Author Archives: Dreams Set Sail

Dreams Set Sail 2015-07-08 17:27:38

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Test button

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Happy Thanksgiving from the Amazon!

We celebrated Thanksgiving today since tomorrow we will be docked in Manaus. The past two days, we have been sailing up the Amazon! The river is muddy but it is surreal to look out my window and be less than a football field away from the jungle! We have passed by small fishing boats and villages and many different types of trees. I have just loved looking out the window! It is much too hot and humid to be outside. At night, we have had to close off all the doors to the outside because of all the bugs attracted to the light of the ship. Can’t wait for my riverboat tour of the Amazon!

We have been fortunate to have the special guest of US Ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon, sail with us the past few days. Although I have only personally spoken to him once, it is amazing just to have his presence on board!

Tonight I celebrated Thanksgiving dinner by getting all dressed up and sitting with some of my best friends on the ship. We sat for hours just talking, sharing stories, traditions and then sharing second and third helpings of pumpkin pie. As one of our deans, Dean Randy, said: While we are all away from our families right now, we have gained a new family of 600 shipmates. It is so true! This Thanksgiving has been wonderful.

Hope you have a great Thanksgiving! I am so thankful to be on this boat and thankful for everyone who supported me. Miss you and love all of you!

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Meat.

I celebrated Thanksgiving early this year and it was over the course of my three days in Brazil. I don’t know if I have ever eaten so much as I did these past three days!

The first day, we went to lunch on my class trip to a Brazilian steakhouse. It was a great first introduction to Brazil! Although they had an endless buffet of salads, sushi, cheese and other appetizers, I did not touch them. Instead, I let my plate be filled with different types of meat. Waiters came around to the tables with skewers of beef, pork, ribs, chicken, lamb, and any other type of meat imaginable and carved it onto your plate. It came sizzling off the grill and was freshly carved: delicious. We ate SO much! How could we pass it up whenever they brought a new kind of meat from the kitchen? Even when we were so stuffed we had to refuse any meat they came to offer us, the waiters would plead and convince us that we had to try this meat, it was their most popular, it was made just for us, this one would be our favorite. We couldn’t say no. My favorite was the parmesan crusted steak. Yum ๐Ÿ™‚ Even as we were leaving, we saw meats come out of the kitchen that we hadn’t even seen yet! I didn’t know it was possible. The best part was however, that since we were on a class trip, we didn’t have to pay for it!

On our favela tour, our guide took us to a rodizio- an endless Brazilian buffet. Boy do those Brazilians love to eat! We stacked our plates with traditional brazilian foods such as freshly grilled sausages, beans, rice, cheese stuff empanadas, cheesy doughy bread balls, and seafood (which I didn’t have any of). For dessert, passionfruit or açai custard and sugar cane juice!

Our last day in Rio, we were at a cafe and I saw that they had feijoada. When I was in first grade and a part of the Vicarious Voyage program, the ship sailed to Brazil. To celebrate that port, the parents came in and cooked feijoada for our class. I did not try it in the first grade because we were told that it is made with pigs feet! As a 6 year old, that was too disgusting but I vowed that one day I would have it. And what better place to have it than in Brazil! Although I wasn’t extremely hungry, I decided that I couldn’t leave the country without having this traditional dish. No longer made with pigs feet, feijoada is a bean stew that is cooked with pieces of pork and sausage for hours, so that the beans are full of pork flavor. When I ordered it, I had no idea what was coming. The waiter arrived with 7 plates and a huge pot of feijoada. All for me. No one else in my group was hungry! While I only was able to eat about 1/3 of the meal, it was so worth it. Not only was it delicious, but I get to say I finally had feijoada in Brazil!

I did not know it was possible for me to eat so much. I was so full from all of these lunches, I couldn’t eat anything else all day! It was so worth it.

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Favelas

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The beaches in Rio

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RIO! View from Sugar Loaf at night and Christ the Redeemer in…

RIO! View from Sugar Loaf at night and Christ the Redeemer in the day Continue Reading

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Rioooo De Janeirooooo!

Take me back to Rio. Now. Let’s just skip over Montevideo, Uruguay because nothing really happened there.
Brazil has won the favorite country award! It has mountains, it has beaches, it has jungles, and it has great food! It has got to be one of the most beautiful places I have been to. I want to live here! Ever since the first day of the voyage, we have been warned about the high crime rates and dangers of Rio, but I never felt unsafe once. Instead, I fell in love with the landscape and the people here. Our tour guide told us that anyone could be Brazilian because Brazilians are a mix of African, Portuguese, German, French, Japanese and other ethnicities. Brazil actually has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan. Such a diverse country!

Day 1
Every class we take on the boat has a required field experience. The professor organizes one day in port during the voyage that pertains to the class. For my Infectious Diseases class, we went to an HIV/AIDS clinic in South Africa. For my Short Story Literature class, we met an author in Argentina. For my final class, Cross-Cultural Psychology, the field lab was the first day in Rio. I almost didn’t take the class because it would cost me a full day in Rio when I could be doing other things. However, it turned out to be an awesome day! We walked along Ipanema beach, went to a local park, got delicious lunch, and then went to a huge market: all so that we could “observe brazilian culture”. It was great!!
That evening, we took the cable-car up to Sugar Loaf to watch the sunset. As the sun set and night fell, I could truly appreciate how huge Rio is. It is so beautiful at night! I loved sitting with some great friends reflecting about this trip while watching the twinkling lights of the favelas built into the hills. The warm summery night and beautiful view made it perfect. To top it all off, we walked along Copacabana beach at night before going back home.

