Entries this day: Almost_back! Bye_books Bye_ship Crazy_Day Final_dinner Lick_Nipple Zzz_hitomi

Almost back!

almost back!

(written Friday 19 August 2005)

HI Everybody!

The fiords in Alaska offered more interesting glaciers and animals than the fiords
near Norway.  We saw ice calving from glaciers (summer or global warming?) and
otters floating around amidst small icebergs between which we carefully glided.

Oh!  and we saw whales!  For a day there were practically whale sightings every 20
minutes, though for the great majority (all but 2) we just saw a bit of spray as
the whale exhaled, then the dorsal curve arced downward until the tail flipped up
then disappeared.  That always meant "the show is over."  Everyone would be all
excited and squealing..  I was never impressed; whales breathe.  They swim.  I
agree it was *neat* to see wildlife, but not worth squealing.

Except one time, when a whale about a kilometer from the boat leaped out of the
water with a spin and dramatic splash... "OH MY GOD THAT WAS AWESOME!!!" and people
talked about it for the rest of the day.  I wonder if anyone got it on video.

Classes are over; my quiet girls' class left with nary a peep, and my loud and
crazy class made me a big card with my favorite class photo and wrote things like
"I came to enjoy English through you."  I'm so so thankful.

Our jobs as teachers are basically done except for three big days of events that
will be held over the next few days after Alaska: graduation, prom, speeches
(teachers in Japanese then the students in English) and project presentations:
video, performance, and journal teams will be featured for a couple hour event.

There's a man named George Meegan onboard.  He walked from the southern tip of
South America to Barrow, Alaska over a long period. He has many stories to tell,
and is promoting a revolution in education where every child is rewarded for what
they're good at doing, not punished for being bad at certain subjects.  DEMOCRACY
REACHES THE KIDS is his book, though I don't see an ISBN or publisher on this copy.

His lectures are full of surprises and tangents as he brings random people onstage
as examples or has the entire auditorium go onto the top deck to experience the
world more directly.  Engaging, unique, revolution, spirit.. these words come to
mind but don't want to be wrapped in sentences.

I've heard a rumor that the weather is beautiful outside; I'm going now to
experience it.  I spent some hours last night creating art with Matt instead of
writing an email like this one.

-----

Now it's Saturday 27 August 2005

Seward, Alaska was big fun; Katt and I climbed most of Marathon mountain and
met two couples from another cruise ship.  They were performers - doing 4 shows
(twice each) on a week long voyage between Vancouver and Seward.  I don't know how
many voyages they do per contract.  Their ship was The Summit, one of the panamax
cruise ships run by Celebrity Cruises.

On our way back toward the ship, I spent about 20 minutes standing in a culvert
where humpback salmon vied for position going upstream.  They seemed to spend more
time hovering than moving forward, which I didn't really understand; why spend so
much energy swimming against stream, but just staying in the same place?  As I
write this, I remember they would also occasionally fight/bite each other, so I
imagine each fish had to be wary of passing other fish for fear of being wounded. 
Occasionally a fish would swim near me, and I was able to touch a few and actually
lift two out of the water!  We got pictures that will certainly be on my website
within a few days.

We have only a few days to go until we reach Yokohama.  Our schedules still brim
with activity, though now we are focused on cleaning and closing up shop.

------

Sunday morning 28 August 2005

The ship has been pitching and rolling quite heavily for the past 12 hours; we went
through a typhoon last night in the Pacific.  Katt and I went onto the top deck
to experience the rain and wind, which nearly pelted hard enough to be painful.  As
we headed toward the front of the ship, a crew member spotted us and asked that we
get off the top deck; it's too dangerous.  Fair enough; it would be challenging to
live while treading water in the middle of a typhoon in the middle of the ocean.

We will be in Japan in two days.

    Love to all
    - Rob! 

Bye books

1:30pm MAGST Sunday 28 August 2005

I'm consciously releasing these books to the junkfest upstairs:

1. Lonely Planet Journeys: Lost Japan

2. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, given to me by Marcel. I recognize I don't care to become a great artist.

3. The Art of Loving by Eric Fromm, because it's dry and I'll never read it.

4. Travels with Lisbeth, the kind of book I want to write myself some day.

5. Married Lust, the 10 Secrets of Longlasting Desire. Wende and I got this, but I broke up with her.

6. Japanese History, written in Japanese and English, given to me by Miho from Nova.

7. Conscious Breathing by Gay Hendrix, PhD. purchased at Half Price Books, with a red wine stain now from the stag party.

