Morocco...Part 2

Day number 3 in Morocco was both an excited and very stressful day. It was what seemed to be the longest day of my life. It was a very early wake up once again. We had to be ready and down in the hostel lobby at 6am. Our tour guide for our camel trek was meeting us there. My group was originally supposed to be 32 students. All 32 of us made it Marrakech and to the lobby by that time. After our guide rounded us up, we headed to the vans. When we got there we saw one van. Then the second pulled…then another, followed by 2 more. We were quite confused as to why there were 5 vans when each could hold 16. We had 32, so that would mean 2 vans, right? Yeah, to our surprise, our group grew to 80 SAS kids without us knowing. That, right off the bat, didn’t make my group too happy.

Once all 80 of us got rounded up into the vans, we headed out for our “6 hour” ride to the desert. We stopped at a cool spot in the Atlas Mountains where we could see a bunch of Berber villages built into the sides of the mountains. It reminded me somewhat of Peru. The views from up there were incredible. We then went on our way and stopped about 30 minutes later for “breakfast”. My breakfast consisted of a large can of Pringles and water. So nutritious. Each stop was taking so long already because there are no places in the mountains that accommodate 80+ people at a time. We hopped back into the vans and headed out for another hour or so before we had to take a bathroom stop. That took forever as usual before we were on our way again. We drove for another hour or so before we had to stop at an ATM for all of the people that didn’t have money. That took about 45 minutes just for everyone to get money out. Then we drove for another two hours before some of us started getting really hungry. We finally stopped at a restaurant for lunch. It was very good. It was my first real Moroccan meal. I had fresh cut vegetables, bread, a tangine, and melon for dessert. We also had our first Moroccan orange juice. They have, hands down, the best orange juice in the world. It was so good. I have made fresh orange juice at home, but that doesn’t even compare to their orange juice. From then on, all we got at restaurants was orange juice. That meal made my mood a little bit better since we had already been on the road for about 9 hours by this point on our “6 hour” drive. We got back on the road again after we ate. By this time a lot of us were getting fairly grumpy and irritated that the sun was going down and we were promised that we would be riding camels at sunset. It took us another 3 hours to finally reach the place…hence my “6 hour” ride. It took us at least 12 hours.

Once we finally got there I was a bit happier. I was definitely tired, but I was ready to finally get to our camel trek. We made it out to our camels…all 80 of them…and started getting on. Janhavi, Annie, Gina, Jon, and I were all together. My camel was named Moose. Besides really liking my camel, I don’t ever want to ride one again. He was very nice, but I have never been in that much pain. They are the most uncomfortable things to sit on. It would have been fine, but it took us a little under 2 hours to get to our campsite. I was in so much pain by the time we got there that I could barely move my legs to walk once we got off. It ended up being worth it in the end though. When we got to the camp, we staked out our tents. Then the Berbers served us amazing mint tea. It was the best tea I have ever had. After everyone made it to the camp, they served us dinner. It was delicious. It was the same type of dishes that we had for lunch, but different variety. After we all ate, they cleared all the tables and chairs out and the Berbers started playing their drums. A bunch of SAS kids joined in and danced around for the rest of the night under the stars. It was awesome.

I ended up crashing earlier than most that night. I was exhausted and we had to be up by 6am to ride back to the vans. In the middle of the night, however, I was woken up by water and sand hitting my face. It was pouring rain outside. Yeah, we were in the middle of the Sahara Desert and it is pouring on us. I was already gross enough that I didn’t care and just went back to sleep. Waking up the next morning was amazing. We woke up before the sunrise so we were able to get our stuff ready to go before. After I was ready to go, I just walked around taking some really cool pictures. The sunrise in the desert was awesome…coming up over the sand dunes. We then headed back to the vans. We were the first group back and had first dibs on breakfast. They had all sorts of breads and cereals and all the orange juice you could drink. We each had a few glasses.

After we ate breakfast we split into our vans to go back. A few of us had asked our guide if they would be able to take us straight back to Casablanca instead of Marrakech though, because it was closer than Marrakech. They said no problem, but that it would cost a bit more. We agreed because it would have cost us just as much to get a train or taxi back from Marrakech. They told us it would take us 8 hours to get back. Needless to say, we had the same problems trying to get back as we did getting to the camel trek. The guide lied to us and told us that we would be going a shorter way back, but we ended up going through Marrakech anyways. I don’t have many good things to say about the tour company, but it was still a fun trip. We didn’t make it back to our ship until 1am that night after leaving at 10am. That’s 15 hours. So much for that 8 hour ride. We only had 32 this time compared to the 80 before and it still took us 7 hours longer than they told us. Oh well, we made it back and that’s all that matters.

