Our three day passage between Hong Kong and Japan were the roughest days yet (with the exception of coming into Cape Town where they disabled the stabilizers on the ship). The ship was deserted and silent, especially our first day at sea. The waves aren't all that huge: 3-5 meters, but they are very irregular and close together which really makes the ship pitch and roll. If the movement doesn't make you sea sick, it at least makes you very very tired. I took some long naps, but I was kept awake all night by the waves violently crashing against my head and throwing me up in the air. It's like trying to sleep while being thrown up and down in a parachute. Actually, I can get used to the movement, but it was the pounding of the waves that I couldn't handle. This was the only time on the entire voyage I actually got sea sick.

Towards the end of every SAS voyage, we have an auction to raise money for some of the charities that we visit in our ports of call. This is always a very successful event. People donate vacation homes, services like breakfast in bed or language lessons, and then there's the prized item that I donated. In India Kat sent me a DVD of the season premier of Gilmore Girls. It went in the silent auction - I'm not sure of the final price, but there was a girl stalking the bidding that kept outbidding everyone else who bid on it. Yeah Gilmore Girls! I also donated a jar of peanut butter. That would have been a super prized item my last voyage, but the food was much better this time, and we never ran out of peanut butter. I didn't actually bid on anything. Anything I was interested in quickly went for $300-$600. After the auction I went to Megan's cabin to sleep in her extra bed. She's on the 4th floor and much farther back, so there's not as much movement or wave noise.

Our final day of the crossing was our 3rd and final no class day - a nice lazy day. Gladys, one of the adult passengers who has been on about 14 voyages turns 83 tomorrow, so she threw a birthday party for herself, got 2 huge cakes and invited all the faculty, staff, adult passengers, and dependent kids. It was a fun event, at least the cake and punch were very good.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to haul myself out of bed for the sunrise coming into Kobe, but when the common noise of the ship pulling into the dock, was my sign to get out on the deck pronto.

I made it out JUST in time to see the fire boat and then the most exciting part which I remember from 1999 quite well which is the Japanese marching band standing outside the port terminal playing Sousa marches. That sure woke me up!!! I was marching and skipping and grabbed Jason V. and Byron to dance with me and even do a kickline, it was awesome!

These mornings waiting for the ship to clear are always interesting, it's the only time I really don't like being down in the pit. While waiting for the ship to clear I went into Byron's room to take a nap, but I was really jumpy and restless because I was afraid of missing the announcement that our passports were ready to be picked up. Everyone had to pick up their passport, and then they could turn them right back in, but I had to be sure I kept mine with me because we had to have it to activate the Japan Rail Pass.

When the ship finally cleared, I replaced Yas in the Jason, Rico, Yas travel trio and headed off with Jason and Rico to redeem our rail passes and take the bullet train west to Hiroshima. Chris had been in contact with a 20-something Japanese guy named Toshi who had met some SAS students in previous voyages and wanted to take Chris around, so when Chris met up with Toshi, Toshi offered to drive us to the train station in his car. It was pretty funny, 5 of us smooshing in this tiny little Japanese car. Jason, Rico, and I smooshed in the back seat and I really felt like we were bonding, it was great. The process of getting our rail pass was easy, and with Jason and I working together (the best Amazing Race team ever) we quickly found the right train after waiting for one of the super fast Nozomi's to pass since that was the one type of JR we couldn't take with our pass.

Had I done more research before I got to Japan (or Hong Kong actually) I could have saved about $75 and the hassle of buying a Japan Rail pass before I got to Japan by buying the 20000Yen 4-day western Japan rail pass which covered everywhere I was going (Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara), it just wouldn't get me to Tokyo. My rail pass was about $250 and cost 28,300Yen. There are a lot of Japanese characters on my rail pass that there's no way I could read (although Jason taught me how to recognize the characters for Shinkansen - the second character of each syllable looked like Godzilla, Pope, Robot), but I thought that I should have been able to read the dates which were just regular numbers, but I couldn't decipher what the dates were. Last Date: 17.11.26 (or I thought it looked like 26, but the 6 was more like a 0 with a horizontal line through the middle of the 0 and a little chunk out of the right side above the line). and Date of issue: 17.11.20. Yes, my pass was issued on November 20, and it should have expired on November 26, but what the heck was that 17. Well, Jason who knows every piece of useless trivia you could imagine filled me in on the Japanese system for dates. They don't use the common era dates that western countries use, they record years by how many years the emperor has been in power. This totally confuses me because how can you tell the current emperor's 17th year from any other emperor's 17th year, and how do you record years where the emperor changed halfway through the year because it appears that they still go by the same 12 month system we do. I guess I'll have to research that more some other time.

