Caitlin's Travels

Incredible India!

2012-01-23T02:06:00.000+11:00

Sometimes India can intrigue and beguile. And sometimes it can be just plain annoying. Here's a little scene that I was a part of recently. You need to imagine me in the restaurant in a very good hotel in one of the larger cities in India. After finally getting the waiter's attention I ordered a curry and some naan bread. Our conversation then went like this:

Waiter: You can't have naan bread.

Me: Why not?

Waiter: Because plain rice would be good for you.

Me: Thank you, but I would like naan please.

Waiter: No, you should have rice with this curry.

Me: Please, I would like to eat naan.

Waiter: Ok mam, I will bring you rice.

Me: No, please bring me naan.

Waiter: Yes, rice for you.

Me: Excuse me, but please bring me naan not rice.

Waiter: Yes mam.

Twenty minutes then elapsed (which is way too long, but that's a whole other issue). The waiter then brings out curry and rice. Once the rice was on the table I asked if he was also bringing naan and he responded 'but you did not order it Mam'. In the words of India's Tourism Board: Incredible India!

India's Cows Strike Again!

2012-01-11T02:28:00.001+11:00

The front page of one of Delhi's leading newspapers, The Indian Express, carried a tongue-in-cheek (I hope) article reporting comments made at the Cow Protection and Conservation Board's inaugural national workshop in Madhya Pradesh. Here are some of the gems:

Only those inside houses coated with cow dung escaped the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy
There are only two ways to remain insulated from nuclear radiation, and one of them is the application of cow dung [to people and property, just in case you were wondering]
Using cow dung can ensure normal birth instead of a c-section
Those who drink the milk of jersey cows and buffaloes commit more crimes than those who drink only Desi [Indian] cow's milk
Foreign cow breeds give only poisoned milk which causes autism and heart attacks
10 grams of cow's milk ghee [essentially clarified butter] is equal to 100 tonnes of oxygen
Children become more obedient if they drink cow's milk [presumably only Desi milk though].

The conference finished with the announcement that the state of Madhya Pradesh will strictly enforce new anti-cow slaughter legislation (it's already illegal to buy and sell beef in India). Special designated officers will now roam the streets of Madhya Pradesh monitoring cow activity. Those accused (not guilty of) an offence under the new legislation could serve up to seven years in prison. The legislation also authorises officers to raid a person's house on suspicion of crimes under the act. All I have been able to think about all day is how much I'd kill for a steak sandwich. I'm just not sure that it's worth seven years in prison!

Covert Acts of Independence

2012-01-02T03:23:00.000+11:00

It's 2012 and I'm back after a (or is it an?) hiatus induced from a combination of ridiculous amounts of work and writer's block arising from the discovery that there were rather a lot of people reading my blog. You see, when I was a kid at school, I used to go to pieces in exams. Not because I didn't work hard (I did!), but because I hated the thought of my work actually being judged. But I'm all grown up now, and am going to proceed on the assumption that only my Mum will be reading this. So how is life in India you ask, Mum? Brilliant actually, except that I seem to have lost my independence.

An Aussie in their late twenties is considered to be a reasonably independent and functioning member of society. Most of us have managed to join the adult world of secure employment. We have to live somewhere and generally we have managed to hoodwink real estate agents into renting us apartments. Though, some of us have sold our souls to merchant banks and law firms and have consequently joined the property classes (but can only afford shoebox proportioned apartments - see there is some justice). Yes, we occasionally require emergency “loans” from Dad for absolutely essential purchases – such as shoes - and I have been known to ring up Mum for a dose of self esteem. But by this point in our lives we are expected to be able to get up in the morning, make our own beds, assemble vaguely healthy food for ourselves, pay our taxes and generally go about our days contributing to society and the economy (see Dad, the shoes were essential - it's holding back the tide of recession that is threatening to crash upon us).

But not anymore! Independence now means doing shocking things like making my own cups of tea. Actually, it turns out making tea involves a remarkable amount of effort on my part. First I have to find the cups. Don't look at me like that, it's harder than it sounds. I have a housekeeper (she's sort of like having a Mum except I have to remember to pay her at the end of each month). My housekeeper is so incredibly bored (because I don't have 10 screaming children, I live in a pretty small apartment and I still like doing most of my own cooking) so she has taken to rearranging the contents of my kitchen cupboards every week. Therefore, all my acts of culinary independence must now start with a treasure hunt. Once the equipment and ingredients have been found there's the water that has to be boiled obsessively to kill the various bugs that would prefer to see me dead, and don't even get me started on milk (I've just given it up, it just got too hard). It's quite exhausting actually. When I've managed to get myself a cuppa I seem to have acquired contagious dementia and I tend to leave it places and my housekeeper (who is overly attentive) will have it washed up and put back in a secret cupboard before I can locate it again. It's a start I guess.

My other acts of spontaneous independence are equally banal though slightly more fraught. I've taken to driving myself (oh yes), in my own car to various destinations in Delhi. I know, radical! Assuming that you're not actually my Mum (it's possible), I must let you know that I love cars. I love cars as much as I love sparkly shoes - and that's saying something. So I couldn't imagine living here and not spending at least some of my time driving. But there are a few issues. Firstly, I'm a bit embarrassed by my car. I wish I had an Aston Martin! I could hold my head up high in a BMW. Hey, at this point I'd even settle for a Mazda. However, practicality, availability and obviously price demanded that I purchase a Toyota. Not just any Toyota, a diesel (oh yes, it gets worse) people mover. And it's beige. Oh my goodness, I could die from the public humiliation. When I'm a B-list celebrity and appearing on Top Gear I'm going to lose all my street cred when I mention the three years where I drove a diesel Toyota Innova. I'll need to buy something outlandish and likely without a roof to make up for this when I return to Australia!

The second issue is the judgement that comes with me wanting to drive. When I want to use my car I must first ask for my keys from the security guard at my apartment. He normally looks at me with shock and wants to know why. I have enough Hindi to say: because I want to. Which makes me sound like a petulant 3 year old demanding ice cream for breakfast. After I've managed to stare down Mr Security Guard I have to take a big breath and go and knock on my landlords door and ask him to please move his car. He normally asks why (see the theme here). His English is better so I have taken to randomly flattering him as a method of distraction. His wife is probably going to knit me one of his beige cardigans for Christmas next year because I appear to be obsessed with his. Once I have got everyone's permission and all the physical obstacles have been removed from my driveway I am finally able to get in my car. By now I have normally drawn a crowd on the street (usually because I'm inappropriately dressed in something that reveals my ankles, or, shock horror, my collar bones). Then I must reverse out of my driveway without stalling/running over stray dogs/hitting cows – my independence is quite stressful.

Then I'm free to turn into an aggressive, horn honking and impatient Delhi driver. Thankfully, everything happens on Delhi's roads at low speed (I rarely make it to fourth gear, I have never made it to fifth). You have to keep an eye out for motorbikes, rickshaws, people, buses and of course cows. Nobody ever gives way – that would be losing face and we can't have that. Though traffic lights are (mostly) respected and generally speaking Indians do drive on the left hand side of the road. It's all worth it though! I do get a somewhat perverse sense of satisfaction from going somewhere under my own steam. When I get to the limited number of destinations that I feel comfortable driving to, I feel like I can take as long as I like wandering through the shops, or sitting in a cafe simply staring into space. I can see a movie without feeling guilty about my poor driver being bored out of his brain waiting for me. And then when I return to my car there is no one waiting to judge me for the number of bags that I have. It's quite liberating actually. Even if I am freaking out rather a lot of people in the process.

And just for the curious or the grammaphiles in our midst, google tells me that the a/an debate is superfluous because it is actually proper to say 'on hiatus'. Who knew?

Driving, A Lesson In Karma

2011-08-13T14:42:00.000+10:00

The first thing to note about transport in India is that the majority of Indians believe in reincarnation. This is critical to understanding road rules in India and must be kept front of mind for those of us who have only a single incarnation to get our bucket list completed. Seems that it's easier to be reckless when your soul is immortal and your body is just superfluous packaging seeking moksha. I spend the majority of my time on India's roads with my eyes firmly shut, but here are a few of the things I have learnt so far.

Like a good Indian village, there is a complex social system that orders India's roads which simply can't be questioned. As far as I can tell the order of precedence is something like this: buses come before cars; which come before taxis; which come before motorbikes (though they may possibly be the road's untouchables and defy categorisation); which come before scooters; which come before auto rickshaws; which come before non-auto rickshaws; which come before bicycles; which come before people. But cows, well they come before everything. Even ambulances.

India is a chaotic ride, and it seems that this makes you incapable of forward planning. Which is evident in the signalling practices of Delhi's drivers. Indicators simply take the spontaneity out of life. Why would you need to provide advanced warning of your intentions? That's what your horn is for anyway. And if you indicated what your car might be doing next it denies you the opportunity to roll your eyes and teach Caitlin new Hindi swear words. And really, we can't miss an opportunity like that. If you feel like turning right across four lanes of traffic on a read light – no problems! All that is necessary is to proceed and honk your horn loudly. Do it with enough gusto and it's possible to stop buses. And that's saying something! This is usually the point where I start holding my breath (strange reaction, I know).

But let me to turn to helmets, just for a minute. Before arriving I would have been reasonably confident of being able to pick a helmet in a police line-up. Turns out I was woefully ignorant. In India (if you're a man) it is compulsory to wear a helmet. Haven't got a helmet. Not to worry. Got a colander? Perfect! Did your cousin-brother steal your colander this morning when he left early for work? That's ok, use a metal-working visor instead. What! You've leant your metal-working visor to your brother-in-law not to worry, simply tape a piece of plastic (you know the bendy stuff) to your forehead. When I was coming home from work last night I swear I saw a man on a bike with a mixing bowl on his head. Necessity it turns out, really is the mother of invention. But if you are rich enough to be able to afford a full face helmet, then you simply must use it to protect your favoured elbow. You'll have to prioritise one arm over the other though, so think carefully about which arm your prefer to use for fist-waving and gesture making at buses attempting to bring you one life closer to enlightenment.

And finally, the Indian government decided that guttering was for whimps and that the flooding from Delhi's monsoon really a test of fortitude and the survival skills necessary for living in India. The resulting pot holes/craters/black holes are designed to test your reflexes, eliminate the weak and keep everybody on their toes.

Torts, Indian Style

2011-08-05T01:10:00.001+10:00

When I was at university studying law, one of my favourite subjects was torts. I'm a self confessed nerd, but I loved doing my readings for class because they were so out of the realms of possibility. I loved that you would start the story with a man walking down the street – pretty normal really. Then you learn that the man was walking down a street in a little English town called X which was sparsely populated but had three main buildings that were (unusually for town's in X's county) set at exactly 37 degree angles from each other. And this English inhabitant was wearing a pair of shoes manufactured at a nondescript factory in Surrey. The judgement probably gave you a very detailed summary of the factory. After reading those five pages you knew what colour the factory was, what the foreman's wife liked to cook for dinner on the third Thursday of each month. And how the glue that they imported from South Africa smelt funny when there was a north wind. And on one particular Thursdays (the third Thursday of that month) there was an extra savage north wind. So the foreman rushed his plebs to make their daily quota of glued shoes extra quickly because the fumes from the South African glue gave him a headache and he wanted to get home to his extra special dinner. And at this point your thinking to yourself, where is this going? Rather like this post I imagine!

Then the case would go off on a tangent and you'd learn all about the weather patterns of North England and that once every thousand years there is a weather inversion. And that isn't a problem unless you are in a sparsely populated town where there are three buildings that are angled at exactly 37 degrees from each other. Oh my goodness you think, what are the odds of that? And you read on fascinated. Then you discover that when there is a weather inversion and buildings are 37 degrees from each other that if you use a particular gravel to make your footpaths they become extra slippery. And if you just happened to be wearing a pair of shoes that were glued together at a grey factory in Surry on the third Thursday of the month when there was a north wind then you will probably fall down and break your leg because the glue will come unstuck. And you think, how strange. Could life get any worse for Mr poor shoe decision maker?

At that point fate takes over and Mr Shoes gets run over by a rogue bullock dray that was hurtling through the country town and he ends up in hospital where he catches a strange tropical disease that is normally only present in monkeys and dies. And I always saw torts as a variation of science fiction. Until I moved to India.

This afternoon I watched one of India's random tort cases unfold right before my eyes. My apartment is on the road behind a local market. It's definitely not uninhabited, but rather the complete opposite. Especially in the evening. So while I was munching on my chicken tikka I saw a mango-wallah wheel his hand cart down the road. Pretty standard fair for an evening in South Delhi. Then around the corner hurtled a rouge motorbike driver who was distracted by the racy sight of a lady's shoulder 100 metres on the other side of the market so he didn't notice that there were a pack of spy-cows making their daily surveillance round. So Mr scary motorbike rider had to mount India's almost-footpath which had giant puddles from today's monsoon rain. And he splashed a family who were waiting to buy their milk from the milk stand at the back of the market which had ice creams today. And their little son slipped out of Mum's hand and ran into the street where a taxi had to swerve so as not to hit him (or the cows) but ploughed into the mango cart. Well, mangoes went everywhere (which is particularly sad because it's the end of Mango season!) and the cows got excited and called all their mates and the traffic went a bit mad and there was lots of yelling. And I thought, wow, I couldn't have made this stuff up!

Old Delhi's Pumping Heart

2011-08-04T02:56:00.000+10:00

I spent the weekend exploring Delhi with the summer heat, a million flies and approximately half of the world's population trying to take my photo. But before I tell you all about my adventures we should start with a bit of a history lesson so we are all on the same page. Some say that what we now call New Delhi is actually the eighth city of Delhi, others say fifteenth and I've even heard some people claim that there are twenty one dead cities of Delhi. They say that Delhi is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world with a history that might just date back to 1000BC. I'm not sure who is right, but what I do know is what we now call Old Delhi is a stunning collection of buildings which sprung up around about 1693 (so you know, not that long ago) when the Mughal Emperor Shahjahan arrived in town. He wasn't too excited about the existing city of Delhi (whichever number they were up to) and decided that what Delhi really needed was some seriously impressive city walls.

He (and by he, I mean his army of servants - this is India after all) first built a walled city made of mud. That wasn't good enough for old Shahjahan and he knocked them down and started again, this time building in what would become Delhi's iconic red sandstone. Because he was a planner, he bought along a swag of brilliant Islamic architects. This was not the sort of guy who was happy hanging out in tents. And with their help he set about building a seriously impressive city. Over the years these beautiful buildings have been plundered by the many different waves of people who have called Delhi home, but what remains is a stunning heart to a thriving metropolis. Some of these buildings literally take your breath away.

I started the morning at the Qutub Minar. It was nearly deserted when I arrived because it was awfully early in the morning, even for the super eager sightseers. Which meant that the stray dogs and I (no cows allowed here) could hang out together. I checked out the beautiful Humayun's Tomb, took a ride on the wonderfully air conditioned Delhi Metro, lined up for the Red Fort (at this I was flagging), and checked out the beautiful marble pavilions inside the fort that reminded me of the summer palace in Beijing. Then headed into the heart of Old Delhi for some lunch (and some more air conditioning). After starring in a million pictures – there's no getting around how white I am – it was off to the Friday Mosque where I had to get dressed up in an orange polyester cover-up before they would let me in.

It's hard to describe how frenetic and crazy Old Delhi is. It makes New Delhi, where I live and work, look like a sleepy country town. Which is nuts, really. Delhi is always pumping with people. But Old Delhi seems to pack them in extra tight. Mothers feed their babies literally in the middle of the street. You can't walk through Chandi Chowk without accidentally stepping on a beggar or very nearly bumping into a cow. Sikhs washing their hands and having a glass of water before heading into their temple to worship are practically standing in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in Old Delhi. They bump into Muslim's rushing off for afternoon prayers. And no one seems concerned that the famous Jain bird hospital (yep) shares a wall with a Hindu Temple to the goddess Shiva. That doesn't change the fact that crossing the street is a nightmare and a test of nerves and it's so noisy that it's hard to think straight. And while cars honk at each other, and the bicycle rickshaw drivers are all yelling at you to get your business, still there is a calm to the city. It's not trying to be something it isn't. Except perhaps the random man dressed in what I think was meant to be a Sufi mystic's costume who kept jumping into my photos in the hope that I would give him some rupees. In the end he won, because all that jumping was just making me feel hot.

A Piccie For Proof

2011-08-04T01:22:00.002+10:00

The stunning Humayun's Tomb was completed in 1572 and isn't looking bad for such an old lady! It was remarkable at the time it was built (and is still stunning today) and was one of the first pieces of architecture on the subcontinent to take Persian architecture and make it India's own. The symmetry and clean lines appeal to the lawyer part of my brain.

I Hate You (Like I Love You)

2011-07-24T02:08:00.000+10:00

India, you complex me. How is it possible that in the last sever days I have hated you with so much passion and intensity that it has rivalled my hatred of bok choy (which is extreme, near choking causes emotional scars that simply don't heal). And yet, you have made me smile, have a giggle and sigh and how fantastic you are?

India spent much of the past seven days attempting to kill me. I have been initiated into the Delhi Belly club. It's not fun, but at least I'm now a real ex-pat living in India. I won't go through all the details, but let's just say that the past seven days have been a battle. One where at several points I was willing to surrender to death, even wished for it. Thankfully India and my stomach have come to an uneasy truce. There are occasional signs of a resumption of hostilities, but for the most part they can be described as low-level skirmishes that haven't affected bilateral relations.

When India was done with killing me, it's terrorists ensured that my very interesting trip to Bihar was cancelled. It's cheap airlines had the audacity to cancel my weekend flight to Goa (that's just mean, I was going to sit on the beach, read books and drink cocktails). It's politics have remained incomprehensible, rendering me near useless at work. And I had a near death experience involving me, a tuk-tuk, a cow and a truck.

Yet, while India was attempting to knock me off it provided Harry Potter (in 3D, complete with intermission so my newly acquired contagious bulimia didn't interrupt my viewing pleasure) that one film made my entire world fantastic. I watched my first Bollywood film (the title of the headline song – which has been stuck in my head for a week - is the title of this blog, very appropriate). I found the place where all of India hides it's fitted sheets. That's sort of like finding the holy grail; or winning the Ashes; or opening your tim tam packet and finding a genie and getting to wish for a never ending packet of tim tams. And I finally tracked down Jamie Oliver's new cookbook. And it cost 899 rupees (about $20 AUD). Which is practically free compared to the cost of books in Australia. I have found the secret Chinese restaurant that does stir fried vegetables (wahoo). I literally fell over a Gloria Jeans coffee shop and it had lamingtons (hurrah). And just when I thought life couldn't get any better I found a fantastic pedicure place (yes, I'm a girl) and they have OPI nail polish and now my toes look cute.

So in the words of the aptly title Bollywood movie, Delhi Belly: I hate you, like I love you.

Independence & Peacocks

2011-07-16T22:41:00.003+10:00

Thanks for your well wishes and concern. Luckily I'm in Delhi and not Mumbai so I'm safe and sound, but am thinking of the people of Mumbai. Sadly my Bihar trip is cancelled for the moment, so I haven't worked out why the Naxalites and chocolate are so firmly associated in my subconscious (the psychologists amongst you are welcome to speculate). But let me return to my frivolous narration of my adventures in India.

When you step off the plane in the new (but bizarrely crumbling) New Delhi airport it turns out you become incapable of looking after yourself and you must employ a small army of staff to do things for you. I have acquired, there being very little choice in the matter, a housekeeper called Sylvie. Because she is reasonably high caste (well, would be high caste if the concept of caste weren't outlawed in India), she also comes with an attached man called Manesh. Originally I though he was her husband, but turns out he is her servant. I'm not yet exactly certain what he does, but I pay him 1,000 rupees to do whatever it is and he may or may not be squatting on my roof-top terrace. I'm pretending that there isn't anyone camping up there for the moment. Apparently this is totally normal behaviour. Oh, India! Due to the suicidal tendencies of Indian's once they are behind the wheel of a moving vehicle I also have a driver (don't have a car yet, but this doesn't seem to worry Robert my driver). And because I'm an expat, someone (not yet sure who, but most likely me) pays for a man to sleep outside, sorry I mean guard, my house 24/7. Well actually I think there are two men, but it's a bit hard to tell since I rarely see them when they're conscious.

