Monday, January 22, 2007

Acapulco!

I really enjoyed our brief stopover in Mexico, despite some of the city's tourist attractions featuring the nauseating glitz I first learned to associate with Atlantic City. I wished both that I knew some Spanish and that we could have stayed another few days so that I could have spent more time sneaking into non-touristy areas and chatting with locals -- but perhaps another time. And anyway, JUNGLE BOAT TOUR. HOW COOL IS THAT. (Yes, even after all this ship time and a little seasickness, I still really like boats.) One of the best things about this trip so far is the variety of wildlife we've gotten to see -- I've spent very little time outside of North American climes, so most of these animals are completely new to me. However, there's a drawback to moving between climates too -- as with last summer's trip to Europe, this trip is involving a lot of me wilting in the hot sun.

In her last post Gemma mentioned that she feels ungrateful to Mr. Fushigi for feeling frustrated with the decadent materialism that in some ways pervades the cruise. I've never met the man, of course, but I have to assume that he wouldn't find our attitudes ungrateful -- in choosing Gothic Funk as the recipient of his largesse, his goal can't have been simply a gift of luxury to people who would unreservedly appreciate it. A group of young, middle-class, educated, offbeat artists can only be expected to view the culture clashes inherent in an experience like this with a somewhat critical eye -- so even as we've been enjoying some of the luxuries of the cruise, we've also been rebelling against the ship culture in some ways and at least observing some of the social and environmental issues that are highlighted in this context. I'm not sure exactly what Mr. Fushigi had in mind giving this trip to us -- I'm not sure what he thought we'd do with our observations, and I'm not sure what we will do -- but I can't imagine that he intended us to walk around covered in diamonds, making snide comments about the locals' choice of hats. (I like the hats.)

I've been doing a lot of web programming work on the ship, which is nice; also drawing, and reading -- recently, The Other End of the Leash, a book that attempts to help humans understand dogs better by comparing and contrasting primate and canid instincts. I was quite delighted to see actual monkeys, and to note that they did, in fact, hug each other, just like people (dogs apparently don't like hugs)!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home