If you're wondering what ever happened when I arrived in Manaus...

Thinking back to the day after I arrived in Manaus....

its 16:13 pm. I am laying on the bed listening to my roomies recount their activities for the last few days. I just got out the shower…an hour ago I walked on the ship from my 4 days/3 nights in the Amazon. Early on in the semester (well when we first got on the ship and sat through orientation), the Dean of Students told us that we will come to love the ship and it will become a symbol of home for us. She couldn't have been more accurate. True we kinda rolled our eyes back then because we were anxious to leave the Union. I kid you not, I was soooo relieved to stand in the torrential rain, get my bags checked, walk up the gangway and swipe my ID into the freezing realm of the lovely, familiar Tymitz Square. I never felt so dirty in my life. We were muddy, stinky, exhausted, and excited to be reunited with more people. We were completely isolated. But let me retrace my adventure since I didn't post my reflections of my first complete day in Manaus. I started it that night but didn't feel up to finishing it because I was sooo tired and as you can see….never got around to it. So I will insert what I originally wrote for that day (Sunday):


The time is 17:14 pm and I am utterly and thoroughly exhausted. I just came back to the ship and can honestly say I don't mind if I stay in for the rest of the evening...or for the rest of the Brazil stop. It is so-freaking-hot. Like, it's driving all of us crazy. We have been irritated, hungry, thirsty, and antsy all day and none of us are good company right now hahaha. After breakfast, we all went back to our rooms and showered. Met up with Crystal, Kelly, Obai, Malachi and Kyle. We head out and I see Erica and Yohanna who asked if we had any plans. They were standing around in Tymitz Square so I was standing with them a bit and seeing if we were just gonna merge the groups... I turned around and everyone was gone. So I told them bye and walk off (swipe my ID, walk down the gangway) and there they are. I was thinking to myself, wow. So much for that. But hey, brushed it off. Man, that was a tiny glimpse of how the earlier portion of the day would turn out. Somehow Crystal was in control and we were.... following her??! Now let me explain this to you. We get off the ship, wandered into the Tourist center... took some time to withdraw money from the HSBC atm... the line was long but it was worth it. It was no fee to withdraw (into Brazilian Reals). The tricky part was understanding the machine and the transactions you were making since it was in Portuguese hahaha. But we figured that out...walked into one of the stores right next door to browse...started talking to Daniel, Cobie and Ian (Yohanna and Erica's group had caught up and were finalizing their plans)... next thing you know I turned around and see they were gone again. So I was like whatever, I don't stress stuff like that. I was going to hang with these folks because thats the loveliness of SAS. We all get along... and there are no set cliques...But then Obai comes walking back and leads me where they are so I follow. Man why did I do that. We come outside of the Tourist center and find ourselves in the heart of the city with tons of tents and marketplaces. Obai had stressed that he wanted to go “grocery shopping” since last night so naturally when we discovered a store we walked into it. Crystal gets impatient and says we can do it later...why get the snacks now and carry it all over the city... which makes sense at the time so everyone agrees. Mistake #32341. For whatever reason, she's blazing through the streets trying to get us to some Opera house which I didn't mind, I just didn't get why this girl was rushing us. We had all day. Plus we started so early in the day and from what we heard, due to it being a Sunday, most stores wouldn't be open until late afternoon. Marketplaces were everywhere though. But there we were... all of us following this girl who was equally as ignorant about the city as we were (we didn't know this yet though, regrettably). We asked some folks how to get to it and they laugh at us. Not surprised. Not everyone  like Americans. Kyle was feeling self-conscious because he felt like he really stood out and sadly he was getting a lot of rude stares. We kept having to stop and have “talks” with Kelly... she looked and walked like she was lost. Think of someone who looks like they stumbled out on stage by accident...well that was her. Hahaha. She couldn't help it though, she was scared and some people can't help that it shows. It was pretty intimidating I gotta say though. especially since the entire streets were dominated by markets so there was always a ton of people... PlusI guess people were trying to figure out my ethnicity because I didn't get too much negative attention and in fact, some random folks were trying to ask me stuff in Portuguese. I replied back in broken Spanish and English ahahaha. But back to this earlier venture. So yeah, turns out she was trying to meet her friends and we were being dragged and rushed around. Mind you, she's tiny in height and build. I'm guessing she was using us for protection haha. But seriously, we finally figured out where the Opera house is. We walk up the steps and there's a massive crowd of SAS folks... we take pictures... then we find out we can actually take seats because there is a free show starting soon. Naturally, since we walked so darn far and because she acted like it was a life or death situation, we thought it would make sense to stay. Right? No. Obai, Kyle and I walk in...This girl starts walking back out (and there was an ocean of people streaming in) so when she disappears it takes a minute to register. Malachi was kinda confused and finally shrugged like I don't know what's happening...his usual face hahaha. He went out there to “get her” haha... I bet you can guess what happened then. At that point I was like forget it. I didn't come here to waste any time nor be annoyed when it didn't have to play out that way. So we are in there with seats, we run into more SAS folks and I ended up sitting with Courtney.  