Ambassador's Ball Night

Howdy ya'll

 

I have a lot to write about tonight. Recently we finished finals and things went alrgiht. Not great, but not too bad either.

 

It's been hectic latelypacking and studying at the same time, but tonight is a perfect night to say bye and celebrate the voyage. We had a ship wide formal dinner and everyone looks gorgeous and we have an all night chocolate buffet coming, i think.  I can't wait to get home to tell everyone about the trip, but at the same time, ill miss this so much.  Ill miss barbs, meena, molly, tc, eric, andy, katie, the other katie, kirsten, 3rd katie, monica, juliana, rachel, jenn, melissa, amanda, lauren, charis, joanna, and everyone, sorry if i forgot you!!

 

We got to sign the banner for the trip with the slogan, remember when, and it pretty much sums up my trip, so ill tell you what i wrote:

Remember when:

1. I got caught for sneaking on pastries in a moroccan magic box

2. I skydived in hawaii

3. I rode an elephant in south africa

4. I bought a drink for captain jeremy in viet nam

5. I dinner at oliver's in ghana

 

Well, the night is still young, i think 8:00 PST!!  Yep thats right folks, we're in pacific standard time!! ive finished switching time zones, finally!! ts bittersweet i must say, but it feels good that i have circumnavigated the world.. i cant believe my parents leave tomorrow for san diego to pick me up!!  im so excited to see them!!  And so thankful for everything they've  given me.

 

Tonight is a special night, ive been on the quiet side taking it all in, and im wearing great grandmother's ring and my grandma's necklace she gave me, so i feel gorgeous too!  Thank you ladies, RIP!

 

I will write tomorrow again to work on summing this blog up, when things get a bit calmer!

 

Miss everyone, but i will see you soon! love you all!

More Hawai'i

So, Aloha again. I left something out from the last blog!  Right aafter honolulu i had a fancy dinner on the ship for the etiqutte dinner and ate with kareem, mackenzie, lauren and kellie and practiced our etiquette!  It ws very fun, and very good food for it being ship food.

 

Anyways Hilo hasn't been as nearly as excting as honolulu.  the lava tunnel was pretty cool. this morning i had macademia nut and banana pancakes which were totally awesome at KHOP. Kens house of pancakes.  Then I went to the shopping mall, of course and then ran a 5k with 100 others from the ship to raise money for the 100 dollar project.  yeah, it was pretty fun.

 

now we're about to leave hilo and cant wait to hear excting news...rumors are that we're going to maui!!

 

aloha!!

Aloha!

Aloha!!

 

Guess what everyone!  I skydived here in Hawai'i! I had the time of my life!  So much fun. Scariest thing ever, but so freeing and such a gorgeous view coming down!  My tandem instructor Greg, and photographer Ash were totally awesome. I would go again in a heart beat! I can't wait to show everyone photos from it!

 

I also swam with a dolphin names kahloa!  He is my new true love.  He was adorable. And I'm bring the stuffed version of him home with me!  We swam with him, rubbed his bellow, watched him do jumps out of the water and kissed him on the cheek.  I would definitely swim with the dolphins again too if I could!

 

Today, we arrived in Hilo, which has not too much going on, but I didn't stay for long--I went straight on a field excursion to the volcanoe national park, breathed in a lot of sulfuric acid probably, walked through a giant lava tube, and even picked up some red, and black sand! Finally!  All around the world, which I can honestly say there is only beige sand! Black sand is a nice, and beautiful change!  We didn't see any actual lava unfortunately, but we did see seismographs and a big volcanoe crater!  Maybe next time when I come to hawai'i I will see the actual lava! 

 

Hawai'i is awesome. Honolulu is so great, and Waikiki is awesome, and my cheeseburger in paradise was amazing.  I was just singing good old jimmy buffet as i ate my wondeful burger!  Not to mention, the best part of sky diving was the amazing acai bowl I ate afterwards from the blue truck shop that put honey over the smoothie and it was the greatest thing ever, beats Cafe Brazil (sorry santa cruz!)  And then driving back to the ship afterwards good old grateful dead came on the radeo.  Can't beat all that!  So I'll be back!

