MV Greenpeace / PC 8023
Noon Pos: 10 48'N 127 30'E
June 3, 1996
Day 18

It is a busy life on a Greenpeace ship and at the moment quite a small crew. So never enough hours in the day.

And now as we get closer to our destination, apprehension is building of what these next few weeks will bring. Still we have no idea if China will welcome us or rather the opposite. You can play many scenarios in your head. We are looking foward to catching up with the campaigners who have been working on the CTBT for a long time and who join the ship in Manila. They will give us a clearer and more detailed picture of how we will be involved.

Working as a Greenpeace sailor you often feel like a fish in a fish bowl, being watched, ambassadors of your country and public property. Something we accept as we know we are fortunate to play our role and only because of the millions of people who support us in many ways.

But we are all 100% homo sapians here. We have other lives outside Greenpeace that are being constantly juggled. Many of us miss the people we love, we have our insecurities and uncertainties just like anyone else. We have our good days and our bad. We have only been to sea for two weeks, not long at all. But still everyone is looking foward to going for a walk and hopefully a big pile of mail will arrive, and each one of us will go and find a quiet spot and catch up on our` other life'.

Tanya Popp