Obai feels bad because Kelly had put her stuff in his bag so he goes outside to check on them (much courteous than they were I tell ya). He finds them, and gives it to her and they take off. He comes back irritated like we walked all over and its hot and this little girl..... hahahaha...Womp Womp. Yeah quite a start to the morning. The show was apparently the last? It was an orchestra and they played classical music. It was amazing. Found myself watching the Conductor a lot... he was so into it. I wonder why few people have an appreciation for classical music, it was amazing and I recorded one or two songs (they were long)…anyhoww, we did some wandering around. We weren't really sure where we wanted to eat or what we could eat since you get scared pretty bad about the bacterias and cooking differences in foreign food. We saw this square with some interesting writing and pictures symbolic of the slave trade and took pictures. There was also a shop called African Market I can't remember if it said Museum or one of the two. Either way it was closed so we didn't get to check it out. One thing that struck me about Manaus was the diversity of people. We barely saw any light skinned folks, most were brown or dark Brazilians. You really had to do a double take because of the representations you generally get of Brazil. There is a noticeable difference between North and South Brazil (which doesn't get depicted in the media we get back in the US about Brazil) and that showed in the types of people we saw. We also realized that the assumption that because we were still a part of South American so people spoke/understood Spanish was completely and utterly false hahaha. We tried on numerous occasions to communicate using Spanish but the official language of Brazil is Portuguese. I repeat, Portuguese. They responded to whatever words were identical in both Portuguese and Spanish but that was about it. We were stuck with hand gestures, drawing pictures, repeating Spanish words with an Italian or hopefully Portuguese accent…and that was interesting lol.  But moving onward we walked and walked and walked. We came across some restaurants but we weren't sure if we wanted to stop and eat there or if we could find something better. We ended up walking all the way back to the marketplace than ruling eating at one of the vendors out. So we walked all the way back to that row of Brazilian restaurants. We opted on one where we saw a table of SAS students already inside. We were given menus but we couldn't really read or make a decision about what to get (even though one of the menus had English translation). The only thing we could figure out was the beverage…and what did most of us order? Coca Cola. Coca Cola is a huge deal internationally… it apparently sponsors a ton of world wide events… so go figure. They even served it in the glass bottles. Lol. Mind you, I don't even drink it in the US. That stuff is lethal… ever heard about how it takes the paint off of cars? Or how it can be used to clean toilets? Exactly. But we couldn't trust anything else that wasn't carbonated… In the pre-port meeting they warned us about ice (frozen water that may not be purified or from a clean source) and fruits. The other folks ordered bottled mineral water. Courtney and I looked over at this Brazilian guy eating this whole fish with the head and all, rice and some sauce. We told the waiter thats what we wanted. Haha..talk about taking risks! The girls with us ordered a cubed steak and something that looked like chicken fingers but not quite. Either way, they got their order first and it looked delish. It came with a basket of rice and fries…Courtney and I looked at each other like, "hmm…maybe we shoulda gone with something familiar…" But then ten minutes later our platters came. I guess the entire fish was fried someway somehow because the entire thing was crispy… with our whole fish, came a side of white rice, a bowl of white crunchy something to sprinkle on it which by the way, we had been getting with every dish in Brazil (still don't know the name of it). There was a sauce kinda like a salsa-like vinaigrette? I mixed it with my rice because the fish was perfectly seasoned. Obai's pizza was the last to come so he sat for a bit watching us enjoy our food hahaha. He ended up not eating his pie but one or two pieces… it was supposed to be a pizza with different meats I am guessing? No actually, it was something like pepperoni with a few things he asked on it. Either way, he was disappointed and became a bit of a sourpuss. Naturally we looked at him and asked what did he expect…. People don't go to Brazil and order pizza… womp womp. As I learned in Bahamas, you stick to the things the country has plentiful and what they prepare well. You won't be disappointed. My fish (although I have no idea what type of fish it was) was gigantic and each bite was amazing! Hahaha. After we sorted out (after paying for our meals) we was still divided on what to do. The girls mentioned one of the major malls so we decided to go but needed to find a cab. There was a cab parked outside so we asked him if it was even open by this point on a Sunday he said it was. We found out it was at least 15 minutes away… Then he told us it would cost like $55 bucks…definitely ridiculous. Or maybe not… we just thought it was hahaha. Anyhow, I told him no bueno. We are so used to taxi drivers seeing us and