The next two days I took a lot lighter. The 5th day I slept in. Then after lunch I went with Jess and Gina to a hotel right outside the port gate to get free WIFI. I spent a few hours catching up on uploading pictures and whatnot. I got everything uploaded through Spain. I will try and get Morocco up my last day in Ghana. Then on the last day, I went with a few people back to the markets. We spent most of the day walking around trying to find any last minute items we wanted to buy. After the markets, Kelsey, Karli and I went to the Hassan II Mosque. It is the 2nd largest in the world. We didn’t go with enough time to go in, but we got to take a tour around the outside. It was so cool to walk around.

Well I am arriving in Ghana in less than 6 hours right now. I can’t wait. I just got done with 7 straight days of classes, so I am ready for a break for a few days. I have a lot of exciting things planned for Ghana. I can’t to see how it goes. Hope everything is good back home and I will be back in 5 days!

MOROCCO!

        It’s hard to believe I have already been to three countries this semester. Wow. Morocco was quite the switch from Spain. I couldn’t really tell you any similarities. Different language, religion, buildings, cars…pretty much everything. There are some parts of Spain that have a lot of Muslim influence, but I didn’t really see that. During my time in Morocco I stayed mainly in the Casablanca and Marrakech area. It was a very interesting stay, but I enjoyed it for the most part.

        We got a pleasant surprise on our way to Spain. The Dean announced that we would be arriving in Morocco a day earlier than expected. That was good and bad. It was good in the fact that we got to spend more time in Morocco, but bad in the fact that it didn’t even give us a full day to recover from Spain. I spent almost the entire time between countries sleeping. I think I slept for 12 hours. It was much needed.

        When we got to Casablanca, Jon, Amanda, Damien, a few others, and I went out to explore the city. We didn’t really have a plan..we just started walking. We found our way into the medina, which is the market of the city. Every prominent city in Morocco has a medina. Some have just one. Casablanca has a new and old medina. We only went to the old one. We spent hours in the market that afternoon. After we walked around, we headed back to the ship for dinner. We weren’t quite adventurous enough yet to try the food. After we ate dinner, we all decided to go back out the medina again. We just walked and looked around some more. We played soccer for a bit with a few younger boys. That was fun. We also had some gelato. It was so good. I had peach and berry topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. After walking around for a few more hours, we called it a night.

        The next day I headed out to Marrakech with Gina and Annie. We took a taxi from the port gate to the train station. At this point, we hadn’t heard what you are suppose to pay for a taxi, so we just paid what the driver said it cost…which was 100 Dirhams (about 12 dollars). We later heard that you aren’t supposed to pay anything over 15 Dirhams to go anywhere in the city…oops. Oh well, we got to the train station and that’s all that matters. We lucked out and happened to get some of the last 1st class tickets. They only cost 140 Dirhams, so we decided to get it. That ended up being our best decision so far. We had our own seats and air conditioning…unlike 2nd class. In Morocco they pack as many people on a train that want to go. You aren’t guaranteed a seat if you get 2nd class. We didn’t feel like taking the chance of having to stand the whole way to Marrakech. It was even a better decision when we got about 2.5 hours into the train ride when our train came to a halt and shut off. Yep, our train broke down in the middle of nowhere. We were stuck out in the desert with no air conditioning or water. We ended up getting off the train and walking around taking random pictures because we were so bored. We didn’t move again until 2 hours later when a diesel engine came to take us to Marrakech. It was great to be moving again, but we still had no power, so that meant no air conditioning. The 3 of us and 2 others that we had met stood in the front of the car with the doors open for almost the rest of the ride so we could have some air movement.

        The 2 we met on the train ride were very interesting. One was from the US, but was working for Boeing in Saudi Arabia. The other was his work partner from Germany. They were just working in Morocco for a few weeks at the Casablanca airport. We spent almost the entire train ride talking to them. It made the time go a lot faster. We just ended up taking a bunch of pictures with them and messing around.

        Once we finally made it to Marrakech, we headed straight for...you named it…McDonald’s haha. It was the first place we saw when we got in the station and we were starving because they don’t offer food or drinks on the train and we had been on there for about 6-7 hours by that time. I had to try all the new items that I saw on their menu. In Morocco they have steak fries, mozzarella sticks, and toblerone McFlurrys. All of them were delicious. The only thing I had to complain about was that they only give you one packet of ketchup. I usually drench my food in ketchup, but the steak fries were still good.