Oh the rare occasions that they are conscious, I would actually prefer that they were asleep because then they wouldn't see me do horrendous thinks like walk places. Oh the shock. And even worse I walk on my own. My most recent attempt at independence saw my guard attempt to escort me to my friends house until I managed to convey in very bad Hindi that I wasn't out of my mind and did intend to go out on my own without my husband (ahh yep, complicated, but best to just run with the fact that I have also acquired a husband. Everyone seems to feel better about life if we pretend that I'm married). My unescorted walk around Vasant Vihar is the most independent thing I've done since I got here. Everyone seemed very concerned about this, except me.

I wrecked it all though by turning up later that evening in an auto-rickshaw . Turns out my legendary lack of direction has followed me to India. Eventually this trait is going to get me into awful trouble. After attempting to get directions from several unconscious guards, in a stroke of genius I flagged an auto-rickshaw to take me home for a negotiated (in Hindi) 30 rupees (less than a dollar). I was quite pleased with myself actually. I'm resourceful. I'm using my Hindi. I'm so down with India. Yeah... Nope, I'm really not. See I got in the auto, we drove around the corner and there was my apartment. Sort of undermined my new found independence with my guard!

But my last infraction may actually be serious. I was on my way to a morning yoga class at the shocking hour of 5.30 am (For some reason Yoga classes in India seem to all start at 6 am. Quite frankly I think it's a stretch – pun intended - to demand that I be both conscious and coordinated at that hour... Anyway, I digress). So there I am standing outside my front gate waiting for a taxi... And I learnt something new about India. You know instantly when you are breaching general expectations of behaviour. My guard was suddenly awake, the guard across the street was the most alert I have ever seen him, AND the next door neighbour's guard (who I didn't even know existed) was suddenly on his feet and staring at me. See, the thing is sometimes because of the household staff, the air-conditioned cars with drivers, and how polite everyone is, I forget that I'm actually in India. And then, as a result I take huge liberties in what is actually still a very conservative society. By standing outside my house in my chic Lorna Jane sleeveless top and stretchy gym pants I was basically announcing myself a hussy. Thankfully my Ambassador taxi arrived. I jumped in, and sped off at high speed with the hopes that all the men simply think they were hallucinating.

But I know you are all really reading this for an update on the cow situation. Well, heavy surveillance continues. I'm obviously a difficult case because the compound peacocks have now been drafted in as back-up. I'm onto them though! Yesterday I had a Mexican stand-off with Andrew Peacock (head peacock on our compound). I was on the way to the office, iPod in, coffee in hand, when I heard a bit of a rustle in the bushes. I slowed down, just in case it was a random cow. Andrew Peacock knew he'd be caught and decided to abandon covert ops and move onto ambush tactics. He jumped out in front of me. On seeing me, he was obviously shocked by my humidity-hair (think birds nest) and puff up his chest and unfurled his tail feathers. At which point I froze. And there we were, just staring at each other, both afraid to move. After about 30 seconds we started slowly circling each other. Me looking longingly at the office door and secretly praying that nobody was witnessing this. After we had switched places I made a dash for it, ran to the back door. Only in India!

New Adventures Ahead

2011-07-16T22:37:00.003+10:00

I’ve arrived safe and sound in India. The Monsoon greeted me two days after arrival and thankfully dropped temperatures from 40-odd degrees to a much more liveable 33 with occasional evening storms (I’m told the full force of the Monsoon is yet to actually make it to Delhi). It’s amazing how quickly you adjust. Yesterday was 30 degrees and I had to sit outside for lunch because I was cold in the air conditioning.

I’ve spent most of the week filling in forms in quadruplicate (or more) and signing things far more often than is necessary (including the bill at a restaurant where I paid in cash?!?). Work has all the signs of being juicy and interesting, but at the moment it is a daunting pile of work, background papers and task lists. In a couple of weeks I’m heading off to Bihar – one of the northern states that until very recently was the least developed region in India. It’s the birthplace of Buddhism, connected with the founder of Jainism and has a smattering of important Sikh sites but has dropped off the international tourist map (except for the uber-keen). So, it should be a window into the real India; having said that I’m staying at the only “five-star” hotel in the State, so perhaps not.

The ruins of the largest university of the ancient world – Nalanda University - are near Patna (Bihar’s capital) where there is a project to rebuild sections and re-open it. At its height (about 600 AD) Nalanda University had over 10,000 students and Monks and everyone who was anyone in the ancient world studied there, including a whole host of Chinese Emperors. Unfortunately things came to a rather sticky end in the 12^th century when invaders (not sure who yet) burnt the whole place down. Folk stories say that the libraries of the University were so extensive that they burnt for six months.

Mum, don’t read this bit. Apart from Nalanda, Bihar is famous as the hub for a rather nasty gang of Communists known locally as the Naxalites (which for some reason makes me think of chocolate biscuits). Luckily they are pretty uninterested in foreigners, but are prone to be rather destructive and have a passion for explosions and things that go bang.

But I know you have all been waiting for stories of my cow encounters. Well, it’s true. They are everywhere and to be honest they freak me out. Cows in Australia are contended things, with big eyes and they’re kind of dopey looking. I associate them with yummy thinks like milo and ice cream. I think being Holy has gone to the heads of the cows in India. They’re definitely not associated with rolling green hills, friendly farmers and strawberry yoghurt. The cows of India are more akin to a bikey gang. They’re pretty shameless. Happy to cause traffic chaos (hitting a cow is worse than hitting a person), intimidate, stalk and just generally cause a nuisance. They’ve instituted a pretty heavy surveillance program against me which has included accompanying me to such places as the bank and today also the supermarket. An interested young fellow even stuck his head in the door, caught site of the dairy cabinet and high-tailed it back to headquarters to send out an all-cow alert. The Indian Cow Service appears to operate most often in gangs of about three where they first conduct a preliminary audit of their surroundings and pick out the weakling in the crowd (usually me, occasionally dogs) and mount a campaign against them. Bad behaviour includes stare-down tactics, the odd bit of stalking and for advanced players a bit of pack action. My least favourite move is the sneak-up-and-moo-loudly-when-least-suspected-stealth-attack. I have sighted (though thankfully evaded) the double-sneak-up-stealth-attack, which quite frankly given my tenuous control of bodily functions at the moment could have dire results. But it’s ok folks, my apartment is in the gated community of Vasant Vihar which provides seclusion from real India through the use of large and imposing gates which keep out the vast majority (though not all) cows and also beggars and small and dusty children. Meaning we only get cow attacks at the local markets and have only the best dressed and most glamorous beggars. Ahh beggars, the subject of another email I think.

Well that’s all from me for now. I’m off to evade the Indian Cow Service while attending to my craving for rice crackers (what do you think the odds of success are?). Till next time, I’m your dutiful correspondent from the sub-continent.

A Little Bit of Inspiration

2008-07-24T14:43:00.003+10:00

I have always had a rather lofty set of ambitions and have a tendency to see the world through very rosy glasses. When, at the ripe old age of 18, I announced that I wanted to study law, my high school career advisor said there are four reasons why people study law: because they get the marks and can't work out what to do, because they get the marks and their parents think they should study law, because they want to make lots of money and because they want to change the world. She told me the first three were perfectly good reasons to study the law, but if I wanted to change the world I would wind up dissatisfied with the world, depressed and poor. I know she was joking and trying to shock me out of my state of ideal bliss, but by the time I got to 5^th year and still hadn't found the area of law that I was passionate about, I wondered if she might be right! I was turning into a jaded young lawyer who just wanted to find a graduate job and was about to throw away all of my principles simply to earn a living. Not great for the soul! Enter stage left: the Aurora Project.

The Aurora Project is a series of programs designed to relieve the pressure on Native Title Representative Bodies around Australia. They include all sorts of things from workshops and scholarships to Master's programs for lawyers, anthropologists and sociologists working in Native Title. I was interested in their legal internships. Similar to a clerkship, Aurora can arrange a 5 week winter placement (or longer summer placement) in a Native Title Representative Body. I was selected and spent 5 weeks working with the Northern Land Council (The NLC) in Darwin.

The NLC is one of the premier Native Title Representative Bodies in Australia. They work on cutting edge land claims in the top half of the Northern Territory. Some of the names you might have come across: Blue Mud Bay, McArthur River and the Vernon Islands to name but a few. They also help Indigenous People manage their lands through negotiating and drafting Indigenous land use agreements which are essentially licences to carry out activities on Aboriginal Land.

In my time with the NLC I drafted agreements for pastoral operations to occur on Aboriginal Land, I prepared appeal books for what will be this year's most significant piece of litigation in Native Title. I met with traditional owners who are currently in negotiations with the Federal and NT Governments regarding potential residential development on their lands. I flew in a very small plane to meet with traditional owners in a very remote community to give advice and seek instructions. I went to Court with Lawyers and in my spare time I researched the implications of draft water allocation plans in the NT. It was interesting work that really means something to the organisation and to their clients, Indigenous People.

Being in the 'Top End' also gave me the opportunity to explore a part of the country which is still not seen by many Australians. With the NLC I went to places tourists simply aren't able to get to: Indigenous communities where you need a permit to enter and working cattle stations literally in the middle of nowhere. And in my own time I explored Litchfield National Park, the Daly River region and Kakdu. It is a truly beautiful part of the world to live and work in.

Life working as a lawyer at the NLC is about passion and community with a bit of activism thrown in. At the NLC your tools are not just the words you put in a document or speak in Court. It's also about building public support, using the media to aid your cause and taping into people's inherent sense of justice. It's as much about converting hearts and minds as it is about sealing a deal or winning a Court case. When I was 18 and working out what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted a job where my actions could directly create positive change in the community. I chose the law because I thought this was my best opportunity to make a difference to peoples lives. However, somewhere along the way I got caught up in top tier firms, graduate salaries and prestige. Those things are all part of the law, and they are worthy ambitions. Yet, for me, those were not the things that drew me to being a student of the law in the first place.

The NLC and other rep bodies around Australia offer interested lawyers the opportunity to be involved directly with some of the most disenfranchised people in our country. They allow people who have had the privilege of education and opportunity the chance to give back to communities that desperately need assistance. It's one of those 'warm fuzzy' jobs, an alternate career path that utilises all the traditional legal skills and then something more. You have to be passionate to work in a Native Title body. You also have to be prepared to fail, to come up against barriers and to be criticised in some cased by the very people you are trying to help.

Despite all the challenges, my time as an Aurora intern with the NLC was very rewarding. It was a window into a world that I thought did not really exist in the Australian legal landscape. It restored my faith in the power of the law to (at least attempt to) create change. Yes, there are lots of problems with Native Title and with the representative bodies trying to help people, and if you work in these organisations you face more obstacles than you would in corporate law. And yes, some sacrifices have to be made (a large corporate salary being the first). But there are other rewards that cannot be quantified. A sense of purpose and self satisfaction being the big ones I found.

If you are a 4^th or 5^th year law student (or an anthropology or sociology student) with a passion for giving back to the community, you too should apply for this once in a life time experience. Like with most things that are different and challenging the effort that you put in is returned 10 fold.

The Appeal Books are Done

2008-07-18T15:46:00.001+10:00

It has taken a week and a half but they are finished. All 48 volumes of the appeal book are copied and ready to be sent to the Court. If you don't know what an appeal book is, it is a wonderfully cruel administrative task often given to juniors in a legal office. It is sort of like re-writing a phone book from scratch. It involves putting together lots of documents that will be given to Judges prior to a legal appeal. Other than photocopying amazing numbers of documents it also involves drafting the indexes almost constantly and removing and adding documents as the Barristers change their minds about what should be in there (it happens - A LOT). It's a particularly annoying job and most often messy too.

In the course of the appeal books I sustained the usual injuries - paper cuts, cardboard cuts (paper cuts on steroids) and a bruise from when the photocopier attacked me. I got covered in ink when I was paginating (numbering) the pages with an old school printing machine. Once I washed the ink off I was clean enough to be covered in photocopying toner which has proved impossible to get off and I currently look like I am suffering from whatever turned the Blue Men blue.

Other than my guilt for cutting down a small forest I am now free from the joys of appeal books. Now they have to be bound (thankfully I have been relieved from that job or else I may have lost my mind) and then they will be sent off to the Court and the other parties in the litigation. So now I cross my fingers and hope that somebody doesn't have a giant issue with them and seek to have them amended. That would be a nightmare because the whole thing would start again!

And my clear conscious and I are heading out to Kakadu this Sunday to fly in a very small plane (again – let's hope the Territory's attempts to bring about my demise do not continue) to check out some Aboriginal rock art.

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When Another Place Becomes Home

2008-07-18T15:29:00.001+10:00

So I am from Sydney. I love Sydney. I love café's and restaurants. I love that it is busy and full of people (mainly noisy people). I love that you get swept along with the pace of things and you walk quicker and talk in a series of incomprehensible abbreviations because it makes you sound like you fit in. When I am there I can't imagine being anywhere else in the world (generally anyway). Then I get sick of things being the same all the time and leave. And suddenly where ever else I am starts to feel like home.

I have been in Darwin now for a month. And Darwin is not busy (except perhaps Mindal). It is a lazy sort of city that is laid back and just cruises in its perpetual summer. People stand on street corners and talk. They don't get take away coffees - they sit and drink in café's. They don't walk quickly and sometimes it's hard to tell the locals and the tourists apart. And I am sort of melding into Darwin.

I still walk quickly. And I can't quite sit in a café for morning tea without feeling guilty, but I could get used to this.

I love that I walk home down the Esplanade and watch the ships go past. I like that in the middle of winter the only time I wear a jacket is inside because of the scary air conditioning that they seem to think is necessary up here. I like that all it takes is an hours drive from Darwin and you can be in the middle of nowhere.

If it wasn't so far away from home, this could be perfect.

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Yes I am actually working up here

2008-07-14T10:01:00.001+10:00

All has been quiet of late in Darwin as I have spent all week in the office (well, except for Court twice, a meeting or two and lunches every day). So, yes people, despite my best efforts to make you all jealous, I confirm that I am actually working up here. In fact, I am working on two very interesting cases, but if I start talking about them I won't be able to stop so I will save you all from the boredom. Oh, except to say that one of the cases made the news up here in Darwin (though it is yet to reach the consciousness of anyone further south than Alice Springs). I felt like quite a celebrity when I was filmed walking into Court and had a microphone thrust into my face after leaving. My quizzical face even appeared on the news up here. But enough about work - more about play.

So it is acknowledged as a fact that everything up here is bordering on dangerous. And what may you ask is the latest event to get the deadly Darwin touch? The movies. Yep, bet you thought that was one of the safest things you could ever do. Not up here though.

I have been twice now to my new favourite cinema – the Deck Chair, which I am told is the longest running open air cinema in Australia/Southern Hemisphere/The world (still not sure which version is correct). It's basically a paddock, probably the size of two netball courts with a card table where you can buy alcohol and popcorn and about 100 deck chairs (hence the name), some speakers and a giant screen. When the sun goes down (about 7:30) they show art house films which I am taking a liking too…. Except so are the possums. And the gekos. And a thing that sounded like a man crashing through the bush, but I was assured by the lady sitting next to me that it was probably just a snake ('oh, just a snake, how nice' I think I said). Deck Chair turns watching a movie into an extreme sport as the wild life takes great pleasure in joining you. I tend to react badly. The possum that decided to sit on my foot on Saturday caused me to sit up straight in my deck chair causing issues (see reference to Grandpa below). And if the wildlife doesn't get you the mozzies will. I learnt my lesson though and wore jeans most recently. Also now that I have adapted to Darwin's regular 32 degrees I also have to take a jumper and a scarf because the chilly 20 degree nights make my hands turn blue. And before you say it, yes I know that it was 10 degrees in Sydney last week (I just don't care all that much).

Deck Chair is a bit of an institution up here with trendy people attending its screenings. The idea of sitting in a deck chair and watching an intellectual film is quite fantastic, but I am obviously a bit of a misfit. For starters, people get amazingly dressed up (by Darwin standards) to sit in the dark where you can't see each other and I just don't have the wardrobe available to me to compete. Also, I tend to wear items of clothing for their original intention. Unlike recent cinema goers I wear my skirts as skirts rather than dresses (not too out there I guess), I tend to wear headbands not tea towels tied around my head (though it could always come in handy I guess) and I still don't quite get what you are actually meant to do with fisherman pants. But luckily people sort of ignore you if you aren't appropriately dressed. And you can always wear green and blend in with the surrounding trees.

Once I have quietly made it to my selected deck chair and ignored the stares that I receive for my conservatism there is the problem of the actual deck chair. I will let you in on a secret. They are not actually all that comfortable. Because I am short if I slump down in the comfy part of the chair I can only see the top third of the screen over people's heads. If I sit up straight I get a stiff neck (and nearly fall over which made the 80 year old grandpa sitting two seats down from me last Saturday burst out laughing). I tried taking a pillow (which was accompanied with lots of taunts of moving in/sleeping over/other crude remarks). And my latest tactic of taking up two seats only works if you go to something no one else is interested in seeing. I think I have found the solution though – I took both my pillow and my blanket last time. Surprisingly no one seemed to mind at all. One lady even complemented me on my shawl (it's the sort of gory tropical pattern that you would find in a cheap motel with scary carpets). It was perfect though and kept me comfy, warm and free from mosquito bites so it was a winner all round! And now people think of me as the in-crowd. The taxi driver thought I was crazy though.

And as I sign off you can add the price of tomatoes to my outrage list. They have reached $8 a kilo for red, watery things that have some many dents in them that they almost resemble golf balls. Good thing that the markets up here are amazing!

I went camping this weekend and climbed up a waterfall - stories on my rather pathetic princess behaviours to follow.

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Correction

2008-07-04T10:33:00.001+10:00

The author of this blog wishes to correct this most honourable public record. She regrets the social stigma which has unfortunately been attached to an individual mentioned previously in this blog when the author dared to suggest that she consumes lattes. The author would like to advise that 'the certain individual' would never, ever consider drinking a latte and of course is a flat white drinker. My sincere apologies go to this individual for suggesting that she would drink such a beverage, but thanks go to her sister (you know who you are) for reading this blog even if it has sparked her horror.

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The Territory Wants Me Dead

2008-07-03T17:41:00.001+10:00

Two recent events have suggested that the Northern Territory has taken a dislike to me and has put a price on my head. They have unsuccessful though and I keep marching on.

The first attempting happened on Monday. I had spent the day with a wonderfully passionate Indigenous community in Borroloola (see map below). To get there we took a flight in a scarily small 6 seater (but thankfully twin engine) Cessna. My initial inkling that there might be a price on my head began when I met my pilot – a nervous gangly man by the name of Diageo. Diageo instantly endeared himself to me by dropping all of his charts as he was getting in the plane. That was kind of nothing though compared to the return journey.

Time to go home! So we jumped in our flying insect, went through the safety checks and took off, only for the door to the cabin (which I was sitting next to) opening mid-flight. Now, I would love to get all dramatic and tell you that it flew open and my life lay at a cross road (feel free to imagine whatever drama you wish). Sadly this was less dramatic than my headline may suggest. Rather, the door opening consisted of the top part of the door popping open (think like opening a Tupperwear container). All that really happened was it got noisy and I had my own personal air conditioner. Mind you if I had decided to lean on the door it could have all been a different story (it was right about when that was pointed out to me that I had a giant desire, a compulsion even, to lean on the door – maybe I had a death wish?). Haha, I thought to the Northern Territory – is that all you've got? You are going to have to work harder to knock me off.

Spoke too soon. In response Diageo decided to leave his moderately important post of flying the actual plane (even if it did resemble an insect) and crawl over his seat (kicking the steering wheel-like object which resulted in a sharp veering right turn and several profanities being admitted from my travelling partner Kirsty). Diageo however was not fazed and proceeded to crawl over the middle bank of seats and arrived roughly in my lap to see if he could assist with my air conditioning issue. Now, I am not an exert in all things aeronautical, but I am pretty sure you're not meant to do that. At the very least he probably shouldn't have sat in my lap – it kind of freaked me out – he had greasy hair.

