Vietnam Day 2 - Part 1: Perspectives

Today was left open as we waited to hear if Pedro was going to be traveling to the location of potential partnership with his water purification system.  Matt and I had breakfast on the ship and took care of some post-production loose ends, ready to spring into action if it was time to shoot.

Lunch came around, so we decided to grab it on the ship before heading out to explore more in Ho Chi Minh City.  We had heard that the Vietnam War Remnants museum was an interesting place to go, so we decided to head over there and learn about the war from the Vietnamese perspective.

The courtyard of vehicles.

We caught a taxi, and entered the three story building, walking by a courtyard of bomb shells, helicopters, tanks and jets.  We began at the bottom story where there we displays about children during the war.  We learned about how the children would continue going to school even if they were down in underground bunkers, and many schools split up the children into homes so that they weren't all in one location in case the school was bombed.  It was interesting to realize that life had to go on as usual during the war, and people were trying to live and normally as possible despite the constant war all around them.

The second floor went through the after effects of the war.  So much chemical warfare was used, and we saw photos of people who were burned by phosphorus bombs and agent orange.  There was also a full room dedicated to people who were born in the 1990's and 2000's who are still deformed by their mother's exposure to agent orange in the fields, water and seafood.  It was very disturbing on one hand, but also intriguing to see how the people lived their lives with such extreme deformations.  I couldn't help but think that many of these people were born in the early '90s.  The age of my little brother - still effected by what went on in the 1960's and early 1970's.  Words flooded my mind as I looked at the effects on these people: melted flesh, twisted bones, missing limbs.

This was a sculpture made out of metal
schrapnel by a war survivor.  It's called
"mother."

On the top floor were sets of before and after photos of locations around Vietnam and how each spot has recovered and rebuilt since then.  There was also an entire room dedicated to the journalists who covered the war.  We saw Time magazine articles that showed Vietcong soldiers tied up and being shoved into a jeep.  The caption on the photo said something like "this soldier was held for questioning, then released later, unharmed."  Then, we saw a photo of a group of women and their children huddled together, flinching from an unknown source.  The caption on that photo was from the photographer, and it said something like: "I saw the guns raised at the group, and shouted, 'hey!'  They paused long enough for me to snap a photo, then I turned around and heard the sound of gunshots and multiple bodies hitting the ground."

There were so many horrors of the war.  American soldiers blown to bits.  Vietnam villages burned and bombed with no survivors.  Children and women massacred.  Body parts missing.  Head wounds seeping.  People carrying limbs of their fellow combatants.  Babies born with their spines bent the wrong way and half of their face missing.  Everything talked about the "American aggressors" and illegal war crimes that the United States committed during the war.

It was surreal to go out into the courtyard and see giant military vehicles and aircraft with U.S. markings on them.  We also went into a replica of the prisons called "tiger cages" where the South Vietnamese would keep North Vietnamese prisoners.  Inside it described how they would torture all of the prisoners to death, and listed all of the ways that they would perform the torture.  It was truly horrifying!

It was an emotionally draining experience that was confused by the research I did going into the museum.  I was interested in seeing the museum because I'm fascinated by the war, and interested in one day making a feature film about a small piece of it called Operation Babylift.

Much of the controversial language has
been removed from the signs, as of 1995,
but you can see that there are still hints
of negativity.  This sign puts "Vietnam War"
in quotes suggesting that it's an
inaccurate description of what the
U.S. did to Vietnam.

The museum was created by the North Vietnam perspective, and it used to be a lot more one-sided than it is now in pointing out the war crimes of France and the U.S. and also referring to South Vietnamese people as "puppets."  It's been criticized by how blatantly one-sided it is, but regardless, it still shows the graphic side of the war.  Many people feel that the museum has twisted the stories and photo captions to support "their side" of history.

It certainly makes me question who is truly telling the whole truth.  It's easy to leave out the rough edges when writing history books, depending on your audience, and I would say there's plenty of that being done in the media today.  Take, for example, the most recent national news with Mary Blair elementary.  It's a better story if we demonize the school for taking away children's happy dreams for the world and their blooming imaginations.  A kid throwing rocks on the playground and getting a little timeout in the principal's office? Not so interesting.  How would we expect the account of a 17-year war to tell the whole truth when we're only allowed to consider a limited number of perspectives?

They day in the museum left me wanting to learn more - not convinced of anything other than the fact that it was a terrible, terrible war.  But what war isn't?