 

Mahalo for the memories here, Hawai'i!

 

Next stop, sunny San Deigo, then hooooome!!

 

Miss eveyone, love everyone!!

 

Aloha!

Japan!

So taken right out of my journal:

 

In Tokyo I went with Jules, Monica and Ashley, but could not do much at the places we went to because my ATM was no good anywhere.  But we did go shopping and I got sodoku books at the 100 yen, or 1 dollar store.  And then I lost the girls but found my way back on the intense train system back to Yokohama, finally ate sushi and found a glorious starbucks.  It was a short night but pretty perfect.  The next day I went to Mt. Fuji and bought a fuji camera! We had a pretty good tour guide. And then we had a boat ride on Lake Hakone.  That night began 2 nights of lounging in the garden lounge doing nothing which was so nice.

The next day was a sailing day, where I slept, ate, got a massage, and slept some more.  I also thought of home a lot with all the Santa Cruz drama being on CNN.  And made me miss home so much!

The next day I had a tea ceremony but because Monday was a holiday and we drove to Kyoto we spent more time on the road than at the tea ceremony.Then at night when we finally made it back to Kobe I almost went bowling but then instead I found the coolest sushi restaurant ever. The sushi came out on conveyer belts and it just goes around and you pick what you want and enjoy! most clever thing ever!  The last day in Japan I turned a fifteen minute job of looking for postcards into a big day event because postcards are hard to be found in Japan, but once I finally found some I wrote them while eating more sushi with an iced starbucks coffee. It was an interesting mix!

 

Anyways, I am back on the ship! We are done with foreign countries, the next couple of class days will be hard, but I'm ready.  I'm so excited for Hawai'i! just to be back in the US will be amazing!!  I can't wait to be home for the holidays and to see everyone!  I miss everyone and love everyone!

 

-Kim

China

Hey everyone!!

 

China is amazing!! I was absolutely in love with Hong Kong, and spent the entire day with barbs and meena.  we found barbara's dad's old apartment and found a private beach and collected sand. Then we met Navy men who lead us tot he Victoria Peak tram, and went up to the top of the peak to see an amazing view.  Then I hiked the Great Wall in Beijing, saw Tiannamen Square, the Olympic stadium, and the Forbidden City.  Today and tomorrow morning (our extra added day in Shanghai due to bad weather aka maybe Obama)  we are in Shanghai, and I got uggs, a wallet, a lesports sac, chopsticks 3 tea sets for less than $100! Amazing stuff and amazing deals! 

 

I miss home so much and everyone..I can't believe theres less than a month left of this journey.  Feels like just yesterday I almost couldn't come on the ship, and even applying to come just feels like yesterday.  I can't wait to be back home though to go to Jenny Low's to have more Chinese food. the rumor that says american chinese is different than real chinese is so wrong when it comes to JEnny Low's Chinese.  Good job Jenny.

 

Anyways, I love everyone. Love life, miss home, miss my bed, miss good heated rooms and fires and facebook and tv, and the news, but ill stop complaining...this trip has been so unfogettable..its incredible!! Peace.

 

~Kimmy

Goooooooooooodbye Viet Nam...Helloooooo China

Hey everyone

 

This will be a quick one. I'm in class and it might end soon, but I never finished my stories and adventures from Viet Nam.

 

So Ali and Mom came to see me, and I am so glad they did.  I got amazing food with them, had them meet KEvin, Dani, Marissa, Katie and Molly. I wish they had met TC and Eric too, but its cool, hopefully in San Diego everyone will meet. Ali and I had fun I'd say at the ZanZ bar and she met a couple others, and then I'd say we had even more fun at Apocolypse Now where we met 3 Ozzies.  We all did the Mekong Delta trip, but separately. I went on the trip with a friend and had a pretty good time, and had the hotel room all to myself which was amaizng. I found more dave letterman on and watched the new carrie underwood song, and watched some baseball, damn the yankees!  I watched some of the asian indoor games, hackey sack over a volleyball sized net.  you tell me how thats done.  I watched some music videos on MTV including good old miley cyrus and lady gaga and some new vietnamese music.  I tried some new foods--i even tried a half developed duck egg! And a rambutan--a crazy looking fruit with spikes on it.

