreed to cover their expenses if they agreed to take him, and they did.
The two young women took great care of him. All three walked the steps of the Forbidden City, and all three did indeed get to the Great Wall.
Whatever age you are right now, sitting there reading this, do you think that when you are 91 you will be standing on the Great Wall of China with two lovely American college students?
You know what?
When Chief was your age—neither did he.
Anything can happen if you let it.
Continue to watch this space

Wednesday, August 23, 2006, Columbus, Ohio

2007-07-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

En Route…

To the Faculty/Staff Lounge Thursday morning with a cup of tea to mark papers while looking out on the gorgeous Pacific.
To dinner on my own Thursday night while My Irish Husband Tony rehearses the puppet show.
To the Faculty/Staff Lounge Friday morning with a cup of tea to mark more papers while looking out on the gorgeous Pacific.
To the puppet show Friday night to video Tony as narrator and envy those who bid for the puppets afterwards because they won’t have to ship them back to England.
To the ‘KD’s assignments’ box in Purser’s Square Saturday morning to drop off all the marked papers for the students to pick up.
To the final ‘Logistics Preport’ Saturday night to tell us how to get around our last port, San Diego (‘The currency is dollars, you can drink the water, most of the people speak English…’), as well as the mechanics of finally getting off the ship.
To my mailbox Saturday night to find one last late paper and a tearful note from a student not happy with her grade.
To the Registrar’s office Sunday morning to turn in the final grades.
To Convocation Sunday night to watch the students who have finished all their college credits graduate and the students who have done well in their classes receive honors.
To our neighbor Nancy’s room until 2 am Monday morning to party with the other faculty and staff, while the students hang out in the hallway hoping for a glimpse of their professors drunk.
To breakfast before 7 am Monday morning because who knows when we’ll get lunch.
Down the gangway lugging two carry-ons and balancing a Vietnam hat, while My Irish Husband Tony, also balancing a Vietnam hat, tries to get a picture.
To the Holiday Inn which seemed to be right across the street until Nurse Ellen and I had to lug four heavy suitcases and one big backpack there.
Back to the ship in the Holiday Inn courtesy van to pick up the rest of the luggage and ‘my husband with the heart condition…’
To lunch with Nurse Ellen after she and everyone else booked on late flights dumped their luggage in our hotel room.
To bed to nap Monday afternoon while watching crap American TV in the hotel room.
To dinner Monday night at the pseudo-British pub in the hotel, and then to walk by the ship one last time with My Irish Husband Tony.
Back to bed after Tony leaves at 5 am Tuesday morning to catch flights taking him back to Birmingham.
By train to Santa Ana Tuesday morning, to be met by Cousin Cathy who takes me to the Last Aunt, Noreen, 93, who tells me I sure have an interesting life.
To Cathy’s house Tuesday afternoon to give her presents, do laundry, check e-mail, and then catch the train back to San Diego.
To dinner on my own Tuesday night, again at the pseudo-British pub, sitting outside desperately watching for anyone from the ship to walk by.
Back to sleep Wednesday morning after Tony wakes me up at 2 am to tell me he arrived safely in Birmingham and the cats and the apartment are fine.
To the airport at 5:30 am to go through security with two carry-ons and two Vietnam hats, but no gels or liquids.
Onto the plane in Houston Wednesday afternoon to change for Columbus, but nap while we wait on the tarmac for 90 minutes in pissing rain.
To Columbus Wednesday evening, with two carry-ons and two Vietnam hats, minus one suitcase, met by my brother and sister-in-law who take me out for dinner and then to their wonderful home in Westerville where I fall sound asleep in the Steeler room.