After our exploration, we headed back to the ship to get a quick nap before dinner... (to be continued)

Good Morning Vietnam!

This morning we pulled this giant ship into the Mekong Delta and took four hours to weave our way up through the waterway to get to our port just outside the center of Ho Chi Minh City.  The delta didn't look wide nor deep enough for this ship, but we made it!  It was awesome to watch Vietnam go by.  Rural areas where it was only green and more industrialized areas where we went under a bridge and past skyscrapers.

Matt and I are on Aquaphytex-duty during out stay, so we're following Pedro and Rosa with their plan to start a couple of experimental water purification plants in Vietnam.  They set up a meeting in a biology research center in Ho Chi Minh, and we headed out with them around 2:00pm for the meeting.

First things first, we needed to catch a taxi to the middle of town, so we walked down the long port area to "immigration."  They just got a new x-ray machine, which means they run absolutely anything in your hand through it, then let you pick it up on the other side.  No questions asked.  It was a nice break from DIA.

There was a taxi driver just on the other side of the street, and Pedro negotiated him for the whole day.  We needed to go to their meeting, pick up Pedro's girlfriend at the airport, then take them to their hotel, and Rosa, Matt and I to downtown to meet the rest of the film crew for dinner.  After the cab driver walking away from the negotiations twice, he finally told us to get in his car.

We got to the research center and headed in, expecting our cab driver to hangout and wait for us until we were ready to head to the next location.  Matt and I were, of course, documenting everything, so we captured Pedro cranking the music in the cab and also announcing things in Spanish on the cab driver's CB radio.  The cab driver found it funny, so we felt like we had gotten back on his good side.

The meeting with the two researchers went really well.  They offered us tea, dried coconut and some interesting candies that looked like it would be hard, but ended up being soft fruit with the texture of sugared rambutan.  After the meeting was over, the two researchers were so pleased with how it went that they wanted to celebrate.  They said that they would go out and get a traditional cake to celebrate the new year and also some Vietnamese wine.  We approved of the idea, so they disappeared from the second floor meeting room and closed the door behind them.

We waited for a little bit, then, needing to find a restroom, I wandered out into the hallway and downstairs.  They were nowhere to be found.  They really did head out to buy us this cake and the wine!  We patiently waited, assuming they wouldn't want to scam us after such a nice meeting.

The reappeared with a green, square lump with the texture of sticky rice on the outside and a bottle of Vietnamese red wine.  They poured out our tea and filled the cups with wine.  They had a geeky quality to them which charmed us.  Since it's the Chinese new year, most businesses are closed and all of the people from their office (including their assistants) were out for holiday.  They didn't quite know their way around a kitchen, per se, but they made due.  They got some mismatching plates and a few forks and spoons, and then proceeded to drop the wine cork into the wine.  The wine was still pourable, so we proceeded with the celebration.

The rice, bean, meat "cake"

They cut us each a piece of the cake, and upon further inspection, I realized that it truly was sticky rice on the outside.  They explained that this cake had a long history and a mystical story behind it - something about the king asking for people to make a cake for the people or something...I should have listened better.  It takes 8 hours to make the cake, and it's made of sticky rice, a sort of mashed and dried green beans around peppered pork, all wrapped up in some large leaves that give the outside the green tinge when they're removed.  It was interesting to say the least.  Not extremely flavorful, but very filling and pleasant as a savory dish.  I think the word "cake" was a mistranslation...

We all finished our toast and had some more green tea poured on top of any leftover wine.  "Very good for digestion," they said.  Alright - we'll go with it.

We headed out to the road to the terrible realization that our taxi driver had driven off.  That didn't seem like a huge problem to our Vietnamese friends, but Pedro was beside himself.  Pedro had left his luggage in the trunk thinking it was going to hang out with us all day.  Bad idea.

"You what?!" cried our new researcher friends.  They sprung into action and pulled around their car to take us in search of the taxi driver.  At this point, it was time to pick up Pedro's girlfriend at the airport, so there was a miscommunication, and we were driven to the airport to search for the place that the cab picked us up.  We tried to explain that we were picked up at the port where our ship was, but were happy to be at the airport where we would be picking up our friend.  Anyway, our researcher friend called the taxi manager and got the people in search of Pedro's luggage to be dropped off at his hotel that evening.  Pedro didn't seem extremely concerned for having just lost his suit, shoes and presents for his girlfriend.