While Diageo was trying (unsuccessfully) to close the door I noticed out of the corner of my eye an approaching plane. Not just any plane, but a scary looking 'I'm in charge, don't mess with me' sort of plane. A plane that looked suspiciously like it might belong to the air force. Briefly I wondered what it would be like to be on this plan, I bet their pilots don't sit in passenger's laps. Then my mind returned to the present and the gangly, greasy haired pilot of my insect like plane sitting on my lap. After a quiet 'excuse me' on my part and something a bit louder and slightly less polite on Kirsty's part Diageo decided that closing the door was futile and returned to his post in control of the plane. After a nervous 3 hours (where I had my fingers crossed the whole time) we landed. And other than now having grey hair I am not worse for wear. Ha, take that Northern Territory.

However, Tuesday night the Territory had its second attempt at knocking me off. This was during a little something known as Territory Day, A day where Territorians celebrate their delusions (sorry guys but you know I am right) of autonomy. To celebrate this momentous non-occasion and their collegiate feelings for one another Territorians purchase fireworks which they then proceed to shoot at each other. The Territory's second attempt on my life occurred when at thirteen year old boy shot a rogue firework into the crowd. Being brave I jumped backwards and was spared only to have my good friend Alix take the bullet (almost literally) for me. She sustained singed jeans and what is going to be an impressive bruise.

The Territory however has failed in its attempts and I remain whole, happy and healthy (or though there was a run-in this morning with a piece of concrete that resulted in a stubbed toe). And despite all of the above I am still having a fabulous time here. I am particularly loving the fact that for three days in a row I have gone swimming in July. It's just brilliant and I intend to rub it in for all of you who are currently in the cold!

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Forget petrol it's the lettuce that's going to get you

2008-07-01T10:56:00.002+10:00

Forget the price of petrol. It's the price of lettuce that is breaking the bank up here. It does helps that I no longer have a car to fill up and I am therefore unfazed by the $1.89 a litre cost of petrol up here. But to my latest rant… Yes that's right: economic crippling by lettuce.

Firstly, my Mother probably just fell off her chair because I am the last person to voluntarily eat salad. I don't mind vegetables, but I like mine stir-fried and preferably covered in a yummy sauce that negates their original nutritional value. However, up here where it is normally still in the high 20's at dinner time I have taken up a sudden obsession with salads. And as with all obsessions, it is proving to be an expensive and some what soul destroying activity. Now I like a salad with lots of extras. Throw in the sun dried tomato. Add the new potatoes with herbs. Why have normal salt when you can use rock salt for twice the price? But here it's not those things that are crippling my rather meagre income. Oh no, it's the humble lettuce.

I had a craving for a Caesar Salad last night. So after I applied the oil slick of sunscreen to my laughably pale skin I trudged out in the heat to the local Woolworth's. Ignoring the snide comments of the local hooligans who like to mock me for the fact that I almost glow in the dark compared to the locals, I made it to the air conditioned oasis that is the Mitchell Centre. Jumping over the drunken locals who frequent the entrance I headed to the fruit and veg section only to be met by the most forlorn iceberg lettuce I have ever seen. Not only did it look as if it had just walked all the way from Sydney to greet me, they wanted $5 for it. Yes that is right, $5 for the privilege of taking it home to the previously mentioned dodgy motel. Now I am sorry, but I draw the line at highway robbery when it comes to buying vegetables. Even those cut and kindly washed bags of lettuce that I normally shun for being ridiculously over priced are cheaper than my dodgy looking iceberg at less than half the cost. So last night instead of my iceberg lettuce I had a baby spinach and beetroot leaf salad with sun dried tomatoes and feta for less than the cost of the half dead iceberg. Darwin is a weird town indeed!

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Map for the Punters

2008-06-28T10:29:00.002+10:00

Kidman Springs is also known as Victoria River Downs Station. As you can see it's kind of in the middle of nowhere! On Monday I am heading in a very small plane to Borroloola to meet with traditional owners.

Welcome to Darwin!

2008-06-28T10:23:00.001+10:00

I am here in Darwin! I arrived on Monday morning about 1 pm local time and was dropped off at a slightly dodgy motel which will be my home for the next two weeks (until I move to what I have been assured is a much less dodgy motel). Never one to muck around I headed straight into town to check the place out.

Item one on the agenda was catching up with my good friend Alix who has been living in Darwin for about 2 years now. Being city girls we met at a café. Alix had a latte. I however was melting in the heat so I had a lemonade, while Alix told me how cold it has been and how she had to wear a jacket to work today. Obviously I am going to have to adjust to the weather here a bit. We gossiped about anything and everything. Alix went back to work and I amused myself in town before heading back to her place for dinner.

Then Tuesday I headed into the Northern Lands Council (the NLC) for my first day at work. I have a great office looking out to the water. After a quick run through the computer systems I got my first assignment. To head with one of the lawyers 'on country' for a NLC workshop. And I was instructed to head back to the motel and to pack clothes for 'three days or so' and then to head out 'Katherine way'. Nothing like trial by fire.

So I headed back to my dodgy motel and threw some stuff in my backpack and was picked up by Kirsty one of the lawyers from the NLC. I later found out that I forgot my sneakers and my water bottle – but not to worry! We picked up a hire car and started on the drive to Kidman Springs Station which is in the Gregory National Park (I will try and find a map and put it up). We drove 4 hours to Katherine and then a further 3 hours to Gregory National Park. Kidman Springs is about a further half an hour up the road. It was a long drive. Ordinarily when I drive somewhere for this long I usually get to sit on a beach for about a week afterwards. Not this time though, we were staying only two nights and then coming back to Darwin.

Kidman Springs is just on the other side of a small gorge called the Jasper Gorge. The elders at the workshop told me that the only other place in Australia that looks as spectacular is Kakadu (I will have to get back to you on that point). We arrived in the gorge just as the sun was setting behind the fabulous escarpments. I have some photos that I will try and put up, but they don't do justice to the quality of the light and the total silence of the gorge.

We were greeted by various workers from the NLC who were sitting around a camp fire and chatting about the politics of the NLC (there is quite a lot of it and they were there to the wee hours of the morning). It was quite cold up there (maybe as cold as 15 degrees) and when I could shiver no longer I headed to bed. Now here is a cliché if ever I have written one. Guess where I was to sleep? In a swag under a hills hoist looking over one of the escarpments. Sensational stuff. I even had a wallaby come and try and each my hair in the middle of the night. It's a far cry from my city roots, but I loved it!

The next day Kirsty gave her presentation on land use agreements which I 'helped' her with (mainly by asking more questions than the participants). I also sat in on a project planning session which was really informative.

For dinner that night we cracked open some beautiful red wines (after throwing some steaks on the barby) and watched the sun go down (and the flies vanish – not a moment too soon). It was a pretty relaxed sort of atmosphere with everyone trying to scare me with horror stories of the NLC. No luck though. It's early days, but I really like their frank and open manner. Lots of the issues I will be working on up here are extremely complex and culturally sensitive. The NLC, which is considered the pre-eminent Native Title Body, or so its workers tell me, gets things wrong just as much as they get it right. But it's great to sit down with an organisation where indigenous people and white Australians are tackling some of the taboo issues of our society. This is the coal face of human rights work in Australia and it's just my sort of thing. Hopefully I will still be saying that after 5 weeks in Darwin! But enough with politics, I'm off to the markets in Mindil to grap a spot of dinner.

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Some Ships Don't Get to Sail

2008-06-14T15:00:00.001+10:00

I learnt a lesson this week. Don't let any opportunity pass you by. Don't sit and wait and dream. If there is something that you want to do, go out there and do it now! Maybe it's not quite the right time - when is it ever. Or maybe you're scared, or there are money issues or a million other reasons holding you back. Don't listen to those voices. Get out there and do it. You will figure the rest out as you go along.

Why may you ask is this crazy woman on another one of her rants? Well, the Scholar Ship which was my home and universe for half of last year has just announced that it will no longer be sailing the seven seas. After only two voyages it no longer has the financial backers it needs to send out students to explore the world.

I have been working with the Scholar Ship since my return as a peer advisor. I have been helping many interested students apply for and prepare for their voyages. My heart aches for their disappointment. I have been there, and I know the sorts of adventures that you now won't be able to have. Hence the first paragraph of this post. Don't sit around wasting your lift planning for things. Get out there and make adventures happen. And with that thought I will now return to my desk and write my uni assignments (oh the irony).

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Round Two: The Top End

2008-06-03T17:42:00.001+10:00

So I have been in Sydney, in the one place, for just on 6 months now. And while I love being back with my friends and seeing my family, it's just not quite the same as a new country every other week. So in the search of adventure I recently applied for an internship with the Aurora Project.

The Aurora Project offer a range of programs for students and professionals interested in Australian Native Title and Indigenous issues. I was mainly interested because their internship program includes the possibility of being posted to a remote community. It's hotly contested each year though so my chances were slim. However, after a rather scary interview where I felt horribly unprepared I was selected and in a little over 3 weeks I am heading up to Darwin to work with the Northern Land Council.

Who knows what I will be doing. I have been advised to expect anything from visiting remote Aboriginal communities to making endless cups of tea. I anticipate filing and researching and taking messages, but hopefully it isn't just 5 weeks full of tea making. Mainly for the sake of the tea drinkers, because I make horrible tea. And worse coffee.

I have already met with controversy even before leaving Sydney. Telling people that I am going to work with an Indigenous organisation seems to been like an open invitation for people to offer their personal views on everything wrong with our Indigenous communities. It's staggering the attitudes that still pervade our society. Now I am not militant in my views, but I have to say that getting just a small slice of what it must be like to have your life constantly evaluated by people is really not a lot of fun. I have already been labelled by some and put in categories which are outrageous and plainly false. Goodness knows how people deal with this day in and day out. But let me not start my tirades just yet.

I'm excited to be out exploring the world again. I am really excited to explore a corner of Australia that I have not yet had the pleasure of visiting. Australia is such a diverse country that I am literally walking in to a foreign culture. It's true outback country up there and far from my city roots. But luckily not so far that I won't be able to find a cafe somewhere in Darwin that specialises in a good cup of Chai.

Wahooo! Here is to some more adventure!

TSS 4 Months On

2008-05-04T16:41:00.001+10:00

So I am sitting back at home in Sydney working on my assignments for uni and wondering if the Scholar Ship was all a dream. I thought it might be an idea to post a blog of what it feels like being at home and what I actually got out of the whole experience just so you get the full spectrum of the Scholar Ship experience. The first thing is that no it wasn't a dream. I have about 5,000 photos to prove that I was there and my inbox is still chocked with emails from all around the world reliving our experience and planning our next adventures, but what has the Scholar Ship actually given me?

The Scholar Ship was absolutely an amazing experience and coming home and getting used to my old life was possibly the hardest thing I have ever done. Life here is so different to the fast paced and dynamic way I lived for 4 months. Even though the Scholar Ship went to a huge effort to prepare us for coming home, I still woke up nearly every morning wishing I was still on the boat and found it quite hard to be satisfied with the life I have here at home. Luckily for me I have fantastic friends and a great family who understood that it was hard for me. But I didn't anticipate it being so hard to talk about the Ship. A part of me just wanted to kind of forget it and move on, while everyone else wanted to hear all about it (I was kind of expecting the opposite actually - me wanting to talk and nobody else wanting to listen). The only thing that seemed to work for this was time and an appreciation of all the wonderful things that are still at home. Now I look at the Scholar Ship with a more balanced view. I remember the wonderful things that I did and the people who I miss everyday, but instead of wanting to get back there I am now looking forward to new challenges at home and hopefully some more travel sometime soon.

I am currently in the process of applying for graduate jobs and the Scholar Ship is the first thing that employers ask me in an interview. In fact I think sometimes I get an interview just so they can hear about it. Hopefully it will also help me get a job, but at the moment I can say that it is opening doors. The intercultural skills that I developed on the ship are definitely in high demand and being able to show concrete examples of how you worked in difficult and multi-cultural situations has helped me so far in the application processes.

I am back at uni now and the beginning of semester was challenging. On the Scholar Ship we had lots of small assignments and I became used to that pattern. It took a couple of weeks to readjust to less and longer assignments, but that thankfully that was pretty easy to do. I have been very aware though of how homogenous my classrooms are. Not so much in terms of nationalities (Macquarie is a diverse university), but more in the opinions of teachers and students. I am finding that I can see about 3 or 4 sides of an argument now without really thinking too hard and even more when I engage my brain. My new trouble is being able to be critical about the different opinions I can see. On the Scholar Ship there was a relativist approach to learning where all opinions were valid, but that isn't working so well back at home. Quite a lot of my assessment feedback has commented on my lack of critique of the opinions that I identify. I think this is just a difference in institutional approach, but it's hard fitting back into the box of uni.

Overall I look back with fond memories on my time with the Scholar Ship. It was some of the best fun I have ever had, but I also learnt a lot about myself and a lot about different cultures from around the world. I feel a bit like a global nomad now and staying in the one city for 4 months is just about killing me at this point. But I also learnt a lot about setting long term goals for myself, and right now it is important for me to lay down some roots in Sydney and I have an infinite number of stories to tell random people I meet at parties which should last me at least the next couple of years!

The Scholar Ship was everything I wanted and then some. I loved it, but I have come to realise that it is important to live in your present and not to wish for things in the past. I will never forget my friends that I made or the experiences that I had. But 4 months on its time to stop looking over my shoulder with fond memories and to turn around and leap into the future with the same enthusiasm I had on the first day in reception on the Scholar Ship. I know after the things that I did on the Scholar Ship that anything really is possible, and I am excited about where my journey will take me next.

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Ship Life

2008-01-19T10:01:00.000+11:00

Leaving from our very first port Athens

Salsa lesson in the background. Neni in the forground

Intercultural communication: the boys trying vegemite for the frist time. An Australian favourite, but the rest of the world is not so convinced!

The Journey Begins

2008-01-19T09:45:00.000+11:00

First sight of the ship. I particularly like the Vespa below the gang plank unloading what turned out to be ice cream. How fantastic!

Cesky Krumlov

2008-01-19T09:40:00.000+11:00

Story book pretty. Probably crawling with tourists in the high season, but fantastic all the same (even in the rain).

The Beginning on the Photos: Prague

2008-01-19T09:35:00.000+11:00

Thank you to everyone who sent emails upon my return to Australia. It has been very interesting getting used to normal life again and your thoughts and well wishes have helped me more than you can realise. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

I am now attempting to post a series of the best photos that I took during my time away. I have well over 6,000 so this will be but a slim collection. Here I start with the Charles Bridge in Prague almost 5 months ago (far out that time went quickly!).

The Charles Bridge: very pretty but too many pick pockets (and tourists) for me!

The Final Word

2007-12-23T20:04:00.000+11:00

For my final year in high school I had to sit a series of very horrible state wide exams for all of my subjects. One of the essay questions in my English paper was on journeys. I was primed and ready for the exam and had a head full of quotes and sensible things to write. The ironic thing was that the 18 year old who walked into the exam room was asked to analyse literary journeys before she had taken any real ones. Now as a 23 year old I have travelled further around the world than I could ever have imagined. After this trip, there are only two continent left unexplored (though I want to go back to them all so that I can see more). I wonder what my essay on journeys would look like after this experience?

In this journey I have travelled thousands of nautical miles aboard a floating universe. When I made it to land I travelled in cars, taxi's, busses, trams, boats, ferry's, yachts, trains, four wheel drives, cattle trucks, pick up utes and by foot (yep lots of walking). I met with famous leaders, philosophised with revolutionaries, heard passionate pleas from indigenous tribes and learnt to dance with the Polynesian people. I saw sharks,dolphins, whales and swam with sting rays. I was mesmerized when I saw dolphins and whales from my classroom. I had disagreements with people when we both were trying to say the same thing in two different ways. I laughed, I loved and I cried. I gave my heart to this experience and in return I saw the world through the eyes of the people who I met. I sat on deck and learnt about what it means to grow up in Taiwan, Canada, Mexico, Iran, Morocco and Finland. I learnt to speak English in a new way.

I got frustrated, I got annoyed and in the end I let it all go and loved everybody here for who they are and where they are along the path of their own journey. I talked about the things that you are not meant to: politics, religion, power, privilege and terrorism. I discussed the Middle East with people who live there (and on both sides of the story). I learnt about the crisis of Africa with Africans as my teachers. I learnt that to judge is to expect to be judged. There were hard lessons, some that were difficult to take. And ultimately I learnt that onboard the Scholar Ship, the quiet moments are often the ones where you learn the most.

Thank you to each of you who have taken the time to read this blog. I started writing this blog for you, but to be honest by the end it was as much a way for me to understand my experience as it was a way for you to hear about it. Some of you know me well and no doubt laughed at me when you read this blog. I look forward to sharing more stories with you when I get home. Some of you however stumbled across my blog. Whether I was a random find curtesy of Google or you found me through the Scholar Ship website. I hope that this blog gave you some insight into what it's like to be a student on the Scholar Ship. This blog was raw and honest and it was my own experience of the programme. I am but one story though, and I hope that when you sail on the Scholar Ship that you have your own fantastic experience!

This will be my last post about my journey. However, when I get home to an internet connection that is faster than the snail that I am currently working with I will begin to post some of the photos that defined my experience. I hope that you all stop by in the coming weeks to check those out. I am also not one to sit in my own little corner of the world, and I am sure that soon enough I will be back exploring the world and writing about it here.

Thank you all!

The Dolphins Are Bringing Us Home

2007-12-23T01:48:00.000+11:00

Vanessa and I were just escaping the craziness of the boat by sitting on the bow when about 10 Dolphins appeared out of the vastness of the ocean. There they were jumping around and having fun.

It just served as a reminder of everything that is wonderful about this voyage. You never know what is going to happen next. Wonderful things appear out of nowhere and surprise you. And you get to share it with amazing people who you would not have met if not for this experience.

My suitcase just got taken by the crew so it will be ready to unload tomorrow morning. There is nothing in my cupboard; nothing in the bathroom that belongs to me and one small bag that remains to claim this room as mine.

In just over a week and a half someone else will be living in my room. I hope they have as great a time as me! To them I say that the sight of Dolphins on the bow are amazing!

Almost the End

2007-12-22T21:02:00.000+11:00

Today is day 108 aboard the Scholar Ship. After two days in Hong Kong, we went back to sea for the last time. The last days aboard the ship have been filled with last minute meetings, seminars to sum up our experiences and workshops to help us prepare to go home. I was going to write this blog to try and sum up this experience, but at the moment I am failing to find the words.

At the moment I am sitting in reception. It is a hub of activity. There are people swapping photos, paying bills, signing each others address books. It's loud. It's full of people. Ordinarily I would run a mile given the large number of people in a rather small space, but right this second it is exactly where I want to be.

Yesterday morning I went to a seminar with a leading expert on re-entry shock. He related our journeys home to an astronaut re-entering the earth after spending time in space. He said that was as close as he could come to finding another experience like ours. It is probably a bit dramatic, but in a way he is right. We have been completely immersed in this community for well over 100 days now. Like an astronaut, for this last 108 days this has been my world. I have known no other people. I have travelled with these people, learned with these people, laughed, cried on occasion and got mad. And now I am about to leave this all behind – with no possibility of recreating this rather unique experience.

Someone asked me today if I was scared to go home. Maybe I am. I am scared that I will forget the lessons that I learnt here, that I will go back to the same old person that I was before I left. I am scared that I will forget the amazing friends that I have made and the adventures that we have shared together. I don't want to get home and talk about the adventures for a few weeks, then throw my pictures in a box and leave them in my bedroom cupboard to gather dust. That I think would be tragic.

Near Death by Shopping

2007-12-15T14:39:00.000+11:00

I tend to be a bit dramatic so you are going to have to work with me here, but I had a near death experience all for a rather gorgeous (fake) Chloe handbag. I can't wait to get home and have people ask me where I bought my bag just so I get to tell this story.

So we were told not to under any circumstances go with the people who come up to us on the street promising bargains on handbags, watches or other apparel. So naturally one of the first things we did was just that – follow a little old man down a dark alley way to purchase fake merchandise. Mum, before you freak out there were six of us and we were being careful.