Watch this space.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii

2007-07-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

An Interview with Tony Dixon

We’re near the end of the voyage, so it’s time to hear from a different voice. I’ve asked My Irish Husband Tony to tell you about our week on Semester at Sea.
Gypsy Teacher: Last Wednesday we pulled out of Kobe, Japan, under a full moon. The next day we had classes and you and I both had coughs and colds. The following day, Friday, we had classes and also the charity auction. So, Tony, tell our readers, how was the auction?
Tony: Pretty well. But it was too much money spent by these kids. They were buying things like ‘Steer the ship for an hour’ for $600. ‘Raise the ship’s flag’ for $500. One of the staff bought our house for a week in England for $400, which I was excited about. I wanted to bid on a weekend in Dinard, France but it went out of my range in about two minutes. I didn’t think that many people knew how gorgeous Dinard is. The usual items were up for auction—professors’ books, items around the ship, and Colombia. Adult passenger Minor bought a week in Colombia for $1200. Him and Conduct Officer Joe duked that out for about five minutes, but Minor went to $1200 and Joe couldn’t match it. It’s a good deal tho because it’s a week for two at one of the students’ family homes.
GT: Was the auction entertaining?
T: Very entertaining, but there’s a couple of parents in the US who are wondering why there is this massive chunk of money on their credit cards for ‘Steer the ship for an hour.’
GT: The next day was August 12th.
T: There were two August 12ths. Coming across the Pacific, we had to go thru 48 hours of August 12th because of the time zones. We were coming towards the International Dateline, or passed it, on the 12th of August, twice. It’s a funny thing to go through a day twice; I still can’t get my head around it.
GT: On the evening of one of those 12ths of August, the crew put on a talent show.
T: A great talent show. They started out singing gospel which I thought was going to turn into a Jesus session but it didn’t. Then we had a gay steward, dressed up as a nun. I guess gay men like to dress up as nuns, but he was very entertaining, a pretty good dancer. Then Vincente, who was a fabulous singer. He wins every karaoke competition. There was Antoinette, our favourite bartender, who sang a nice song. And in the finale they sang We Are the World.
GT: But there was another part of the finale.
T: They made an ice sculpture.
GT: A nice sculpture?
T: No, an ice sculpture. The head chef made an eagle and his assistant, from down in the bowels of the boat, made a swan. We didn’t stay too long tho because Kathleen discovered when she went up to the bar that she could see it on the TV. So we had a glass of wine and watched it up there.
GT: The following day, Sunday, we had the student talent show.
T: Absolutely cheesy American bullshit. One guy sang Brave New World or some musical stuff. Roger, it was, sang it with one of the chickies. Lovely fella tho; he sang something from The Lion King.
GT (pathetically): ‘A whole new world…’
T: Right. A lot of kids were very talented. One sang Imagine: ‘Imagine no possessions...’ She probably had more possessions than 99% of the people in the world. And there was a kid who wrote a song in his basement. Absolute rubbish. But I’m sure he had a message there. We’ll hear from him in a couple of years, but absolute rubbish.
GT: Sounds like you didn’t enjoy it.
T: I did enjoy it. I enjoyed Roger singing. And the Parrott boys. They were on with my friend Jing Jing. Think Yoko Ono in a younger, different time—that’s Jing Jing. Mad as a carp, but she’s a nice person.
GT: And very professional. What did she do?
T: A kung fu demonstration with the Parrott boys and then she painted Chinese characters as an entertainment piece. She’s very good at it. I think she destroyed $3000 worth of furniture in painting this thing.
GT: She destroyed furniture?
T: She dripped paint on it. But I suppose it’s worth $3000 for arts’ sake. There was also…The Parrott boys. They just kept appearing. First in kung fu and then on the cello and the piano.
GT: The next day, Monday, was our anniversary. 14 years since we met in Dublin, honey bunch.
T: The wife and I have been together for 14 years. Not an easy road, I have to say.
GT: In honour of our anniversary, that night on the ship was the Ambassador’s Ball.
T: The Ambassador’s Ball was this money-raising thing for good causes. We went to the Union for an hour to see a video of how we can feed the world. I had gone to these orphanages but they didn’t take pictures of me with Down syndrome kids. In the video you see a chickie in a strapless top holding up a Down syndrome baby. But I also held the babies and I helped them read, and played with them...
GT: Back to the Ambassador’s Ball.
T: Right. We were lucky enough to have Nurse Ellen, Doctor Renee and Barbie the Librarian at our table and some really nice food. Kathleen had salmon and I had steak and we had champagne because it was our anniversary.
GT: Everybody had champagne.
T: We then took a lot of pictures with kids who were asking me to be photographed with them. They never spoke to me before but they wanted to take pictures with me. This is what Semester at Sea is all about. Everybody loves each other the last week. Friends forever.
GT: The following day, Tuesday, was the last day of Global Studies, the course that everybody takes. Some faculty—all women faculty—were asked to give their reflections on the trip. I’m sure you felt that your beautiful wife did the best job, but tell us about the other faculty.
T: I always find the wife interesting as she is a very entertaining woman when she gets in front of an audience. The other faculty included Andrea Parrott, whose sons are the megastars, and Tavia. One of the most creative women I’ve ever met and I’ve gone to almost every one of her classes. She is extremely entertaining and creative. Love this woman—but not as much as I love the wife. After Tavia, Carrie spoke and she gave her—what do they say in the Senate? ‘I want to surrender my time’?
GT: Yield.
T: ‘I want to yield.’ She yielded her time to my lovely friend, Shira, who has cerebral palsy and has spent most of her life in a wheelchair. Talking about interesting people, this woman far outweighs or outstretches any of the characters on this ship because she has done basically everything she could do. Including going and seeing the Great Wall of China, which is something that I promised myself to do a couple of years ago but she has done it. She’s disabled but can get around and do things and she’s a good person. She’s a very determined woman and when she was finished speaking, there wasn’t a dry eye in the faculty. And there shouldn’t be when you see someone like Shira who is a gorgeous human being.
GT: Today is Wednesday the 16th, and this morning we had final exams. We’re in Honolulu for the day and then we take off.
T: This was the first land we had seen for like 10 days. When I got up this morning I went out on deck 7 and all of a sudden there was this huge chunk of land on the port side—that’s the left hand side if you know anything about shipping. It amazes me after being out in the Pacific Ocean in this vastness for so long that you come across anything. You see a ship, and you’re all excited. You see a bird, and you’re all excited. And you see a flying fish and you’re all excited. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can describe seeing Hawaii. I spent a couple of hours out there on the 7th deck, taking pictures of the islands, and then we got into Honolulu. Not being blasé, but we had been there eight or nine weeks ago.
GT: And tonight we had dinner with our lovely granddaughters.
T: Stephanie, Erin, Rachel and Nicole. Shauna didn’t come because she’s weird. It was quite nice to see them all. We got pictures out on the back deck as we were steaming away from Hawaii after re-fueling. We weren’t let off in Hawaii, by the way. We had to stay on the ship for the best part of seven hours and no smoking. No smoking. It was quite nice to get back on the road to San Diego.'
GT: You’re very busy now because you’re in the puppet performance. What’s that like?
T: We’re in rehearsals for our puppet show which is based on snippets of Asian mythology from every country we’ve been to. We incorporated them into a play for one of the last days on board and it counts as credits for a couple students. About 20 people have drifted in and out of the class. I’ve stayed with it most of the voyage and I ended up narrator. I tell the story, the Song and Dance Man acts it out, and the players play it. I’m looking forward to that.
GT: We’ll be in San Diego on Monday. What would you tell people about this voyage?
T: This is my third voyage. The first one would be hard to beat. The second one was an 11-day stretch last year between Antwerp and Dublin. On this one, I enjoyed the people. I didn’t particularly have a good time with some who enjoyed listening to themselves as opposed to talking to people. That’s not my style, I love listening to people and talking to people. It’s always a joy to be on Semester at Sea.
GT: What about the others?
T: I made some good friends who I’ll probably know for the rest of my life. Raymond who is a New York fireman. Mike, whose wife Jane is here with him, lives on San Marco Island in Florida. Raymond’s mother, Carol, possibly one of the greatest photographers I’ve ever come across. She left me with about 600 copies of her photographs on a CD which I will not claim to be mine. Lauren, an absolute a treasure of a child who is my friend and also Kathleen’s student. I would love to be able to keep in touch with these people; they are absolutely fantastic.
GT: What about the ports?
T: Pretty good. Vietnam was a big eye opener. I loved Vietnam, moreso than Singapore. I did enjoy Singapore but I think Semester at Sea should go to more places that are a bit raw, a bit edgy. Japan I loved. Had no idea how gorgeous Japan was. I had looked at the image of that domed building in Hiroshima from the time I was a child and then to stand in front of it in silence was absolutely one of the highlights of the trip for me. So many people lost their lives on that particular day 61 years ago, it was nice to be there and just be quiet.
GT: What was the worst part?
T: The worst part for me was Busan, Korea, and not because of Busan, Korea, but because I was sick there. You come on Semester at Sea, you’re going to get sick because you’re with five or 600 people and they all have diseases or flu. As much as I enjoyed Korea, this was a bit of a downer.
GT: What was the best part?
T: Two best parts. There was the day in Hiroshima and then there was a day on the Mekong Delta. These places I’ve heard about, seen pictures of both, and I had no idea what they were like. Being on the Mekong Delta and being down there, with local people—that was one of the highlights. Vietnam is definitely a place that everybody in the world should come to at some stage and see what these people are doing after what was done to them. They have no bitterness towards anybody. No bitterness towards the French, no bitterness towards America. An absolutely lovely race of people.
GT: What would you say overall about Semester at Sea?
T: My experience with Semester at Sea is great. There are people who are moved by it and changed by it and who look on life a little bit differently when they get off these ships. Every couple of months Semester at Sea are changing maybe four or 500 lives on average, so that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing for Americans to be here, to be looking at the world from a different perspective. And you can not get a more different perspective than to be on a boat travelling to somewhere you’ve never been before and observing the culture. I would recommend it to anybody.
GT: And, if you could sum up this voyage in one word…?
T (Pause): Asia! Come to Asia!
Watch this space.

2006, August 9, Wednesday, Kobe, Japan

2007-07-02T08:42:00.000-07:00

“Children Get Older…”