At this point, it was time to line up outside of the terminal and grab Pedro's girlfriend.  Pedro was in search of a place where he could buy flowers, and decided that going in the exit of the airport would be the best option.  He headed to the two security guards who weren't letting anyone in, and told them, in broken English, that his girlfriend was coming and he had to go in to meet her.  He whipped out his passport, and they sent him in.  "For love!" he claims.

We, however, were not allowed to follow.  This little camera crew is not as good at sweet-talking authorities.  We'll need to work on that.

After about a half hour, Pedro and his happy girlfriend walked out of the airport.  We were very happy to see them!  We caught a taxi back into the middle of Ho Chi Minh to drop them off at their hotel, and dropped ourselves off at a location to meet the film crew.  We were now an hour late to our rendezvous time, so Matt, Rosa and I decided to go and exchange some money and find some dinner.

After a wild goose chase around a block, we finally exchanged our American dollars over to Vietnamese dong, and became instant millionaires. One US dollar is the equivalent of 20,000 dongs, so a hundred bucks is the equivalent of 2,000,000 dongs.  Madness!

We were pretty hungry at this point, and the streets were packed with people celebrating the new year in the main square, so we decided to go to a Pho restaurant in the side street that we were on.  It was very delicious!  I didn't know that I liked Pho until now.  The American version is far more bland than what we had.

Any given day in Ho Chi Minh...

After dinner, we decided to explore the main square.  It was completely insane!  The biggest killer in Vietnam are motorcycle accidents.  There are really no street laws or lights or signs that control traffic.  You just go and don't hit anyone.  Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way.  The trick is to walk confidently and steadily and people will drive around you if they can predict where you're going.  If they predict incorrectly, you get hit, and it's your fault.  In other words, you would get the ticket.

I can't even put into words or in pictures how crazy these streets are.  It was a constant flow of cars, trucks, vans, mopeds, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians going across the traffic.  Nothing stops, it all just flows.  There were families of four on a single moped.  Dogs riding along.  Balloons.  Dried squid. Ice cream.  The whole place was a giant party.  Everything was decorated and blinking for the holiday, and there were street performers and so many children enjoying themselves.

The streets were beautifully decorated.  Each
street and each block had a different theme
and a different look.  This road was
full of lanterns and behind them you
can see pots of yellow flowers.

At one point, we needed to cross the main drag, and we walked and walked to find a place to cross where the traffic would stop.  It was like an eight lane highway with everyone going about 10 miles per hour.  We finally got to a spot where there were two policemen.  We pointed out to the road, and they grabbed us and pushed us out into it, nodding happily that they helped us.  We were in the middle of the madness, and gritted our teeth and just walked.  It was actually quite exhilarating until I turned to find Matt who was holding the camera above his head shooting the whole thing and not looking where he was going.  Ah!  He made it safe, though, and we made a new family rule: no filming while crossing Vietnamese roads.  Agreed.

We wandered around in the magical, chaotic world that is downtown Ho Chi Minh during the new year, and enjoyed the feast of images to capture.  It's a little bit humid here, and it was very hot during the day, but the evening was the perfect temperature.  We could have stayed out all night, but we've got another day of shooting ahead of us and decided to be semi-responsible and head back to the ship for some shut-eye.

So far, I am loving Vietnam.

Shawna's Shipboard Birthday Bonanza

B-day decorations on our cabin door.

This morning we started our malaria pills for Vietnam, which is a great way to start any birthday. Matt surprised me by buying me two new books for my Kindle, which was the perfect gift since I have just about finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy. He also surprised me by pulling out a birthday card with my dad's handwriting on it. I was confused for a moment on how it got mailed, but then realized it was a secret plan concocted sometime before Jan. 4 when we packed up our 320 pounds of luggage and got dropped off at DIA to catch our flight to San Diego. Nice work, guys. I loved the surprise!

I've had an influx of happy birthday wishes which was so wonderful to receive. My sincerest thanks to all of my friends and family. It's comforting to still have a piece of home out in the middle of the South China Sea.

Part of our crew got to interview the Archbishop Desmond Tutu this morning, which is an honor I hope I'll get at some point before he gets off the ship in South Africa. He's is the most wonderful and cutest man. He has a hilarious sense of humor that you're not expecting at first, and the fact that it catches you off guard makes it even funnier.