So down the dark alleyway we went. We came to a shop. We were all pushed down a staircase to a door. The man performed a 'secret knock'. The door opened and we were quickly ushered into a room and the door was closed behind us. That alone was an experience.

Then we turned around and were in a room probably the size of an average bathroom stacked to the rafters with bags, handbags, watches, wallets, suitcases, sunglasses and everything else that you could image – all most likely fake.

Let the bargaining begin.

I was bargaining on a bag that I had no particular need for but wanted all the same. This was in the early stages of our trip in China and I was not yet assimilated to the hysterics that can sometimes accompany transactions here. As usual we bargained with the aid of a calculator. I was talking in English, the shopkeeper in Mandarin. She was appalled at my offered price. I was just plain freaked out by everything. She threw a calculator across the room in disgust at one point. When it all got to scary two of my friends tried to rescue me from the corner she had put me in. She pushed both of them away. And just when I was actually starting to get a bit concerned for my welfare she relented and I was the owner of a fantastic 'real' designer bag (my first ever) for the low price of $39 Australian.

In a country where the government controls almost every aspect of life it is hard to imagine that they don't know that nearly every Westerner that comes into the country leaves with a stack of their 'designer' products. Presumably the administration feels that this is an acceptable route for their economy to take or else I imagine that they could shut down these operations in a heart beat.

I Saw Snow!

2007-12-15T12:46:00.000+11:00

I come from Australia. We have lots of things: wonderful beaches, beautiful outback scenes but I am really more of a city girl. We have some ski fields but for one reason or another I have never been. So I made it to the age of 23 without really seeing snow.

That was true until this week.

This trip has been one of the most bizarre and fantastic experiences I have ever had. And to top it all off, my first experience of a snow storm was on top of the Great Wall of China. I had my first snowball fight on the Great Wall of China. I fell over on my first ice on the Great Wall of China and I was freezing on the Great Wall of China.

This blog is turning into a bit of a cliché because each experience seems to be more and more fantastic than the last. Every entry is about something that was 'truly incredible' or 'one of the most amazing experiences of my life'. I am starting to run out of ways to describe the things that we do and the adventures that we have. So with the risk of repeating myself again I will just say that is was great.

I explored possibly one of the greatest man-made wonders with fantastic friends from all over the world. As per usual our eclectic bunch of people drew attention (and photographers) and we had a blast. We threw snowballs, we slid down the wall, we took photos and again this will be an experience that I will cherish.

I couldn't think of a better way to see snow for the first time and it's going to be hard to top it!

Introdution to Beijing and the Politics of China

2007-12-15T11:18:00.000+11:00

It was with great excitement that I boarded the overnight train to Beijing on our second day in Shanghai and started my journey to Beijing. I have wanted to go to Beijing for as long as I can remember. I have tried on several occasions to go and for one reason or another my trips never seemed to happen. So it was amazing to finally be sitting in our soft sleeper compartment on our way.

The train itself was pretty cool. There were four of us to a cabin. The cabins on the Scholar Ship can be described as snug, but even the smallest of the cabins still afford you room to stand up and move around – not so on our train to Beijing. But it didn't really matter because we were literally there to sleep. And sleep we did! Considering that we were moving faster than we ever do on the ship, that it was about 3 times as loud as the ship and we were all incredibly excited to get to Beijing it's a wonder that any of us actually got any sleep at all!

We arrived in Beijing at 7:15 in the morning and were greeted by a wall of icy cold air that took your breath away. It was probably about 2 degrees (Celsius) and I have to say that up until that point I had never been so cold in my life before!

Our first day in Beijing was a big one – Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden Palace and then lunch at a fantastic restaurant followed by a silk factory and then a Kung Foo show in the evening.

Tiananmen Square was amazing. This is a vast expanse, the largest town square in the world and it would easily hold a million people. For me it was more important to see this place because of the things that have gone on there. Tiananmen Square for me is the site of one of the shocking examples of abuses of human rights witnessed in recent history. For our Chinese tour guide though it is the glorious monument to their beloved founded of modern China Chairman Mao. This contrast was hard to take at times.

It is hard to get an accurate sense of what the average Chinese person thinks of the political state of their country. For a start there is absolutely no privacy in China. There are surveillance cameras almost everywhere. Upon entering the country and turning on my mobile phone I received a message welcoming me to China and advising that all communication would be monitored. There are guards and police officers wearing imposing Soviet like costumes at all the significant historical attractions in Beijing. We ate in government owned and run restaurants and hotels, and were taken to government markets to shop. Unlike in Australia, the government was present and visible for our entire stay in Beijing. It's imposing, it's a bit scary and it makes you wonder what they are so scared of!

What happens as a result is that you get 'the party line' about China's history. For example what I know as a human rights tragedy that occurred in Tiananmen Square was presented as a violent resistance of rebel militant youths who needed to be suppressed for the good of the people. I don't know if that is what my tour guide actually believed. I don't know if that is what actually occurred. And I have no way of finding out the truth. That is frustrating and scary and I could simply not live with those kind of restrictions placed upon me. I will forever be a liberal girl who values things such as freedom of communication and the right to live my life uninterrupted by the State. The difference is quite frankly shocking.

Another interesting thing is the complete devotion and reverence paid to the former Chairman Mao. Even today he is revered and spoken of in terms similar to that of a deity. In Beijing, everywhere we went we were told of how the Chairman had visited these sites, what he had said and his impressions of the place. His Red Book is still available for sale here. Despite the best efforts of the Chairman, the forces of globalisation are still invading China and you can buy the Red Book in a variety of languages – not sure how pleased the Chairman would have been about that. It was a completely different version of Chairman Mao that I found in Beijing. I find this perplexing as I only know of the way Chairman Mao abused the human rights of Chinese people, how he shut out the world and did horrible things as a result without retribution. It is hard to reconcile these two versions of the one man. Especially since both sides are addiment that the other side is indoctrinating and lying to us.

I guess the wonder of travel is that you get to be the arbiter of the dispute for yourself. I don't know if I have been able to work out a solution to the two very different versions of history that I found in Beijing. But at least realising that there is a different version of each story is a valuable lesson. For me, the Chairman will still be the perpetrator of horrible abuses of human rights. For me that is simply not acceptable. But this trip is showing that human rights are not simply a black and white concept. While he did kill people unnecessarily whether by his own orders or simply through neglect there are segments (rather large segments) of the population that were able to develop and better themselves under the Chairman's policies. To deny them the right to develop is also equally criminal in my eyes and creates a rather perplexing issue for me to grabble with. As always it is something that I am still working on and will have to continue to question. Perhaps this is one of those things that does not have an answer. Now all I have to do is be satisfied with that realisation.

China: First Impressions

2007-12-15T10:44:00.000+11:00

My intercultural communication teacher Riikka had been preparing us since leaving Sydney for what she called the 'uber-cultural shock' of China. I was slightly sceptical of this because I live in an area of Sydney that has a large Chinese population and while I expected culture shock I wasn't sure that it was going to be as bad as Riikka was suggesting. But still a part of me was expecting to find great difficulties when we arrived in Shanghai. Luckily it really wasn't as hard as everyone was expecting.

My first impressions was firstly that it was cold (little did I know how much colder it would get) and that it wasn't actually that much different to China Town at home. I could still haggle and negotiate on price in the markets, I LOVED the food and the people - while being pushy - were not rude or aggressive. During the week I did start to get sick of people following us around and trying to get us to buy counterfeit merchandise. I never got sick of the food though – it will beat ship food any day!

Shanghai was a lively city with a fantastic rhythm to it. There was a lot of building going on and you get the sense that this is a city that is proud of its development and excited to share it with the world. Initially in Shanghai we were limited to tourist markets, streets and restaurants. But upon returning from Beijing we sought out the less touristy. We explored local markets and shopping streets, got lost in the old heart of the city and found people who spoke no English and kept stopping and looking at us. It's been a while since we pulled crowds like we did in China – maybe not since we were in the depths of the Panamanian Jungle. This was slightly embarrassing but interesting all the same.

My first impression were all fantastic and luckily this continued for the length of our stay in China which was by no means long enough to get a true sense of the country. This is one of the few ports that I will definitely be coming back to as soon as I can!

China Updated Coming

2007-12-15T10:31:00.000+11:00

Hello everyone,

We are now back at sea after a crazy and amazing week in China. I am meant to be writing my final essays so naturally I have been writing blogs instead. Updated will be uploaded shortly on Shanghai, my near death shopping experience and the joys of Beijing and snow.

Hope you are all doing well at home. I can't believe that there are less than 10 days now until this whole crazy experience is over.

- C

Shanghai

2007-12-08T02:01:00.000+11:00

9:15 am - Just cleared immigration in Shanghai and we are off to explore the city. It is cold (for me anyway) and foggy. Perfect weather for exploring mussuems and the like.

Turning Corners

2007-12-07T04:45:00.000+11:00

If you turn a corner in your car you hopefully aren't going fast enough for this to be a problem. And you are normally wearing a seatbelt anyway. Turning a corner in a bus can be more of a problem. Sometimes you fall over or end up sitting on a strangers lap. However turning corners in boats is rarely a good thing.

Example A: Turning corners on the Scholar Ship invariably means that the contents of your bookshelf take some time resting on your floor... It was funny the first 100 or so times but now its just getting a bit old.

From Global Issues to Fancy Dress

2007-12-07T03:05:00.000+11:00

Wow, what a day yesterday. It did not start well though. I managed to fall down the stairs at breakfast and almost threw my yummy bagel in the pool. I think that brings our total up to about 10 people who have done the same thing. Embarrassing, but luckily no damage done! I followed this up with our global issues final exam. Altogether, not a great way to start a day really – but luckily the trend did not continue.

Yesterday was also our Model United Nations Conference. Everything went fantastically well for the inaugural session of the Security Council at sea. Sadly diplomatic difficulties meant that no resolutions could be agreed upon, but that is almost exactly what happens in the Security Council anyway. For Brittany and me it meant running around like mad things organising printing and supplies and certificate. For our Director and Chair – Neni and Molina – they were in charge of managing the flow of the debate so that no major international incidents occurred. Everyone seemed to have a fantastic experience!

Then to finish of an altogether bizarre day we had our formal dinner and masquerade ball organised by the Student Events Committee which was FANTASTIC! We had an outstanding 7 course meal: Entrée, Salad, Sorbet, Pasta, Steak (or fish or a vegetarian dish that I didn't recognise) followed by dessert and cheese platters. It is 11 am the next morning and I am still full! Then after dinner (complete with fantastic entertainment from our talented students) we headed up to the student centre for a dance party. The student centre was completely transformed with fairy lights and decorations. We had more performers – our very own mime and contortionist then Erik and his media posse also played some of the videos that they had put together about our voyage. There was a fussball championship and everyone danced the night away.

Then, the wonderful thing about this ship is, when your night is over and its time to go to bed it is a mere 30 seconds away. No cabs, no trains and no driving involved. Oh so fantastic!

So today is kind of like a lazy Sunday (except its Thursday) – no classes, no work that needs to be done just a chance to chill and relax. So I am off to sit on the deck (in my jumper its cold all of a sudden) with a stack of magazines and the last of my junk food from Australia. All together a fantastic way to prepare for our next amazing port – Shanghai!

Oh and an update on the storm – big swells but no actual storm so maybe its still coming?

Maybe this is THE storm

2007-12-05T04:20:00.000+11:00

Nav-man tells me that it is officially 'very rough'. I had figured that out by myself because my room is on Baja (four decks up from the waterline) and our porthole is getting nicely washed by the waves. It's raining and maybe this is THE storm that we have all been waiting for. Its just a shame that it is happening right in the middle of our last round of assessments.

I am guessing but I think I am currently studying for my global issues exam in about an 8 metre swell. It makes for an interesting time. If this keeps up much longer I will have a stack of very interesting bruises to show off by the time we reach China. It's raining and the Captain has advised us to be aware of our 'movement'. Hmmm… wonder what he means exactly – another one of those lost in translation moments.

They tell me today is Sunday

2007-12-03T00:48:00.000+11:00

Time... It's such a crucial asset at home. I schedule myself to within an inch of my life. I write lists, I have a diary that often has more white-out than actual paper and I couldn't imagine living a life without a watch, mobile phone, diary and the crazy interactive online calendar planning system we use at work.

So if time is so crucial, how is it that half the time on this ship I don't wear a watch and I almost never know what day of the week it is?

It's not like we are sitting around here doing nothing. I am definitely accomplishing lots of things every day on this ship. Life is still as full as ever, and yet it is possible for me to go a full 24 hours without wearing a watch, consulting my diary or even touching a phone. In fact my phone only serves as a highly over-tooled alarm clock at the moment.

So if that is the case, if I can still be as productive here with almost no conception of time as what I am at home – then why do we rush around so much back in 'the real world'? I have still managed to attend all my lecture on time, hand in my assignments on time and am as busy as ever with a million extra curricular activities onboard. The only difference is on the ship I don't have a job. But I do still have responsibilities and deadlines – they just don't seem as important anymore.

It's interesting how you change when you are living in the middle of the ocean!

The Love Boat

2007-11-30T22:23:00.000+11:00

The media in Australia liked to call the Scholar Ship the 'Love Boat'. They were referring to what they thought would happen when you put a group of young people together away from the rest of the world. First of all I would like to know why this experience would make people act differently to how they would act at home and why are they making these bad suggestions about the Scholar Ship? Or how being on a ship with 200 other young people and travelling around the world is different to any other group of young people travelling around the world? However, what the media might not realise is that they are right, this place is the Love Boat, but maybe not the way they expected.

Last night we had to say farewell to one our beloved professors who has a medical condition that can't be treated on the boat. The whole community came out to wish him farewell. I don't think there are many universities where all the students and all the teachers would come to wave a sick teacher off as he is taken to hospital. There is a lot of love on this ship. Not to get all mushy on you all, but this is a real community and it is sad when somebody leaves. Especially know when that we have had to start thinking about what we are going to do when this time in our lives is over.

Today is another one of those 'oh my goodness I am on a ship sailing around the world' moments. We are in the middle of "Star Wars". Just to set the backdrop for you, each of our residential communities are named after Stars and we are running a series of competitions to determine the supreme constellation. Later tonight we are getting together for the announcement and to watch some student produced films about our time here. The sense of community and belonging is strong here today.

So I leave you so that I can go and catch up on the scores and watch the relay (TSS Style – kind of like an egg and spoon race except our 'eggs' are our squishy ships).

- Caitlin

PS Eva – great list of subjects! You have to do four subjects on the boat to qualify for the certificate. If you want the certificate, I would recommend adding international security to your list!

85 Days Aboard the Scholar Ship

2007-11-29T16:24:00.000+11:00

Today marks 85 days aboard the Scholar Ship in my 109 day journey.

85 days makes this kind of like home by now. Actually 85 days feels kind of like a year or two. I know these people extraordinarily well. For some of the people on this ship I know their life history, what annoys them, how to calm them down when they are angry and a whole selection of things like that you wouldn't know if you had only met someone on land 85 days ago. When I think about it, a large number of these people are my family. We have supported each other, climbed through the jungle together and experienced so many new things together.

Things here are starting to wind down. People are starting to talk about when they go home. About what it will be like when that happens.

I am not sure if I am ready to comprehend that.

Recently in Sydney I spent a lot of time talking with media and strangers about my experience. I am still unable to come up with a couple of sentences that explain what we do here or what it's like to be on this ship. All I can say is that in the last 85 days I have learnt much more than I would in 85 days at 'normal' university. In 85 days I have done crazy things that I would never have done at home. 85 days have taken me to far flung points in the universe that I might never have been to. And 85 days have created friendships that are going to attempt to continue despite distance and different life paths when we all go home.

This is an amazing journey. It's about exploration and challenges and being inspired and at the moment about not wanting to go home.

I just wrote an assignment for my intercultural communication class on re-entry shock. That made me think a lot about what it is going to be like when I get home 'full time'. I am not even sure yet that I understand all the ways that this experience has changed me. And to be totally honest here, I am a little worried that I won't have time to work out all those changes before I slip into my old roles at home. It's not that I didn't like who I was before I left – I did, I liked me a lot. It's just that now, after 85 days of cruising around the world I see things a little differently, think a little differently and because of all those tiny little changes, overall I think I might be a different version of me.

So life here is a little confusing at the moment. It was easier when I had heaps of uni work to complete because I didn't have time to think about all this kind of stuff. Still, at least you know that you are surrounded by people who are going through the exact same experience as you. And with that thought I am going to hit the books and start studying for our final round of exams.

The Home and Away Phenomenon

2007-11-28T13:27:00.000+11:00

No I am not talking about a crazy Australian soap opera - I have just had the rather surreal experience of being away from home and there at the same time. Sydney is my hometown. It's where my family are, most of my friends are there and it's where I grew up. So last week when the Scholar Ship sailed through the heads into Sydney harbour you couldn't have found a more excited individual on the entire ship (except perhaps the other four Aussies). We cheered when the boat went under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Customs came onboard when we reached the dock and greeted us like long lost family – welcoming us home. My parents were there for a hug and then the Scholar Ship experience took hold and I had a million things to do that meant I wasn't actually home. First there were journalists to talk to, photographers who wanted pictures of Aussie students and post graduate students who wanted a tour of Macquarie University (my home university). I was Home and Away at the same time.

My week in Sydney was a whirlwind of responsibilities for the Scholar Ship like talking to journalists and completing my Academic Field Programme combined with an attempt to catch up with friends and family. And while I love my family very much, sadly my first priority had to be the Scholar Ship. So while all my fellow students were telling me how lucky I was to be at home, I actually didn't manage to catch up with all of my family. I also acted as tour guide to the Scholar Ship and have never answered more questions about my city in my life.
On top of it all we were surrounded by journalists who kept misrepresenting our experiences here.

I seemed to take every negative press article personally. It was frustrating to have everyone tell me how wonderful it must be to be home, while I didn't feel like I was actually at home. I was still in this alternate universe that is the Scholar Ship.
I am lucky because on the boat we study intercultural communication. I know (because I do my reading – contrary to what some of the journalists suggested) that I was suffering from a textbook case of re-entry shock. That's when you go back to your home culture and everything is not quite the same as when you left it or you aren't the same.

Looking back Sydney was an amazing experience. My Academic Field Programme like all of the programmes I have done was fantastic, insightful and controversial. I had a fantastic experience with my fellow conflict studies students. It was also great to catch up with the friends and family that I did manage to see.

To be honest I didn't think that I had changed much over the course of this voyage. But everybody kept telling me how relaxed I was and how different I seemed. So maybe I have changed a bit here. In the end it was a good thing to have a taster of what it's going to be like to be home. Talking about the great things that we have done also made me really appreciate my last month here on the Scholar Ship! So while this post probably doesn't make a lot of sense to anyone else, this post has helped me sort out my slightly confused brain!

So what is next for us? A long stretch at sea (3 days down, 9 to go) and then the place that I am most excited to visit – China! The boat is sailing into Shanghai. I am spending two days there, then am heading up to Beijing to stand in Tiananmen Square and to walk on the Great Wall of China. Then after a couple of days in Beijing its back to Shanghai.

Updates Coming

2007-11-28T09:24:00.001+11:00

No I haven’t forgotten you all! I have just written (and thankfully now handed in) 5,000 words of assignment in 3 days. Now that this horrible experience is over I will catch you up on life onboard the Scholar Ship.

Special hello to all the guys who I met this morning in our prospective students chat online! You can always post a comment here if you want more information and don’t forget the next chat is in two days.

For any prospective students who didn’t know we are holding online chats over the next week. See http://www.thescholarship.com/ for more details.

Insiders Knowledge

2007-11-16T09:58:00.001+11:00

I have had a few queries about what life is really like on the Scholar Ship so let me try and give you a sense of what its really like on the Scholar Ship. As always if I don’t talk about the things you want to hear about, post a comment on the blog and I will do my best to answer your questions.

So, first of all the big questions on everybody’s mind is sea sickness.

Yes people do get sea sick. It helps if you come prepared. I swear by Seabands. These are bracelets that you wear that have half circle balls that put pressure on an acupressure point. Now it could all be a placebo effect, but I wore them consistently for the first week of the voyage (even when I didn’t feel sick) and have never had a problem since. There are also little things you can do like avoiding caffeine, eating green apples and drinking lots of small quantities of water throughout the day. Basically stay as healthy as you can, get some exercise and you should be right.