Last Wednesday morning we arrived in Busan, Korea, and stayed until Friday night when we left for Kobe, Japan.
I had passed the ship’s head cold on to My Irish Husband Tony, so we used Busan as a rest stop. We were docked in Da Daepo Port, a bedroom community 30 minutes from the centre of Busan, with a total population of 5 million. We had enough shops, restaurants and bars near the ship, so we limited our travel to, for me, the Korean tea ceremony and a Lotte Giants baseball game (they lost; apparently not unusual), and, for Tony, a van-and-driver trip through the countryside with our “granddaughters.”
But Korea is not just tea and baseball, so I interviewed our student, James MacLean, an International Relations major from Boston University who is in the ROTC program. His mother was born in Korea in 1961, eight years after the war there ended. I asked how he felt about visiting his mom’s home country.
“When I saw that this voyage was going to Korea, that sealed it for me. I wanted to figure out what I was. Half Korean, half Scottish, I don’t look Scottish. Figured I’d better learn something about the Korean half.
“I honestly didn’t know a whole lot about my mom’s background until a few weeks before this trip. I think she was in the orphanage when she was three, wasn’t adopted until she was four and didn’t actually make it to the States with her adoptive parents until she was five.”
James originally wanted to travel to Seoul, about four hours north, to see where his mother grew up, but those plans fell through. I’ll let him tell you what he did for three days in Busan.
“I got off the ship and was on the Tongdosa Temple tour. It took two hours to get to the first stop. We were just driving around; I’m lookin’ out the window. It was really bittersweet. I wasn’t sure how I should be feeling. If I should be feeling enthused or I should be feeling remorse. I seriously was torn for the first couple hours.
“We got to the Temple and it was one of the most beautiful places I’d seen on this trip. There was a river leading up to it and local families swimming, having a good time laughing, playing. A lot of little kids too.
“Came back towards Busan, swung by the UN cemetery, went to a park for a little while and then I left the tour at one of the markets. I know very, very little Korean, and a lot of the vendors knew very, very little English. But I was able to talk to a couple for a few minutes. Mostly hand gestures though.
“That first day we went to a buffet and had bulgogi. I have to say I like mine better. I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking that. Around the time I was getting interested in my background, I decided to try cooking some Korean things.
“The second day I had completely free. That morning I thought about everything and outlined some of my thoughts from the day before and looked at my pictures. Four of us decided to go to one of the local beaches, walk around. If I was Korean and had the day free I would probably be at the beach, so it was nice to see locals in their natural environment.
“The last morning, Friday, I ran to a peninsula about three miles away and it was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. There was an island, pine trees and a lone fishing boat with the sun coming up. I really wish I’d had my camera for it. It was also weird because I was sitting right next to a pillbox, a very poorly camouflaged pillbox. It reminded me that the country is having some problems. There were people playing badminton and Korean troops doing exercises, guards with M240 Bravo rifles.
“Then some of the girls and I went out to the market. My mom had asked me to bring her back a stone. Just a regular old stone. That first day, I went to the river, grabbed a stone. But I’m also the brat kid and I decided to spoil her a little bit and I wanted to get her another kind of stone.
“I only had about an hour because I had a trip leaving later, so we went to the international market. At a jewelry store they had an emerald pendant, yellow gold, heart-shaped, with diamonds around it. But I’m a white gold guy, so I had them make another one from white gold. So she asked for a stone, she’s getting two. It’s her birthstone, so that was perfect.
“Then I caught a cab back to the ship because I had signed up for a visit to an orphanage. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was really mixed, not sure whether I would want to be there. But what could I do? If I didn’t do this I’d be kicking myself for the rest of the trip home and for a long time after.
“They walked us around the orphanage, gave a few presentations, we met the director. Then we got about an hour to play with the kids and that was one of the most bittersweet moments of the whole trip. This particular kid was just reaching out, grabbing my face. He literally reached into my mouth and was pulling on my teeth.
“But the toughest thing—I don’t have any pictures of this because I just couldn’t do it—there was this girl that looked just like my mom did 40 years ago. I had seen my mother’s pictures, and it was like, whoa! That is too creepy. I tried to talk to her and the only thing I could think of to say in Korean was sa rang hae, which translates to I love you. I said that a couple times. I couldn’t think of anything else to say and the little girl started crying. It just…that got me. I’ve been through my share of crap and, I’m not going to lie, I’m a hard bastard some times. But that got me where it counts.
“Then we came back to the port, and about 12 of us went to a restaurant your husband recommended. It was like the first real Korean meal I had. It was a good way to end the trip.”
James knows that he will come back. “This voyage has prompted my mom to suggest that she come back here with me after I graduate from college. I think she has kind of been using my newfound interest to get herself back here.”
Thanks, James, for sharing your experiences. And tell your mom thanks too.
After spending Saturday teaching classes as we sailed through Japan’s Inland Sea, past uninhabited islands and big cities, we docked Sunday morning in downtown Kobe, Japan.
Picture a country with half the US population shoved into California—but just the mountainous part. And you dropped nuclear bombs on two of their largest cities but within 40 years they became the world’s second largest economy.
Our visit to the peace memorial at Hiroshima left at 6 am for a five-hour bus trip through Pennsylvania-like mountain tunnels. Considering the Japanese suffered nuclear radiation, getting up at 5 am wasn’t much of a sacrifice.
Our students had folded 1000 origami cranes to hang at the memorial for a 10-year-old girl who died from leukaemia after the blast. When our trip leader, Professor Judit Gellerd, found out on the bus that there should be an accompanying ceremony, she pulled together a moving sermon. It was hot, standing there in the August sun. But that didn’t match the 5800C temperature when the first nuclear bomb exploded there 61 years and 1 day before. No one complained on the long bus trip back that night.
Tony and I signed up for the “Home Visit” program, and our hostess, Mrs. Nakahata, met us at the subway station (Gee, how did she pick us out?). She took us by taxi to her high-rise apartment, clinging to the side of a San Francisco-steep mountain looking out over the bay. We could hear the crickets around her building and see our ship from her living room.
During our afternoon together, she showed us her collection of brochures about English country garden tours, and we invited her to visit us in Birmingham (she likes cats). She was born during the war, but she didn’t look any older than us aging baby boomers. Japanese women have the longest life expectancy on earth, so, at 62, she still has a ways to go.
When she was an infant, her family home in Osaka burned. She moved to a nearby city where a couple adopted her and raised her with their own children. Her dark eyes looked away as she said of her adoptive mother, “If it weren’t for her, I am not here. I am not here.”
Thanks to this couple, she had attended university, taught school, married a teacher who became a government worker and school principal, and raised three children who have families and jobs of their own. She has visited America and Europe. What a Japan she has witnessed in this past 60 years.
Today, last port, last day, I went with another professor and his political science students to the University of Kobe, carved out of the same mountainside as Mrs. Nakahata’s apartment building, with the same chirping crickets for background. Professor Rieko Kage of their new law school talked to us about domestic politics under the popular Prime Minister with the great hair, Junichiro Koizumi.
Dr. Kage arranged for four of her students to join us for lunch, two Japanese, one from Paraguay, one from Sweden. Annemarie and Bjorn are among the 10% non-Japanese in the University’s 10,000-strong student body. Most are from Asia; only 300 are Western. They study Japanese law, read Japanese textbooks, and take their tests in Japanese. Annamarie said Japan attracted her with the best financial aid for international students.
With the lowest birth rate of any industrialized country, Japan is worried about who will support those aging women. Immigration to Japan? Walking the crowded and interesting streets of Kobe, I felt as though two siblings locked in a closet had developed this culture. They eventually passed their fascinating language and rituals on to 127 million descendants, but outsiders have a hard time decoding them. The Japanese take in Western concepts, but they don’t give up much in return.
For an American living in Europe, it’s hard to imagine a country loosening its immigration laws to attract workers. Attracting foreigners to study at university sounds like a good strategy.
After Annamarie gave us a campus tour, partly in Spanish, we got back onto our bus to wind down the steep streets, back to our ship for the last time, in the last port, on our last day.
Last night Tony’s first grandson was born. Dallan Brian Dixon Cusack came into the world in Ireland, not at war with anyone. His immediate family, including his eight-year-old sister, Erin, have all visited America and can legally live, work, and study in all 25 European countries. His grandfather is on a ship, under a bright full moon, sailing home from Japan.
Welcome to this world, Dallan.
Where will you go?
Watch this space.