The bus ride to Hiroshima is about 6 hours, but our bullet train or shinkansen only took us about an hour and a half. We gave Rico the window so he could look outside like a puppy dog the whole time and I slept in the middle. When we arrived in Hiroshima we had to quickly get ourselves oriented. Fortunately I'd grabbed a map from the travel agent in the port terminal because Lonely Planet is horrible in Japan and doesn't put names on most of the streets. We had very little money since the few ATMs that work with foreign cards are inside post offices which were closed on Sundays. We all had a bit of money that we'd gotten before the trip, but in Japan, a little doesn't go very far. In most countries we've visited, you always got a much worse exchange rate and big surcharges when you used traveller's checks because they're a hassle and don't work on the black market, but in Japan, they want to make sure they're getting legal currency, so the exchange rate is actually better with Traveler's Checks. We found a big hotel just outside the train station, so we went to exchange some money and get directions to the peace memorial and museum.

They told us to take a bus which we did, but we got on one that peeled off the wrong direction, and of course unlike other countries, each wrong bus you get on is a fairly costly mistake. It's about $1.50-$2/bus ride. After 2 blocks, we ended up just walking the rest of the way to the memorial which wasn't too far, it was a nice walk actually. The most exciting thing about Japan is that we finally got to see fall colors. The trees were beautiful, there were many bright brilliant red leaves. It just made me smile to see all of these trees and the nice crisp weather. It's kind of fun to get to wear my hat and bundle up in my fleece.

Rico, Jason, and I didn't talk much when we finally got to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park area because it was a very sobering area, especially the museum. The first structure we saw was the A-bomb dome which was the one structure that was hit that they left standing. Pretty much everything around this building which was a performance hall I think, was flattened, and the dome was hit slightly off-kilter. The actual bomb hit several blocks away (everything within a 2 kilometer radius of the bomb was pretty much flattened). There was a children's peace memorial area where school children from all over Japan have hung paper cranes for peace that they made.

We went through the peace museum at our own speed. We were in there about 2 hours, I pretty much walked right through the 2nd half of the museum which was showing dioramas, wax figures, and lots of burned and bloody clothes from children who were burned and killed by the bomb. It was all too graphic for me and I didn't feel like I needed to look at any more. I sat outside the exhibit and waited for Rico and Jason, none of us really talked to each other until we'd gotten to dinner because we were just reflecting on all that we'd seen.

It seems like such a horrible and unnecessary thing to do to drop an atomic bomb and completely decimate an entire city - not to mention doing it twice - Nagasaki, but I think the museum did a fairly good job at presenting the different sides. It's just hard to believe that after all that the Japanese are friendly with Americans. A couple of nights later when I went out to sushi with Byron and Jason, we had a long conversation with the sushi chef who had lived in the US for 11 years. He explained it was all about the samurai spirit. The Japanese appreciate and respect a good fight. When they are fighting, they are going to try their very best and fight a good hard fight, but when they are beaten, they respect their opponent and acknowledge a good fight. So I guess that's what it is, they respect the Americans for being worthy opponents. Now Japan is one of our closest allies.

We actually got a relatively inexpensive dinner at a little restaurant in Hiroshima before heading back to Kobe. We had noodle soup dishes and Rico and Jason both got sushi rolls. We wanted to go to sushi-oke (our made up word for sushi and karaoke) we were sure there had to be the combo somewhere, but it was getting late, and we were afraid that if we went out in Osaka which was what we really wanted to do, we'd miss the last train back to Kobe which was around 10:30, so we decided to go back to the ship, see if we could find Chris or anyone else and head back out in Kobe to find karaoke. I didn't actually go back out, but the others did.

Rico and Jason had planned to head up to Tokyo on day two, but they had kind of a crazy night after they went out last night and Jason didn't make it much of anywhere that day. I ended up heading out on my own that day, and left a note on Jason's door telling him I'd be back for the welcome reception at 4:00 on the ship, and if he was feeling up to it, we should go out to dinner tonight. I then stopped by the information desk in the port area and got a bunch of maps and hopped a train out to Himeji.