When Matt went in to light the interview, they sat him down in his room on the ship and set up the lights around him. He pleasantly chatted to them, then once Matt started turning on the bright lights, he flinched a little and said through his squints, "Oh. I was just beginning to like you." And then let out his boisterous cackle of which he's become famous for on the ship.

Happy Matt and Shawna in the Tipsy Toucan

We did pre-port interviews with the entrepreneurial teams that we'll be following in Vietnam. It was good to get to know them a little better on camera. We're trying something new with the way that we split up our film crews, and now Matt, Jessie and I will focus on Aquaphytex, Prakti Design and Deaftronics for the rest of the voyage.

After interviews, we had a birthday burger bash up on the aft 7 deck where there is a grill and snack bar. You can buy French fries and burgers and hotdogs and soda, so I invited everyone to come up and enjoy some good old fashioned junk food for my birthday. We had a nice turnout and it was fun to eat something other than the usual ship meals of potatoes, pasta, steamed veggies with a side of meat.

The sticky note piñata!

Right before dinner, I was presented with a birthday gift from the team: grape fettuccine gummies from Tokyo. Oishi!!!! ("Delicious" in Japanese). Then, Oli pulled out a wonderful creation that took her days to create: a piñata!

She had found a ballon on the ship, went to the kitchen and got some flour and went to town making a legit piñata. She even decorated it colorfully using sticky notes. Very resourceful.

We had to shoot a fireside chat with one of the Unreasonable mentors on the ship which took us up to 10:30pm when we wanted to do my birthday dance party. Everyone was so exhausted, and we've got an early morning tomorrow to shoot the ship going down the delta to get to Ho Chi Minh City. I've heard it's quite the site to be so close to land on both sides. Everyone says its a beautiful experience that you can't miss, so we all decided to call it quits and head for bed. It was decided that we'll extend the celebrations to another night when people are more fresh and ready to crack into a piñata.

A lovely sunset for my birthday.

As I headed up to the Tipsy Toucan to call off the party, I found a whole crew of people heading there that I had to disappoint, including members of our admin. team, Tom Chi and his wife, Lucille, who had a delicious present in tow. Chocolate covered açai berries. So thoughtful! Everyone is just so wonderful on this ship!!

We'll, it's off to bed so I can greet Vietnam with bright eyes and a bushy tail. All of you in America technically have about 15 more hours of my birthday to enjoy, so make the most of it for me, will you?

The Sniff Test

Travel brings out the best and worst in people. It also redefines people's thresholds.

Take laundry for example. At home, I assess whether or not a piece of clothing is clean by determining whether or not I've worn it. If I've worn it, it goes in the hamper, and I don't wear it again until it makes its way through ye ole wash cycle.

Now, on the ship, you get a grocery-sized bag that you can stuff to the brim with clothing and pay $6 to have it washed and returned to your room the next day. As a staff member, we are allowed to put our laundry out anytime, and don't need to wait for the scheduled laundry days. (So, awesome). As a frugal person, however, that $6 per bag, per person, per every 5 days or so, has made me reconsider my definition of clean.

There is a new process of testing out clothing for cleanliness...

1. The look: one must examine the clothing for exorbitant amounts of wrinkles and also note how unbearable any stains are. Upon approval of this step, the article of clothing can go on to step two.

2. The sniff: one must hold the piece up close and personal and give it a good sniff. Test out different areas of the clothing to see if you might have missed a particularly stenchy area.

If this test is not passed, but desperation calls for a re-wear, one can move on to step three.

3. The helicopter: one holds the article of clothing at one end, letting it dangle down to the ground.
Then swirls the clothing in a vertical helicopter motion and quickly sniffs the moving air. This test presents a more extreme version of the hallway pass to see whether or not strangers will be able to detect your re-wear. A very effective test. My clothes usually pass, but then I just have Matt's sniffer to contend with. He usually doesn't mind as long a I'm locked away in a separate edit room.

So, there you have it. The three step process to saving the world. (By saving the water that would be wasted by unnecessary washings therefore reducing the impact on the environment and reversing global warming. You can thank me later.)

Most of today was spent in the Eagle's nest editing episode four, but we ended our day with a gorgeous sunset on the warm and calm South China Sea and also with delicious Vietnamese appetizers for a pre-taste of what's to come on the 12th. I'm very much looking forward to Vietnam.

I promise I'll do laundry before I meet the locals.