2006, August 2, Wednesday, Busan, Korea

2007-07-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

Control Issues

Will they be able to control it?
In Michael Palin’s BBC series about the Pacific Rim, Full Circle, he states that the economy of the People’s Republic of China had averaged 10% growth per year for the previous ten years. That was in 1996.
Our political science professor on board Semester at Sea, Dr. Wonmo Dong from Washington University in Seattle, tells us that over the decade since, the rate has stayed the same. In the past two years it has increased to 12% per year.
What happens if the Chinese government can’t control this growth, I asked him. “They will have to deal with the foreign investment coming in,” he says. “So many foreign companies want to invest in China now. It is growing too fast.”
Last Wednesday we docked in the middle of the busiest harbour in the world, Hong Kong. Almost ten years after the British ceded control of their colony to the mainland Chinese government, it feels like an equal mix of British formality and Chinese chaos. Operated as a “Special Administrative Region” by the Chinese, capitalism is rampant, fuelled by the Hong Kong dollar (7.7 equal to US$1).
As I had anticipated from pictures and friends’ stories, Hong Kong is a canyon of glass and metal skyscrapers. To emphasize the point, every night at 8 pm, the skyline produces a symphonic light show. When we were kids, it was a big deal to drive up to Pittsburgh’s Mt. Washington to see whether the top of the Gulf Building was orange, red, or blinking orange or red. Here corporations and the Hong Kong government coordinate their buildings’ lighting for a 12-minute extravaganza seen throughout the harbour and heard from key locations.
On our visit to the English-language South China Morning Post, the editors we met with assured us that they have felt no pressure to change their content to please their new rulers. The only evidence of control is when an edition is pulled from distribution points in the mainland because of sensitive stories. Many full-time reporters cover the People’s Republic, and the editors feel free to publish what they alone decide is important. In Hong Kong.
For two of our five days in this port, My Irish Husband Tony and I decided to cross into mainland China to see for ourselves. As a Ramada employee, he is entitled to inexpensive “staff breaks” at any Ramada worldwide, and we arranged to take a train to Guangzhou, formerly Canton, the closest of Ramada’s 15 Chinese hotels. Thursday morning we packed our haversack, put on our walking shoes, and took a taxi to the Kowloon station. One of our “granddaughters” from the extended family program on board, Shawna, came with us.
Unlike our train excursions in the UK, here we needed cash for our tickets (about US$50 each, round trip, for premium class), and had to specify the exact time for our return the next day. We turned in our Hong Kong departure cards and our China entry cards, showed our special Chinese Entry Visas, and walked through the yellow painted lines for immigration, then customs, then to board Coach 3, seats 31, 32 and 33. Oh look, those seats are better. Couldn’t we sit there if no one…Oops. No. Sit in the seat you are assigned.
Most of the other passengers were Asian, well-dressed, and loaded with fancy shopping bags from Hong Kong’s upscale stores, going home to Guangzhou and environs after a Western-style shopping trip.
The ninety-minute train ride winds through Chinese countryside, past glistening rice paddies and filthy warehouses. “There’s Wal-mart!,” Tony said. We’d seen lots of vertical five- and six-story malls in Asia, but I was surprised to see America’s favourite retailer built straight up. Then I realized—retail, hell! That ten-story building was Wal-Mart’s administrative offices. Well, how do you think all that stuff finds it way to America?
In the Guangzhou station there was the mirror image of our previous queuing: Past the duty-free, past the signs warning to report respiratory infections, as I slipped throat lozenges to a coughing Shawna. Then customs, immigration, show our special Chinese Entry Visas, again.
Outside, hotel courtesy desks greeted us, and the hotel van whisked us to the Ramada Pearl, right on the mighty Pearl River. Modern, elegant, and a bit more upscale than the Birmingham Ramada Resort Tony works in. From our room overlooking the river we could see more skyscrapers on Ersha Island. The porter, complete with “Call-for-Phillip-Morris” red uniform and pillbox hat, showed us how to insert our key into the slot to get electricity, where the hotel stationery was, and how to find CNN International on the TV.
Shawna, a child of the 21st century, had tossed her laptop into her backpack, and shelled out the extra 35 yuan (about US$4) to have 24-hour broadband access. After we changed clothes in our room and checked e-mail in hers, we asked at the front desk where we should go, and the concierge pointed us to the shopping district. Oh, good—more malls!
Because the staff in Guangzhou’s hotels speak more English than the taxi drivers, they provide cards that say, “Please take me to…” Our taxi let us out on Beijing Street, a pedestrianized area built over the original Guangzhou roads from as far back as the 6th century AD. You can view these thanks to a glass-enclosed exhibit sponsored by Coca Cola.
After I took pictures of the unique Nike billboard and the faux-Nike shop opposite, we explored the “Guangzhou Catering Exhibition Hall.” No sign of any catering exhibition, but we did see a middle-aged, fairly well-dressed Chinese man grabbing his female companion—wife, we assume—by the arm and twisting it. Whatever he wanted her to do, she didn’t want to, and she put up quite a fight. The only people who seemed to notice were my feminist self, my equally shocked Irish husband, and Shawna, making mental notes for her Human Sexuality class. Her assignment is to find examples of how women are treated in the cultures that we visit. Should we report this incident to nearby police? Would they do anything? Would they understand what we were trying to say?
Having absorbed enough cultural differences for one afternoon, we treated ourselves to dinner in the elegant Chinese restaurant back at the Ramada. The main cultural difference Tony noticed was that we had three to four staff waiting on us every minute. Labour is a lot cheaper here than in Birmingham.
From the menu and the assistance of the attentive staff, we knew the offerings were authentic, and I had an outstanding kung pao chicken. In lieu of his usual duck, Tony tried crispy fried goose, but Shawna went the less-risk route with chicken fried rice. This approach didn’t work as well for her the next day for lunch in the Tee Mall where the same dish included strong Indian spices.
Friday we wandered through the overgrown neighbourhood outside the hotel. On the side streets we saw how some Guangzhou residents live; not Ramada standards, but working class housing. Tall apartment buildings, a different shop for every need, locals crossing streets and greeting each other. Like Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Having abandoned my practice of extensively researching every stop on a trip, we were left to the suggestions of locals, who continued to send us to malls. Because everything was so cheap, we loaded up on presents for some of you lucky readers. Interestingly, in this Western-friendly city, we found few souvenirs of the “My grandparents went to Guangzhou and all I got….” type, readily available elsewhere on our voyage. Guangzhou is a city for Western businessmen, not doting grannies.
After visiting the Coca Cola store, whose clerks had the best English, we tried to hail a taxi to take us back to the Ramada for our luggage and then on to the train station. After many empty cabs flew by, we realized we were standing too close to a staffed police car for any driver to want our business. Walking around the block worked.
The driver didn’t understand tipping, despite Shawna’s efforts to force extra Yuan (also 7.7 to US$1) on him. While she and Tony went to have outdoor cigarettes, I sat in the waiting area and watched three military officers with secure metal boxes and a rifle come by. I was guarding our luggage in the safest spot in Guangzhou.
Retracing our steps through yellow painted lines to customs, then immigration, past the duty-free shop, we turned in our China departure cards and filled out new Hong Kong departure cards. We boarded a luxury double-decker train and were handed complementary bottles of still water. Shawna chatted the whole way back with the Chinese-American businessman from San Francisco next to her, gathering more info for Human Sexuality, I assume.
Shawna’s respiratory infection had transferred to me, so our next day in Hong Kong, Saturday, was spent walking and sniffling through non-stop rain, eating dim sum and riding the MTR. As in the equally well-controlled Singapore subway, yellow lines on the pavement showed where to line up when you get on and where to walk when you get off. The Chinese version also has lights on the subway maps showing which doors will open. Very orderly.
Sunday, our last day, tho cloudy, had enough warmth to let us truly enjoy this amazing city in full bloom. Tony and I took the tram up to the Victoria Peak, much longer and very much steeper than our beloved Duquesne Incline in Pittsburgh. After going on and off the tram via yellow painted lines and metal barriers, and making our way through the upscale shops sprouting on the peak, we used the free internet at Starbucks-rival Pacific Coffee. Although some students reported that Google on the mainland gave restricted results, we encountered no obstacles surfing through our e-mail.
From this glass-enclosed vantage point we were able to gaze down on the booming, growing, well-controlled harbour of Hong Kong.
How many more malls, how many more people will fit into this tiny space? Or into the sprawling space of Guangzhou? How much farther up can they build? How much longer will the Chinese government be able to control its 1.3 billion shoppers?
Watch this space.

