equator and approach to salvador

Feb 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 2007
Basically all the same, picked up my fifth course Politics and Memory and on my first day we discussed British architecture in India I was extremely confused. Today the 14th we crossed the equator at noon, and the stupid irritating man who does the announcements was telling us to look for a green line, as a joke like there are on globes, I didn’t laugh, the sun was pretty intense and you know what else is intentse right? Ahahhaahahhaah and we are having Neptune day on the 24th not really sure why but the announcement dude was talking about how we are upsetting the gods and such he needs to be fired I tried to unwire my speaker in my room but its not possible. The roommate is chill we are going on the Borneo: Sabah Orangutan adventure which is divided by the south china sea from mainaland peninsular Malaysia is the island of borneo, Sarawak and sabah are the two Malaysian states on the island. Sabah is located in the northeast section of the island and its capital, kota kinabalu, serves as the gateway to the states amazing natural attractions. A two hour ride away is mount kinabalu park and the 5000 meter high mount kinabalu the pride of sabah. The orangutan rehabilitation centre the worlds largest of its kind is located at sepilok, a 20 min drive from the town of sandakan. Just a little info on that. Had a big Valentines Day Stop light party up on the pool deck, it is so humid outside it feels like I am constantly in a steam room. The stupid announcment guy came on the speaker to announce to us a sun warning that even if you are just walking outside the sun is so intense you could be sunburned instantly seriously we aren’t sailing threw the sun, its like at school when its negative 393939 million they post warnings that any un covered skin could be frost bitten within minutes of being outdoors, I have my first test on the 16th not so stoked, and I have 14 books to read, which I don’t get cause I go to class and the professor lectures to us what I exactly read, I don’t get things sometimes, oh and so in my history class today with vladmir stephel im being a good student paying awesome attention not taking notes but I don’t take notes, and occasionally I would glance around at my neighbors just to make sure that they were all awake, and about half way threw class vladmir looks directly at me and starts violently yelling with fire in his eyes bout how this is not kindergarten and something about scouts honor and just goes off on this tangent about 2939230 thousand things not making it clear that he was viscously screaming at me but he made it pretty obvious and at this point I am extremely flustered now cause I have no idea why I just got screamed at minus not taking notes and I was slouching but I didn’t know either was a crime, so now all I can focus on for the rest of class is trying to figure out why I got screamed at so I go to ask him after class and he goes off on how I was so disrespectfully and was cracking jokes which I swear I wasn’t I think I chuckled and smiled once when well he says in context after every sentence so after about 30 in contexts I found it amusing, so then I fought in my defense and he apologized but he scared the shit out of me, what ever happened to the good ole see me after class apparently that’s too 90s anyways oh and the best part of his violent screaming at me is when he was ready to walk to the deans office to un enroll me. Is that even legal to un enroll someone for no reason, besides he smiled, apparently the USSR army is running SAS. And in attempts to stay in shape I devised a rule that every time I leave my room I have to do 25 pushups or crunches, its going good so far I only go in and out of the room like 15 or 20 times a day so its not that bad. And we are planning a Pirate party post India and an A B C party. It is also interesting how word travels on the ship we had a bunch of things taken away from people getting into trouble so in informed everyone that there are cameras everywhere and I guess it worked cause people have told me they don’t want to do anything stupid cause they will be watching on camera, I laughed, It is also crazy how many students are on this ship, they all need name tags, I cant remember anyones name, and they are all named mike, and amy and there are 6 huskies on the ship, which is rad cause last time it was just me and frank reppin for the HUSKIES! There are 50 students from boulder which is just ridiculous, and a bunch of people that are insane like crazy kickboxer pilates girl who is on every committee and doing every workout class possible, then there are the “upper deckers” which are apparently the people that own the pool deck, which is my ground, and beth is definetly the official SAS upper decker in history. Tutu is pretty entertaining hes usually cracking jokes and dancing everywhere he goes but he is only like 4 feet tall.

Feb 15, 2007

Had some interesting classes lately, today in global the professor ended the lecture with the statement “black people are the reason the US does not have the highest HDI in the world” which I thought was pretty interesting especially for stating it and then fleaing the podium. Then in my local to global perspectives course the inter port lecturer spoke and after he left their was all this tension being thrown around the room about whose opinion was right on the IMF and the World Banks dealings with the MST and the landless movement on Stiglitz book etc. and how he was a coward for no providing a good summary and not fessing up to supporting those sectors by working for them and the Clinton administration and all these tangents and I was sitting in the middle of the tension cross fire. And then I was reading about Okonkwo and his story and all these random crazy books, and then in my Politics and Memory class today we were talking about some crazy story where Negro always has a capital N and Lawyer always a capital L and how one women wasn’t satisfied cause she married a plantation owner who was ugling and raped her on her wedding night and her friend was living a glamorous life cause of the man she married some how this was all dealing with brazil and Brasilia, and then in my other course there is racial democracy in Brazil but not, and some Indians area was protected by the government but their lands spread into Venezuela but that boarder should be protected by the government etc etc etc. and the other class covering how slashing and burning in the amazon and ethanol and way too much information as been given to me to process lately and then in my other course we covered abortion and Russia in a 5 min span, then moved on to Malaysia and the Portuguese and Brazil and China and covered almost every aspect of a 300 year span in about 45 minutes, then we had a big discussion later in the day about nationality ethnicity and race, and in one class all the tree hugging overly opinionated hippies were getting extremely rowdy and I thought Gloria was gonna lose it. Then in pre port we covered the gods and music an oh also in global before the random statetment he went off on a tangent about DWB and a few other random topics. Just a little insight to a day in the life on the MV Explorer.

“ I was in my kitchen washing a dish and I heard it so I came out I didn’t even have time to but my shoes on I heard it so I came out! What were you doing?”