Not Long in Hong Kong

February 8, 2013

Hello Hong Kong!  We got to get off the ship today.  Woo hoo!!  And boy did the few hours we had fly by.

Matt and I grabbed breakfast on the ship and booked it to the front desk for a Hong Kong map then made our way to the gangway to get off the ship.  We were ready to get lost on Hong Kong island and have ourselves an adventure.

We got off the ship and walked through the port mall to find an ATM to get Hong Kong dollars.  After a few rounds of ATM time, we finally got some cash out.  We pulled out HK$400 which was the equivalent of about $35 in the US.  Hong Kong can be very expensive, but if you do it right you can get a lot of bang for your buck.

The Star Ferry went from our port over to Hong Kong island where we could quickly walk to the subway or trolley cars and go along the entire city shore and explore.  We hadn’t broken down our big bills, but, luckily, there were some people from our ship who had gone out the day before and gave us four HK$1 coins to get on the ferry to the other side.  We said we’d thank them by buying them a drink later, but they laughed and said they basically just gave us a buck.  We could split a soda with them on the ship…

The ferry was really fun.  It was very tippy and wavy going across the river, but the men were old and weathered who ran it, and it felt very old-school with giant ropes and hooks to attach it to each little port.  It was all open air, so it was a little chilly during the trip, but it only took five minutes to the other side.

We walked down a raised walkway that would eventually take us to the subway, but found an interesting building with a Starbucks at the bottom and decided to break our cash with a hot, milky latte.  Ooooh how I crave lattes on a regular basis since we don’t have access to them on the ship.  Okay, I take that back.  You can buy one of those powder machine lattes for $4 if you really, really need one, but I only stoop to those during all-nighters.

I laughed at the receipt because they use the same dollar sign as we do, and the latte cost $33.  The most expensive latte you’ll ever buy.  (The conversion rate is $13 Hong Kong dollars to a single US dollar.)

We found the subway and headed down to Quarry Bay where we heard there was a Lunar New Year Fair.  We figured it would be a fun cultural event.

The Chinese New Year is a huge celebration over here, and they would equate it to our Christmas.  Everyone gets into it.  The big thing to buy during the new year is flowers and lucky mandarin plants, so there were rows and rows of sellers.

Hong Kong was a lot nicer than Shanghai, both in the way people treated us as foreigners and also how clean and well kept the city was.  There’s a ton of business done here with other countries, so we saw a lot more diversity here and far more people spoke English which made getting around easier.

When we first got off the subway, there were protest signs against the communist party, and I felt surprised by this.  Hong Kong had been owned buy the British until 1997, so they had a different government than the rest of China.  When Hong Kong rejoined China, they agreed to have one country and two governments, so Hong Kong kept a lot of the freedoms that wouldn’t be allowed in the rest of China.  Seeing the freedom of speech against the government felt out of place from what I knew about China, and I’m interested in researching more about the relationship between Hong Kong and the rest of China.

The fair was fun and colorful, and Matt said that he felt paralyzed with how much there was to photograph.  We were off for the day, but that never stops him from shooting.  He got some great footage.

We found the fair food section, and even though they did have a small booth with cotton candy and another with popcorn, the rest were filled with Chinese fair food which is close to the American way, but with a Chinese twist.  Instead of a turkey leg, you can have a duck wing.  Instead of a hot dog, you can have ramen noodles in a hoagie bun.  Instead of beef-kabobs, you can have quail eggs that they fry in a device that has a hole for a stick to make an egg-kabob.

My favorite delight was a pre-packaged ice-cream ball.  We chose green tea and some sort of passion fruit flavors.  You could get one that tasted like durian, but the little lady at the booth highly discouraged us.  “You no like.  This for sure,” she said to us.

If you’ve never experienced durian, you’re in for a treat.  We saw and sniffed them in Hawaii during the farmer’s market in Hilo.  Imagine finding a fruit about the size of a pineapple, maybe a little bigger, that looks like a hedgehog that’s been hanging out in a radioactive pond.  Crack it open to find what looks to be large yellow organs – like a liver, then give it a big whiff and soak in the smell of a giant pile of excrement.  Welcome to the wonderful world of durian.  Apparently it tastes like vanilla pudding, but I wasn’t about to put my mouth on that business.

