On the ship!

oh my goodness.
this place is amazing!
and confusing! I'm going to need a day or two to orient myself to everything! Also, our poor cabins are tiny. but my roommate seems pretty chill. Her name's Emily, she's from California and she's tall like a model! 
I've made some pretty cool friends already, and I'm excited to make even more. oh and I met one of my teachers, the one for my comparative politics course. He is pretty old and has crazy facial hair and I like him very much!

:P

So, here's what's gone down. Got up this morning and lounged for a bit with Samantha until we had to leave to get to the dock. We decided to walk the few blocks with all of our luggage! it wasn't bad, but we had to take a couple breaks, haha. It was only about three blocks, but when we actually got to the pavillion where everyone was in line to get their bags checked, the line was so so so soooo long that we had to walk about two more blocks just to get to the end of it! We got there around 11. But we didn't actually get on the ship until like 230! Ridiculous. It was because all the people working had to like take a break or something between 12 and 1. so everyone in line was forced to just stand around aimlessly. It's a good thing it was a pretty day, because if it had been drizzly or raining, SO many people would have been pissed! One of the teachers coming down the line talking to everyone said that the workers taking a break like that had never happened before in his experience. I don't see why they couldn't just take shifts or something, so at least a few people would be trickling through the line steadily. But we finally made it!

I've taken some cool pictures of the boat and stuff, but I'm not going to be able to upload them until we get to an internet cafe in Barcelona or something. I don't want to kill my ship internet time too quickly! So I'm sorry, but you'll just have to take my descriptions for now!

The ship has 7 decks and I'm staying on deck 3. I don't have a window :( but there are plenty of places with cool views!


....


so several hours have passed since I wrote the above section, and we are definitely out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean now! well, not in the middle exactly,  but there is nothing but a vast expanse of open sea all around us! It's very exciting :) I got a little bit teary eyed though today when we actually pulled away from port. I'm going to miss talking to my mama all the time. We had a big orientation meeting tonight and got to see who all our academic advisors and faculty members are :) They are all really fun looking old people. haha. :P 

I found out that I might be able to sign up for another class! If I can manage it, I really really want to take Spanish Conversation, it would be fantastic.

We have phones in our cabins that we can use to call other cabins, it's the coolest thing! I tried it out today to call Sami's cabin, he's this really cool guy from Saudi Arabia! There are so many different people here. Our dean(? I think? someone like that) read out the statistics of who all was on the ship, it was fascinating. there are just over 1000 people total on the ship. 740ish students. 75% girls! some 25ish countries, and 49 of the states! but we don't know which one is missing, lol. Apparently no one cared to figure that out before the presentation tonight.

The food is pretty good here, but I heard it gets old by the end of the voyage.

The boat is rocking SO MUCH! It doesn't make me sea sick though. Some people don't feel well, but I just think it's like being in a cradle. until you're walking down the hallway and you look like a drunken idiot falling against the walls. lol. I feel like I'm going to get used to the sway of the ocean and then get back on land and still be swaying myself. haha. I guess we'll find out when we get off the ship in Barcelona! NINE DAYS ON THE OCEAN!

Today we had our first Sea meeting. Our halls are called "seas". Like we sort of have RA's and they help us out or take care of us or whatever we need and they help us build a grand ol' community. So we're the Mediterranean Sea :) And! this is the coolest thing, we have Sea Olympics! So all the Seas on the ship (there are like.. 8?) compete at the end of the voyage in whatever Olympic games we come up with! It's very exciting. Oh, also, our colour is orange. :D I'm pretty excited for these games. I'm going to sign up tomorrow to be one of the coordinators for our Sea. I met this other girl who's really excited about it too! Her name's Clare and we're going to work together to make our Sea WIN!

I really wish I had a room with a porthole. 

Apparently taking a shower on a rocking ship is challenging. I haven't attempted it yet, but my roommate just did and she said you pretty much had to brace yourself against the wall. haha. So. looking forward to that. :P I anticipate some cuts on my legs from shaving, lol.

There are nifty framed pieces of artwork in everyone's room, and on the back of them are tidbits of advice and stories and good times from past SaS travelers, it's really hilarious and really intersting! because not every summer voyage goes to the same countries that we are visiting on this one. Some have gone to like, Denmark, Russia, Sweden, France .. all kinds of places. It makes me want to just take another voyage. I met a guy who is here for the 2nd time. One of our teachers (who happens to be from Scotland! AWESOME!) mentioned that once we get off the ship, we will spend the rest of our lives trying to get back on it! I rather believe him :P just in the first day I already want to come back later in life as a life-long learner or something. Speaking of which, our oldest life-long learner on board for this voyage is 90! And some of the professors and staff brought their families too, so we have little kids running around and the youngest of them is a year and a half! so we have quite the age bracket this summer. :)

I got my email account set up with semester at sea. It's ehsloan@semesteratsea.net, if you care to email me. :)

Classes start on Thursday, tomorrow is going to be a day full of more orientation. yeehaw.

Our cabin steward's name is Achilles. I giggled.

It's weird to have my phone just be completely useless for any contact. but it's a good watch. I just set it on airplane mode so it's not roaming or trying to find signal.

I got sunburned today from standing in line for 3 hours. D: I didn't even think to put sunscreen on. boo.

I love being at sea! We had a safety drill today right before we left, that was tons of fun. We had to put on awkward life jackets and walk to our "musters" where our life boats are. the rule was that we had to participate in this in complete silence, but I think 3/4 of the students must not know what silence means -.- I gave glares to some people who wouldn't SHUT UP.

This is a really long post, and I haven't even had the chance to tell you about the more interesting people I've met. I'll get around to it eventually. On a slow day or something.

It's a ship, not a boat.
It's a voyage, not a cruise!