        After we ate our delicious McDonald’s, we got a taxi and headed to our hostel. As we were driving, we noticed our taxi driver stopping frequently to yell at people walking on the streets. At first I thought he just knew a ton of people. I couldn’t understand him because he was speaking Arabic and French. Then I realized after awhile that he had no idea where the place was that we needed to go to. We drove around forever before he finally found someone that knew where to go. We found out that our hostel wasn’t on a street that you can drive down, so that made sense why he didn’t know where it was. He dropped us off and told us a general direction to walk. We started walking and ended up in a really small tunnel walkway type thing. It was getting sketchier and sketchier as we kept walking. We got to a point and figured we should just ask someone. We found someone that knew where to go and started taking us to the hostel. We had heard from people before that Moroccans love to show people around, but they expect a pretty hefty tip at the end. I got some money out but not nearly as much as I knew he was going to want. Once we got there he stood outside the door with us…waiting for the tip. I waited for a bit then handed him what I had. He instantly started yelling at me saying it wasn’t enough. I just yelled back that it was plenty and to go away. I really gave him a lot, but they know Americans will pay more if you get mad at them. Someone just happened to let us into the hostel at that time so I walked in and shut the door on him.

        Once we got settled into the hostel and changed, we went out and walked around the medina for awhile. The medina in Marrakech is much better than the one in Casablanca. We didn’t have a lot of time though, so we just stayed close. We were getting really good at bartering at this point. We found a lot of cool items for cheap. The medina there was really easy to get lost in though. They are all enclosed and just street after street of shops. They all look the same so you really have to pay attention to where you came from so you know how to get out. We didn’t pay that great of attention obviously and got lost trying to get back to the hostel. We eventually found our way back without anyone helping us so we didn’t have to pay.

        Once we got back, a group of us headed out to dinner. Salo made a reservation for us at a really up-scale restaurant in the new part of Marrakech. I didn’t bring any nice clothes with me to Morocco, so I felt pretty out of place, but it was still fun. The restaurant was 2 stories tall. It was very cool inside. We had eaten lunch so late from the train so we weren’t very hungry. Instead of ordering a huge meal we just ate the bread they served and ordered some wine. About 30 minutes after we sat down, the lights all dimmed. Then from all over, belly dancers came out. It was so cool. They were all dancing with huge trays of candles on their heads and crazy stuff like that. After the show, about 5 of us headed back to the hostel because we had to get up at 5am for a camel trek.

        Well I am off to class again. I will write again tomorrow about the rest of my time in Morocco. See ya!

Adios Spain...Day 4

Finally…I have arrived at my last days in Spain. The 4th and 5th days in Spain were much more low-key. They were still fun, none-the-less. Day 4 started with sleeping in. Janhavi, Luis, and I got some much needed sleep after our fun-filled night in Ibiza. We wanted to sleep from when we got back to about 11:30am or so, but we didn’t wake up until after 1pm. That was ok, we were exhausted.

When we finally got up and moving, the three of us headed out to see Barcelona. We decided to just walk around and see if we could find a nice café to eat at on our way to see La Sagrada Familia. We found one café that looked decent…the rest were closed for siesta. We had some decent pasta and tapas. The tapas were delicious. My favorite thing there was the potatoes with a spicy tomato sauce and sour cream on them.

We then went to see La Sagrada Familia…which is Gaudi’s masterpiece if you didn’t know. We didn’t go in because we had a lot to do that day and the lines were incredibly long to get in. We just walked around for awhile and took pictures. It was amazing to just look at. I can’t wait to go back and see it when it is finally finished. That will be awhile, but I plan on going back when it is done. It has been under construction for so long that you can really tell the old from the new parts. The architecture is like nothing I have ever seen before. It just blew my mind seeing what he came up with…and that was just the outside of the building.

After La Sagrada Familia, Luis didn’t feel very good, so he headed back to the hostel. Janhavi and I headed to Parc Guell instead. Parc Guell is the park Gaudi designed. Right when we walked in, we felt like we were in Candyland. The buildings and design were just so crazy…really weird shapes and so many colors. We just started walking. We walked around for a few hours. You never get bored there. Every path led to something new and amazing. We took a lot of side paths through random parts of the park. Even spending that much time in there, we still didn’t see over half of the park. It is just so huge that I would need a whole day or more to go through it all.