Day 2
There are two things that I came on the trip wanting to do: sky dive in Cape Town and hang glide in Rio. Neither of which I got to do because of weather! We spent about 4 hours waiting for the wind to change so that we could hang glide from the top of the mountains and land on the beach but unfortunately, we weren’t able to. However, those 4 hours were spent on a beach eating Açai berries so I’m not complaining. After we got tired of waiting, my friend Tucker and I went to see Jesus! Standing at the base of the Christ the Redeemer statue was unreal. I couldn’t believe that I was standing next to this prominent monument (one of the 7 wonders of the world) and overlooking this country that I had wanted to visit for so long. I could have stayed up there all day just enjoying the view and soaking in this beautiful place!

Day 3
On our last and rainy day, we went on a tour of a favela. Visiting a favela was really important to me because although they are infamous for being dangerous, they are also the places in Brazil that need the most help. Our tour went to a favela that had been pacified 2 years ago; out of the 1,000 favelas in Rio, only 25 have been pacified. That number was absolutely shocking to me. We learned a lot about the history of favelas, the violence, drug use, and power of the drug lords. Because favelas are built up into the mountains, the government built a gondola system that transports the residents from the top to the bottom of the mountain. We rode this all the way up to get an aerial view of the favela. I was stunned at how large the favela was- 80,000 people! It was so crowded and the population is growing, forcing families to build up instead of out since land is scarce. We visited an organization that is working on teaching people how to read and write, skills to get a job and an after school program to keep kids out of the drug trade. Although I had visited townships in South Africa and villages in Ghana, the favelas were drastically more impoverished. I believe that it is this way because of the millions of people living in favelas and the lack of government or outside involvement. My heart broke for the favelas because there is so much need and if there is one thing that this trip has proved to me, it is that one person can make a difference.

I am very excited to explore more of Brazil in our next port, Manaus, but I already miss Rio. It was full of color, adventure, and worry-free. I would spend the rest of the voyage there if I could! I want to go back. 2016 olympics anyone? ๐Ÿ™‚

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Buenos Aires

The Argentinian lifestyle wore me out! The four days we had there blurred into one because of lack of sleep and our constant drive to make the most out of our time. Buenos Aires is a huge city similar to New York City with several different districts, or barrios, and the usual dirtiness of a big city. However, I came to really appreciate the beauty of the city. The european influences are very evident in the architecture, street names, cuisine, and especially the people. We learned that the darker skinned people that we would normally associate with latin america were from northern Argentina where most people in Buenos Aires had lighter skin tones and hair because they are descendants from italians and english colonists.
While the city is very busy and always bustling, Argentines are very laid back. They were very friendly and helpful if you needed something, however this was the country that students and faculty had the most problems with pick pocketing. Although I never had any trouble, I heard countless stories from many other people. Instead, I had people point out to me that my purse was unzipped or advise me to keep my hand on my purse to avoid pick pocketing and I was very surprised and thankful for their helpfulness.
On Sundays, they shut down several streets in the barrio of San Telmo for the Sunday Market. Vendors come from all over Argentina, even gauchos come in from the north, to sell their products at this market that stretches for miles! We spent about 5 hours there shopping, watching street performers, and drinking matè: a traditional tea that is drunk out of a hollowed out gourd. Its not very good and requires a lot of sugar in my opinion but when in Argentina…
Upon our arrival in Argentina, when describing the typical food, our interport lecturer said, “Vegetarians, you are in the wrong country.” That meant that I was in the right country! Steak, chorizo, empanadas, and ham. We even took a food tour that took us around to 4 local restaurants and we got to sample several types of Argentinian food. It was so good, we took our friends back the next day! The meat was so good, it didn’t require any sides or sauces. Just the natural juicy flavor and a glass of wine. Delicious!
Even better than the carne was the dulce de leche. They put it on everything! Even bread at a restaurant comes with dulce de leche rather than butter. We had dulce de leche ice cream, coffee, pastries, and alfajores: a cookie that can be made out of shortbread or cake with dulce de leche sandwiched in the middle. That is one part of the Argentinian culture that I have decided to adopt and so there is now a rather large jar of dulce de leche in my fridge.
The Argentinian lifestyle was quite exhausting and took us a while to get used to. Siesta is a sacred time when all the shops close down and the city become very barren. Around 4 or 5 pm we would go back to the ship, have dinner at 6, shower, get dressed up, and then go out for second dinner around 10. This was typical time for most people to have dinner and we saw children out until 2 or 3 am. After dinner, you go to the bars and around 3 am you go to the clubs. We left when the sun was rising, and the party was just getting started!
The city is big and beautiful and very impressive but I liked seeing a different side of Buenos Aires on my service trip to a feeding program. While every city has their Rodeo Drive, they also have a Skid Row. We visited a neighborhood on the outskirts of a city to visit an organization that was started by one woman, Margarita. For her community, she created a kindergarten, youth center, a clinic, and she makes free food for the entire community. It was so inspiring to see how just one woman started all this and that it remains sustainable from selling freshly made pasta and clothing that the abuelas make from donated cloth. Outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina is very poor and it is often forgotten about by the government but visiting Margarita’s community gave me hope and proved to me that one person can make a difference.

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Table Mountain! From the ship, from the top, and rappelling…

Table Mountain! From the ship, from the top, and rappelling down! Continue Reading

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