After our icecream treat, we realized we had HK$250 left over and needed to buy some goodies from the product side of the fair.  We found inflatable iPhones that were about a meter long that had all the apps one could ever want printed on the front.  We got to try some snake jerky, and also some sugar cane juice that was freshly squished.  We found a couple jewelry items that were fun and the equivalent of two dollars, so we snatched those up.

We left the fair with full tummies, good photos and also a street sign souvenir made by a local high school economics club that said “like a boss” in Cantonese that we knew would come in handy around the ship.  We headed for the subway and found a post office to send off some postcards before spending the rest of our money at the 7-11 in port next to the ship.  Gotta load up on snacks to hold us over to Vietnam.

We got back to the ship, exhausted and happy and had dinner with the Hong Kong skyline outside.  All of the buildings were decorated on the outside to celebrate the new year holiday, and at 8pm when the ship was leaving port, there was a huge, city-wide light show complete with music that’s pumped throughout the city.  All of the buildings flashed and shot out lasers in time to the music.  It was a festive way to say so long to Hong Kong.

Now, we’re floating along in the South China Sea, headed for Vietnam.  We’ll arrive the day after my birthday, on February 12.  It’ll be a pretty sweet present.

Headed to Hong Kong

Feb. 6-7, 2013

This trip is bombarding all that I am with questions of who I’ve chosen to be and what I’ve chosen to do with my life.

The first aspect of this trip is the very apparent one: travel.  I’m learning to adjust to a new way of living. We’ve got tight quarters, lack of available resources, close community where we eat, sleep, work and play together, not having to take care of the usual daily needs like cooking our own food or doing our own laundry, and lastly culture shock on a weekly basis.

Experiencing a shipboard community where people are from all different cultures in one thing, but being immersed into places that we don’t speak the language, don’t know the customs and have to find our way around and do our job of capturing a story we can’t plan for, has been a challenge.  Not in a bad way, but in a healthy way. I feel like I’m growing and learning to be less uptight and more flexible.

On our journey from Shanghai to Hong Kong, I was tasked with editing the 2^nd webisode for Unreasonable at Sea.  We had followed Protei, the company that is creating a social R&D platform for autonomous sailing robots that have the goal of researching and cleaning up our oceans.  (That’s quite the mouthful)

Their goal in Hawaii was to do some research about the plastic pollution that washes up on the beaches of the island, and they found a place on the main island that was nicknamed “Rainbow Beach” because of the way that millions of pieces of plastic have been caught in an eddy and trade winds and washed up on the beach.  Because of the waves and rocks, they’re smashed down into tiny rainbow confetti which is spread around everywhere.  It goes meters deep and it’s impossible to clean up, so they just let it be.

The episode should be up by February 12 on www.Unreasonable.is/atsea, and I really hope you’ll all check it out!

The edit took be longer than I had expected, so my first day in Hong Kong, February 7, was actually spent on the ship finishing the episode.  I worked all day, and got a pretty solid cut which Daniel felt happy with, and all I had left in the evening was finishing.  If I got it completely done, Matt and I would get to venture out into Hong Kong on the 8^th which was highly motivating.

That night, there was a very special dinner on the ship which consisted of five courses, plated and served.  It was honoring the big dogs in the Semester at Sea program and also honoring the Tung family who started the Institute for Shipboard education back in the 1960’s.  It was based out of Hong Kong, and we were honored to have several members of the family on board for the dinner.

Matt and I sat at a table with two scholarship students who were on the ship thanks to the generous donors who were at the dinner.  One of the students, Pabel, who was originally from Peru, had been funded by this man from his high school studies in Italy through his college in Missouri and now on this semester on the ship.  He was so excited to meet the man that had made all of this education possible, and he kept pointing over at the table at him and explaining how he changed his life.

Pabel pulled a wrinkled, ripped piece of paper out of his fancy suit, and unfolded it to show us a full page of scribbled words.  He had written out a speech for the first time that he met his donor, and wanted to deliver it to him when he met him at the dinner.  We all joked that he should stand up after the board members spoke and give his speech.  No sooner had we turned around, and Pabel was gone and the dean was announcing him to everyone during dessert.

Pabel gave a heart-felt message explaining how he wouldn’t be where he was without the opportunities that were given to him through the scholarships.  He’s studying political science and wants to go home after his education is complete and become the president of Peru.  I think he can achieve it.  He’s a charming, sharp, driven young person that could change his country for the better.  Go Pabel!