Janhavi and I then headed back to the hostel to meet up with the rest of the group. They had gone to all these things the day before when we were in Ibiza or that morning, so they spent most of the day at the beach. We all lounged around for awhile, and then headed out for dinner. Two of Gina’s friends from Oregon happened to be in Barcelona the same time as us, so they joined us for dinner as well. Some of the girls had a club they wanted to go to after dinner, so we tried to go to a restaurant near there. We ended up walking forever before we got there…thanks to Stephanie’s lovely map. We were definitely in a part of Barcelona that wasn’t popular. There were hardly any restaurants, or anything for that matter. They found the club first, and found out that it was closed that night. We had walked all that way so we decided to just find a restaurant in that area anyways. We went to some Mexican restaurant. It was alright. I had a quesadilla. It definitely did not compare to anything back home, but did make me miss home Mexican food even more.

After dinner, we all walked back to the hostel. Some of the group went out to a bar called The Dow Jones, but I decided to get some sleep because we had to be up and out of our hostel by 5am. Our train was at 6:30am the next morning and I was still lagging from the rest of the trip. I only got about 3 hours of sleep since we had dinner so late, but it was better than nothing. The rest of the crew showed back up around 4 or so. They didn’t sleep at all since our alarms were set for 4:45am anyways.

After the early morning wakeup call, we all headed to the train station. When we got there, we contemplated whether or not we wanted to continue sneaking Stephanie onto the trains without her railpass. It was really risky today, because if she didn’t make it on one of the trains, she would miss it and be late getting back to the ship. We asked her what she wanted to do, and she didn’t want to buy more tickets, so we decided to try our moves again. This time we switched up how we would sneak her on. We had Ariana go first. Once she got her ticket scanned, she acted like she was fumbling through her wallet to get her tickets in order. As she did that she held her railpass at her side with her other hand and I took it out of her hand. I gave the railpass to Stephanie and they never noticed. We were becoming masters at this game. Once we all got to the train we celebrated again that we had successfully got Steph on the train.

I slept on the train almost all the way to Madrid. Once we got there, we had to switch trains to get to Cadiz. When we got off the train and looked at the monitors, we saw that there was a direct train from Madrid to Cadiz. The one we had reservations for stopped in Seville, and then we had to switch to another to get to Cadiz. We had about 30 minutes until both trains took off. Luis decided that he wanted to see if we could get switched to the direct train. We all went scrambling through the train station with barely any time before the trains left trying to get them switch. With about 15 minutes to spare we got them…and got money back…and made it to the gate. We were all strategizing how we would sneak Steph on to our last train. We had it all planned out and headed to the gate to find out that we were late enough that the lady didn’t even ask for our railpasses. We all ran onto the train and started celebrating again that we had gotten her all the way through Spain without her railpass.

I again slept almost the entire way to Cadiz. The trains were so comfortable and I was so tired that it just put me to sleep. When we got to Cadiz, we tried to find a grocery store to stock up on snacks for the ship, but arrived at the beginning of siesta so we just headed back to the ship to make sure we got on before ship time. If you don’t make it on by that time you get “dock time”. For every 15 minutes that you are late you have to stay on the ship 3 hours after the last person leaves in the next port. If you are more than 2 hours late, the ship leaves you and you have to find your own way to the next port. We made sure we had plenty of time to get to the ship.

Well I am finally done filling you all in on Spain. I will be splitting up Morocco into 2 blogs in the next few days before I arrive in Ghana. Then I will hopefully keep up the rest of the trip. Also, send me your home addresses to gmnagaki@semesteratsea.net if you want a postcard. I plan on picking a few up in Ghana. Take care!

Viva Espana! Day 3

The third day in Spain wasn’t much less hectic. That’s alright though; it made it fun. Day 2 and 3 in a way just felt like one really long day. That was aided by my 2 hours of sleep I got. We all woke up earlier then we had planned because we needed to get to Barcelona before our tickets were scheduled for. Janhavi, Luis, and I planned a last-minute trip to Ibiza and our flight was at 5:15pm, and we were originally supposed to get to Barcelona by train at 3:30pm. That wasn’t going to work. We got to the train station, and we all caught a train that got us to Barcelona around 1pm.

Before we headed to the train station, we made our trips first stop at a McDonald’s. Yes, that sounds very American, but I have made it a deal that I will eat at a McDonald’s in each country we visit. It is a comfort food for us, but each McDonald’s around the world has different items. At the McDonald’s in Spain, they only have one menu. Since I was there for breakfast, I ended up having a cheeseburger meal. That was odd, but it tasted so good. They also have a pastry section in Spain. They had muffins, danishes, cheesecake, chocolate cakes, etc. I also tried their onion rings which were awesome.