It was actually kind of nice to be off on my own. I was armed with maps and my knock-off Japan Lonely Planet that I bought in Vietnam. Once in Himeji I walked down a beautiful street lined with brilliant fall foliage down to the Himeji castle which is supposedly the castle where Tom Cruise filmed The Last Samurai. The castle was pretty cool, but what I liked the most was just watching all the Japanese school kids. It was a big field trip day. There were several groups all in their uniforms taking group pictures just inside the entrance of the castle area, and then a bunch of younger kids were playing tag and running around on the field in front of the castle. Once I bought my ticket and got inside the actual castle grounds, there were 2 groups, a boys group and a girls group, probably high school age. The girls were all taking pictures with their camera phones.

I think this is the best season to visit Japan, all of the postcards have pictures of the different areas in autumn. The leaves are so red and brilliant, it's sunny, and the air is refreshingly crisp. It's nice to have this weather after sweating for the majority of the semester. The tour inside the castle and the nearby quarters was pretty cool. You had to take off your shoes before entering and adults only put on slippers that they provided. You had to climb up and down a lot of very steep staircases throughout the tour, with the slippers that felt like they were always going to fall off, I thought I was going to wipe or trip terribly throughout the entire castle tour. The inside was cool though, all wood, nicely preserved wood floors, and they had several little holes for the warriors to shoot arrows, drop rocks, or pour hot water on anyone attempting to scale the castle walls and enter.

On my way out of the castle I was stopped by a Japanese girl who asked if she could record me speaking English at a normal speed for her English class. It was really funny. She had a sheet that she was reading from when asking if she could talk to me and it had all of her questions written down as well as the answers she could expect to here. I laughed to myself when I answered and looked down at her paper and my answer was written down verbatim on her paper. I guess I'm just that predictable. After our short interview, I asked her to take a picture of me in front of the castle since I didn't have any pictures of me today.

After touring the castle, I walked to the nearby Koko-en Japanese garden and took my time walking around, reading, and taking pictures. It was just so nice to have that quiet, peaceful, alone time. I was really hungry, but didn't really want to spend a lot of money or know where to go on my own, so I stopped in at a tea house inside the garden. I thought I'd get to sit at a table, sip some tea, and read, but I ended up getting in on the tail end of a tea ceremony. They handed me a sheet on how to drink the tea which I put in front of me and followed while also watching everyone else to make sure I was doing the right thing.

Everyone involved in the tea ceremony kneels around the 2 outside edges of a tatami mat, while the women serving tea are on the inside of the room. They first come and give you a plate with a little sweet on it. The sweet was made out of a ginkgo leaf and served with a little 2 pronged fork that you kind of spin it and eat that first. They then come and serve the chawan or little bowl of tea which you place inside the tatami edging and bow and say "Thank you for the tea" to the hostess. You then take the chawan in your right hand and place it on your left palm, steady the chawan with your right hand, bow your head slightly to express thanks, turn the chawan clockwise twice in order to avoid its front, and drink the green mealy, not so yummy tea to the last drop. Then turn the chawan back so that the front faces you and place it in front of you outside the tatami edging. I think the turning of the chawan is so that those facing you can look at the design while you're drinking, and then when you're done, the design faces you so you can enjoy it.

I headed back to the ship for the welcome reception that was supposed to be very good, but poorly attended, so I thought I'd help out the cause. Our choir performed a couple of songs, it was pretty embarrassing since only about 2 students and 4 adults were even there from the choir. Another student, Megan, sang a few folk songs and accompanied herself on the guitar. After the presentations and speech by the mayor and John, and exchanging of gifts, we had some dessert and the Japanese students did calligraphy. Jason and I decided to meet up at 7:00 to go out for a kobe beef dinner.

The kobe beef dinner was so incredibly amazing, it deserved a page unto itself. Please take the time to experience this amazing meal with me through step by step pictures.

This being our last port, and a safe port, everyone is very comfortable with traveling and heads out on their own agenda. We are no longer worried about following a group just for travel companions. Heading out on another adventure on my own, I stopped by the info desk in the port building and got train directions to Nara (which was much less direct than I remembered or expected) and directions to the top of Mt. Rokko where I planned to go for sunset, so I was trying to pack a lot into this day and the women at the information desk were a bit incredulous, but when I'm by myself, I can really do a lot.

