Sailing - Day 2

Sunday February 3rd 21:00

This ship is kept well ventilated in all areas. It's often cold even. If a door opens from inside while sitting on a back deck you can definitely feel the cold breeze hit you.

We rounded the corner of Brazil today and got a nice view of Recife's skyline. It was still pretty far away though so I'm not sure exactly how good the pictures are going to turn out. There have also been a group of like 10 seagulls following our ship for the past day and a half, kind of fun to just watch them fly up then dive into the water to find some fish. Then fly quickly to catch up with the ship.

So I'm getting pretty pumped for Brazil. Our interport lecturer, Javier, just got done giving an hour speech about what to do, see, and eat in and around Salvador. It sounds like after Carnivale is over in the middle of the second day things become a lot safer for everyone, so I'll start to take some pictures after Carnivale, most likely. Just looking at everything now, it seems that Brazil is going to be the hardest for most people. It's the least-safe country of the ones that we're going to, hardly anyone speaks English, and American currency isn't accepted in most places. The exchange rate is 1USD = 1.75 Reais.

Just got done reading "The Bridge in the Jungle" by B. Traven for my Knowledge and Responsibility: A Global Perspective class. Not the most exciting book to read, but one of the chapters ended with a paragraph that I really liked. When the book was all said and done, it actually ended up being pretty good. So I'll end today with that paragraph.

"... One becomes a philosopher by living among people who are not of his own race and who speak a different language. No, no matter what happens, you had better stay firm in the belief that there is no better country in the world than God's own great land of the free and then you will feel fine and be a respected citizen. Aside from the fact that philosophy actually pays if you know how to handle it right, experience has taught me that traveling educates only those who can be educated just as well by roaming their own country. By walking thirty miles anywhere in one's home state the man who is open minded will see more and learn more than a thousand others will by running round the world. A trip to a Central American jungle to watch how Indians behave near a bridge won't make you see either the jungle or the bridge or the Indians if you believe that the civilization you were born into is the only one that counts. Go and look around with the idea that everything you learned in school and college is wrong."