After McDonald’s, we headed to the station. Since we had failed at fixing our tickets the day before, we were all kind of frantic. I was fine because I had everything I needed, but Stephanie still didn’t have her rail pass and wasn’t going to be able to afford each ticket individually. It costs about 10 times as much to buy a single ticket as opposed to tickets with a rail pass. Instead of dealing with it, Stephanie decided to try and make it on the train with her reservation and not her rail pass. Doing that gave all of us a heart attack. When we went up to the counter to get on the train, we all only took out our reservations hoping they wouldn’t ask for our passes. Of course, they ended up asking for them. We tried acting stupid, but that didn’t work so we all put our passes up at the same time to try and overwhelm them…that tactic worked. They lost count of how many they had seen and thought they had seen them all. Stephanie lucked out and got to Barcelona without her rail pass.

Once we finally got to Barcelona, we took the Metro right to our Hostel. We stayed in a very nice hostel right in a historic part of the city. It was about a half block from one of Gaudi’s houses. It was very convenient to get anywhere we wanted. Luis, Janhavi, and I didn’t have much time before we had to head to the airport at this point, so we just decided to get ready.

Our trip to Ibiza was one of the most epic things I have ever done. We basically just flew to the island to go clubbing. We felt like celebrities in a way because we got all dressed up before we got on the airplane in Barcelona. We were only staying in Ibiza for 12 hours, so we didn’t take anything but what we had on us. Barcelona’s airport is one of the nicest airports I have ever been to. The section we were in was brand new. However, the security there was very lax. We barely had to do anything to get to our gate. Kind of made us nervous, but we didn’t care at that point…we just wanted to get to Ibiza. We requested row 4 when we made our reservations online. When we got on, we saw that rows 1-3 were “1st class”. No one sits in them, however, because they are the same exact seats as the rest of the plane, just at the front. Even though we had nice seats, it was the loudest plane I had ever been on. It sounded like I was sitting in the jet the whole way there. Thankfully it was a very short flight…only about 45 minutes.

When we got to Ibiza, we caught a taxi and headed to Marcelo and Salo’s apartment that they rented for a few days. Salo is from Mexico and I don’t know where Marcelo is from…all I know is that they spent thousands in Spain alone. Ridiculous, but it was nice to have some place to go when we got there. We ended up changing into other people’s clothes at the apartment because everyone else was going to the beach. We went and walked around the beach for about 3 hours before dinner. The beach there is incredible. It is very much a tourist attraction though. There are clubs and bars lining all the beaches. It was fun to just walk around. At about 9pm, we headed back to the apartment and changed back into our nice clothes. We headed out for dinner. Salo had made reservations at a restaurant for a bunch of us, but it was way more expensive than what I wanted to pay. Instead of going there, a few of us went to a place down the street. It was really good; I got chicken, salad, and potatoes. We got done with dinner around midnight and wanted to head to the club. Everyone else wanted to head back to the apartment for an hour, so we headed to Privilege without them.

Privilege was AMAZING. This club was unreal. It is the world’s largest club. Capacity of 10,000 people. We all went because DJ Tiesto was playing that night. He is Privilege’s resident DJ. Cameras aren’t allowed, but I was determined to take pictures and videos, so I stuck my camera in my underwear. Haha. We all got patted down as we went in and I’m positive that every part of my body was patted down. They somehow didn’t feel my camera though. When we got in, we were all in awe. It was just insane. People were everywhere. We fought our way to the front and just started dancing. After about an hour or so, we ran into some other SAS kids. We danced with them for awhile and just made our way around. Then Tiesto came out. The place erupted. Tons of dancers came out from behind the stage, from the ceiling, from everywhere imaginable. There really aren’t many words that can describe the club. My videos I took will describe it better.

At about 4:30am, Janhavi and I rounded up our group of 5 that had to get back to the airport. We had 4 of us, but I had to go drag Sabrina out because she didn’t want to leave…I don’t blame her. We finally made it out and got a taxi. We definitely over paid, but we had to get there. I think we paid 35 euro to get there. We got quite the looks when we got to the airport because we all looked so disgusting. It was all really funny though. We finally got on the plane at about 5:30am and I fell asleep right away. I honestly remember none of the flight. I fell asleep before the doors closed, and was woken up when people were already leaving the plane. I didn’t think we had even left Ibiza yet. It was some much needed sleep, but we got about 5 more hours when we got back to our hostel in Barcelona.

Well I am off to dinner on my last day in Morocco. I will be on the ship for the next week so I will get caught back up on my blogs. Take care!