By now I've gotten the train system down to the point where I can look up at a board and run to catch the right train. I did get on the wrong train, going in the opposite direction at one point, actually, turns out, it was a loop train and I could have probably stayed on it, but I wanted to follow the directions I was given, so I got off at the next stop and hopped on an express train in the other direction. It took me about an hour and a half to get to Nara and once there I stopped at another information desk for directions and a suggested itinerary for my not quite 3 hours there before hopping a train back to Kobe and Mt. Rokko.

My Nara sightseeing tour took me to the Five Storied Pagoda (which I remembered from my last time here), Todaiji Temple, which I also remembered, and Kasuga Taisha Shrine which I think was a new one for me. I also took the time to play with the deer, play with some school children, and take plenty of pictures. A sightseeing day in Japan can be pretty expensive because most of these places cost about $4-$5 to get in. I don't remember if I went into the temple next to the Five Storied Pagoda the last time I was here, but I decided to skip it this time, the outside is probably the coolest anyway. After my first stop, I cut through the park and areas where all the deer are and probably didn't take the most direct route to the Todaiji Temple, but I did buy some deer cookies on the way and fed several deer. There were really more cookies than I was interested in feeding them on my own, but I really wanted some photos of me with the deer, so I found a group of school children and gave them some of my cookies so they could feed the deer and I could get pictures of them, and then I handed off my camera and asked them to take some photos of me.

I must be more approachable when I'm by myself than when I'm in a group because kids kept coming up to me and saying hi, or yelling across the field "Hi, nice to meet you." One group of kids sitting and eating lunch got me to come up to them and take their picture and one kid handed me one of his fire cheese curls. I didn't want to be rude and say no, so I ate it and my mouth was on fire for the next 20 minutes at least.

I finally wound my way to Todaiji Temple which I had definitely been to before, but I remember it was very cool, so I paid to go in again. It has a big Buddha in it and one of the big wooden columns inside has a hole in it that kids crawl through. I'm not sure if it has any significance, but it's fun.

I only had about an hour left to get to the Kasuga Taisha Shrine which was even farther from the train station than I'd walked thus far and get back to the station to catch my train, so I started walking pretty quickly and ran into some SAS people. After I broke off from them I broke into a jog down this path to make it to the shrine. I must have looked pretty silly, but I made it there, took a quick look around and decided it wasn't worth $5 to go inside, so I started jogging back. My goal to make the train was pretty aggressive, but I was committed to making it, so I just looked silly jogging.

I had about 20 minutes left until the train left and I hit a little pond that I wanted to look at, so I ran down for a quick look and was stopped by a man and girl who were taking some photos in the area. The man was a photographer and teaching this girl a thing or two about photography. He saw my camera and was interested and we exchanged the few Japanese words that I know. He pointed to my camera and said "Canon", his camera and said "Minolta", then said "Pentax, Nikon." Yup, we don't speak the same language, but I guess the brand name of photography is universal. He then wanted to take a picture of me holding my camera with the girl standing next to me. I wondered why he used the girls little pink camera instead of his own, but when he pulled out the Hello Kitty Polaroid picture and gave it to me, I understood. He then put his arm around me and had the girl take another picture, he said "engagement picture." He kept that one. The girl spoke some English, so she translated for us. I finally explained that I was trying to catch a train, so they let me go, and I ran off. At one point my backpack unzipped and everything fell out which was a mess, and not too good for the things inside, but I made my train with over 5 minutes to spare!

One adventure down, one or two to go...

I managed to get an express train back to the Osaka area and got to the Rokkomichi station, but got on the wrong #16 bus, fortunately I pointed to my map to ask directions and a very nice Japanese woman stopped the driver and got me off the bus before it really got going. The Lonely Planet talked about one peak in Kobe that sounded pretty easy to hike down from, so I thought that's what I'd be doing and only bought a one way cable car ticket, but quickly realized there wasn't an easy way down with the maps I had and I'd have to buy another one way ticket to get back down. I was up the mountain by about 3:30 and sunset wasn't until around 5:00, so I had some time to get around. Unfortunately, I didn't really know what there was to do around there and I didn't want to pay a lot for bus fare, so after the first scenic viewpoint at the top, I started hiking up the road. My map wasn't very good and I don't think this was really a normal foreign tourist destination because all of the signs were only in Japanese, but I found a hiking trail and I just decided to take it. It was really cool, I felt like a detective. I had my map with both English and Japanese, and then I'd come to signs, sometimes with maps, sometimes just words, and I'd compare the characters to figure out if I was heading in the right direction. It worked and I eventually ended up at the observatory I was trying to get to by sunset. I got chilled to the bone standing up in the open observatory for about an hour photographing the different stages of the sunset. At one point I went into a little shop and pretended to be looking for something to buy while standing underneath their heater.