Wednesday, 26 July, 2006, Hong Kong, China

2007-07-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

Vietnam--The Country, Not the War

Saigon. Da Nang. Hue. Dien Bien Phu. When I was growing up these were scary places on the evening news where people were killed daily.
This past week they were my evening weather report.
We approached Vietnam with apprehension and excitement. It’s a “third world” communist country. We couldn’t drink the water or have ice. We would have to divide every price in “dongs” by 16,000 to convert to US dollars.
But all those who had been there before said it was their favourite stop on Semester at Sea.
My Irish Husband Tony and I both awoke at 4 am last Wednesday as we sailed up the Saigon River into the port. I shifted my head to the bottom of the bed so I could look out our balcony as lush rainforest and fishermen on little boats passed by. Tony grabbed the video camera and raced up on deck to record the whole trip.
Four hours later, when the ship finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, still called Saigon by everyone who loves her, it executed a 180-degree turn, sweeping past the SANYO neon billboard and construction cranes. The friendly Communist government requires that we have continuous shuttle buses to drive us ten minutes into the centre of town, letting us off at the beautiful old Rex Hotel. It’s not courtesy; it eliminates the gaggle of taxis that find our ship whenever we dock.
All I have ever known about Vietnam were stories of the war and that it was originally colonized by the French. I remember a documentary in the 1980s about how life was going on in the post-war country. The CBS reporter concluded by saying that even a victorious Communist regime from the north could not suppress Saigon’s seductive southern allure. The last shot was of civilians marching in formation. One beautiful woman—and they are all beautiful—wearing traditional Vietnamese silk dress and pants, noticed the camera. She giggled and winked.
That is the city the shuttle took us to each day. And, as we had been warned, we stepped from the bus into a swarm of motorbikes. They flow through the streets like schools of fish. Not too fast; at a steady pace. The only way to avoid being hit is to step off the curb and keep walking. They instinctively sweep by you, parting like the Red Sea.
There are four million motorbikes and 30 road fatalities a day in the whole country. An underestimate on both counts, if you ask me. Many of the drivers wear helmets; many don’t. They carry, two, or three, or four: adults, children, infants, dogs, baskets of food, feet of wire cable, and anything else that has to be moved through the city.
I wonder if the Vietnamese women’s traditional slit dress and pants developed to allow them to ride the necessary and ubiquitous bicycles of old French Saigon? Now that those have been traded for cheap Japanese Hondas, or even cheaper Chinese “Rondas,” the women can straddle the seats and maintain their petite yet elegant bearing. Or ride side-saddle in evening clothes and stiletto heels.
With no metro and a dirty, infrequent bus system, the motorbikes are a necessity; pedestrians, a minor obstacle. Our representative on board from the American consulate told the students, “Don’t even think of driving a motorbike yourself. I watched a little baby on his mother’s lap weaving in and out of traffic on one. I realized that these people grow up with those traffic patterns and none of us would stand a chance. Take a taxi. They’re cheap.”
So were the fabulous food, the beers (but not the wine), the handmade suits and silk dresses, and the presents we’re bringing home for some of you lucky readers.
A few days before our arrival, Vietnam was accepted into the World Trade Organization (WTO). As their economy continues to improve, more American brands will join the lone western fast-food operation, Kentucky Fried Chicken. And each motorbike will eventually be replaced by a more affordable but less environmentally-friendly car.
They welcome our American brands, and our American dollars, with smiling faces. From many sources we heard, “The Vietnamese bear no grudges. ‘But we lost!’ say the Americans. ‘You didn’t lose,’ say the Vietnamese. ‘You left.’”
And now we are back.
Tony and I went on Semester at Sea-sponsored trips to meet with a former UPI war photographer at his house, where he proudly showed us the US Marine Corps jeep he had saved; to crawl, with an American Vietnam vet, through the Cu Chi Tunnels where Viet Cong laid booby traps for American soldiers; to visit the War Remnants Museum, with its grisly, one-sided presentation of “the American War”; to sail on a series of smaller and smaller boats through the once-strategic Mekong Delta, sampling local fruits and coconut candy.
On our own we hired a van, driver and tour guide who took us, along with our friends Shira, Jess, and three students from the “extended family” program on board, out into the beautiful countryside to a rubber plantation and an elegant open air restaurant for lunch (entrees and beers for all: US$38, including tip you’re not expected to leave). In the evenings, in upscale dining rooms, we ate chicken grilled in lime leaves, fried rice served in a pineapple, and finally drank real (not Asian) wine with dinner. At the vendor’s stall set up right outside our ship we bought our triangular straw hats, obligatory for all Semester at Sea participants to wear as they get off the ship back home.
Yes, there are pickpockets, and little kids in your face with postcards to sell at every stop. And yes, one student had her purse stolen by a thief flying by on a motorbike. And yes, we did feel more secure, ironically, with Vietnamese soldiers milling around.
But every night we finished up at the Rex, for cheap internet, a dish of ice cream or a bottle of Tiger Beer, and a band trying to recreate ubiquitous American pop songs. With our backs turned to CNN on the wide screen TV, we could look out the big picture windows at the smiling people walking by. I did see a few piss-faces, but each one broke into a grin when he or she saw my smiling American face. And behind the people on the sidewalk, the motorbikes streamed by.
Only on the last day, when I was on the bus home from the traditional water puppet performance, did the rains come to relieve the heat. Pelting, lashing, typhoon rains. For a moment, the motorbikes halted. Some were pulled inside shops or under overhangs. But most drivers just put on plastic ponchos, big enough to cover themselves and whatever precious family members or cargo they were transporting.
And then they continued on in the rain. Blue, green, black and peach plastic triangles on motorized wheels. Sailing slowly through the Saigon streets.
Watch this space.

Wednesday, 19 July, 2006, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

2007-07-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

Singapore v. Malaysia

Go ahead. Look at a map. C’mon—you’re on line anyway, so go to www.nationalgeographic.com/mapmachine and find southeast Asia. See the long bony finger sticking out of China? The part past Thailand is Malaysia. And Singapore is the well-clipped fingernail at the tip.
So I asked my Irish Husband Tony, How would you describe the difference between Singapore and Malaysia?
“Singapore was so neat and tidy,” he said. “Malaysia was so…scattered.”
“Malaysia was like Florida in the 1950s,” I offered. “Wood houses in the scrub, palm trees, gorgeous undeveloped beaches. And not enough air-conditioning.”
“Singapore was Toronto in the 2050s,” he added. Unlike most stops on Semester at Sea, which are scheduled for four to five days each, we had three days in Singapore, then a high-speed overnight run up the coast to Kuantuan on the eastern coast of peninsular Malaysia for three days. However, one of the MV Explorer’s engines gave out around 3:30 am and we limped into Kuantuan four hours late. Our field trips were delayed a bit, but the engine was fixed before we left yesterday.
In Singapore we docked at a shiny new terminal, with hundreds of cruise passengers (mostly Asian) coming and going all day. The shopping mall attached was built over the easy and efficient metro system. We had to show our passports and landing cards as well as have our bags checked when we went in or out.
In Malaysia we were the lone cruise ship (this port gets two a year) at an industrial dock filled with timber companies. The welcoming committee consisted of three street vendors and eight hopeful taxi drivers charging from 30 to 50 Ringitts (US$10-US$20) for the half-hour drive into “downtown” (and I use the term loosely) Kuantuan.
Soon after docking in Singapore last Wednesday, three US government representatives came on board to give a diplomatic briefing. They explained that, when Singapore broke away from Malaysia in 1965, the government policy was to emphasize education of its people and the growth of its main industry, shipping.
Is the secret behind Singapore’s affluent booming economy “location, location, location”? Look at where it is. If you’re shipping anything from India to the new world, you go past Singapore. Malaysia’s long coastline is easily avoidable.
So I asked our Economics professor, Dr. Arifeen Daneshyar from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, how one city-state could be so “first world” at the tip of a “third world” peninsula.
“Good question!” he said. “Singapore has 4.4 million people on an island three-and-one-half times the size of Washington, DC. That’s easier to control than the 23 million people spread out along the Malay peninsula and part of the island of Borneo. Both have been run by autocratic regimes, but Singapore has 77% ethnic Chinese. Very ambitious, very hard working, very good at business.
“Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew for 25 years laid down plans for Singapore’s future and they were followed to the letter. The city-state has an extremely controlling government,” he said.
I confessed. “The metro was clean and easy to use, but I was yelled at for drinking from a bottle of Pepsi. The security man nicely told me to put it away and pointed to signs listing the stiff fines for drinking, eating, and littering.”
“It is a wonderful port for us, but the political repression there would not be pleasant,” Arifeen said.
Singapore was gleaming, bustling, fast-paced and efficient, with gorgeous skyscrapers, top rank hotels (including the symbol of colonial Britain, Raffles), outrageously priced alcohol (Raffles’ invention, the Singapore Sling, goes for US$18, so we opted for the Brits’ other great invention, Bombay gin and tonic at US$17 each), and fabulous Indian/Chinese/Malay cuisine everywhere.
Malaysia, whose capital Kuala Lumpur on the west coast is home to the world’s tallest buildings, the Petronas Towers, is more horizontal over on the rural east coast where we were. Our sumptuous dinner-for-two of chicken satay and bottled beer at the top class Swiss Garden Resort cost a total of 111 Ringitts, or US$30, including the tip you’re not expected to leave.
The taxi drivers we hired to take us up to a beautiful waterfall, down into the city centre, and back to Batik Village (which had the best presents for some of you lucky readers), had modern, air-conditioned cars but only charged US$40 to 50 for a full day of touring the area. We were shown beautiful almost-deserted beaches, villages with small stilt houses and monkeys running free. The houses all had water, electricity, and we even spied a wide-screen TV inside one. Hey, ya gotta have cable.
Singapore has 80% government subsidized housing through a compulsory savings/mortgage scheme, but private condos for the wealthy abound. Our tour guide, Mavis, explained that the cars look new because, to own one, you first have to buy a certificate from the government for about US$10,000, good for ten years. When it expires, your vehicle will be sold on to the Philippines and other less gleaming southeast Asian countries. Mavis said she couldn’t afford and didn’t need a car because the public transportation is so efficient, and she can walk to work.
Malaysia has the oil—that’s what built the Petronas Towers. But Singapore has the oil refineries. So was it the ambition of the Chinese immigrants who have populated the island city-state on the tip of the Malay peninsula for the past centuries? Its location in the Straits of Malacca? Or one single-minded autocrat demanding that his people earn money and build skyscrapers
Whatever the reason, per capita GDP (gross domestic product) in America, the last great superpower, is US$38,000. In Singapore it’s US$23,700. In Malaysia, US$9,000. Quite a contrast for two countries that used to be one, still connected by a bridge in the South China Sea.
So I asked our cultural anthropology professor, Dr. Robert Shepherd of George Washington University, to give me his explanation of the discrepancy. “Malaysia doesn’t have the money of Singapore, but it’s still a prosperous country. The Muslim-Malay people there are happy, hard-working; it’s very diverse,” he said. “Globalization doesn’t mean that every country has to be just like we are in the West.”
Today we docked in sprawling Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), in Vietnam, which has a per capita GDP of US$2,500.
Watch this space.

