4/13/09
As usual, sorry it’s taken so long to get this up. I hope everyone is having and has had a good Passover. I hope everyone enjoyed the pictures from a few days ago. Since then, we’ve left Japan (which was amazing (and expensive)) and are on a 9 day journey to Hawaii. We’ve been very busy on the ship; yesterday we had our second Global Studies exam, which everyone spent a while preparing for since getting on the ship in Japan. We had fairly rough seas for the first couple days, which made the test even more difficult for a lot of people. (I’ve fortunately remained fine without any seasickness problems thus far). If I didn’t explain the test taking process last time, let me briefly try to now. Since there’s no classroom that can hold the over 700 students, they assign people to every room and public space on the ship to take the exam at the same time. This time I sat in one of the dining halls at a table with four other people, which is one of the “better” places to be. Other, less lucky, people had to sit in the union (big theater-like room) and take the test on dining trays. (Pretty difficult where the rocking is the worst in the front of the ship). But overall, I think that this test went much better than the first one; I’ll see how I did in a few days.
Moreover, I’m sure a lot of you are interested to hear about what we’ve been doing for Passover while on the ship. Let me start by saying that on our last night in Japan, about 25 people from the ship, including one of our professors and his wife and 13 year old son, went to a Seder held by the Tokyo JCC at the American Embassy’s Residential Complex. The Seder was a very cool and unique experience. The SAS people ended up being about half of the Seder, with the rest being a combination of Americans living in Japan as well as several Jewish Japanese couples, who was very cool to meet and talk to. The Seder was led by the JCC’s new young woman rabbi, who had recently moved to Japan with her husband and two young kids from Minnesota. It was also very cool to learn that she went to UW Madison and even lived in the Towers dorm. The food at the Seder ended up being just okay, but many of their unique and creative traditions made up for it. For example, each table had a form of each plague that they got to “unleash” on the other tables. We had lice and threw raisins across the room. The table with boils put little red circle stickers over peoples’ faces, and there was even an angel of death that came around and “killed” all of the first borns. Overall, the Seder, while very different from any other Seder I’m used to (with no one beating people with onions), it was a terrific experience that I’ll definitely remember for a long time.
The next night, once everyone was back on the ship and after we had left Yokohama, we had another Seder on the ship that about 75 people came to (students as well as faculty, including a bunch of non-Jews). It was led by the Jewish professor, who I talked about earlier (who I’ve gotten to know and really like). We used an extremely modern Hagaddah that was very funny in how pro/equal-everything it was. I kept a copy of it to bring to our next Seder. Continuing, I should say how absolutely amazed and impressed I, as well as pretty much everyone else, is about how well the ship has done to cater to those keeping kosher for Passover. After not having a single piece of matzah for us prior to arriving in Japan, the crew has come extremely far. For the entire week, they have devoted one of the two buffet lines in the deck 6 dining hall to those celebrating Passover. (Someone even put up funny signs around it explaining “Why this buffet is different from all others?”) For every meal this week, we’ve had a sufficient supply of matzah with cream cheese, hard boiled eggs (both of which prior to now had not made an appearance on the voyage), some kind of matzah ball soup thing, and then the usual potato and chicken/fish thing, which has always been different (and better) from what was on the regular side of the buffet. For example, we’ve had latkes twice now which were very good and crispy. Also, for dessert we’ve had homemade meringues or macaroons alternating at every meal, which have been surprisingly delicious for being cooked by a Philippino chef (I assume a student gave him a recipe from his/her mom or grandmother). I have also done research and learned that there is absolutely no reason that Sephardic Jews cannot eat corn syrup or related products on Passover. (Google it). I’m going to end my Passover tomorrow at lunch and then tomorrow night me and a bunch of people are looking forward to going to one of the “fancy/specialty” dinners that the ship does (like on cruises how you can pay for “special” food, except on the Explorer, the food turns into a regular cruise dinner).
Additionally, you might have seen how the title of this post includes “Groundhog Day”. This is because a couple nights ago, on the night April 12, we went to bed, only to wake up to another April 12. This is because we crossed the International Date Line; So instead of losing another hour (like we’ve done probably 18 times now), we added an entire day. Unfortunately it was a normal class day just like any other. What is really cool, is that there were a few people that got to have 2 birthdays in a row, something I don’t think very many people can say they’ve had.
Last night we had a charity auction sponsored by the Students of Service group on the ship. They had a combination of raffles, silent auctions, and a live auction, giving away lots of donated prizes and things. Some of the raffles were simple, but very cool, like being the first and last person off the ship in Fort Lauderdale, a map of the voyage signed by the captain, sitting at the Captain’s Table with friends at the Ambassador’s Ball, and various popcorn and pizza parties for friends. However, some of the live and silent auctions were much more significant. A lot of faculty donated time at condos and stuff like that. For example, a week at a condo in Molokai, Hawaii, several days in a house at Yellowstone, a day on someone’s yacht, and dinner and a show in New York were just some of the things that were auctioned off. I think by the end of the night, they raised almost $8000. I tried for the raffles, but unfortunately wasn’t so lucky.
I know I still have to put up my China and Japan posts, and hope to do so before we get to Hawaii. I’m going to be fairly busy over the next couple days with our third and final paper in my Asian American Fiction class about The Joy Luck Club and a paper for my Strategic Management class. I hope everyone is doing well at home and is not having any trouble finishing up with Passover.
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