Since it was already dark, I decided to take the bus down to the trolley instead of hiking unfamiliar trails, especially since the one sign I saw that was in English warned me to watch out for wild boars. I didn't realize that one of the trolley cars was open and one was closed, but I ended up in the front open car, so I got even colder heading down the mountain. Once back to the ship I warmed up with a hot shower and went to dinner. I had left Byron a note that I wanted to go out to karaoke if he was around, but there was no sign of him. As I was finishing dinner I saw him walking through looking for me. We decided that we needed more than 2 for karaoke, so we just hung out in his room for awhile until Jason called, and then the 3 of us took off in search of sushi.

It took us awhile, but we finally found one of the best sushi restaurants in the area, or so the customers told us and we believed them. They seated us up at the sushi bar and the sushi chef was the owner's son. He had lived in the U.S for 11 years in college and after and just came back here to start a family and help his dad with the business. We had a great conversation, part of which I talked about earlier in this posting. He taught us the correct way to eat sushi. He said we didn't have to use chopsticks. It was properly correct to use your hands and just pick up the sushi instead of trying to maneuver it to your mouth with chopsticks. I also learned that you're supposed to turn the sushi over, dip it fish side down in the soy sauce (don't soak the rice in soy sauce because that's unhealthy) and then keep it turned over so you're putting it in your mouth fish side down to your tongue. Any sushi that's has some kind of sauce topping doesn't get dipped in soy sauce. I also didn't realize it, but he put wassabi in my sushi, I did taste the kick, but it wasn't so bad. He told us that fresh wassabi is really hard to find, it takes several years for the wassabi vegetable to grow and is therefore very expensive, so a lot of places now use the dry paste, but they use the real stuff. He even showed us the fresh wassabi before it had been ground. Byron and Jason both got extra helpings of wassabi for their sushi. I ate 2 or 3 different types of eel, red snapper, tuna and a few other pieces, but I knew it was going to be an expensive meal, so I stopped after 6-8 pieces. It ended up not costing me a thing though because Byron and Jason covered it with their GNG lunch money. Note to self, next time in Kobe, find Takara Sushi and the owner's son Tokuhara Takeshi.

I thought that Jason would still be in Tokyo and Rico who I thought had gone up 2 days ago would be back, so I left Rico a note asking if he wanted to go to Kyoto today. Turns out Rico and Jason had both gone up and back yesterday, but Rico had gone to Kyoto with Chris on Monday. Jason, however found me at breakfast and decided to go to Kyoto with me. They suggest allowing about a week for Kyoto alone, but we only had about 5 hours or so which wasn't much. It was also a Japan national holiday - the Japanese Labor Thanksgiving day (like our Labor Day), so we had to maneuver around huge crowds of Japanese tourists.

Our strategy for the day was to first hit the information desk and ask for maps and a suggested itinerary for the day. The most useful thing they gave us was a bus map, so we could make things up as we went. Jason hadn't yet been to a castle, so he wanted to Nijo-jo Castle which we made our first stop. There were several other temples that we were going to hit as a loop, but after Nijo-jo we tried to take the train and didn't really find out next temple very easily. We did however see a beautiful garden that wasn't on our itinerary, but since several Japanese were flocking in, we decided to check it out. We figured out that it was the Daineiken garden designed by Jyochi Yabunouchi who is the master of the tea ceremony next to the Nanzenji temple. They only open up this garden a few weeks a year, and since we were here near the peak of autumn, this was one of those weeks. My camera started having crazy focus problems and just didn't want to behave which was really frustrating when we tried to give it to a man to take a picture of us in the garden. Later on we realized that my camera need a name, once he felt more loved and appreciated he'd probably behave better. After considering several lame names we finally landed on "Cameron" the camera. We were right, once he was named, he started behaving.