Wednesday, 12 July, 2006, Singapore

2007-07-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

Risk-Takers

Dare we? We stared at the iced frappucino in front of us, as we sat in the Starbucks right outside our ship in Keelung, Taiwan. Although mindful of the medical staff’s warnings about drinking the water in this port, My Irish Husband Tony and I hadn’t yet perfected the correct hand movements to alert the Chinese staff that we wanted “no ice” in our drink. One sip revealed that it tasted like crap anyway, so we stuck to packaged shortbread.
As we stood up to leave, Nurse Ellen appeared in front of us and said, “Want to go on an adventure?”
“What kind of adventure?,” I asked warily.
“Let’s figure out how to get in to Taipei and then just walk around,” she said.
Exactly the adventure we were looking for. Together, the three of us were able to find the correct train (Well, the ticket window said “For English”), get off at the correct stop (Well, “Taipei Main Railway Station” was a clue), and walk around the underground mall (Well, the entrance was right outside the station). We ordered a lovely lunch by pointing, and happily helped the young waitress practice her English. But when I said “Thank you” in Chinese the way we had been taught on the ship, she pointed me to the ladies’ room. Probably my Pittsburgh accent.
Emboldened by the success of our first day, Tony and I spent Thursday and Friday exploring Keelung on our own. Ever the independent travelers, we have not signed up for many of the Semester at Sea field trips. But by Friday night it felt good to just queue up for the bus to take me and 20 fellow shipmates to “Gu Ling Experimental Theatre.” What would it be about? Who cares?! I’m happy to be a passenger.
After the fascinating (to me) presentation of Tin Lightning by a three-person theatre troupe from Brooklyn, our group mingled with other audience members. Carefully avoiding discussing our opinions of the avant-garde performance, we stood around, munching on the reception snacks. Finally, a senior passenger declared, “Well, we’ve seen experimental theatre!”
I admired the guts of our theatre professor, Tavia, who had arranged this excursion, sight unseen, months ahead of time. “I searched the internet, and saw that this International Little Theatre Festival was starting tonight, when we would be in town, so I signed us up,” she said. When I take students on creative adventures I constantly worry, But what if they don’t like it?! Who cares?! I liked it.
On the bus trip back, Shira sat next to me, and she had appreciated the performance as much as I had. She told me how frustrated she is that “everyone else can do what they want,” whereas she is limited by her wheelchair and the stamina of her full-time carer, Jess. She wanted to spend the next day, our last in Taiwan, out in the countryside, but couldn’t find others to go with her. “Jess needs a break,” she explained.
Tony and I had already discussed going out to one of the seaside towns we’d heard about, and had researched the train routes to get there.
I felt guilty. Why didn’t we take Shira with us? Imagining how we would maneuver her up and down the three steps into the train carriages, particularly if Jess wanted a day off and didn’t come with us, brought back memories. Growing up, our family was focused on helping my mother up and down the world full of steps we encountered every time she left the house. She had rheumatoid arthritis, but wasn’t in a wheelchair. She should have been, but refused.
Then Shira said the magic words: “Jess talked to the tour agent about hiring a car and driver to take us tomorrow.”
“We could do that!” I said.
Back in our cabin I explained to Tony my reservations as well as my plan, and he agreed.
Saturday morning, I deputized him to meet the tour agent with Jess and negotiate a deal. $US80 for four in an air-conditioned taxi, out into the mountains for four hours. Sold.
The tour agent introduced us to “Mr. Cole.” Actually, after I pronounced his name that way she turned to him and said, in Chinese, “For today, you’ll be Mr. Cole.” He helped Jess and Tony break down the wheelchair and squeeze it into the small Chinese taxi trunk. We were off!
Where was he taking us? Who cares?! We had confidence in the tour agent’s instructions to him. Winding up mountain coastal roads, when I glanced away from the spectacular scenery, I saw a huge diesel truck passing in a no-passing zone, slipping back into the right lane just before a tour bus appeared around the bend. I cringed. Best to keep looking at the scenery and let Mr. Cole worry about the driving.
After about an hour we turned into the parking lot of Ocean Beach Park, which had a pool, a cafe, disabled parking and a ramp up to the second level for a great view of the ocean. A young Chinese woman offered to take our group picture, and helped translate between us and Mr. Cole. Eddie (“I know. It is boy’s name,” she explained) apologized for her bad English. I pointed out that her English was better than my Chinese and asked if she knew about “blogs.” That word she did know, so I gave her my card. (Hi, Eddie! You made it into my blog.)
We had drinks in the café, and, damn it!, ice in my juice. Who cares?!
The tour agent had said to me, “Do you want seafood lunch? If you want seafood lunch, tell Mr. Cole and he will take you to good place.” Tony and I dug out the cheat sheet she had given us, and pointed to: “Please take us to lunch.” Mr. Cole got the message. We crawled into the taxi and headed back down the mountain roads.
Halfway to Keelung he turned onto a small lane bordering an inlet. As he headed towards a street vendor, I was wondering if her cart held our “seafood lunch.” He drove past her as well as the tiny, dirty shops lined up on the ground floor of a ramshackle building, and then stopped in front of one which housed a gorgeous restaurant. We decided it was easier for Jess to just lift Shira from the taxi to a seat at a corner table, without using the wheelchair. Jess and Tony were brave enough to go with the restaurant owner to pick our fish from a list in Chinese and English and the smiling faces in the tanks. Eels, oysters—I stuck to steamed shrimp, violating my rule of “Never eat anything that is looking at you.” I used the chopsticks to break off the little buggers’ heads and deposit their pink crusts in a small bowl.
Everyone else dug into fried eel and steamed oysters, and we split three huge bottles of Taiwan Beer. Mr. Cole agreed that he should drink only water. The restaurant gladly took Mastercard to cover the $1200 bill—New Taiwan (NT) dollars, that is. The equivalent of US$37, for all five of us.
Back into the taxi, back down the mountainside, back to the Keelung Port Terminal. We pooled our cash to pay Mr. Cole, including a nice tip. I made a point of telling the tour agent what an incredibly safe driver he was, so she would recommend him again to nervous tourists.
Our first night back on the ship, a “Port Reflect” session allows anyone to share their stories in an open mic format. When no one else volunteered, I went first. I described our fabulous trip with Shira, Jess and Mr. Cole, adding that we planned to do this again in other ports and would be happy to split the cost of a mini-van if some students wanted to join the four of us.
And then Shira took the biggest risk of all. She wheeled to the center of the Student Union, and, while someone held the microphone for her, told about her frustration at not being able to get around as easily as we can. She had really wanted to go on the white water rafting trip. But, she explained, it was important for her to come on this trip to show other disabled that they can do it too, and to show the rest of us that disabled people can travel the world.
Today we docked in clean, low-risk, oh-so-British Singapore, with safe water, English-speaking taxi drivers, and an accessible metro station right outside the terminal.
Watch this space.

Wednesday, July 5, 2006, Keelung, Taiwan

2007-07-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

Ten Not-so-long Days at Sea

When we first looked at the bright orange calendar charting our Semester at Sea voyage this summer, I eyed with disbelief the 10 straight days before we even reached an Asian port. On our European voyage, our longest stretch at sea was five days. Would we feel trapped in hotel luxury, surrounded by nought but the blue Pacific?
It’s gone by quite quickly, because since leaving Honolulu one or both of us has:

Given a “Community College” presentation about blogging.
With all on board, in the Student Union, filled out our customs and immigration cards for Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Japan, and returned them to the Purser tucked safely inside our passports until we need them.
Gone on a tour of the high-tech bridge of the MV Explorer (one of us had a picture taken in the Captain’s chair).
Guessed “Who would play you in the movie of your life?” with my Writing for Media class (some hadn’t heard of Susan Sarandon).
Lost a Wednesday.
Had a gourmet dinner with the Captain and others, although we had to miss the Community College presentation by the adult passenger who grew up in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines.
Sat through a spirited faculty meeting, debating how seriously we should take student complaints about the daily required Global Studies course and its upcoming exam.
Surprised my writing students with a visit to the Asian Puppets and Performance class, where Shira, our one disabled student onboard, presented her life-sized handmade puppet of Pippy Longstocking draped over her and her wheelchair.
Participated in the Summer at Sea Olympics as part of the faculty-staff-family-adult passenger team called the Fantasea, one of us taking part in the Wet Overalls Relay race in the pool and one serving as a cheering “Athletic Supporter.” (The Pirates of the Mediterranean Sea team won the right to be the first students off the ship, despite the Fantasea’s victory in the Lip-Synch contest with a spirited rendition of Octopus’ Garden).
With all on board, in the Student Union, learned basic survival phrases in Chinese from Chang Huang Ming, our 21-year-old Taiwanese Interport Student, who taught us how to ask for toilets, beer, cigarettes, tampons, condoms, and “Nutritious Sandwich.”
Celebrated Independence Day by proctoring anxious students taking the Global Studies exam, while Okinawa floated by the window.
After being instructed last night, with all on board, in the Student Union, to not consume water, ice, dairy products (usually unpasteurized), raw shellfish, snake’s blood or “Nutritious Sandwich,” and, when we inevitably do, to take Pepto-Bismol before visiting the beleaguered medical staff, we awoke at 6 am this morning eager to put our knowledge into practice.