Bye ship

3:55pm MAGST Sunday 28 August 2005

We switched to a new timezone last night. Today I recorded an hour of byebye ship video. 12 year old Shunji and a girl fell and I nearly got it recorded.

We have to be dressed up at 4:45 for some stupid kampai byebye ceremony crap.

Today we have been selling GET CDs, and I have nearly recovered my money on Kamau's CDs that I bought for everyone to buy, but not everyone has wanted. I sold two to passengers, Hitomi and Miki with an underbite.

Sent three emails today- Kellie, janette, Rob Update List.

Crazy Day

10pm MAGST Sunday 28 August 2005

Today, we went to the presentation I didn't want to do, and we had to wear suits and I didn't want to and it was for some stupid yay-thanks-for-being-onbaord crap. We gathered at 4:45 and got free drinks (orange or champagne) and there was a jazz band and Captain Costas introduced his crew and then people ran off to dinner and we were supposed to go to the GET meeting but Katt and I nixed the location: Hemmingway, cause I totally hate cigarette smoke. I apologized later cause I hadn't been very gracious about the way I said I didn't want to meet in Hemmingway.

At the second copy of the same presentation (for the other half of the passengers), we were cutting up more and taking pictures of Francois drinking champagne and being totally silly and my 73 year old student Shunji came up to us GET Teachers as we were having Francois drink champagne and he said something that sounded like "lick nipple," and I was like, "what??" and he said it again and rubbed his nipple and we tried to think of anything it could be, but it really sounded like "lick nipple." He went away and we were baffled.

((and then Hitomi came up and I was like no, fuckoff, go away, leave me alone, I hate you, but she kept talking and hounding me and finally she somehow convinced me to meet with her tonight and I put a 30 minute limit on it but was pissed about meeting her at all. later, on the way to dinner Katt was like, "you shouldn't have talked to her at all," and I was like, fuck off about what I should or should not do. I shouldn't have done a lot of shit, I know. "grr"))

Final dinner

Dinner was delicious with duck patee and Kris brought her video camera and recorded the crew singing We Are The World, but didn't take my advice to record Carissa offering Dave three noodles arranged to look like a phallus and balls. He saw immediately what it was and leaned down and used his mouth to suck/eat the penis part.

Then we had baked Alaska, which was great, then I had to run off to meet Cheerful Dancing Fellows.

Lick Nipple

I had a fantastic dinner with Cheerful Dancing Fellows, and I asked Shunji just what he had said. He goes, "lick nipple," and the girls were like, "what does that mean?" and he pointed to his own chest and perhaps stuck out his tongue and I was like, "stop stop stop" and the girls were totally confused and I explained it briefly in two parts: "lick is like taste" and "nipple is おパイの上" but realized that wasn't quite right but the girls got it and then I asked what was the actual translation for nipple: ("ちくび").

Shunji explained that was his phrase of the day. Oh man.

So that became our buzzphrase during the party and then it came time to determine who was the winner(loser) of the Spoke-The-Most-Japanese during class game.

I had a paper cup with names of people who spoke Japanese during class. Every time they spoke Japanese, I gave them a red piece of paper. Every time they used a good vocabulary word, I gave them a green piece of paper. The papers were signed and duly collected in the cup.

I made a bit of an event of counting the number of times each person had spoken Japanese, pulling them out of the cup one at a time and announcing the name and handing it down the table to whoever's it was.

Before I got too far, I was like, "what will the winner have to do?" and Shunji goes, "lick nipple!" and we all laughed. Then he's like, "lick Rob's nipple!" and I was like, "okay, ha ha, no really, what should it be?" and we came up with something like sing New York New York in the middle of Namihei.

The results of the game:

 Kazue:  4-1 (1 good vocabulary)  
  Koji:  3
Shunji: 10
  Yama:  0
  Naho:  1
   Aki:  1
   Rob:  6

And before I could say, "Yama, did you say nothing at all??" Shunji ran up to me, opened my suit coat and unbuttoned my shirt and LICKED MY NIPPLE and I was like "aaaaaahhhh!!" and "get a picture! get a picture!" and everyone was crying laughing, and amazingly, every other table ignored us. I can understand that if we were in Japan, but we've been on this boat for three months!

Shunji was all, "mmm delicious."

Zzz hitomi

12:30am MAGST Monday 29 August 2005

I talked to Hitomi, who wants one more time in Japan, and I'm like, "no. we are done."

I was upset afterward and threw the rest of my Mt Fuji stick over the side of the boat.