seeing dollar signs. Discussed it with the rest of everyone and we tried to think of what else there was to do… not much so I talked to the guy again trying to toss some Spanish in hahaha. I told him we needed to get to that mall but we would only do it for $25 (everyone would just put in $5). After a few minutes he agreed and we squeezed the best way we could in his car. During the car ride we threw out some spanish words and had a fairly decent conversation going. He smiled a lot and we learned he liked to dance but was terrible at singing. He was very nice. The ride also gave us more of a glimpse at Manaus than we could have expected…When we got to the Mall we were shocked at how pristine it was once you entered. It went on for miles and there were at least four floors with a section that looked similar to a "dave & buster's", a movie theater (we recognized some we hadn't seen yet in the states…too bad they were in Portuguese haha), a very diverse and impressive food court. Too bad we weren't trying to eat again. When we got thirsty we had to really stop ourselves from getting a smoothie or ice cream. First off, it is Brazil and it was hot… secondly, there were more ice cream, frozen yogurt and smoothie places than we could handle at that moment. The temptation was just too great so we went to one of the stands where they were offering free samples… tried the black cherry ice cream… it was good, until the after taste. That little bit was enough to remind us that the milk or the cows were different and whatever conditions they were under were equally as different… so we didn't buy a scoop. Went to the McDonald's to get Coca Cola. Courtney freaked out once we realized that we hadn't told the girl no ice…. so she took a few sips and tossed it… I refused to do that hahaha. But I didn't keep mines much longer after she tossed hers. Funny story, we also didn't know how to say anything else on the menu even if we wanted to order something else so we just kept it short and when the girl asked us in Portuguese simply said "Coca Cola…media." Thank God for Coca Cola… haha. We ran into some more SAS folks (Aisha, Darlene, and some other girl) and ended up leaving with them. We split into two cabs and paid the same price, this time the cab driver we had didn't speak anything other than Portuguese… out of nowhere Aisha starts speaking to him… we all looked at her like what?? She apparently took a year of Portuguese a year or so ago and never got to use it… wells, she used it alright. We all were relying on her to get us back to the ship… and that she did so that was grrrreat! We got back and went our separate ways… it had been a long day so napping before dinner time was necessary.


Everyone was talking about Samba something during dinner. My understanding was that there would be practice in the Union (6th deck) at 7pm… unfortunately this was wrong. Everyone was meeting near the Union (or it turns out more like Tymitz Square on deck 5) to get further instructions on how to get to the Samba event. Womp womp…it all happened so fast… I ended up not going because people were leaving and I didn't know that it would be happening when it did. Again, my introduction to Brazil wasn't a great one. Everyone came back that night (and the following days to come) raving about it. It was amazing they kept gushing. Picture a long street party. Add hypnotic drumming, brazilian dancers, chaos, drinks, and laughs. It was madness trying to find people and there was so many Brazilians. It was like their Carnival which I hear from natives (and also popular in the Caribbean islands)… I missed one of the main attractions, big events that Brazilians boast and brag about=( definitely dropped the ball on that one by missing it. Then those who I talked to for a bit went to sleep shortly after :( they said they kept dancing nonstop because of the drums… got to the point where people weren't even trying to "dance" anymore, but they just kept moving because the drums made you hahahaha. I definitely felt like a dum dum for losing that experience with my fellow SAS'ers. =( On the flip side, I did the responsible thing… I packed for my Amazon trip (had ample time thanks to being a loser that night). That also gave me more than enough time to overpack (as I eventually found out), but in that moment I used the packing excuse as a levy for myself. Obai was still feeling down and out about his girlfriend so he stayed back as well. We just walked around the ship…felt like a ghost town. Malachi and Kyle decided not to go either and were napping instead. Their flight for the overnight SAS Rio trip was scheduled at 11:30pm…mines to the Amazon wasn't until 8am the next morning…technically, we could have gone and came back because it wasn't that far and everyone left to go around 7pm. Anyhow let's move past this because I get annoyed at myself all over again lol. The fact that my other group of friends, Daniel, Ian, Erica and Yohanna told me they didn't leave until 8/9ish pm so I shoulda hit them up and knocked on their door may have a little to do with it as well hahaha. Urgh. Okay done with that. So my roomies eventually came back and everyone stayed up talking. One of Obai's roommates brought a girl back to the room. They were apparently very drunk as well and had gotten back from the Samba ordeal… Obai's not very confrontational so he didn't want to interrupt or say anything so he dropped by our room…Caroline got into talking about anthropology (her love) hahaha, and that was cool.  we all conked out around 4ish am…we offered Obai a pillow and cover to just crash over our spot. I was in the limbo stage. I wasn't sure if I should go to sleep or stay awake since it was past the point of return and I didn't want to oversleep and miss my trip… I gave in and slept of course…