the days in and surrounding Croatia

I knowww I have a thousand things to catch you up on from the past week! I really meant to type things up while I was in Dubrovnik, but the water was calling me! I spent a couple hours almost every day hanging out by the water, swimming and soaking up some sun.. instead of typing a blog. :P but I did make notes for myself about the things that happened, so I won't leave out any interesting bits! Though my stories may be shorter because I have so much to catch up on!

So. Where did I leave off? All the way back in Capri! that seems like forever ago. So yes, we left Capri after spending some time on the beach and we got dropped off right next to the MV Explorer! It was super convenient because I did not feel like carrying my bag for another mile to get to the ship.

That night there was a barbecue for supper to celebrate 4th of July! it was nice, Sarah said "mm! smells like America!" and I laughed. The cheeseburger I had was pretty good, and they had some baked beans. nom. :)

Later I ended up joining up with some people who were halfway studying for the upcoming Global Studies exam. Then Margo came over and really made us concentrate! Margo is a teacher in ..Michigan? Minnesota? something like that, and I think she is sort of a life long learner on the ship. But she saw that we had a study guide (which was just something that someone had left on the public computers and it, of course, ended up getting printed out 900 times... it really wasn't even that good of a study guide) and she started talking about what was on it and just stayed til we were finished going through it all! So that was nice, and I got to be social for a while, which was fantastic because I'd been feeling like I only had like 3 friends and I just can't deal with that! I like people too much.

C8 -
it's weird getting on the ship from a country and being exhausted and still processing and then having to be in class in the morning.
Global Studies, nap, lunch, homework/study, Poli Sci, Energy and Society. In my Comparative Politics class we had a student group presentation on Croatia, since that's where we were going next, and this girl =.= could not pronounce cuisine correctly .. and (I don't remember if it was the same girl) she mispronounced Croats.. it should not rhyme with boats, dudes. it is a disyllabic word, okay?

Anyway so a lot of work was packed into those two days! Global Studies exam, which I did okay on, and Poli Sci exam, which I did alright on.

Random thing I read: "A recent study found the average American golfer walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found American golfers drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means, on average, American golfers get about 41 miles to the gallon.
    Kind of makes you proud."

Random thing I heard: "have you heard about the three holes in the ground? ...well well well!"  it made me giggle. :P

OH. C8 was taco day for lunch. It had been a while since I had some sour cream. it was delicious!

C9! after all the class work and whatnot we were coming into Dubrovnik, woo! So Sam and I went out at 11ish to watch the pilot come on board. it was a little bit anticlimactic, I expected him to actually *jump* onto the ship, but it was a very leisurely step. It took at least an hour for us to get to parallel park the ship. it's a relatively complicated procedure from what I can tell. and Sam and I stood out there the whole time and chatted with Maniates and Kevin for a bit and then talked to Danny for the rest of the time. He's got a great vocabulary, I'm jealous.

The following morning.. where are we now? the 8th? I think so. So that morning we had, as usual, our diplomatic debriefing, and this guy was pretty cool. in fact, we saw him later just out and about the town! It was kind of funny. But he was really nice and stayed after for those of us in politics classes to ask questions. It made me want to be a foreign diplomat :O  maybe I will.

that day for lunch we had bowtie pasta! :D just like mama makes. kind of.

At 130 we went on the SaS City Walls orientation. Apparently the city walls are a must-see in Dubrovnik. and it's true! it's awesome. I got some pretty amazing pictures :D and I got to hang out with more people, like Jeff, who is one of the nicest dudes I've met on the ship. :)

When we got done walking around the walls we met up with Emily and Sam and had some pizza that cost 107 kune :O it was weird getting used to the currency exchange because a pack of gum is like 6 kune and at first it about gives you a heartattack! but then you divide by like 5 and it makes you feel a little better. haha. :) oh! and with lunch I had this drink that was like orange soda, but more like carbonated orange juice. it's called Orangina. anybody heard of it before? I never had, but apparently they have it in the states, too.