In the event that those strategies don’t help you, there is a fully equipped hospital on board that can offer you everything for the treatment of sea sickness from tablets right through to shots and other medication.

The reality is that when the sea gets rough the whole community feels a bit off, but that is the challenge of living on a ship and everybody is very supportive! There are very few people who suffer from extreme sea sickness. The majority of the community feel a bit ill but gets on with their normal day to day schedule and have no problems.

The second most popular query is the weather and what it’s like to live on a rocking ship.

All the voyages for the Scholar Ship are strategically planned to make sure that we are crossing oceans when they are at their calmest. For example we crossed the North Atlantic at a time when it has the fewest storms. As a result the ocean that can throw giant storms resembled a lake for our crossing.

Our biggest seas have been recently when crossing the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia. The ship has fared well! The crew are well prepared and there are procedures in place to ensure that everyone is aware of the upcoming sea conditions and can plan accordingly. The most dramatic thing that has happened is my bedside cabinet fell over in the middle of the night. But nothing was damaged and it was all put right in the morning.

As for being able to sleep with big seas, one of the wonderful things about the human body is that it is designed to protect you, and for most people their body’s reaction to big seas is to get sleepy. So I actually find that I sleep better when there is a bit of rocking happening. The ship, being like any ship creaks and rocks a bit. But you get used to it very quickly and unless I concentrate on it, I don’t even hear the noises anymore.

One of the questions asked was how often does the ship rock at night? You might not like the answer to this question, because the ship rocks 24/7. That’s right the ship rocks all day, all night, every single day that we are at sea. However, you stop noticing it after about a week and only on the days with big sea do I even stop to think about it. It is quite amazing how quickly our bodies can adapt to this foreign environment!

There have been questions about the resources on the ship. To be honest this is one area where there are some challenges. For example if the book you want for an assignment isn’t in the library, there isn’t a public library down the road where you can go looking for it. Instead you have to wait until you are on land. Having said this, all the courses on the Scholar Ship are built around this realisation. Next semester will be even better because us ‘guinea pigs’ have worked out all the kinks in the system!

Internet access is slow and limited, but you have to remember that you are here for the experience of living and studying on a ship and that is just one of the things that you have to get used to! There are also amazing student who will be around you and that is distraction enough. Last night a group of us were up till the early hours of the morning discussing anything and everything. In our group of six were five nationalities and three different native languages. That means that there were six radically different perspectives on the topics that we were discussing. When those opportunities present themselves, suddenly things like lightening speed internet don’t mean all that much!

To anyone who is thinking about this experience, I would say go for it, send your application in! There are challenges and this is definitely not a perfect programme. But the things that are hard are also the things that make this experience so unique. The benefits are the amazing programmes that are offered to us in port and the incredible access that we have to leading academics when we are onboard. I have also never been in classrooms that are so dynamic and diverse. Yes sometimes you feel a bit seasick, and there are days when the weather is a bit tough, but you are in the hands of a fantastic crew, there are medical experts on board and at the end of the day this is a once in a lifetime experience. So, start writing those applications, send them in and you to could soon be writing home about how every day seems to be more amazing than that last!

Message in a bottle

2007-11-15T09:34:00.001+11:00

They exist! That’s right, floating past my classroom today was a message in a bottle. Or at least a bottle that looked like it had a message in it. I guess it could have been a piece of rubbish that made its way out to the middle of the ocean, but it is far more interesting to go with the ‘message in a bottle’ theory. It was heading towards Australia, so should you be expecting a message, I would give it about two weeks and then start combing the beaches. In honour of the floating bottle, I have been playing John Mayer’s version of the song Message in a Bottle on loop. It is possible that my roommate may want to kill me shortly…

Waves are to The Scholar Ship what wind is to Primary Schools

2007-11-14T17:48:00.001+11:00

Do you remember those really windy days when you were in Primary School and you couldn’t concentrate because all you wanted to do was be outside chasing the leaves? Or perhaps you are a school teacher (or parent) who wants to pull out their hair on a windy day because your kids just can’t sit still and concentrate on anything. Well on the Scholar Ship its pretty windy nearly all the time, and we seem to be adult enough to concentrate on our work (but perhaps that is because there are no leaves here to chase), but today I discovered the equivalent.

Today we had our largest swell yet. We came around the far north coast of the North Island of New Zealand and ran smack bang into an oncoming south westerly wind. The wind is coming at us at about 30 nautical miles an hour (about 60 kilometres an hour). The swell was up at about 7 metres but has settled to about 5 metres now. And the result is a general case of bedlam and a great deal of sea sickness. People are louder (possibly to be heard over the roaring wind and creaking ship). The most stable places to be on the ship are as close to the middle of the vessel as you can get. So that means we have all spent the better part of today sitting in corridors and on staircases. What has resulted is a kind of carnivale atmosphere where people tell their stories about Auckland over the top of each other, catch up on ship gossip and generally be loud and do very little uni work. Today we are also celebrating 4 or 5 Birthdays which means in addition to the general post port chatter and elevated noise levels due to the waves we also have spontaneous choruses of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in a variety of languages. I’m glad I don’t have any assignments or presentations due tomorrow, because this atmosphere is contagious and it’s simply impossible to try and act like an adult.

For example, each of us received a small squishy ship when we got on board. The ship is similar to a stress ball and can usually be seen flying across classrooms, being attacked by people experiencing varying degrees of cultural stress and is often the subject of our many photos. Today however, a group of us decided to conduct a ‘science’ experiment that involved filling up our bath tubs and floating our ‘shippies’ in them to demonstrate the wave conditions. Many (including myself) have taken video footage (to one day post on this blog should I ever get the bandwidth) to show people how bad the swell really is! In addition, to continue our rather childish behaviour we have a movie showing in the Princess Theatre tonight. Our movies are normally educational and have included films like Rabbit Proof Fence, Babel and The Rise and Fall of Jamaica. Tonight however, our movie is Finding Nemo.

The Captain has advised that the swell should die down tonight which means that by tomorrow we should be back to our usual adult selves. However, I will have a fantastic video of my ship being attacked by a Pantene Shampoo bottle to remember today by.

Auckland Wrap Up

2007-11-14T07:52:00.001+11:00

I have always been fond of the land of the long white cloud. As an Australian the land of the Kiwi has always had my sisterly affection, maybe this is because the stories of Australia and New Zealand have been linked through the decades. We tend to go to war together, we like to play sport against each other and many of our citizens have swapped home soil to live on each others shores. So it was with delight that I cruised into Auckland Harbour a week ago. Here was a land where people were as close to me as you could get without being an Aussie. They drive on the right side of the road (which would be the left), they speak similarly (if you excuse the interesting things that they do to their vowels over here), the street signs look the same and everyone is so friendly.

And I adapted so well to Kiwi culture! I went sightseeing, shopping and wine tasting. I sat on park benches with a latte and watched the world go by. Then I was fortunate enough to have the sort of experiences that being a Scholar Ship student affords you. I chatted with shopkeepers who gave me discounts because they loved to hear us talk about what we have been doing. I met with immigrant communities and sat with Polynesian Mama’s who taught me how to work the flax into beautiful headdresses. I met the crew of the Rainbow Warrior and I discussed regional politics with experts whose articles I have read at uni. These are the sorts of things that you just don’t get to do when you are a tourist. And even though this port wasn’t a cultural challenge for me, I will still cruise out of the harbour later tonight with a feeling that I stepped beyond myself and experienced things that I simply could not do at home!

I managed to crash the international relations post graduate academic field programme. They were studying the region and one of their activities was to meet with representatives of the migrant communities. At home in Sydney our local migrant communities are from South East Asia. At home I gradually have learnt about the challenges of being a migrant from Cambodia, Vietnam, mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. But here in New Zealand the majority of their migrants come from the Pacific. I know a little of the Pacific from uni and my holidays to Fiji, but I don’t know the first thing about the challenges they face. We met with leaders and young people from The Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati and Tuvalu. I would have loved to sit and chat with them, but this learning circle didn’t seem to be much into that and preferred action, so instead I sat with the old women who were doing their weaving. And they laughed at me because while I am a city girl who can type 75 words a minute, I have no control over my fingers and can’t weave as accurately or as fast as they can. But it was fun and I feel that I got more out of that cultural exchange than I did from my mediocre attempts at dancing their traditional dances.

Now I am back on the ship for the short crossing to Australia: home soil. And I am so looking forward to it, and also kind of dreading it in equal proportions. I can’t wait for Sydney because it means a chance to quickly catch up with friends and family. I also have my last academic field programme in Sydney so I know that I will have the opportunity to do things that even a local would never be able to do. But this means that I will almost be in two places at once. I will be at home in familiar territory, and yet be away in a parallel universe that is the Scholar Ship. But I am blessed with an amazing family and a fantastic group of friends so I know that they will understand!

Watch out Sydney, here we come!

A Second Hand Tale

2007-11-11T20:05:00.001+11:00

I love words. I like to speak them a fair bit, I like to listen to others using them, but mostly I like to read them. I have read everything from the cornflake box on the kitchen table as a child to Jane Austen and Dickens. My room at home has a giant desk with more bookshelves than some people have in an entire house. It is filled with an eclectic mix of my chick-lit trash, law textbooks, literary novels, non fiction fact books and biographies. One day I will own a house stuffed full of my collection and the many books that I am yet to buy. There will also be wing- backed chairs and comfy quilts to curl up under on a raining day when a hot chocolate and a good tale are calling. Due to my love of the written word, there is nothing I love more than a good bookshop. I love the smell of crisp unopened and untouched books. Or so I thought.

In Auckland there is a bookstore called the Hard to find bookstore. I assumed it had its name due to its location, and on my second day here in Auckland I went in search of its many tomes. Turns out that the store itself is very easy to find, its name instead, refers to the wonderful mish-mash of titles it contains. This was the kind of bookstore that I could fall in love with. It was small. Maybe three times the size of my cabin (i.e. very small). But inside were something in the order of 30,000 titles and three floors of heaving shelves waiting to be explored. All of its delights pre-loved, all of them fabulous.

I have to say that I am not generally a fan of the old second hand bookstore. It is normally a place full of obscure, dusty and often yellowing musty books which have seen better days. These are the books that people like you and me can’t bear to throw out but don’t want sitting in our houses either. This place was different. It was airy, it had books that didn’t look like they might bite back and they were titles that you might actually want to read. There were sections on foreign languages, detective novels and must reads. I found the original works of Lenin, Plato and Aristotle (obviously not first editions but still this was the insights of brilliant minds, not their theories re-told by later day academics).

I could have spent weeks exploring the collection. Instead I had an hour. Not really enough time to sample the delights of the entire western world’s literary history. So I narrowed my exploration to western politics and went searching for something to distract me from my textbooks (our cornflake boxes are currently in Greek so I am not having a lot of success reading them).

After about 45 minutes of crawling around on my hands and knees so that I could get to the juicy stuff, I found it, the perfect book to sum up my recent adventures. It is called Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership. Here in only 400 pages are one mans version of the secrets to leadership. It is written by a behavioural psychologist who presents at the beginning of the book a psychological explanation for leadership. But the real reason I bought the book is because it tells the story of almost every major leader of the 20^th century. It profiles Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Mead. There are also scary guys who I have to read for uni like J. Robert Oppenheimer (he uses far too many big words) and business minds like Alfred Sloan. I feel inspired already just by looking at the contents page.

There is also something nice about the fact that another individual has owned this book. Read its pages, shoved it in their backpack perhaps and considered its contents. Like a pre-loved instrument that already contains music, this is a pre-loved book that already contains insight, thoughts and discussion.

Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

2007-11-06T09:53:00.000+11:00

Just a little something that touched me from a workshop I have been doing here. The workshop is called Power, Prejudice and Privilege. The poem was presented to the group in the course of a discussion about ideals and the kind of people we would like to be. Think about who you want to be when you read it!

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.' It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Milestones and Milo

2007-11-06T09:51:00.000+11:00

I write to you watching the navigation screen on my television intently because we are about to clock over 14,000 nautical miles since we left Athens. And what an amazing journey we have had so far! Today is also a milestone because we crossed the date line over night. So today is the 6^th of November, yesterday was the 4^th and the 5^th does not exist for me this year (which is sad for the English people onboard who miss Guy Fawkes Day).

Today there is an eerie mist hanging above the sea. It is raining and if I didn’t know better I would say that we were about to sail into Melbourne. The sun is trying hard, and hopefully we will see it soon because grey days tend to affect people here more than they would on land. Luckily we have the promise of Auckland ahead of us. Tomorrow we are set to land in Auckland harbour for a week which should be fantastic. I plan on visiting a winery, eating cheese and good meat that hasn’t had the unfortunate task of sitting for a substantial period of time in a deep freezer to preserve it. I also sadly will spend a majority of my time sitting in a public library researching for my various assignments (I have never appreciated books so much in my life and I am someone who LOVES books).

Auckland should be interesting because for me as an Australian this is a familiar culture. For the first time on this journey around the world I will be somewhere where the locals are more like me than the majority of passengers on the Scholar Ship. For once I won’t struggle with a language barrier, different cultural practices and slightly scary (though always yummy) local cuisine. I am looking forward to not being introduced to my lunch before I eat it (there was an unfortunate incident in the Panamian jungle where I was introduced to a chicken named Ossie and then served it for lunch – rather bizarre and one of the few occasions when I considered becoming a vegetarian). I also can’t wait to go shopping and not have to guess what is inside the packets.

It is sad to leave behind challenge though. Up until now every port posed a challenge for me. A different way of thinking and looking at the world which was to be explored. Here the hardest thing for me will be not making fun of the Kiwi’s accents or their inability to play cricket. I want to make sure that I am still searching out different experiences. So I am hoping to head off to find a service project or Maori elder to sit with or something similarly interesting.

Auckland also means that the next port is home – Sydney. This will be an interesting and slightly odd experience. It is a good thing though because I am almost entirely out of my cultural supplies (Vegemite and Milo) due to the enthusiastic uptake of my culture by people here. Ok, so maybe they aren’t quite into the vegemite yet (there is still time), but the general population has been converted to Milo. See us Australians are practicing slow world domination… Eventually you will all wake up in the morning craving the salty goodness that is vegemite…. Ok, so maybe not, but its worth dreaming about it anyway.

By the way, in the time it took to write this blog we clocked over 14,009 nautical miles – what an achievement!

Tahiti

2007-11-02T07:08:00.001+11:00

Sailing into Tahiti the satellite internet was finally activated and we now have to pay for our internet access (it has been free up to now). Hence the beginning of an era of sporadic updates of this blog has begun as I need my precious internet minutes for research (yes we do actually do university work here). Hopefully though, I will still have the chance to update you with the happenings aboard this crazy and mind blowing ship.

So… Back to my whistle stop tour of Tahiti.

We had to evacuate yet another student for a medical emergency on our trip to Tahiti so our arrival in Papeete was a day and a half later than expected. So rather than having two full days to explore, we only had 28 hours (much of which we would be sleeping). So my extravagant plans for hiking to a waterfall one day and snorkelling the next kind of didn't happen. However, this was still a lovely break.

Up until now for every single port we have been to we have had at least one piece of assessment based on our experiences. These are usually intercultural communication papers. While I have no problem with completing them, they tend to frame your time in the country and you see everything through the eyes of your intercultural communication paper, or as if you were an international mediator (one of my other classes). But Tahiti was to be our 'mid-semester break'. Therefore I had nothing, not even a small assessment task to guide my experience here. And to be honest at first I felt a little lost. With nothing specific to seek out in the country, and a reduced amount of time I felt a little bit lost for the first hour or two. So I did what I do best – headed to a local market to see where the adventure took me.

The market here on the main island of Tahiti was hot, dusty and full of people and noise. Some of it was touristy, but in the middle of the (mainly) German tourists were also the locals buying their fresh produce and meats and fish. It was an interesting juxtaposition seeing a sarong painter sitting next to the local fish monger. This just made the experience more colourful and exciting. I could have gone wild in these markets and the Polynesians love their pretty patterns on skirts, tops and dresses, but this is the first port we have been to where every day souvenirs are really out of the budget of students. Unlike Central and South America where we could afford to buy anything in a shop here the prices were even more expensive than we had seen in Athens (and I thought that was pretty bad). So my purchases were limited to some coconut soap and a few sarongs. I hate to think how the local people can afford to live because I most definitely could not afford to eat in restaurants here or even shop in the markets for basic food and produce.

Despite this, I did treat myself to a coffee and a cheese platter overlooking the ocean with some friends to celebrate making it half way through our voyage. Being a French colony the food in Tahiti is fantastic. The menu looked stunning, however the cheese platter and coffee still cost us $18 a head and that was the cheapest thing on the menu. Still it is amazing how long you can make coffee and cheese last, so I am pretty sure that we got our moneys worth!

After a relaxing couple of hours in a coffee shop we went for a walk around down town Papeete. There are lots of parks and green space in the city which is clean and well maintained. There is also a beautiful board walk connecting the port area to uptown along the water. At night it was slightly shady, but during the day it was a lovely walk.

At night the square in front of the port area came to life. There were about 20 food vans and music. Locals and tourists came to eat some of the cheapest food that you could find in Tahiti. You could have eaten pizza, hamburgers, chips or an assortment of other 'imported' fast food. My friends and I settled on Crepes figuring that these were at least French, even if they weren't traditional Tahitian. And they were yummy! It was nice to spend a meal away from the ship with a smaller group of people. It was also rather a novelty to pick what you wanted to eat from a menu rather than a buffet. After making ourselves feel sick with both savoury and sweet crepes and milkshakes we headed for a walk around the waterfront in an attempt to find some night life. Finding none, and being exhausted we headed back to the ship for a reasonably early night.

My second day in Tahiti was more of what I had expected. I had signed up for one of the shore excursions offered by The Scholar Ship. And man was it fantastic. My excursion was a cruising and snorkelling tour of Moorea (a neighbouring island). First of all it was a beautiful island to look at! We headed off the ship at 7 am and caught the first ferry to Moorea at 7:15. The boat was a catamaran and far less stable than ours which made us all appreciate our wonderful ocean going vessel. The trip took about half and hour and watching Moorea come into focus was stunning.

The island is an incredible combination of jutting mountains and beautiful blue – blue sky and blue water. The mountains were rough and looked impossible to pass. However they were covered in what appeared to be lush tropical rainforest. There didn't appear to be any houses or settlements on these rather imposing looking mountains. This was contrasted with the brilliant blue (and calm) of the water. There were probably 10 or 12 different shades of brilliant blue depending on how close the water was to shore and whether there was reef or not. I would have had a fantastic day if all I did was look at this amazing scene. But there were better things to come!

Our first item on the agenda was to jump in a bright yellow bus to a small boat and then to take a tour of the island by sea. We saw the various bays where Captain Cook had landed and charted the island. And various wrecks of French naval vessels caused mainly by French incompetence (coupled with their passion for a bit of a drink). I have a feeling that our entertaining guide, Terry, didn't like the French too much.

Our first stop was a sand bank to swim with sting rays. This was fantastic. There were maybe 15 sting rays on the sandbank who didn't seem too concerned by the fact that 20 of us had invaded their space. They swam over our feel, arms and shoulders. There were also about 4 black tipped reef sharks, which came to see what all the commotion was about. I had broken off from the group and was exploring some coral when I discovered that I was being circled by three of the sharks and they had cut me off from the group. This freaked me out slightly, but they must have been well fed because after about 5 minutes they got bored and went off to scare somebody else.

After about half an hour in the water with these guys we jumped back in the boat and headed to our private island for the rest of the day. It was in the middle of a lagoon where we spent the day swimming and exploring the coral, feeding some more sting rays which shelter in the bay and eating a beautiful local style BBQ. The day ended with Christy and I sitting on deck chairs in the dabbled sunlight with a beer in one hand and our feet being lapped by the water as the tide came in. I could not think of a more relaxing way to spend my mid-semester break. It was truly a fantastic day.