 

Anyways, we left viet nam, had a reading day...aka sleeping day...and then we're on our second day of class right now and tomorrow...CHINA!!

 

I'm gonna wander around the first day there, hopefully finally get to try some crunchy fritters...no not apples fritters..maybe some tarantulas or crickets.. who knows. then the second day I leave for beijing i think and climb the great wall and then im on the great wall for 3 days, then i go back down to beijing and have some peking duck, and check out tiannamen square. I am so excited!  I will definitely, i know already, that i will have to come back to china again...like i have to go back to viet nam.

 

i cant believe thanksgiving is coming up so fast, and i miss everyone....i hope everyone has a great turkey day...i will definitely write before that, but time flies by so who knows, i might not be able to write before that

 

miss everyone greatly, and love everyone.

 

peace

Recent Happenings and Looking Forward to Viet Nam

Good day ya'll, or to everyone reading this, good early morning to you all.

 

I haven't written too much lately.

 

I forget what parts of India I talked about here, but India was fun.  I flew up to Northern India and saw the Taj Mahal and took a boat ride along the Gange River. An absolutely fabulous time, and took some really cool pictures and video.

 

This past week has been hectic.  I just had an astronomy test, I feel pretty confident about, and if I do well on it, I pass the course, and get the GE for it back in Santa Cruz and its basically the only class that matters this semester like that, so I hope I did well on it. I studied pretty hard for it.  Global Studies has been some what intense, and bought up a lot of emotions when talking about the Viet Nam war and all. It's sad, and I feel bad for saying I don't know as much as I could about the entire war, but its been nice learning a little about it, and rewatching Forest Gump and Good Morning Viet Nam to jog my memory of it. I can't I get to Viet Nam tomorrow.  To get there we actually had to pass the Ardamam Sea, and a small straight that past Singapore, which we anchored all day yesterday to refuel.  There was a big lightning storm two nights ago, on Halloween actually which was fun to watch and a big Halloween dance on the ship.  People actually dressed pretty crazy for it. I dunno how they had room in their bags for costumes and thought of their costumes, but i was pretty impressed, but maybe more impressed with the lightning.  We were so close to the island around the straight and around Singapore some of us could have swam the distance, but the water was pretty dirty so we didnt and apparently its a popular area for pirates so we didnt. 

 

We had an onboard picture day, where the two other banana slugs and I took a picture which will be sent to UCSC newspapers, so hopefully everyone will see it and save the article for me to see!  There was also a crew talent show. One of the cabin stewards can play the guitar and he was hot and amazing.  And others did group dances, and one to Beyonce All the Single Ladies.  Laszlo the hungarian did a comedy routine, love that little guy.  And one guy dressed as a nun and did an act. It was quite entertaining!  And last night was my long awaited for a beloved Bingo night! 5 sheets for 1 dollar, but i got 7 because I'm special. No not really...i got 7 because it was 80s themed and i dressed up 80s!  Pony tail to the side, leggings, and a big neon shirt.  it was totally my kind of night on the ship. And tonight is karakoe! Getting ready for Japan!

 

So tonight I also have a family dinner with the DeVeaux's and then tomorrow night with my real family! My mom and sister flew to Viet Nam and arrived last night and are awaitng me so I am more than thrilled to see them.  I get to show them the ship and all, which im so excited for and hopefully go to a market with them, do some kind of sightseeing, go to a beach perhaps, and get dinner.  I don't know what we'll do, but I am excited for it!

 

I miss everyone back hom so much, and hope everyone had a great Halloween, got all their postcards I sent and are having a great November! I will try to send another batch of post cards before Thanksgiving.

 

Only 40 something days left...crazy

 

Love everyone.

 

~Kimmy