We inched towards, then glided into, then waited alongside the Keelung, Taiwan, harbor. While the local authorities dithered over whether we all needed to walk through thermo-sensors to prove we were infection-free, we waited patiently in our rooms, in the breakfast room, in the computer lab, until the ship was finally pronounced “clear.”

And then, after ten not-so-terribly-long days at sea, the eager contents of the MV Explorer fumbled, tumbled and rushed down the gangway, through the terminal, and onto solid ground in unsuspecting Taiwan.

Watch this space.

Tuesday/Thursday, June 27/29, 2006, Smack Dab in the Middle of the Pacific

2007-07-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

The Wednesday that Wasn't

When I worked out the itinerary for our first Semester at Sea voyage, Wednesday jumped out as the best day to write the weekly scripts I taped for the Radio Reading Service back in Miami, Dixon Donnelly @ Sea.
When I began my blog about being an unemployed 50+ academic in south Florida, I took the title, “Every Wednesday?!” from a quote by author Robert Parker. A local college was offering to pay him a lot of money to be a visiting lecturer, and he only had to show up and teach one class on Wednesdays. “Yeah, but every Wednesday?!” he asked.
Wednesday worked well. So the next two blogs, A Yank in 'Brum, about our relocation from Florida to England, and now this one, have been written on Wednesdays.
This week, for the first time in four years of blogging, there is no Wednesday.
On Tuesday Tony and I were mesmerized by Channel 1 on our closed circuit television service. Backed by a music loop repeating trance-like tracks from Muzak Hell (“crazy for you/dying to tell you…”), it always shows a still photo of our ship, a map of the local area indicating our location, the time, our course, our Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA), and our exact latitude and longitude.
We focused on the latter, watching as the degrees clicked up towards 180. When we hit that magical number, we were exactly half way around the world from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and smack dab on the International Date Line. Tuesday became Thursday. On the National Geographic map of The World blue-tacked to our cabin wall, we fell off the left side and reappeared on the right.
Where did Wednesday go? The 28th of the month is my university payday. Would my earnings be direct-deposited into an account in parallel cyberspace? Were the shipmates with birthdays listed in the daily Deans’ Memo exempt from the aging process?
Because I have kept my computer’s clock on Birmingham, UK, time and Tony’s cell phone gives us the UK time and date, we discovered that Tuesday morning approaching 11 am on board, when we hit 180 degrees longitude, was actually approaching midnight for Willie and Gussie back home. Why 13 hours from Birmingham? Because the United Kingdom is on British Summer Time, the equivalent of the US Daylight Savings Time. The ship was, of course, 12 hours off Greenwich Mean Time, which never alters.
Half of Wednesday was tucked in to our Tuesday, and the other half hung over into our Thursday. The solution for mariners, of course, is to drop a day at midnight. So we went to sleep on Tuesday and woke up on Thursday, ahead of all you.
In my International Marketing class we did an exercise about different cultures’ concepts of time, using the fascinating book, Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman (New York: Warner Books, 1993). The last dream described, as Einstein develops his theory of relativity, is dated June 28, 1905. One hundred and one years from our day that never was. Spooky enough, but then my copy of the book disappeared. Maybe it was sucked into the parallel universe with my paycheck.
Many nights since we left the West Coast’s Pacific Time zone, we have been instructed to turn our clocks back one hour when we go to bed. Gaining an hour each day is the most civilized way to cross the ocean, but Tony and I keep getting up earlier. Sometimes the ship’s clock on Channel 1 is behind the curve, and we wake up wondering if we mis-heard the instructions or only dreamt that we had re-set our watches.
We are warned by those who have done it that the return voyage, when we will turn the clocks ahead one hour each night, can be as debilitating for some as the jet lag from flying from west to east. Our missing Wednesday will re-appear as an extra Saturday, August 12th. What a great idea! Exchange a working week day for a playing weekend day.
This Monday night at the social—the only evenings when students are allowed to buy alcohol on board, with a two-ticket limit—the theme was “Dancing through the Decades.” All were encouraged to come dressed in the clothes of their favorite era. We old fogies sat and watched as gorgeous twenty-somethings paraded on to the pool deck in stiletto heels. We recognized images from the sixties instantly—bubble skirts, tie-dye t-shirts, faux beehive hairdos. But the rest of the outfits, which the students laughed at as relics of their past—the 70s, the 80s, the 90s—blurred into a mish mosh of denim, Spandex, and sweat pants. How could they tell these time periods apart?
Next Wednesday we dock in our first Asian port, Keelung, Taiwan, an hour north of the capital, Taipei. Will it feel as though we are light years away from Birmingham, across the great cultural divide between West and East?
Watch this space.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006, Between Ensanada, Mexico, and Honolulu, Hawaii

2007-07-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

First Days of School

The first day of school feels the same everywhere. New shoes. New pencil box. What time does the school bus come?
On Semester at Sea we also have the new sensation of rocking and rolling. On our way to class, meals and our cabins, we walk like drunken sailors, lurching from handrail to handrail.
We left San Diego a bit later than planned, last Saturday morning, to sail to Ensanada, Mexico, to pick up the students and ‘adult passengers.’ Why Ensanada, you ask. Our executive dean tells me that the Jones Act requires cruise ships to post a huge bond if they sail from and return to American ports. To avoid that leftover from an age when the cruise industry was less than reputable, most ships under foreign flag, such as ours, board their passengers and leave from a non-American port.
When the long line of students weighted down with duffel bags, backpacks and a surprising number of acoustic guitars finally was swallowed up by the MV Explorer, we set sail, at about 2200 hours, from Ensanada into the white caps of the Pacific.
Sunday was spent learning about the courses, the ship and the sea. Come Monday morning it was time to roll out of bed for Global Studies, the course that all on board must attend at 0920 in the Student Union. By using faculty and Interport Lecturers to discuss their specialties related to the upcoming port, this course—which the students take for credit and are tested on—ties together all the information we ‘academic adventurers’ can absorb.
On our last voyage (‘Dixon Donnelly at Sea’), My Irish Husband Tony majored in lolling by the pool and smoking. He sat in on one or two fascinating class sessions, but realized too late that he had wasted a great opportunity.
This time he is like a hungry sponge unleashed. Based on our late night conversations with faculty, he has decided to sit in on three courses—Politics of East Asia taught by Korean scholar Professor Dong; Cultural Anthropology taught by Anthro Bob (to distinguish him from Geology Bob); and Asian Puppets and Performance, taught by Tavia from Chatham College in Pittsburgh. Tony started the day in Global Studies, armed with paper and pen to take notes, and ended it with a big ball of papier mache (guess who supplies the newspapers?) and tape that will become the head of Finn MacCool for the end of voyage performance.
When Global Studies finishes, I grab my portable office—a black LL Bean bag (thank you Mary Lou!) which holds files, class rosters, handouts, pens, staplers, whiteboard markers and erasers. Off to International Marketing. Then lunch, followed by a long break to check e-mails (sooooo sloooow), sun on our lovely private balcony, and prepare for the next class, Writing for Media at 1500. Life’s a bitch.
During these first three days of school, I feel that my predictions about the student body have proved to be true. This voyage to Asia, which includes the opportunity to crawl through the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam where their fathers or even grandfathers might have been ambushed, attracts a different student from those who were lured by the opportunity to crawl through the pubs of Dublin on our European voyage. Although I had some wonderful students on that last trip, the faculty concluded that a large percentage had signed up for The Club Med version of Semester at Sea.
More than half of my 26 marketing students have already studied marketing and seem eager to apply what they’ve learned in class to the markets we will visit. In the Writing class I took a survey. 14 out of 15 have travelled outside the United States before—all with family, not Semester at Sea—and some have lived abroad. Several had received their first passports when they were ‘too young to remember,’ and only one recently. So much for the stereotype of Americans who won’t explore beyond their borders. None in the class has ever been to Asia.
And, after marking their first two writing assignments, here is the biggest surprise: They write grammatically! I haven’t read so much good grammar in student papers in a long time. In both the state university where I taught in Florida and at my former-polytechnic campus in the UK, the greatest despair of faculty is the lack of writing skills.
Each essay featured complete sentences, well ordered paragraphs, few misspellings. We’ll work on the punctuation. And the clichés. And the broad, trite, generalizations. But at least we won’t have to start with, ‘Every sentence contains a verb.’
So at the end of five days at sea, three spent in classes, here’s some things we’ve learned:
1. The upper levels of the American education system still turn out bright, curious, adventurous students who can write.
2. When sailing the Pacific, the wake of the ship churns out white foam that skims over the most amazing, swirling, bright aquamarine patches. This unique color of nature must have inspired chemical toilet bowl cleaner.
3. Hawaii is south of the mainland United States. Who knew?
Watch this space.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006, San Diego, California