Spanish Adventure?Day 2

My second day in Spain was packed full of stuff. It was a very fun and stressful day all in one. We started by waking up fairly early and getting breakfast at our hostel. It was actually a decent breakfast for what you would think a hostel would provide. After we all ate, we headed out on the Metro to Reina Sofia. This museum was awesome. The artwork there is amazing. I didn’t go through the majority of the museum just because it was so big and we didn’t have that much time. I got to see a good portion of it and my favorite pieces were definitely Picasso. I just love his abstract style. Nothing else compares. The garden in the middle of the museum was also very cool. We walked around and relaxed in there for awhile.
After Reina Sofia, we headed to El Prado. It was a short walk from Reina Sofia. We didn’t go in, but we took some pictures from the outside and checked out all the individual artists outside. They had some really cool work. A lot of it was reasonably priced so a bunch of people bought some to take home. Once we got done there, we walked to the train station to get some ticket issues figured out. We ended up failing like we had been the whole trip. We just gave up since we had been wasting so much time in the station rather than actually seeing Madrid.
We left the train station and headed to El Rastro for the afternoon. El Rastro is a huge market in Madrid that is only open on Sundays. We timed it perfectly to hit it right before it shut down. I didn’t get anything, but it seemed like it never ended. It just went up and down every street. After we got done messing around in the market, we found a restaurant that was close to grab a bite to eat. We had some problems finding places open when we wanted because of their siesta. I am all for the US adopting the siesta by the way. I love their lifestyle in Spain. Anyways, right when we walked out of the restaurant I saw a person sprinting towards me. It scared me since I was in the middle of Madrid…I shouldn’t know anyone. We happened to run into Jon and Amanda. It was perfect timing. I went with those 2 to their apartment they were staying at, and met up with my group about 2 hours later to go to a bullfight.
We had all contemplated whether or not we wanted to go see a bullfight. I was all for going because of the cultural aspect. I am not for killing bulls in that way, but I had to see one while I was there. We went to Plaza del Toros. The building was awesome. I had a great time there. Some of the group left early because they couldn’t stand to see anymore. There were 6 bulls total. We had to watch the first on tv because we got there late, but I watched the other 5 in person. It was very intense, but very interesting at the same time. I won’t go into detail of what I saw, but I have many pictures and videos to show later.
After the bullfight, Ryan, Kamrin, and I went to a park not far from the stadium. It was fun walking around at night. The park was full of kids our age just sitting in the grass or playing soccer. A bunch of them were just drinking wine and talking in the grass. Once we walked through, we got back on the Metro and headed back to the hostel. We met up with everyone and figured out what was going on the rest of the night. They all wanted to nap, but Ryan, Kamrin, and I decided we wanted dinner. We headed down to Chueca and had dinner at a little café. We split two small pizzas. They were really good.
After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and Ryan and I took naps as the rest of the crew went to a tapas bar and got some drinks and a bunch of free tapas. I wanted to go, but I had just eaten and I was in need of some sleep. I slept for about an hour then woke up to go back out with everyone. There was a pub crawl that everyone wanted to go on that started at our hostel. It included 2 bars and 1 club for 15 euros. I didn’t feel like going to the club, so I wasn’t going to pay, and just tag along to the bars. When we got to the first one, we found out that they were going to charge a 10 euro cover charge so John and I headed back to the hostel instead. When we got back, we heard Ryan and Ellie in the lobby, so we stopped to talk to them. We saw that Ryan was on the phone, and kind of sensed something was wrong. I had remembered that Ryan was saying all day that his back really hurt. I naturally eavesdropped on his phone conversation. I couldn’t really tell what he was talking about, but I heard, “Where is the nearest hospital?...I need to go to the emergency room now”. That said alone, I knew something was really wrong. Once he got off the phone, I asked what was wrong. He said that his back pain was unbearable. Ryan doesn’t speak any Spanish, so I told him I would go to the hospital with him.
We took a cab to the hospital. It ended up not being anywhere close to our hostel. This experience ended up being more of a culture shock than anything else I had seen in Spain, including the bullfight. We made it to the hospital around 2am. I immediately walked in the emergency room and asked if there was a person who spoke English in Spanish, and they said no. They pointed me off to the check-in counter. The guy didn’t speak any English at all. He kept on asking me the questions about Ryan because he knew I was the only one that kind of knew Spanish. First of all, I don’t know any medical Spanish. Second, I barely know Ryan, so I couldn’t answer anything. It took us about 20 minutes just to get checked in. Ryan could barely stand at this point. After they got the paperwork done, they sent us to a waiting room. There were no medical personnel anywhere around. There were people running around with IVs in their arms. The whole building was filthy. Ryan’s pain got so bad at this point that he started throwing up, but got called in to the room not long after that. About 5 minutes after they took him in there, the one and only nurse that spoke very broken English came back out and told me that I needed to go buy Ryan water so he could drink something. I didn’t know what to think at that point. What hospital can’t even give water to a patient? It took about another hour or so before I saw Ryan again. They ran some blood tests to see if he had a urinary tract infection. I got to go in the room and talk to him for a few minutes and he wasn’t sure if he was going to have to stay the night or not, so he took my cell number and told me to go back to the hostel.
At this point, it was 4am. All the Metros were shut down, and the streets where the hospital was were empty except for the trash collectors. John and I decided to try and walk back to the hostel before we got ripped off by taxi again. This ended up being the LONGEST walk ever. It took us forever to get back to the hostel. I think I finally got back and to bed by 515am. Walking through Madrid at that time of night was probably not the smartest thing, but we made it safe. I got about an hour of sleep, and had to be back up to catch my train to Barcelona. When we all woke up, someone checked to see if Ryan had made it back. He had and he felt a lot better. The blood tests came back negative, and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong, but released him anyways. I still haven’t heard what was wrong, but we are thinking that he had kidney stones, and he passed them that night.
Well I am off for another night! Take care and I will be back with day 3 of Spain hopefully tomorrow.