We went back to the ship for supper and got wrangled into joining a group going on a glass boat tour, which ended up being pretty entertaining. we went swimming too, but it was SO COLD! the sun had set already and we were in the shade and it was my first time just jumping in the Mediterranean! I took my camera and underwater case with me too ^-^ but I didn't get a lot of good underwater shots because I didn't have enough light. :(

thennnnnn we went to the grocery store! it's called Konzum. I got some noms. some foreign noms!

the next morning I had an SaS trip to Desa-Dubrovnik, which is a place that helps women out who had suffered from the war, which was only resolved in the 90s! It's really impressive that Dubrovnik is so put together. So anyway Desa helps women learn skills to help support their families :D it's a really awesome NGO, which is the kind of stuff I hope to work with in the future. :) I bought some jam made from dubrovnik's sour oranges and some sort of candy coated almond things that I am officially addicted to.. and I bought some silk stuff :D  yay supporting women!

Anyway that afternoon we went Kayaking and cliff jumping! :D best thing in Croatia for sure. don't jump from too high though, that's dumb. some girl sprained her ankle and got all bruised just from the impact on the water. I was safer than that, you should be proud of me. ALSO. it is a workout to kayak to the next island on the ocean with a partner who has never kayaked before. :P Kevin learned relatively quickly though :P so our group was me, Kevin, Emily, Sam, Megan, Jeff, Colleen, Kristen, and Allison. 4 kayaks of awesome. ALSO. the Mediterranean is very salty. the salt dries on you. you end up looking like you have bizarre dandruff all over your body.

So when we got back to the ship I showered, of course. And for the first time I read the back of my shampoo bottle. they have some good writers. and little fun fact questions on the back. the answer to the shampoo question is on the conditioner and vice versa. I was amused that I hadn't noticed before. I guess I don't normally make time to read the back of my shampoo bottles though.

ANYWAY. Emily and I slept in that day and we were sore from kayaking when we woke up. we worked it out though by walking the 2.5km to the old town so we could lounge on the rocks and swim :) a lot of dudes wear speedos in Europe. it's kind of gross sometimes. and on at least 3 occasions I have witnessed them changing, with their towels wrapped around them, out of their speedos into their normal clothes. I was very scared that the towel would fall off. >.<  we saw some tiny men, not midgets, just like 5 feet tall, and they were pretty buff. it was kind of amusing. we also saw a really good looking guy who plopped down right next to us. we were like hello ;)  he looked at us a lot but he never said anything. even when a puppy dog came over and sat its wet self down on Emily's towel. she was petting it and getting fur everywhere! it was cute though :)

we returned to the ship and internetted at a pizzaria for an hour or two.

then we went OUT! with Danny and Sami. it was the first time Emily, Sam and I had experienced the night life since Halifax. about time! and it was the beginning of Dubrovnik's summer festival, so that was awesome. I was out til the sun came up and they turned the street lights out!

the next day we slept til lunch and went out to the beach again. this time it was a beach in the more classical sense of the term instead of just cliffs, but I definitely like the cliffs better! I swam for a while and I was going to swim out to the little rope they have that marks the swimming area, but the water is SO CLEAR and I saw a big dark spot and it freaked me out! it was probably just sea grass or something, but I got skurred. So I swam away rather frantically until I could see the much less menacing rocks and fishies under me. :P  oh we also saw a greenish blob floating in the water that kind of looked like a giant whale loogie. but might have been a jellyfish? at any rate, I steered clear of it.

Then we went souvenir shopping and grocery shopping for more snacks and back to the ship,  woo! my souvenirs for each country have been a deck of cards. weird? useless? maybe. but I discovered that I like getting cool decks when I was in Williamsburg and I got the Abraham Lincoln deck. SO. I'm getting one from every country. I think it's kind of awesome. :P

so that pretty much catches you up on events! it's just been class today and tomorrow is the same. I have a test in Energy and Society to study for and then we'll be in Greece the next morning. :)

kthnxbai!