The crowds started picking up after we went to the castle, so we were fighting them everywhere we tried to walk, it was insane and you couldn't go anywhere quickly. We realized that we weren't going to fit in our entire walking tour, so we just started walking towards one of the things that the information person pointed out to us and decided to stop for lunch to plan out the day on our way. We at lunch in what I think was the restaurant of a small hotel. We each just got a planned menu item and Jason had to pay because I was officially pretty much out of money and he had extra money because he'd been planning on spending longer in Tokyo.

After lunch we walked under a big orange arch shrine entrance thingy to Heian Jingu Shrine. We didn't pay to go in the shrine or really walk around the garden, but as with all these shrines, I think the outside is the best part. The cool thing about Heian Jingu was that we were there during the Shichi-Go-San Festival also called the 3-5-7 Festival because it's where boys who are 3 and 5 years old and girls who are 3 and 7 are taken to a shinto shrine, all dressed up in what is probably their first kimono, and the parents pray for their good health and prosperity. Apparently this festival is supposed to be on November 15, but maybe since today was the first national holiday near Nov. 15, the parents decided to take their kids to the shrine on a holiday when they're off work. It was so cute seeing the little kids all dressed up in traditional kimonos. It was a full family event. Lots of pictures were taken and presents were given. Some families had both a 3 and 7 year old daughter which was really cute. I stopped a couple of people and asked to take their picture. Jason had to help me get over my fear of getting in people's faces.

We were running out of time and since a lot of the things we wanted to see in Kyoto were spread out, we decided to pick just one more which was the Kinkakuji Temple or Golden Pavilion way across town. I really wanted to go to the Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji) as well since I don't think I've seen that, but the Golden Pavilion is so beautiful, I really wanted Jason to see that. Of course, I think part of what I was remembering was the nearby Ryoanji Temple rock garden that I'd visited next to the Golden Pavilion, but we didn't have time for both.

It was a long bus ride up there and the crowds were out of control. The line to get tickets and get into Kinkakuji went quickly though and then we had to play the game of find the small window to get a good photo of the beautiful Golden Pavilion. I actually managed to sneak up for a picture of just me in front of the pavilion across the lake with no Japanese jumping in front of the camera or cramming in beside me. Chris would have been so jealous because the light was just at the right angle and absolutely beautiful. We found out later that he had been here yesterday, but he got here I think an hour before we did and the sun was higher in the sky, so not as brilliant off the Golden Pavilion.

We worked our way around the grounds stopping for many foliage photos, and rewarded ourselves at the end with Häagen-Dazs ice cream out of a vending machine. It was already about 3:30, so Jason decided that we didn't have time to see anything else, even the nearby rock garden (probably the right decision), so we caught the bus back to the JR rail station (along with about 50 other people all trying to cram on the same bus, fortunately there were a couple of busses that came at the same time). We were going to try to do a little souvenir shopping in Kyoto before heading back to Kobe, but we decided to get away from the crowds and just head back.

We had taken just the regular express train from Sannomiya to Kyoto, but we wanted to go out with a bang having our last train experience (other than the portliner) be on the Shinkansen, and we wanted to do it in style, so we went to the JR office and got reserved seats on the next Hikari Shinkansen which was the 17:21. We were getting hungry, but didn't want to have to eat dinner back on the ship, so we stopped in the station and got a box of 6 huge dumplings and something else like pot-stickers, but I don't know the name Jason gave them, which we ate on the train.

There were two other SASsers heading back at the same time who had also gotten seats in our car. The ride was short, but so fun. We ate our dinner, took a few last minute photos, recorded a short movie, and then we were in Kobe. We took the train one stop to Sannomiya and then found a grocery store in the station to spend the rest of Jason's money and get a little food for the last leg of the trip before heading back to the ship. I had seen some gummy bugs at the store at the top of Mt. Rocco that I really wanted to get for Conrad, Timmy, and Cullen, and I thought that it was a crazy Japanese thing that I could find anywhere, but I couldn't find any fun candy to give them.

At 9:30 in the Staffulty right before we pulled out of port, the Field Office had a party to thank us for all we've done over the voyage to make the field program successful. Really, they shouldn't be thanking us, we should be thanking them, which we did, they worked harder than anyone else I think because they had to work in port. Adrienne worked incredibly hard, I don't know how she did it.

It was bittersweet pulling away from our last foreign port. It was a beautiful night!