At about 1:30 in the afternoon, just as the sun was starting to get a bit nasty, we headed back on the boat to the Island of Moorea, boarded the ferry and headed back to the main island. Everything went like clockwork and we were back at the dock at 3:30 pm to get back on the ship by our required hour of 4 pm. Then all too soon we were waving good bye to Tahiti and sailing back to sea. Our 'weekend' was over and it was back to the usual life on the ship.

I write this on deck looking out at a grey sky, grey clouds and inky water. Hopefully this weather won't follow us all the way to our next port (Auckland). We have a short stretch at sea this time – 5 days. Well 6 really, but the 2^nd of November won't exist for us as this is the day that we cross the international dateline. So all too soon we will be in my neighbouring country – New Zealand. It seems that the semester is slipping away from me. We only have the ports of Auckland, Sydney, Shanghai, Macau and Hong Kong ahead of us before this adventure is all over. Even though I have only been here for two months, I find it hard to believe that sometime soon I will have to go back to the real world where I won't visit a new port every week or so. But for now, I will push those thoughts from my mind and continue on with this grand adventure.

Find it at www.seek.com.au Your Future Starts Here. Dream it? Then be it!

Introducing the Nav-man

2007-10-29T09:37:00.000+11:00

It has just occurred to me that I am half way through this adventure. That means that I have been away from home for two months and I only have two months to go. It feels like I have been living on this ship for years. And I can’t imagine what it will be like for this to end at some point. I think it is fitting that the half way point is while we are at sea. That means that we are here all together. Unlike in port where we are normally spread out all over the country and you start to miss people.

So, in any community traditions and in-jokes start to form when you have been together for this long. One of my favourites here is a person who I have fondly started calling the ‘Nav-man’ (google it if that makes no sense to you). Every day at approximately 12:00 (ship time), there is a weather and navigation announcement. After hearing it for about 50 days now I can pretty much quote him word for word. First he introduces himself ‘This is your Navigation Officer speaking from the bridge with weather and navigation information’. We are trying to convince the Officers to announce this information from a different location each day. We want to hear ‘this is you Navigation Officer speaking from the library’ or ‘from the international lounge’. Sadly they are not coming to the party, but we still have time on our side. Plus, we hear him every day, so I think it is quite funny that he still feels the need to introduce himself.

Next on the agenda for Nav-man, is to tell us the time: ‘This ship’s correct time is 5 minutes past the hour of 12’. With all the changing of time-zones we have, this is important. I regularly get caught out and forget to move my clock. Thankfully I don’t have class in the mornings.

Then we get what is often a pointless piece of information, where exactly in the wide expanse of the various oceans we are. For example ‘Since leaving the port of Ecuador we have covered a distance of 2,853.7 nautical miles. The nearest point of land is Christmas Island 1,018.8 nautical miles off our port bow’. Thrilling information, but I am not certain what we are supposed to do with it; though it is cool to hear the numbers changing every day.

Then he provides a whole heap of weather information (which despite hearing frequently I still do not understand). Then the best bit. He looks out the window and tells us the weather. There are only three things he has said the entire time we have been here. His options are: the sky is clear (we hear this rarely), the sky is cloudy or the sky is partly cloudy (probably 90% of the time). The threshold to be partly cloudy is one cloud in the sky. So we most often hear that the sky is partly cloudy. A sort of informal betting ring has started amongst the students to guess how he will describe the sky. I am good at this game, let me just say that I have won many chocolate bars.

Then sometimes (probably every two or three days) there is an extra message tacked onto the end. This is the best message we can hear ‘At the hour of 2 am, the ships clocks will be retarded by one hour’. Yay! That means a 25 hour day. I live for 25 hour days. I don’t know what I will do when I go home and don’t get an extra hour of sleep at least twice a week. It is amazing how important that hour becomes.

Today is a 25 hour day. But having been to see the gym (a very rare occasion), I am going to head to bed and use my extra hour to catch up on some much missed z’s. There are only three days until Tahiti where I plan to snorkel like there is no tomorrow. Hopefully Tahiti compares to the amazing experience of swimming with sea lions in the Galapagos Islands!

By the way if anyone wants to know specific things about this adventure, the ship or my times in port, please make sure you ask and I will write up a blog. Living here you start to forget about how unique the experience is. So stuff that has become mainstream to us (like good ‘ol Nav-man) is fascinating to all you land lubbers. So please make sure you let me know what you want to hear about.

Until then I have an appointment with my pillow!

Night!

xxC

Difference - Good or Bad?

2007-10-27T10:02:00.001+10:00

Sometimes we have the craziest days on this ship. One second it feels like the hardest thing I have ever done; then an hour later I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Today was one of those days.

In one of my classes, a difference of culture and some serious sea sickness lead to a misunderstanding between some of the students and our teacher. The exchange got heated and I know that I was not the only student who was a little surprised at the interchange. It is probably the low point of my time here. It was a clear example of exactly the thing we are trying to avoid – cultural misunderstandings that lead us to judge one another before we have a chance to understand why we react differently to situations. So dinner tonight was not a lot of fun because the tension was simmering just below the surface. Then after dinner we had our first intercultural evening. And the very thing that had caused anger and confusion in my classroom – difference – was celebrated in one of the best evenings we have had since boarding this floating universe.

Sometimes it’s tough here. Communication can be tiring. It is like a dance where each person is trying their best to avoid stereotypes, judgments and is trying to moderate their language so that everyone around them will understand their true intentions. Tonight was one of the first times we were able to celebrate our differences, highlight our uniqueness and appreciate each other for who we are. There was no moderation, no screening and no attempts to be anything other than our default selves.

People sang and danced. They presented original compositions to the group, explained important events in their culture and there was even a fashion show. These are the moments that I want to remember when I am sitting back at home in my largely homogenous university classes or almost entirely white workplace. When someone can get up and explain the traditions of Swedish Mid-Summer Celebrations and then be followed by a traditional dance from Morocco it is something that should be remembered.

The lesson here is that difference is not something to be scared of. We spend quite a lot of time here trying to accommodate to each other and in the process I think we tend to lose a bit of ourselves. Nights like tonight remind me that being Australian, or a woman or however else I want to define myself is ok. In fact it’s more than ok, and I should hold on to the things that make me unique and special. The challenge is being sensitive to how others may be affected by my ‘Australianess’, my femaleness and my what-ever-else-ness. Making sure that everyone around you has their mind opened to the possibility of difference is also important. When that is missing scenes like my afternoon class will keep repeating themselves. But if we are aware, and take two seconds to suspend our judgments of others then who knows what is possible!

So like everything here, we try and learn lessons from the hard stuff, capture the inspiring moments and put it all in some kind of context so that we can take it with us when we each return to our corners of the earth. These are lessons that I probably have been taught before. In essence they are basic human curtesies, but they are things that in times of stress we forget. Practicing these skills consistently for over 100 days with the United Nations in my classroom and sitting at my dinner table makes the lessons so much more powerful than I have ever experienced. Like always this ship, this vessel, is simultaneously complicating and simplifying the fast and busy lives that each of us lead.

Backtracking by Popular Demand

2007-10-23T02:33:00.001+10:00

Backtracking by Popular Demand

So due to popular demand, I am going to back track slightly and talk some more about my time in Panama. I have already posted on my reactions to my time in Panama, but people have rightly pointed out that I didn’t actually tell you what I did. In fact I don’t think I have explained the concept of our Academic Field Programmes.

Well for a start we call them AFP’s because it takes way too long to say all the words. The Scholar Ship is based in experiential education. So this is when we take the lessons that have until now only lived in the pages of our (expensive) textbooks and experience them. So in Lisbon I learnt about revolutions (not by participating in one), by talking with all the living leaders of the cultural revolution in Lisbon. I learnt about religious conflict by meeting the Dalai Lama, and in Panama I learnt about the legal issues facing indigenous communities by living with them for a week.

In Panama we visited three indigenous communities and stayed in the community run eco-lodges. We stayed with two different tribes: The Naso and Ngabo communities. Both live in very remote areas of the north-west Panamanian jungle progressively closer to the border with Costa Rica. With each community we caught various methods of local transport to the community, met with elders and young people, stayed the night in the local community and then set about the process of getting to the next community on the next morning. Our purpose for these visits was to discuss land issues and collect information relating to breaches of their human rights.

On our first day we travelled to the city of Santiago. This took about four hours. Once there we met with a local coalition of peasants an Indigenous Leaders who were working against mines and hydro-electric plants being built in their communities. They were extremely passionate about their land and spoke in rich Spanish (that I unfortunately needed a translator to understand). The quote of the day came from the quietest activist (as so often happens), he said “The day we finish with the last tree and the last river is the day we realise that we don’t need money”. This was poignant and set up most of our learning for the rest of our AFP.

After meeting with the activists, we spent another 4 hours in the bus travelling to the cloud forest in the Bocas Del Toro Province (close to the Costa Rican border). The land was lush and green. Very wet, and true to its name the clouds hung only centimetres above the trees. The mist often covered the road and meant we couldn’t really see where we were going. That night we had a quick walk about 5 minutes into the forest and stayed in a local eco-lodge. This was essentially one giant shelter with basic accommodation (bunk beds). The electricity was supplied by a generator which operated only between the hours of 6pm – 10 pm and 6am – 9am. Water was diverted from the river (think freezing). But our hosts were enthusiastic; the food was fantastic and the scenery stunning. We arrived in the dark but awoke to a pristine river running past the main shelter. Flowers, birds and bugs (oh lots of bugs).

Day two of our AFP saw us visiting our first community. These people were members of the Naso tribe and lived the closest to the Costa Rican border. To get to their community first we travelled from Santiago for approximately 3 hours in a bus to the ‘harbour’ of El Silencio. By harbour I mean just a bit of gravel on the side of the river. We jumped in traditional dug out canoes and travelled up river for about 45 minutes to a very large mountain. By this time it was raining hard (think tropical storm hard). We then hiked up a rather large part of the mountain which was in the process of sliding downhill due to the rain. Once we reached the community, we immediately ate lunch (because it’s all about food here). I recognised chicken and rice but other than that I was eating vegetables and fruit that I had never seen before. Still the food was yummy and the people were friendly. After lunch the local children performed their traditional songs and dances for us. Later when we spoke with the elders of the community we realised that they were attempting to resurrect their cultural practices which have almost been lost and this was one of the first generations of children to be consciously taught their culture. The children were participating in cultural schools. They were also attempting to regain lost knowledge about traditional medicine. However, as their children left their community to pursue education elsewhere, they were losing their traditional way of life. The Indigenous people spoke of their frustration because the government did not communicate with them. The community is scared of their future and all believe that they are losing their culture.

The community was enterprising though and had started an eco-lodge called Wekso Silencio. Again accommodation was basic, but the people were friendly and the food was excellent. We had no running water here (the pumps had broken) and we slept in basic dorms which gave conflict studies an excellent opportunity to get to know each other even better. By this point in the AFP I was yet to have a shower and was covered in layers of sunscreen, Deet from the insect repellent, sweat, dirt and a variety of squished jungle bugs – not a pretty site!

We visited the proposed site of the hydro-electric plan on the third day. This involved us travelling in four wheel drive trucks up dirt (well mud really) roads. Before getting there we had met with a government official who provided the Government line about how this would benefit the people, how they had been consulted and wanted this to go ahead. I am not sure if he knew that we were meeting directly with indigenous communities, but he made himself look a little stupid. The hydro-electric plant itself looked like any other construction site and was unremarkable, except for the surrounding beauty of the jungle.

After the plant we met with elders from the Ojo de Aqua community. Their community is pretty remote and again we had to ride on the back of pick up trucks to get there. I swear I am about 5 cm shorter from all the bumps! They will not be directly affected by the building of the dam. However, their community has been designated as the one all the displaced people should move to. This decision was made without clear and proper communication with their community and the people were pretty angry and confused about this. There was a lot of anger in the room and it was difficult to look at the situation objectively. But I think when it comes to these sensitive issues, like somebodies home it is important to bring a bit of passion to the argument!

After meeting with them we travelled to a slightly more developed harbour and boarded boats (with engines) to the island of Bocas del Toro. We had dinner there and then wandered around the town. This is a party town and after the issues we had witnessed in the jungle it was kind of hard to take. But, we did get a shower (with hot water), some good food and a chance to be not quite so confronted by poverty for a night.

One day four we took a tour of some of the remote islands of the Bocas Del Toro archipelago with a local guide. Here we learnt about how the central government is again displacing indigenous people and exploiting their land. We visited a (now bankrupt) development called Red Frog. We were told that there were armed guards on the site and it was possible that they may fire warning shots if they found us (hopefully in the air and not at us). Thankfully we did not come across them, but it was scary enough to think that they were there. We visited our last community who has set up an eco-restaurant. The indigenous community in and around Bocas Del Toro has gone to a lot of effort to set up the infrastructure for a potential eco-tourism industry. They are just waiting for the tourists to come. Unfortunately, the tourists aren’t coming, and there are questions about whether the indigenous people actually own the land they have developed or whether the ownership of that land rests with the central government. Should the tourism industry boom in Panama – and it is a beautiful place so I can’t see why not, then no doubt the question of ownership will resurface. At the moment it isn’t a big deal because the indigenous communities are not earning that much money. However, we were helping to collect information for test case to determine the legal status of the indigenous people’s land. The effect of the decision will be similar to the Mabo decision in Australia. This means that all the poor law students will eventually spend their entire degree analysing the effect of the case and how it has affected the legal landscape.

On the last day of our AFP we travelled back to the ship. This took the majority of the day. We stopped at a beautiful beach for lunch, but this beach was in a high tourist area. We could tell because we could name everything that was on our plate for lunch – personally I liked my jungle food better. Then it was back to the ship to debrief the entire experience (a hefty task).

So my time in Panama was well spent and I learnt more than I could imagine! Again, I have added this port onto my ‘I must come back’ list (which is ever growing!).

Galapagos Adventures

2007-10-21T03:58:00.001+10:00

Well, in the last week and a bit I have experienced my first South American country, studied (in far more detail than expected) 13 sub-species of Finches and found Milo for less than $5 for the smallest jar. So I am a happy, happy girl! Since my last rather unenthusiastic update I have had a brilliant time exploring Ecuador. This is my first port where I was free to do as I liked. No Academic Field Programmes for me (which was a shame because Conflict Studies was working with a local NGO building houses for disadvantaged families). Instead I had two free days in Guayaquil and then spent 5 days in the Galapagos Islands.

Guayaquil was uninspiring. I am sure there are brilliant pockets of the city that would amaze me if I had the time to find them. Unfortunately for me though, I did a whistle stop tour of the city. I did love the markets though. Summer and I ventured to an Artisan’s market. It was full of cheap tapestries and souvenirs. Very touristy, but fun all the same. The real find for us though was the Bahia Mall. An outdoor market frequented by locals where you could literally buy everything – including (wait for it) Milo - which I had been craving. So I was a very happy girl! This market showed much more of Ecuador’s heart. It was busy, unorderly, noisy and full of Spanish, which was better than the Artisan’s market which was orderly, quiet and full of broken English. The only people around were locals. Shopkeepers shook our hands when they met us because they said white people never visited them. I am sure this means that we also got ripped off, but I am ok with that.

After venturing in Guayaquil we began our Galapagos adventure. I am not a fan of the packaged tour, but this was the ultimate. For the entire 5 days I didn’t have to think. Somebody told me where I had to be when, picked me up in various forms of transport and pointed out all the wonderful animals to me. I had no research papers to prepare for, no essays to relate to my experiences and no reflections statements due and I feel like I had a bit of a holiday from all the craziness that happens on the Scholar Ship. It was a really lovely week. And that is before you even think about the animals!

So on our first afternoon in the Galapagos we had a short tour around the harbour of Santa Cruz Island. In just under 3 hours we saw sharks, blue-footed boobies, hawks, various birds and (my favourite) sea lions. The wonderful thing about the Galapagos is how close you can get to the animals. To start with, the animals have almost no fear because they have no natural predators. The tight management of the area has also meant that the animals have had no reason to be scared of humans (except perhaps the whales – there was a whaling station in the Galapagos many moons ago). So this means, that when you see a sea lion and you are in a boat, the first thing you do if put on your snorkel. And then you jump over the side and go and say hi. The water is freezing (17 degrees is in no way the tropical temperature that I expect when jumping into water), but after a while your body turns numb and you forget about the cold anyway because of the animals. The sea lions are inquisitive and immediately came to say hello. There is an official no touching policy in the Galapagos. This means that we spent a great deal of time swimming away from the sea lions so as not to accidentally touch them. I failed. I think on no less than three occasions I simply could not swim fast enough to get away from the sea lions. It is a bizarre situation when you have to try and stop the animals interacting with people so as to preserve their natural behaviours and habitat. But I will never forget coming nose to nose with a sea lion. Or snorkelling along following a parrot fish, and turning around to point it out to a fellow traveller who I thought was beside me and instead finding a sea lion cruising along with me. It took my breath away. And then I managed to breathe in sea water through my snorkel and freaked out the sea lion when I had a coughing fit.

We hiked up ancient volcanoes (nothing like the jungle people there was a path), crossed islands to secluded white sand beaches and took stunning photographs of these amazing islands. There were simply too many amazing things to take pictures of them all. For example, one afternoon I was sitting on a beach, having just been less than half a metre away from white tipped sharks and enjoying the shade when three finches landed on me: one on each shoulder and one on my knee. I have never been anywhere where little tiny birds feel so unthreatened that they land right on peoples shoulders. What was more amazing was each of them was from a different sub-species of Finch. Our local guide used this as an opportunity to talk about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The Finches hung around long enough for him to explain their similarities and differences before they flew off to entertain another tourist.

We ventured to two of the outlying islands – Floreana and Bartholomew Islands. Both of which were a 4 hour boat ride away. 4 hours in open sea in a boat that isn’t as stable as the Scholar Ship had a few people looking a bit green. But it did mean that we saw more sea lions, whales and dolphins. One the islands we explored lava tubes, pirate caves, black sand beaches and yet more snorkelling sites. I can also add a penguin (yep that’s right, a single solitary penguin in the Northern Hemisphere) to the list of animals we saw. There is a small colony that lives on Bartholomew Island. The rest of them must have been off having a party somewhere because we only saw one lonely soul. I will have to go searching for them next time I am there.

Another highlight was seeing the giant Galapagos Tortoises in the wild. We saw tortoises between the ages of about 70 and 150. They were huge. They were also slow and again we were allowed to take a limited amount of pictures with them (the pictures from the Scholar Ship are so varied and diverse!). I hope to have some of the photos up on facebook shortly.

All too soon our time in the Galapagos was over. It was time to return to the ship for our last day in Guayaquil (where we did the usual shopping we do on the last day in port) then at 4 pm we cast off the lines and headed back out to sea.

As I write to you now, we are heading back to the Galapagos Islands to evacuate a sick student. I probably won’t be able to see land but I am hoping for a few last glimpses of whales before we head back out to open sea.

Next stop is Tahiti, but first we have 10 more days of ocean crossing. So it’s back to classes and those assignments that I have been putting off.

I miss having a pantry

2007-10-10T08:39:00.001+10:00

So I am having a grumpy day today, but I miss having a pantry with food in it which I can eat whenever I want. I miss having chocolate biscuits. I miss being allowed to call biscuits: biscuits and having people around me understanding what on earth I am talking about. I miss being able to speak whole sentences without people asking me to clarify things or laughing at me because of my 'funny' English. I miss Laksa and I miss my Mum's cooking.

Yep that's right people… It took 42 days, but I have Cabin Fever. It was precipitated by about 30 Study Abroad Advisers from the America's getting on the ship. There is an odd vibe on the ship with these new people being here. No one is quite sure how we are supposed to treat them. And they keep taking pictures of us like we are animals in a zoo. Ok, but for all my whinging (yet another word that people don't understand), I am still having a great time here. I might be less of a grumble-bum with rice crackers and French onion dip, but my time in the Jungle has only made me appreciate this opportunity even more.

Today we crossed the Equator. We attempted (and failed) to spread a rumour that you have to shave your heads when you cross the Equator (would have been funny if people had listened to us, but sadly the Aussies already have a bad rep for stuff like this). So instead I disgusted everybody at breakfast by eating Vegemite on toast. Always nice to remind them that Aussies are a little bit different to the rest of the world.

