From: Arya Rokni at Semester at sea
Sent: Wed 3/4/2009 3:30 PM
To: arirokni.ari-at-sea@blogger.com
Subject: Mauritius, Sea Olympics, and the Way to India
We spent the day of Friday, February 27 on the beautiful island of Mauritius. Since many of you probably don’t know much about Mauritius (I had never heard of it prior to it being put on our itinerary), here’s a little about it. Mauritius is an island about 900km East of Madagascar. It is renowned for being the only home of the dodo bird. It is a very green island known for its beaches, warm climate, and surrounding coral reefs. We docked in the city of Port Louis at around 7:30 in the morning, had another diplomatic briefing by two members from the US Embassy, and were off the ship at around 9:15 to go on a Semester at Sea catamaran and snorkeling trip. About a hundred SAS students got onto 4 fairly nice catamarans for the day. On the way to our first of three snorkel areas, we say several groups of dolphins swimming alongside of us, which was very cool. The snorkeling ended up being okay, unfortunately not as great as what we’ve seen in Hawaii. For lunch, each catamaran’s crew grilled chicken and fish on the boat and we had a very good Mauritian lunch. After lunch, we went snorkeling again and had a chance to just hang out on and jump off of the catamarans and swim for a while. We ended up getting back to the ship at around 5pm (we didn’t have to be back on until 8pm this time). So me and a bunch of people took a water taxi (we crammed 31 people into a tiny dingy of a water taxi) to go to the town center/downtown. We walked around for a little, got some souvenirs, and then sat down for a fairly quick dinner and drinks. We ate at an extremely multi-cultural restaurant and between the 10 or so of us, we had some terrific pizza, Chinese dishes, as well as pasta and seafood. After we ate, we crammed into another water taxi with many other SAS students to get back to the ship on time. After waiting in a medium-sized line, we were back on the ship by 7:40, with lots of time to spare. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it yet, but one thing that SAS is very strict about is being back on the ship on time. If you are not on the ship at the required time (actually on the ship, not even in line to get on), you will be assigned “dock time”, meaning you’ll have to stay on the ship for a certain amount of time when we get to the next port (at least 6 hours). I haven’t had any problems with getting on the ship on time or getting dock time and don’t anticipate ever having to.
Once everyone was on the ship Friday night, at around 9pm, we had the opening ceremonies for the Sea Olympics. As I described in my last post, Saturday, February 28, would be the Sea Olympics, a day of very intense competitions between the many “seas” (divisions of students by living halls). Being in the Red Sea, I had a lot of red Wisconsin clothes to wear. At the opening ceremonies, each team had a cheer they presented, as well as a flag and a mascot. Ours was a kid dressed up as a bull, covered in red bull cans. The following day (Saturday) consisted of about 20 different events. I participated in the relay, consisting of several carnival-ish events like a 3-legged race and wheel-barrow race, as well as the flip-cup competition (yes, the drinking game, except with water), in which we won the gold medal after winning 4 consecutive rounds. Other events throughout the day were a tug-of-war, workout competitions, poker, Pictionary, limbo, hula-hoop, Sudoku, spelling bee, photo hunt, dodgeball, volleyball, and a paper boat float. My favorite competition of the day was the mashed-potato sculpting contest, in which each sea constructed works of art from nothing but mashed-potatoes. My team, which ended up winning this event, built a near-exact replica of the Taj Mahal. It was really cool. The final event of the day, the one in which the entire ship has anticipated and crowded on the 7th deck to watch, was the Synchronized Swimming competition. Members from each sea had spent the past few days creating very funny and creative routines consisting of much more than frolicking in the pool. At the end of the Sea Olympics, my team, the Red Sea ended up winning the Silver Medal. Looking back, I am amazed how competitive the day was between so many people on the ship and how involved so many people were.
During the past few days since the Sea Olympics, many people have had exams in their classes. I, for whatever terrific reason, don’t have any exams in any of my classes except Global Studies, just papers, projects, and speeches. All of my classes are going very well. In my strategic management class my team in the shoe industry simulation is doing very well, currently the third place team in the industry. In my public speaking class, we have been researching and will be giving our second speech after India. In my Asian-American Fiction class, we have just finished our second book, Jumpha Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and will be writing a paper on it when we get back from India.
We will be docking in Chennai, India early tomorrow morning. Currently, I have several SAS trips planned for our time in India, many of which come from Mara’s recommendation of when she was in India on Semester at Sea. Tomorrow I will be doing volunteer work in a Dalit (untouchable) village, which should be a very interesting experience. Tomorrow night, I will be attending a welcome reception hosted by local college students. Also while in India, I will be visiting (as per Mara’s recommendation) KANCHEEPURAM and MAMALLAPURAM, two very sacred and ancient cities in India. I am also planning on getting onto two other SAS day trips as well as spending time around Chennai. We will be in India until the night of Monday, March 9.
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