ESPANA!...Day 1

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t written in forever. I have been super busy and have not had access to a computer or internet for a long time. I’m ok with that though…it’s kind of nice being disconnected from the web for awhile.
So..Spain was incredible. I had an awesome time. I had a speed tour of the whole country. I went to Cadiz, Madrid, Barcelona, and Ibiza all in 5 days. I travelled most of the time with a big group…about 15 or so of us. We all got along really well. It was a blast. It was kind of stressful at times because it is hard to please everyone in a group that size. We eventually started breaking up into smaller groups which was just fine. Because Spain was so amazing, I am going to have an entry for almost each day. This would be one extremely long blog if I wrote everything in one…so here is Day 1.
On the first day, we arrived in Cadiz. I woke up with my roommate Drew at 4:30am and went to the top deck and watched as we pulled close to land. It was crazy how excited everyone was to see lights on land again. Not many of us were awake at this point, but Drew and I were too excited to sleep. We stay up on the deck the entire time until we docked. While we were sitting on the deck talking, Desmond Tutu walked by during his morning exercise and gave some of us high fives. That man is so cool.
Cadiz was beautiful. The architecture throughout the town was cool to see. I didn’t get to see much of the town because we had to catch a train that day to Madrid, but what I saw was really nice. We went to some local shops and just looked around for a few hours. Then we spent the rest of our time in Cadiz at the train station. It was quite an ordeal figuring everything out. I had everything I needed, but there were a few people in my group that hadn’t bought tickets or a rail pass before we got there, so we had to get that done. Hardly anyone in Cadiz, or Spain for that matter, speaks English. That made it a bit more difficult, but Luis, who led my group, speaks fluently. His mom is from Puerto Rico, and his dad’s family is from Ecuador. Stephanie had the most problems. She had received her rail pass reservations, but was never sent her rail pass. She didn’t even notice until we got to the station and then she noticed everyone else had a different envelope. She ended up having to buy an individual ticket to Madrid, which was almost the same price that we bought the whole rail pass for.
After we figured out everything with the tickets, we sat around the station and had a glass of wine as we waited for the train. Once we got on, I fell straight asleep and didn’t wake up until we got to Madrid. The trains here are so smooth; I love them. Once we arrived in Madrid, we caught a taxi and went to our hostel. We stayed at Hostel Metropol. It was right off the Sol and Gran Via metro stops right in the middle of a busy section of Madrid. It was a great location. We just had to walk out of the hostel to find tons of restaurants, clubs, bars…you name it. Once we all got situated in the hostel, we all headed out to dinner in one of the main squares. Once we finally sat down and ordered, it was already midnight. All the restaurants were packed. It messed with all of our mental clocks to have it be normal to eat dinner at midnight. Dinner was good though. I had pollo a la plancha con esalada y patatas fritas. I found it weird that they call potatoes patatas here. I am so use to saying papas. I also had my first Spanish sangria at dinner. It was really good! …but no one in Spain will give you water! That’s all I wanted…just nice cold water, and a gallon of it. I was soooo dehydrated from travelling all day. Apparently they don’t serve water like we do in the states at restaurants.
Once we were done with dinner, we headed back to the hostel. We had walked around trying to find a good club or somewhere to go, but everyone just wanted to go back to the hostel for awhile to hang out. When we got there, we all just stayed in the lobby and mingled with the other people staying at the hostel. It was really cool to meet people from all over the world. I met some people from Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and Germany. We all just hung out and talked for about an hour, then I wanted to go out for awhile so Ryan, Elouise, John, the crazy guy from New Zealand, and I went roaming around. We found a really good hole-in-the-wall hookah bar/sangria place. We all split a tower of sangria. It was about 3:30-4:00am by the time we got done and we were all really exhausted, so we headed back to get some sleep before we had to wake up 4 hours later to start exploring Madrid.
Well I am off to bed because I have to head to Marrakech in the morning, but I will be back soon to fill you in on Day 2 of Spain! Take care. Also, shoot me an email at gmnagaki@semesteratsea.net if you want!