Tonight, we are hopefully (if the clouds magically disappear) star gazing in the southern hemisphere for the first time on the voyage (and for the first time ever for some people). The Captain has agreed to turn off all non-navigational lights on the ship. However the weather is not playing along and we have had our cloudiest day yet! Should the clouds prevent our first southern hemisphere night sky from coming through the girls are planning on taking over the theatre here and showing episodes of Gilmore Girls with microwave popcorn (providing we can locate a microwave somewhere).

Well it's off to class for me!

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Me Jane, You Tarzan

2007-10-07T23:48:00.001+10:00

The woman who loves her chai lattes and high heels, who has two pet hates: dirt and bugs has just returned from 5 days in the Panamanian tropical rainforest – and LOVED it! My wonderful learning circle – conflict studies (who have continued to be the envy of the ship with our amazing academic field programmes) have just spent 5 days learning from indigenous communities and government offices about the land conflicts in Panama.

The land here is one of the most beautiful and diverse environments that I have seen. In such a small country it has sophisticated towns, open plains, small villages, amazing beaches and about 3 different types of jungle (dry forest, wet forest and REALLY wet forest). To meet with these communities we travelled by bus, dug out canoe, boat, 4 wheel drive trucks, cattle trucks and trekked up mountains, down mountains, and back up really steep mountains. Every grain of dirt and every bug bite (and believe me, there were many of both) were well worth the insight we gained into what it means to try and preserve an indigenous culture in this ever globalising world.

Panama is a country that last year recorded an 8% growth in GDP. This former banana republic appears to have turned the corner and become a more stable developing democratic country. At a glance from the outside, the country looks rosy. However, like many places in the world, when you remove the rose coloured glasses and take a look at the social fabric of the country, you begin to see cracks in the framework. The cracks all centre on indigenous issues. Sadly for the indigenous communities of Panama, there are many different types of conflict that are making it hard for them to preserve their own unique cultural heritage. We focused on Panama's Hydro-electric schemes and exclusively looked at the north-west portion of the country. However, I know that the other learning circles travelled to various parts of Panama and found similar issues to us.

The problem for the indigenous community is deep. Essentially, like the Australian Aboriginals before them, the Government of Panama does not recognise their land rights. In fact it appears not to recognise their indigenous status at all. The government following the example of other globalised economies has been handing out tracks of land (that has previously been used by the indigenous communities) to private companies for the development of hydro-electric plants. These hydro-electric plants will service not only Panama, but all of Central America. Bringing money into Panama, business to Central America and reducing the regions reliance on coal. The development of Panama's cities is already apparent with the standard of living approaching that of the developed world. Education levels amongst the urbanised sections of society are high, with many young adults completing a college education in the United States. The boom in Panama's economy has certainly benefited the average Panamanian.

However, like most things in this world, where there is a winner, there is most often a loser. Unfortunately, the loser in this system has been the indigenous peoples of Panama. While the urban poor have gained access to services, the indigenous communities appear to be going backwards. For example, despite official government policy that require universal education to grade nine, indigenous communities rarely have access to schools beyond grade six unless they chose to send away their children. Something that is unthinkable in these close kinship groups. Yet, government education has replaced the traditional indigenous education which generations before these children received. So the children of the indigenous tribes are no longer learning about their environment, culture and history (and therefore cannot participate fully in their traditional society) but are also not equipped with the tools to exist in the 'new' Panama.

To add to social issues such as education, the Hydro projects are changing the physical environment. Trails that have been used for generations to gather food and communicate with other groups around them are being affected by diverted rivers, and the changes in the environment from the dams are changing the biosphere. The habitat of animals is shrinking. Land is physically being taken from them and flooded or made inaccessible. Diseases are being introduced and global warming is changing weather patterns. Basically, the Hydro projects are making a hard life for the indigenous community even harsher.

To me, this constitutes a breach of these peoples cultural and land rights. To me, this is a contemporary example of human rights abuses. It is subtle cultural genocide (and I know that is a controversial statement). You have to think about it, but these people are slowly being pushed off their land by globalised government policies. In the government's defence, they are trying to do what they think is best for the greater population, but in the process, indigenous communities are losing part of the country's history. Surely there has to be a compromise that allows both parties to create the best life they can for their children.

And these indigenous communities are truly amazing. Despite the hard life they live they are hospitable, open and warm people. We were always met with smiles and good food. The children were encouraged to meet with us and often football and Polaroid pictures were exchanged. Yet, there is an undercurrent by the elders in the community of anger, fear and the feeling of disempowerment. They are fed a series of miscommunications. The Hydro companies are making deals with people under the table and are setting families against each other. The industry appears to be unregulated and little attempt is made to truly consult with the communities and go about development in a culturally sensitive manner.

As a western that is privileged in my own society I find it shocking that cultural genocide could happen under the noses of educated elites. I find it even more shocking to think about the history of my own country and to realise that the same thing was done to my own indigenous community only a generation or two ago. I realise that the life I lead today is due to the suffering of the indigenous communities before me. And there in lies the heart of this issue. I enjoy developed world standards because someone else was disposed of their land and then that land was developed without them bearing the benefits. I value the life that I lead and would hate to live any other way. But how do you reconcile that with the loss felt by indigenous communities? And how do you rectify that wrong? How do you allow them to live their traditional life, guarantee their children education and preserve their heritage all while developing the economy, providing for your urbanised citizens and offering opportunities to the whole community? How do I, as a passionate supporter of human rights reconcile my own contradictions?

Again, I write this blog and find more questions than solutions.

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I am at anchor in the Panama Canal

2007-10-02T01:25:00.001+10:00

Update: I am currently sitting in the middle of the Panama Canal at anchor. Just thought you would all like to know!

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The Plan

2007-10-01T00:48:00.001+10:00

Tomorrow we will be travelling through the panama canal. We have no idea what time we will actually go through because you have to cue up and wait your turn. So basically if there is nobody there I think we will start our journey at about 8 am. Otherwise I am not certain. What I do know is that once we start it will take the majority of the day to go through the various parts of the canal.
For thos who are interested there is a live webcam at www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html I will try and post a message on this blog when we start going through the canal.
When I get to Panama I will be doing another Academic Field Programme. This one looks great just like Lisbon. I will be study development in indigenous communities. No lectures on this AFP, we are meeting people affected by tourism, development of the canal and a couple of other issues. I will be meeting with the Veraguas, Naso, Ngabe and Charco La Pava communities. Our themes for this AFP are the conflict between urban development and natura welath, affect of hydroelectricity plants on traditional life, preservation of indigenous communities and generally the conflicts faced by indigenous communities. It looks like we will be crisscrossing the country starting in Santiago. Hopefully I will have fantastic stories of adventures for you all when I return on Saturday.
Also, we are told that our internet connection will finally be fixed by the time we leave Panama and I will be able to put up a few photos.
Take care until then!
xx Caitlin

P.S. Can anyone tell me if Howard has got around to calling the election yet?

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Political Triage

2007-09-28T22:11:00.001+10:00

On the Scholar Ship every green day (about every second or third day at sea) I take a class called global issues. The class is designed to show us how complicated the world is. It has also turned into a class where we debate our own perspectives on issues and very rarely come up with solutions. In true Scholar Ship style the debates often continue beyond the classroom walls. I have been pondering on one of my recent classes for a couple of days now and I am still unable to come up with a solution that feels right. So what is this debate all about? Well recognising that there are hundreds of global issues that require the international community’s attention, should we prioritise some problems over others? If we do decide to prioritise, how do we decide which issues should get our attention and resources? In essence, should we engage practices of political (or possibly economic) triage to determine which of the myriad of problems in the world get our attention?

So, it turns out that a group of economist sat down a couple of years ago and decided that you should only tackle the problems in the world that you can solve most effectively and economically. The rest should be ignored. They ranked the 4 most solvable problems and decided that the international community should be focusing on HIV/Aids prevention (not treatment or cure), malnutrition, free trade and the prevention of malaria. Many in our class were shocked that climate change was lacking from this list. I was slightly concerned that universal education was not included. Ultimately the list is unimportant though. The real issue is what should be the process for determining which problems get our attention.

You can’t shy away from the real issues in this place. At home, I think it would be very easy to fall in with ‘the party line’ and talk about how climate change or education should be our first priority. But here, it’s next to impossible to stand up and say that we need a carbon emissions trading scheme when sitting next to you is a Chinese student, whose growing standard of living is thanks to environmental practices which would not be accepted in the developed world. Similarly it is impossible to say that every child should be educated, when African students remind you that an education is a luxury if there are no jobs to be found once education is complete. And also international theories of realism and liberalism suddenly seem incomplete when the world is literally sitting in your classroom. It’s all very good and well to analyse State practice and theorise that States only act in their own interest. But here, that is simply not good enough.

It really makes you stop and question things.

We, as the young people who will inherit this earth (who are in the process of taking over leadership), need to demand more of the international community. Many of us from Australia and the developed world have had the luxury of travelling. Some of us have seen what poverty and a lack of resources can do to a country. It is up to us to remind the few who represent our interest that there are higher ideals that need to be upheld for the good of all.

Call me idealistic, but the longer I stay on this floating global village, the more that I am convinced that our future lies in cooperation and questioning the status quo. The other options seem selfish, insular and unfair. So I haven’t yet answered the question of how we prioritise global issues, but I certainly believe that it is more than just working out what is easiest or economically viable.

Pez Tastes Different in Portugal

2007-09-25T03:19:00.001+10:00

Ok, so this is a silly concept, but I just thought I would throw it out there… Pez tastes different in Portugal (well actually I am eating it mid way across the Atlantic, so I guess it tastes different on the Atlantic Ocean). The flavours are the same, the packaging is the same. Except that it is in Portuguese… And they are called bonbons, but other than that, it all looks like Pez. Then you eat it, and it’s just not quite right. And they kind of crumble in your mouth

Today we were arguing in class about globalisation and how it is destroying local customs because it assimilates products and experiences. But, if products that are globalised taste different in different countries, is that really globalisation? Is some other theory at play here?

Let that be the thought of the week, I will be interested in your responses.

Lisbon Wrap Up

2007-09-24T20:55:00.001+10:00

Well I have realised that I have been deficient in wrapping up my experiences in Lisbon. Other than meeting with revolutionaries and seeing the Dalai Lama, I also had some other amazing experiences. I met with a European Parliamentarian, visited the church monasteries at Tomar and Batalha, and attended lectures on the international relations of Portugal after the great ‘maritime adventures’ (some also call it the colonisation of a large section of the world), I visited refugee and immigrant service centres, hostels and the equivalent of legal aid. One of my favourite lectures was on international law and the rights of refugees from the Portuguese perspective (oh I am so predictable). Then on my last day in Portugal I went to the most preserved walled city in Portugal (Obidos), a series of caves and a glass blowing factory. So pretty much I had a whirlwind tour of Lisbon and the surrounds.

It was particularly interesting to hear across all the lectures and site visits the Portuguese perspective on their colonisation activities. Perhaps it was my experience of growing up in a country that was colonised and being taught about how this affected the indigenous population, but there was something about the great pride in their ‘discoveries’ that kind of set me on guard. At no time in any of my lectures or visits did anyone mention the word colonisation. The Portuguese activities were coined as ‘maritime adventures’ or ‘discoveries’. They talked of integrating their new found lands into the Portuguese system. The International Law lecturer also spoke of how they liberated their colonies such as East Timor upon the urging of the local people. He failed to mention however, that four days after their ‘liberation’, they did nothing to prevent the Indonesian’s from invading and occupying the territory. So that aspect of my time in Portugal was quite challenging for me. Even the immigration officers who work with Brazilian migrants don’t acknowledge that they colonised Brazil. I think this is an example of how our history is modelled into the best light and we become blinded by our own version of it.

Despite this the Portuguese people were generally friendly (though they still discriminate horribly against people with dark skin, as some of my fellow passengers discovered). When you got them on a good day they would go out of their way to understand our broken Portuguese, help us with directions and point us in the right direction of shops we were looking for. I think it would be unfair to judge the general Portuguese population by the administration’s attitude to colonisation, but it is certainly something that I hope they come to terms with soon!

I also have an interesting story for the Dan Brown fans among us. We visited the only known church of the Knights Templar not to be raided – the Order of Christ’s Church at Tomar. Those up on Dan Brown’s novel might question this as it was never mentioned in his work. But, it turns out that after the Templar’s were disbanded by the Catholic Church, the Portuguese King at the time (whose name alludes me at present), founded the Order of Christ. Basically all the money and artefacts owned by the Templar’s was transferred to this new order. The Order of Christ then built a church (in the Templar’s style) at Tomar. So the conspiracy theorists amongst you can now speculate how this fits onto the story/myth (depending on your perspective) of the Templar’s and the Holy Grail. All I know was that it was a very cool church that has been well preserved. It was fortified to the hilt, so they must have thought that somebody would come looking for them! Do what you wish with that piece of information!

For those of you who have not yet made it to Portugal, I highly recommend it! The city of Lisbon has LOTS of hills, so be prepared, but it is also shabby chic and has beautifully preserved cities close to it to explore. I have never been to Spain, but those on the trip who had said it was kind of like Spain except not quite so clean. Your Euro also goes further in Portugal. After Athens, Lisbon was cheap! Though I have completely stopped calculating things in Aussie Dollars, because that just starts to depress you! And it is going to get even worse, because next stop is Panama, where their national currency, though it goes by another name, is US Dollars.

So I will leave you with thoughts of colonisation and Portugal as I go off to breakfast this morning.

xx CVB

Middle of Nothing

2007-09-22T19:53:00.001+10:00

Good Morning All!

I come to you today from 31”50.78’N, 026”03.97’W. Where is that you may ask? Well pretty much in the middle of nowhere, roughly a third of the way between Europe and the Caribbean (which I am told is currently developing some nice storm systems for when I pass that way). Yes that is right people, I have found the navigation channel on my television. Actually I finally turned on my television for the first time to see if I can find some BBC news (I could, even in the middle of nowhere), because I am sick of not knowing what is going on in the outside world.

This TV is a fantastic invention. The navigation page is even better. I can now impart all sorts of pointless facts upon you all. Such as that we have travelled a total of 2943 NM since leaving Athens, or that the sun will set at our current position at 19:41. That piece of information is particularly pointless, as I know that I am travelling at a pace of 15 knots on a course of 248º, so the chances of me being right in this spot at 19:41 is highly unlikely. I can also impart such fascinating details as the level of dissolved oxygen in the water (240.23), its salinity (36.46), temperature (23.963) and current depth (4800 m). I still however, have been unable to find out how Australia is going in the inaugural Twenty20 Cup. I am guessing that means that England isn’t going very well or else the BBC would be telling me all about their wonderful victories.

So life at sea continues. I am on my third day of a 12 days stretch across a large expanse of blue. The prospect of spending 9 more days at sea is thrilling (no, actually it is that wasn’t meant to sound sarcastic). I am back in class and doing all those things that normal uni students do like reading, sitting in the sun, falling asleep in the sun – you know the deal. The only component of uni life that is missing is that I cannot consume any alcohol unless I want to take out a loan. Beer here costs an amazing $3 (that is US by the way). And my one attempt to drink wine was similar to drinking green cordial – so incredibly sweet that I may as well stick with the cordial that they are passing off as orange juice. But, that is actually a good thing because people have stopped drinking alcohol and have started actually talking.

Amazing stories are starting to surface from our community here. I have had vastly interesting conversations with students from Iran, Gahanna, China and migrant people living between cultures. My classes are interesting and I am finally finding the debates that I always craved at uni but never seemed to find. Because people here have had such diverse upbringings, they bring with them to class assumptions and traditions that we are starting to unpack. My favourite debate so far is whether democracy is actually a peaceful force in international society. While Americans (and other countries) fiercely defend the democratic ideals that has seen them invade foreign countries, students from other Nations, particularly African nations, have started to speak up and ask them to question their ideas. It is truly amazing to witness. And I am privileged to be sitting in such a diverse learning classroom.

After Portugal, student societies have also gone crazy. We now have language classes, dance classes of every flavour, social justice projects, party planners and people who have started playing what looks like a grown up version of hide and seek around the ship and that is just to name a few. Group discussions have started at meals and it all seems a bit Utopia doesn’t it! We have been warned however that Cabin Fever will probably set in before we make it to the Panama Canal.

So there is nothing of actual substance in this post, but it is also a Saturday and I still have to go to class (so maybe that is why I still haven’t made it to breakfast and it is almost 9:30 am). So till my next post, I hope you are all well! Oh and I finally did get some news about the Twenty20 Cup. It seems that quite a few of the Aussies are injured. I still don’t know how they are going in the tournament, but I am guessing that since the report was tinged with a sense of glee that we must have been doing ok before the injuries.

Watch the news for me!

- Caitlin

Awe Inspiring Lisbon

2007-09-18T09:30:00.000+10:00

Good evening all,

I am attempting to post this via email so we will see how successful I am with this!

I have now been in Lisbon for 5 days and this city is great. If any of you are on facebook a small selection of my photos have been posted there for everyone to take a look at.

Since we have been here I have done so many amazing things. Even just exploring the city was great, but we have also been meeting with amazing academics and leaders from all over Portugal at the University of Lisbon. It is inspiration central and I am enjoying bouncing my ideas about development and NGO’s off people who know far, far more about the topic than I do!

In a string of mind blowing activities, there are two events which I feel compelled to share with you all for how rare and amazing they were.

The first took place with the University of Lisbon on our first day of our academic field programme (which I think was Friday but I cannot be certain as I am on ship time and can only tell whether today is a blue day, green day or rest day – I no longer conceptualise the 7 days of the week). Anyway, on our first day at Lisbon University we met with every surviving member of the leadership team that helped bring about the revolution in Lisbon which unseated the dictator Salazar from power.

This guy Salazar sounded like a total maniac who probably thought that Hitler’s take on the world was on the right track. Anyway, the students of Lisbon University (and all over the country) started to get fed up with the guy. Despite censorship and his harsh policies radio stations, newspapers and music performances started popping up all over the city. Many of the journalists and musicians were imprisoned and sent to political ‘re-education’ camps (read: concentration camps) for their actions.

Despite this, the students of the city continued to meet, and started writing the most beautiful music about freedom and dreams. The music was highly metaphorical in an attempt to try and dodge the censorship laws. The students also met and held concerts where people would come quickly to churches to hear one or two songs.

Anyway, I met with 5 guys who were involved. One evening they were all at one of these impromptu events where they played a song called the philosopher’s stone, which is hauntingly beautiful. By this time every young person in Lisbon and beyond knew the lyrics to these songs from the illegal radios, concerts and contra-band tapes of the songs. It turns out that in the crowd were military general’s who were planning to overthrow the government. They recognised that the people identified with this beautiful song and decided that when they marched into the square of Lisbon, the army would sing this song.

In the end, the revolution happened just 2 days after this concert, and it wasn’t just the army that marched into the square to take power, but also the students and about 1 million people.

The most amazing thing about this is there were pictures from the concert, and the revolution itself which these men showed and talked about them. They also played us an original recording of the beautiful song and explained what the lyrics meant.

Then in an amazing event, two of the men (now probably in their 70’s) pulled out guitars and started playing. The feeling in the room was electric.

People in the halls of the university who were old enough to remember the revolution and knew these songs started pouring into our little classroom singing this beautiful song. By the end of it, our small group of only about 20 or so was surrounded by about 40 beautiful voices swelling together to sing what has to be one of the most haunting pieces of music I have ever heard in my life.

I have some footage of them singing on my lovely new camera. The file is way too large to load on this bad internet connection, but hopefully when I get home some of you would like to hear it. It really was AMAZING! It really made you feel the power of what individuals can achieve when they work together and don’t give up their dreams. I could go on for ages and ages about these old wise men. I have a journal filled with their suggestions for leading a worthwhile life and I really hope that I get the chance to talk about it with some of you when I make it home after this journey.

And that was just the beginning of Lisbon.

On Sunday afternoon, me and a mere 35,000 other people heard the Dalai Lama speak in the Atlantis Convention Centre here in Lisbon. This was a similarly powerful event. Prior to us ‘meeting’ his holiness, we had a briefing with a Portuguese academic who explained about Tibet, Buddhism and went through many ideas about non-violence that I am already familiar with. Then we set out to see the man in person.