2007-07-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

Back in the U.S…

Interesting snippets heard while traveling from the United Kingdom to board Semester at Sea in America:

I’m sorry Mr. Dixon, your Irish passport is not machine-readable so you’ll need a special visa to travel to the United States. Unless you have your Green Card with you.
Just a minute, sir, my wife’s looking for it.But Kathleen, you said last night you had it! Where would it be in the house? Okay, go over there and look one more time.
Whew. Sorry sir, here it is.

No, you can’t switch to your husband’s earlier flight. It’s an international ticket, so now that you’ve already flown the international leg, you can’t change any portion. Yes, five hours here in Newark. That’s the flight you’re already scheduled on.
Paging Mister Dixon. Mister Anthony Dixon. Will you please meet your wife at your flight gate. Thank you.

Hmmm. Let me see. I think I can get you on, just hang around here.
Mrs. Donnelly, Kathleen Donnelly. Could you come to the counter, please? I can’t get you a seat next to your husband, but I can get you this middle seat. Your luggage will still show up on the later flight, so you’ll have to go back to the airport to get it.

Sheit, our phones aren’t working here in San Diego either. It’s so warm. And so nice outside. It’s gorgeous. Oh—they’re driving on the correct side of the road!

Semester at Sea? Oh, right I’m familiar with them. No, they haven’t arranged anything with the hotel. I saw it on MTV Road Rules a long time ago.

Jaysus, listen to that woman at the next table. Fughin’ Americans.
I can honestly say that I haven’t read a work of fiction in my entire life. Y’know? I ask myself, how would that contribute to my quality of life?

You are tuned to KPBS in San Diego. Remember Fly-by-night pest control, call 1-800-Bad Bugs. This is National Public Radio.

Yes, mam. But we live in England now. Those shoes my wife’s buyin’ there--$30? Back home in Birmingham they’d be 30 quid. About $60. Every price here is like that. The numbers are the same, but it’s dollars, not pounds, so almost twice as much.

The phone card? I don’t know. Did I have it? Where did we put it? Can’t you just e-mail your brother for his birthday? It’s free in the lobby. Can we watch the Brazil game a bit before we go?
Goooaaaaaaalllllll!

How ya doin’, sir? We’re going to the Broadway Pier, the MV Explorer. Wait—I’ll get the luggage. I know, it’s a lot. Women, huh?

Dixon, D-I-X-O-N. Yes, and D-O-N-N-E-L-L-Y. Yes, sir. Up those stairs? Are ya jokin’ me? Okay, no problem. It’s allright, I can carry them. She’ll carry some.

Here’s your Faculty/Staff manual, your schedule for orientation, and your key card with your room number.

Look! Kathleen, we got a balcony! Wow! We can see San Diego. And the USS Midway! And a double bed, and a refrigerator. And a tub AND a shower! I sure am glad I met you.

Lemsip? Where did you pack it? Do you need it? Try some of my olbas oil. It’s like snuff, it’ll clear your sinuses. It doesn’t smell that bad. When’s your first meeting?

Oh geesh. I open the door and cats don’t run out.

Oh! We thought you’d have an English accent! You’re from Pittsburgh? Gee, thanks for the Cadbury.
A reception, then dinner. With all this food, we come on as faculty, but we leave as cargo.

Look at this. Helluva lot bigger than the faculty lounge on that little ship we had last time. You can see all the way ‘round out the windows. Is this free, too? No?

Did you sleep? I’ll go down and get you a cup o’ tea. No, can’t get you cats, sorry. Just tea.
What do you have today? Meetings? When? All day?

Jaysus, missus, that’s a helluva cough you got there. I’ll go to the shops and get what we need. Where was that Ralph’s pretty-good-grocery that we saw? Mouthwash, soda, wine, hangers, anything else? Cheaper here than back home.

Where did you put my phone? I know, but I’ll try it again. T-Mobile said it would work here.

So how were the meetings? All good, huh? What’s on telly? Oh, they run movies. Yucch, bad movies.

Take another Contac. You’ll feel better tomorrow.
Aren’t you excited? This is great, isn’t it?

Watch this space.

Wednesday, 7 June, 2006, Birmingham, UK

2007-07-02T07:05:00.000-07:00

Lists, Lists and One Box

Lists and boxes. Once again our days are filled with lists and boxes.
Each time we pack up to head somewhere new, it gets easier. And this time we’re only allowed one box.
Four years ago when we embarked on our first Semester at Sea voyage to Europe (‘Dixon Donnelly @ Sea’), we had to pack up almost everything in our Florida apartment to protect it from My Irish Husband Tony’s son and his friends who were subletting. (Good thing we did, as it turned out.) I was reimbursed for shipping three boxes of teaching materials.
Two years ago when we moved here to the United Kingdom for my new job (‘A Yank in ‘Brum’) we shipped seven boxes and one trunk—which arrived only after the hurricanes subsided—and brought four overweight suitcases, four oversized carry-ons, and one overstuffed purse. Later, two cats.
Last year when I was Interport Lecturer on Semester at Sea from Antwerp, Belgium, to Dublin, Ireland, we only had a couple suitcases. And Tony’s seven-year-old granddaughter, Erin.
This time, leaving for eleven weeks on Semester at Sea throughout Asia, I am once again reimbursed for up to three boxes. $100. Yeah, right. From the UK to California? It cost double that to ship one, big, fat box full of books, handouts, clippings, videos, Ramada pens (gifts for our new shipmates), and a Pittsburgh Steeler Terrible Towel.
Although we leave Sunday, I am piling, not yet packing. The ‘don’t-forget-to-bring’ pile sits in the bedroom where I can see it. The ‘take down to school’ pile is in the second room. The ‘remember to call them’ pile is on the table in the main room.
But we started making our lists a few months ago. Well, I made my list. And then I sat Tony down and said, ‘We’re going to make lists.’ I made him write them because no one, including me, can read my handwriting. He made a column for him, TD, and one for me, KD. When we finished, TD’s was longer than KD’s. My kind of lists.
Then we ignored them for weeks. Then we pulled them out and checked off two, maybe three things we had accomplished. All from my list.
Eventually, the countdown began. Bought a camcorder, check. Set up direct debits for bills, check. Bought shoes, check. Got haircuts, check. Made more lists, check.
Took the Wonderful Upstairs Neighbours out for a drink to make sure they really were willing to scoop cat litter and fill cat dishes for eleven long weeks, check.
Got someone to come stay in the place for a bit (My Office Mate Jonathan for at least one week in July), check.
Look at the printout of our airline reservations and discover that Tony is booked to come back in the wrong month, check. Fought with Cheap Tickets and Continental Airlines on the phone, check. Got it changed, check. Whew.
Set up the blog on Lulu, check. Get the e-mail lists organized so we can send
weekly updates out to friends and families, check.
Write the first blog, check.
Watch this space.