My Life...On a Ship

I can’t even start to explain how awesome living on a ship is. I have gotten use to about everything here, and I love it. I was sitting out on deck 7 forward (very top and front of the ship, above the bridge) with my friend Amanda yesterday talking about this. It is UNREAL being able to go out there to talk, read, or have a dance party (did that last night). We couldn’t even put words to how amazing it was. We sat out there and just gazed at the endless sea. We felt the slight breeze and the warm moist air. Needless to say, we didn’t get much reading done. We can’t get ourselves to actually do work on this ship yet. There is just so much to do and see that we are constantly distracted.
Everyone is starting to fall into groups of friends. It is going to change a lot, but we are all at least finding people that we know we connect with. It is cool being able to have several different groups of friends. You have to do that on the ship because it is so spread out that you may not see someone someday. We now realized how dependent we all are on phones to communicate. We have none of that on the ship to get together. It is really kind of nice to not have that though. My phone doesn’t really work well on the ship anyways, so I just shut it off. It is a nice feeling to not reach in my pocket every other second to see if someone text me or call me. I just don’t even worry about it anymore.
As for service on this ship, it is insane. Service, as in the crew that is working to help us. We have the BEST crew in the world. We feel insanely spoiled here. I come back from my first class every day, and my bed is made, my bathroom is completely clean, and our carpet is vacuumed. We also get our towels changed out every 3 days. They even will fold our clothes and whatever else and put it on top of our bed if it is just lying around. It is a weird thing for us to get use to. Jeffrey is my steward. He is awesome. He is from India and it’s the nicest person ever. He was the first person I met when I got onto the ship. He is also the first person I see every morning…always in the hallway saying “Good Morning”. He is going to get a generous tip, that’s for sure. Our wait staff is amazing as well. We have 2 cafeterias. There is one main dining hall on the 5th deck, and one smaller one on the 6th with an outdoor patio. We have a buffet line essentially, but the wait staff makes sure our tables are set and that we get something to drink. If they are not set, they go and get us silverware. We all try to do it for ourselves, but they insist that we don’t. They also pick up our plates and everything for us. We are all use to doing everything ourselves at our home cafeterias that it is a shock. 
The student life committee held their first on-board event last night. It was a photo scavenger hunt. It was sooo much fun. We all broke up into teams and made team names. We were Team Awesome. They gave us a list of specific scenarios that we had to take a picture of. Stuff like someone laying on the ground in a very public area, or someone with a panda, or someone sneaking by Desmond Tutu’s room and taking a picture in front of his door…just stupid funny stuff like that. We got points for every picture that we got, and got extra if we were creative. We also got extra points for every person that we got to join our group as we were running around the ship. My team and Team We Just Won, tied for 1st. Our prize was to pick out our favorite picture and the 2 will now be the permanent backgrounds on the ship’s computers. I thought that was pretty funny.
We missed our 10pm “Midnight Snack” that they always serve because of the scavenger hunt, so Amanda and I went to the pool bar to grab a snack. It was the first food I have bought on the ship. I got my first burger since I left Nebraska. It tasted amazing haha. I don’t think I have eaten a burger as fast as that before. We all scarfed down our food and headed to the front the ship again. They had shut all the deck lights off so we could stargaze, but by the time we made it they had to turn them on again…so we decided to have a dance party. All the faculty were inside the faculty lounge having an 80s themed party, so we thought we would start our own. We danced until about 1am on the deck; it was awesome.
Well one more school day after today before I reach Spain! I can’t wait to head out on my first wild adventure. It is going to be a hectic, fun filled trip in Spain. Then we head straight in to Morocco the next day. I look forward to writing about it all! Take care.