After dinner, I cranked out the finishing on the episode and dropped into bed around 2:30am with hopes that I’d get to get off the ship in a few hours.

Zia Zian (Good-bye) Shanghai

We had an early start to the day today because we had been planning to go to the Super Bowl party hosted by Wieden+Kennedy (the company behind the Nike and Old Spice commercials - "hello ladies").  Due to the time different, the game started at 7:30am, so part of our team headed into the city to join in on tons of delicious junk food and experiencing the Shanghai office of Wieden+Kennedy.

Matt and I were scheduled to go along with Tendekayi to visit one of the three locations that his company, Solar Ear, is located.  Solar Ear hires and empowers people who are deaf to create hearing aids and solar powered battery chargers for hearing aids in Botswana, Brazil and now China.  We visited the Shanghai location, cameras in tow.

We met our host, Blade, who volunteers there as a sign language interpreter, at the port outside of our ship.  She knows Chinese, English and American Sign Language and Chinese Sign Language.  She got us a taxi and got us to the Solar Ear office where we met the six people who were there.  Four of them are deaf and two are hearing impaired.  We introduced ourselves via whiteboard so that they would know our names, and then Blade drew us some caricatures with their names so that we could remember who was who.

They were really excited to meet Tendekayi since he is the founder of the company started in Botswana.  Blade explained that being hearing impaired or deaf in Chinese culture is shameful and looked upon as a disease, so people don't like to admit that they have hearing trouble and don't like to wear hearing aids because it announces that they need the help.  She said that about 10% of the population has hearing loss, and many people of her generation (late 20's and early 30's) are hearing impaired because of a medicine that was widely used many years ago.

Tendekayi went around the circle and asked people if they enjoyed working there and why.  They all enjoyed working there and liked making hearing aids since they were helping people that had hearing loss.  We got on the topic of their goals and dreams, and each person said what they wanted to be in the future.  One wanted to be a photographer, another a doctor and another a teacher, but before getting a job at Solar Ear, the accepted reality was that they could only do those things if they had hearing.  Solar Ear gives them a job and also trains them in the meantime with English and other valuable skills that they can't get in school since there isn't much accessibility in education for the deaf.

It was so neat to see the smiles on their faces as they talked about the fact that they had a future now.  They loved working together because as a deaf community they understand one another, whereas in their previous jobs, they felt lonely since they were the only one in a hearing work environment that couldn't hear.  We met the custodians who were also deaf, and they came in and visited a little with the lab workers.

Matt and I will eventually turn this adventure into a webisode that will go up in early March, so watch out on Unreasonable.is/atsea as we begin uploading them.

It was time for lunch, and we all decided to go to lunch together.  They wanted us to try xiao long bao, which is a steamed bun filled with a brothy soup and a lump of pork dumpling meat.  They brought us to a little restaurant just outside of their office building, and Blade asked us if we were "much hungry or little hungry."  With the delicious smells and our empty stomachs, we errored on the "much" side.  This resulted in a pile of delicious items that we had never tried before.  Inside of each of those stacked wooden basket-plates were six steamed xiao long baos, and she ordered two for each of us plus two types of soup for each of us.  So much food, but so darn good.

What we didn't finish she brought back to the office for the rest of the team, and after loading up the leftovers, we went back to the office to grab our stuff.  The team said good-bye to us in sign language and we thanked them in both ASL and Chinese Sign Lanuage.  One woman came and gave me a gift.  It was a card holder made of rainbow beads and plastic thread.  So nice!

We found ourselves a taxi and made it back to the port where we found the rest of the team hunting for snacks.  Of course we joined them.  There was a FamilyMart just a couple blocks down, so we went to get some provisions for our two-day haul to Hong Kong.  The ship food is good, but the potatoes, meat and steamed veggies get old after a month, and people seek out crazy snacks to sustain them for at least one meal a day.

Once a month we get taco night, and people completely gorge themselves on guacamole and taco meat, and the ship takes on a more satisfied atmosphere among the people, but also an unsavory stench.  Oh, taco night. Set us free!

We're back on the ship now to enjoy happy hour and a debrief of everyone's stories from port.  I didn't like Shanhai at first, but after delving in and getting to know people one-on-one with our tea house adventure and the Solar Ear office, I've come to realize that the people are good people.  The culture is definitely different from America, but people's hearts and compassion really do run as deep as anywhere else.

Hong Kong here we come!  *Toot toot*  (no reference to taco night intended...)