The Dalai Lama is a short man who has Yodda-esq qualities about him. He looks cute and sweet, and part of you wants to pick up the little thing and take him home to keep him safe. Then he opens his mouth and you realise just how learned and well respected he is. Though the site of this tiny little man sitting in the lotus position on a couch that literally dwarfed him was so funny and I will keep it inside my head always!

He would speak in English for about 5 or 10 minutes and then a Portuguese translator (who must be brilliant to get this job) would translate what he said into Portuguese. During the translation time the Dalai Lama would unfold his legs and because he is so little they jut out in front of him like a little kid sitting on a chair that is too big for them. He would rotate his ankles, shade his eyes and look out into the crowd. Wave at people and have quick chats to the lucky people sitting in the front row. This display of humanity in itself was inspiring, even without his profound words.

He spoke about human beings capacity to love and the importance of non-biased compassion in our globalised world. Even though he is the head of the Buddhist religion, he didn’t once refer to the practices of his religion, and instead talked about the need for the entire world to appreciate the beautiful and similar components of all religions of the world. He talked about the importance of using non-violent principles to solve all levels of conflict and the power that a smile and a conversation can have when attempting to solve your world’s and THE world’s problems. To solve your own problems and practice self-disarmourment before you tried to disarm the world. From such a tiny cute man (with the most beautiful laugh I have ever heard), came constant words of wisdom worthy of any hallmark greeting card.

Despite the practices of China, he like Nelson Mandela and all my hero’s, spoke with compassion, concern and great wisdom about all the world’s people. What made his message even more powerful was the certainty that the crowd had that he actually practices everything he preaches.

My head is spinning with the things that I am experiencing here in Lisbon. Words can simply not describe how amazing this journey is. I can not wait to see what my other ports and the experts on board have in stall for us. All I know is that not a day goes by without something wonderful or challenging happening. I am trying to soak up every minute of this so that I can replay it all with you when I get back to Sydney at Christmas.

I now have two days left in Lisbon before we head back out to sea to cross the Atlantic on our way to Panama. I am sure that amazing discoveries still await me here in Lisbon before then.

Thank you again for your lovely emails, I think I have cleared the backlog and look forward to your further comments about my adventure.

Missing you all (yes that is possible despite this adventure),

xxx Caitlin

Rocking & Rolling all the way to Spain

2007-09-12T00:16:00.000+10:00

Today’s scenery is A LOT of water. At this point that is all that I can see! We are currently heading across the current of the Mediterranean to drop two students with an unidentified sickness off at Spain. We are assuming that they have bad sea sickness and are severely dehydrated. It’s making for a nice ride for the rest of us. The swell isn’t that bad (maybe 2 or 3 metres), but because we are cutting across the waves it makes it feel a bit worse than it would normally.

As this is probably our biggest seas yet it has taken a bit of adjusting. We have noticed a couple of things that need fixing on the ship. Such as the possessed white boards which have taken to attempting Kamikaze leaps across the classrooms to knock out students. I hope that whoever ordered free standing whiteboards was drunk at the time of placing the order because that is really the only excuse I can come up with for ordering free standing whiteboards (with wheels) when we were quite plainly going to be on a moving vessel. Though it has been entertaining to be walking around the ship watching whole classrooms of students ducking for cover from whiteboards, pens and dusters fly at them from across the room.

I also welcome the return to ‘ship walking’. For those who are inexperienced in the practice of ship walking, the phenomenon can easily be witnessed on land – find a pub at about 3 am and watch the patrons walk down the street after they have been kicked out for excessive alcohol consumption. The same thing happens here (except minus the beer of course). It’s also a bonding experience. Once you have bashed into someone in the corridors it’s always polite to ask them how they are and check how they are going today.

Aside from the excitement of landing in people’s laps in the restaurant or watching whiteboards sail down the corridors, we are all preparing for our first official stop in port. For those of you who have not sat through my continual discussions of the ship, in three of the ports we visit I will complete a compulsory academic field programme. My assigned ports are Lisbon, Balboa and Sydney. So that means that when I get to Lisbon I will spend 5 of my 7 days in port studying conflict studies. For each port we have different activities planned. Mine in Lisbon is FANTASTIC!

In Lisbon I will be doing all sorts of really cool stuff, including attending various lectures at the University of Lisbon on the European Union, Cartography, meeting with the resistance movement leadership, visiting some of the sites and main churches of the Knights Templar with an expert in Templar history, and meeting with experts on maritime history and human rights. Meeting with the resistance movement should be interesting because I am not entirely certain who they are or what their goals are. In fact this is one area that I am completely ignorant of. I had no idea there was a resistance movement in Portugal. So I am looking forward to finding out what they are fighting (are they even fighting?) for. So I will genuinely learn something from this learning circle.

Though the trump card is that I will be meeting (along with several hundred other people most likely) the Dalai Lama. We were not expecting this, so that is kind of amazing really. In fact, death stare have started to emanate from the rest of the student body who seem to be trying to become conflict studies students so that they can also join us. If nothing else I think the Dalai Lama would be proud of the discussion that he has provoked on the ship about culture and religion. I had an interesting discussion with on the faculty members here about what the Dalai Lama actually represents. I disagree with his position (though I respect his arguments very much) but it was very interesting to speak with him. I put the Dalai Lama in the category of non-violent revolutionaries which includes some of my hero’s like Nelson Mandela. I will have to report back afterwards on how the actual audience with the Dalai Lama goes!

Well not much else to report yet. If you are on facebook I have loaded some pictures of the Acropolis, my room and general pictures of the ship. Just to load those photos to over an hour and a half (the joys of old style internet – I have never appreciated even dial up internet more than I do on this ship). Eventually, hopefully I will be able to find an internet café in a port at some point and load those pictures onto my blog. In the meantime, don’t forget to send me emails with what you are up to!

Till my next update,

Caitlin

9 September - Unplanned Stop in Sardinia

2007-09-09T18:06:00.000+10:00

Good Morning everyone, I come to you live off the coast of Sardinia as our first Scholar Ship Student is medically evacuated (it was going to happen eventually). We are told that they should be joining us back in Portugal (or possibly this afternoon). So I am temporarily enjoying the sites of land much closer than we have seen before.

Yesterday we could see (vaguely in the distance) the coast of North Africa. I believe (though I stand to be corrected) that we sailed past Tunisia and Algeria. We were just approaching the border of Algeria and Morocco when one of the students had to be landed, so off we set for Sardinia. Again, I am sitting on the deck and can report beautiful sunshine. We are too far off land for me to tell you anything specific about Sardinia (other than it does not have Athens smog haze), but it looks green and hilly.

So how is life going on the ship? Pretty good actually. We started class yesterday which meant no more orientation (yay!). Yesterday both my classes were taught by Macquarie University Professors. It was strange to see them in this context, but I am excited to start my readings (I am a nerd – I have acknowledged this fact).

Even though we are here for classes, what I have really enjoyed is sitting around and chatting with the other students here. Last night a group of us were up to 1 am talking about anything and everything. Mainly about the different cultural practices that people are starting to notice.

My normal routine though is that I wake up at about 8 am (so nice not to get up early for work). Breakfast is on the Lido deck out in the sun. Today we had pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausages, toast and the usual cereal and fruit. Then the earliest I have classes is 12:40 (or today 4:20 pm). So, yesterday I sat around the pool and read up on the history of Portugal. And today, I am sitting on the starboard side of the ship in the shade (its too hot today) writing my blog. Later I will start my readings. Girls, I have a textbook that is about the size of our constitutional textbook from last year (for everyone else, think two bricks stacked on top of each other). The difference with this book is that the content is actually interesting.

Lunch is from 12 pm until 1:30 pm. We normally have it in the coral restaurant. This means a buffet but each table has waiter service. So the waiters take your tray, pull out your chairs, fill your glasses with water, we eat with silver cutlery and they waiters clear our plates after we eat. Dinner is the same. I can’t believe the level of service that we are receiving considering that we are students! Housekeeping also comes to our room daily. They clean the bathrooms, vacuum the rooms, change the towels twice a week and the sheets once a week. I am going to come home a (more) pampered soul.

The crew is constantly cleaning the ship - including when they were vacuuming our corridor at 1:30 am. Hopefully that practice will die down a bit.

[We are moving again, the TSS Student must be meeting us in Portugal]

Tomorrow we have our Port Orientation with Kim (a Kiwi) which I imagine will be interesting. They have bought along some experts in Portuguese History, so I am looking forward to hearing them brief us.
So now, before my battery goes flat, I will post this blog then possibly head off to the student centre to start my readings for the day.

Hope you are all well. Thanks for the emails! Even if I haven’t replied, I have enjoyed reading them and catching up on the going ons at home – please keep them coming!
Xxx Caitlin B

7 September 2007 - Orientation Fatigue

2007-09-08T05:34:00.000+10:00

Today I am sitting on the deck as I type this blog. It is kind of mind blowing this concept of international cruising. Three days ago we were in sight of Greece, then yesterday we sailed off into the middle of nowhere and couldn’t see land at all. Then today we can now see Sicily off our starboard bow.

We have spent yesterday and today in orientation for almost all aspects of the ship. It is a little bit like a high school camp and today I drew the line at chanting along like a cheerleader with one of the international residential Counsellors who, though she had the very best of intentions, seems to have forgotten that the vast majority of us are adults. But not to worry.

I think two days of sitting down and doing role plays and listening to people ask the same questions over and over has started to eat away at my brain.

We met with our Professors (yes, we have morphed into mini-Americans), and thankfully they are not quite so ‘Suzie High school’. Ironically, I have two Macquarie University academics teaching my subjects. But my subjects sound very interesting, and being the nerd that I am, I can’t wait to start my reading.

My books are full of the theory on conflict and dispute management. I have assignments on the congress of Vienna, the Oslo Accords and all sorts of interesting stuff like that.

I finally have my timetable for this experience and in a strike of brilliance (unlike last semester) I don’t have a single class starting before lunch time. Tomorrow (which is a blue day) my first class starts at 12:40 pm. And on Sunday (which is a green day), my first class doesn’t start until 4:20 pm. So, no early mornings for me! It also means that I will have a chance to use the ‘library’ (said in inverted commas because there are only 400 books in it) without the other students. Tomorrow we start the ships routine, where we alternate between blue and green days and every four days we have a day off.

When we left port there was a problem with our satellite connection and we have had no internet, no phones and no way to contact the outside world. Which was kind of freaky when we were in the middle of nowhere, but I am assuming that the crew had someway to contact the outside world.

Due to the VERY, VERY slow internet that is being beamed to the rest of the world from satellites, I am unable to post pictures. But hopefully this will change soon. I do however fantastic photos of the acropolis, Delphi, the boat and my room ready to go should the internet suddenly get faster than it’s current snails pace.

5 September 2007 - Sailing off the Coast of Greece

2007-09-08T05:33:00.001+10:00

I am officially at sea! After 18 months of waiting for this day, I am finally at sea with a group of 200 students from 50 nations from around the world. I can’t believe that I am actually finally here.

As I write this blog while I am looking out at the beautiful Mediterranean. It is an incredible blue colour, and is currently rocking along at a nice 1 metre swell. It has turned some people green already but for once I am surviving without a single tinge of sea sickness.

We spent yesterday unpacking and completing all the official speeches and welcomes. Being the inaugural voyage there are lots of people who want to tell us how special this experience is going to be for us. Though yesterday, probably the most profound ceremony was when all the students stood in a giant circle and each of the nations were introduced and as each nation’s representatives stepped into the circle, the rest of the group clapped and cheered. It was fantastic firstly to see how diverse our community is and secondly to be welcomed to the group.

After all the official-dom we finally had some informal time to meet with everyone here. So far everyone that I have spoken with has a fantastic story about what they do at home, where they are going and what they hope to achieve in the world. At the moment, it seems like there is a sea of people, but I hope to get to know people a bit better. Classes start on Saturday so I am sure friendships will be made shortly. Not much else to report regarding the people.

More on our lovely transportation here - our boat is a fantastic 1960’s cruise liner which has enough wood panelling to build another boat from the interior. It has a glamorous air about it with lots of photos of the various incarnations of the ship in ports from all over the world. There is also a full model of the ship in the ‘star light lounge’ which is kind of cool.

The rooms are all quite large (photos coming), though I am glad that I decided to pay some extra money for a porthole though, because living without natural light for the next four months would have given me a severe case of cabin fever.

Not much else is really going on at the moment, we have orientation for the next two days and then the real experience begins.

More to come…

Cesky Krumlov on a Friday

2007-09-08T05:31:00.000+10:00

Cath and I are very adventurous. Having read through tourist information and discovering that a trip to the historic town of Cesky Krumlov would set us back almost 2000 Kv (or about AUD $130). We decided to jump on a local bus and head for the beautiful city. So off we set across town at an un-toursity hour. So early that coffee and breakfast could not be bought for any price in this tourist city.

After eventually locating the bus rank, a happy accident found us an express bus to Cesky for a mere 180 Kv ($12). The bus ride was particularly interesting as we got a chance to see some of the Czech countryside which is green and open. The towns are a bit shabbier than Prague, but all of them have amazing churches and town halls which make our country towns look dusty and slightly insignificant.

The trip to Cesky took about two and a half hours and Cath and I talked constantly the entire way there. We were met by amazing views it is such a fairytale town!

The tours are inconveniently timed in this town (10:30 and we arrived in the old town by about 11). So we wandered around town and found a fantastic little restaurant overlooking the town where we ate semi-traditional Czech meals (there is only so much potato dumplings you can eat) overlooking a beautiful city. $16 Aussie dollars (which included a rather large tip for our fantastic waitress) bought up chicken, amazing potato’s salad, milkshakes, and seriously good pancakes with fruit.

Cath comes to Prague

2007-09-08T05:29:00.000+10:00

The much anticipated arrival of Cath occurred at about midnight on Thursday night. After chatting a mile a minute we finally went to bed at about 2 am with plans to take an extended walking tour the next day.

At 11 we met our guide in the old town square (which is literally a one minute walk from our apartment). Our tour included the old town, the Jewish quarter, a river cruise on the Valta, a traditional 3 course Czech meal, a tour of the Lesser Town and the Castle complex. This was ambitious and took us about 6 hours to complete.

The photos are going to speak for themselves. This is an amazingly beautiful city. Its history is also fascinating. I am not confident that I have got all the details correct (and in any case it’s in the history books), so I won’t repeat it here. But lets just say that if you are reading this blog and have not yet made it to Prague, you need to book yourself a plane ticket pronto!

I particularly liked the contrast between the Lesser Town and the Jewish Quarter. Like in many other cities of Europe the Jewish population of Prague suffered extreme discrimination even before the time that Prague was annexed by the Nazi’s. Much of the Jewish Quarter has been rebuilt, but the 5 synagogues and Cemetery remain in almost original condition. A symbol of the suffering by the Jewish people is probably the Cemetery, where due to a lack of available land, bodies were buried without coffins one on top of another. In some places they believe that the bodies are buried 12 or even 15 people deep. Families were rarely buried together and what results is an amazing clutter of tombstones of completely unconnected people. The Jewish population control entry to the museums and cemeteries, and unfortunately I have not yet had the time to go on one of their tours and have only chanced a look at the cemetery from its surrounding fences. But just that sight gives you an idea of how the Jewish community were down trodden in Prague.

In contrast to the dark and drab architecture of the Jewish Quarter the Lesser Town (where we went to after lunch), feels vibrant and colourful. Its buildings are literally brighter colours and there are more restaurants and café’s. The Lesser Town leads to the Castle, which is huge! I particularly liked that the President’s Offices are contained in this historic part of Prague. I think it is important that he is reminded of the history of his country every day that he goes to work. You can walk all the way up to the door of his offices without any security barriers or guards. I am assuming that inside the doors is a different story, but you could theoretically pass the President notes under his door. Very different to the fortifications and security screenings that you have to go through to get anywhere near Parliament House in Canberra.

There are a million things about this town that I love. Its beauty quite literally blows me away. It is also incredibly old. The fact that you can stand in a building that was built in the 12th or 13th century that still stands largely unchanged is beyond my comprehension. To think that when parts of the old town of Prague were built, European settlement of Australia would still not occur for well over 500 years is just amazing. It makes you feel that your place in the world is rather small and insignificant. It is interesting how the citizens of Prague walk along beside this amazing history and almost take its power and story for granted. More prominent in their minds is the revival of Prague after the fall of Communism. And this part of Prague’s history is as powerful in the story of Prague as the old buildings and cobblestone lanes.

In more up to date news. I am on the ship (currently off the coast of Sicily with possibly the slowest internet connection in the world). So these updates are going to take a while to come through. Also no photos for now folks. But hopefully the stories are interesting!

xxx CVB

First Impressions of Prague

2007-09-04T02:32:00.000+10:00

When I told people that I was going to Prague, everybody was extremely enthusiastic and said that I would fall in love with this city. Nobody had anything bad to say about Prague. And that is quite a rap. My sources were varied – the old, the young. The recent travellers and those who had been here some time ago. I have to say that I had high expectations for this little city. … And then I got here.

First impressions of Prague were not all that great. In the first 20 minutes, the transfer that I had arranged didn’t turn up, the taxi driver I chose drove like a maniac (apparently its universal), and my drive into the city coincided with peak hour. So things weren’t looking all that great for the city with the big wrap.

As an aside – its funny the things that do seem to be the same no matter which part of the world you are in. Like the fact that it takes about 10 road workers to dig a hole in the ground - one guy to actually dig the hole and about 9 other guys to stand around and ‘supervise’. Or that all truck drivers are maniacs, no matter where they get their licences. Those things are the same, even in here in Bohemia.

So anyway, back to Prague or should I say Praha. Well driving into the city I was worried. The town looked dirty and unloved. And every single woman that walked past seemed to have horrible marks on their legs (not sure what that was about – malnutrition maybe?).

But then, the maniac taxi driver (who was singing in English every song I have ever heard used to promote the footy show – we were bonding, he didn’t speak English) drove into Praha 1, the old town. And I have to say I fell in love.

This town is everything that an old European city should be. It is majestic, grand and above all else overly flashy. The buildings are simply mind blowing. Nowhere else (except perhaps Washington DC) have I seen buildings that just scream money. There are ornate carvings on doors for no other reason than to look pretty, filigree hinges on windows and the most amazing fresco’s and gold work. This town is just by far the best looking city I have ever been in (with the exception of Sydney’s own harbour, but I am probably a bit biased there).

I spent about 15 minutes just standing in the middle of the old town square. It is big, surrounded by buildings and churches and it has cute little café’s where they charge you a motza to eat while taking in the sites. It really is everything that a European city should be.

I am hooked, I am in love. And I haven’t even actually started the proper sight seeing yet.

Like anything I love though, there has to be a bit of a quirk attached… Tick on that front too. Down the road about 100 metres from the apartment is a blacksmith who makes full suits of armour. I am going to go and check him out tomorrow, when I went back this afternoon there was a sign which a passing local read that he had gone to the pub and to come back tomorrow. See I love this city!!

Stay tuned, because I have only just scratched the surface of this town. I am now heading back to the Astronomical clock to see if I can actually get there this time for the hourly chiming. I have missed it three times so far because the little lanes are just too enticing.

The ball is rolling now

2007-08-22T12:54:00.000+10:00

I have a roommate! Yep, there is another person signed up to spend the next 4 months in the same 18 square metres as me. Her name is Lizzie and she is from Colorado, USA. She is 24 (turning 25 when we are at sea).

I now also know what subjects I will be doing while I am away. I am enrolled in International Communication, Global Issues, International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and the ADR subject (Dispute Management and Resolution) from Mac uni. Yep that is the fantastic one where you get to watch movies, negotiate for a BMW and generally have a great time. Hopefully it is as good on the ship!

At this stage I am doing my compulsory academic field programs in Portugal, Panama and (sadly) Australia. It's a bit sad to be allocated a program in your own country, but hopefully it will all come out in the wash.

The important thing is that for the next 4 months I will have a view of the outside world through my porthole. I don't think I could go that long living without window's!

Sadly, nothing else interesting to tell at this stage. But I have no doubt that adventures are at foot.

xx CVB