Tuesday Feb 6, 2007
First Day of Classes!

So this morning we woke up around 7:45, went and had some breakfast (you know, the healthy things, eggs, hash browns, fruit, cereal, bagels, BACON, pancakes…we seriously are living the life here on the ship) After that we all trekked over to the Union room for our SAS lecture Global Studies. Everyone has to take this class and it’s about the history of the countries we’ll be visiting or the places we’ll pass while on the ship. AND IT WAS SO BORING. The teacher of this class is so dry and he tries way to hard to be funny and it really doesn’t work. He had one of the professors of international education come and speak because he’s an expert on Latin America. He was really funny and had some really great stories to tell, but other then that it was pretty deadly. Right before class my friends and I all went and cleaned out the bookstore buying SAS sweatshirts, t-shirts, etc. After that class I had my African American Lit class right away so I had to rush to that one which was so hidden away in the back of the dining hall I’m surprised I found it at all. The class was good, just like any lit class I’d take at UNH (reading, handouts, and discussion) but the teacher is nice and is really intelligent as most of the teachers on this voyage are. I already have about three days worth of homework from him, but its stuff I can do outside by the pool which is where I went right after class. My friends saved me a seat right by our pool which is this little square about 10 ft by 10ft. Haha, okay I’m only half kidding, but it’s definitely really small. THE BEST PART was that we saw a whale!!!!! I mean not only am I on this amazing ship, traveling around the world, but we saw an effing whale?!?! It was so cool, the tail came up and splashed the water, he puff water out of his spout, it was amazing. The boat was definitely heavier on one side from everyone watch this great creature. After all that, we stayed at the pool for about two hours until it was time for my 14:00 class. This was my World Art against a Western Canon and I really really like it. My teacher has this little tick in her head and she’s winks all the time which was distracting in the beginning, but as the class went on I got used to it. She’s nice and really down to earth. She really seems to understand the stage of life that college kids are in and gets that we really don’t want to do a lot of work and want to be interested. So she has no trips required, we get to do all our own research with whatever trips we want to do and she has some museum trips she’s going to head if we wanted to join her on any of those. So that wasn’t bad at all. After that I came back to the room and Garrett was here talking to Lindsay. We all walked around and dropped off some of our paper work; Lindsay and I went and bought SAS long sleeve t-shirts while Garrett dropped off her credit card form and bought this stupid little journal that says Semester At Sea on the front for like 10 bucks and it’s only like 100 pages….def not enough for everything we’ll be doing. After that we met Gretchen and Jenna in the outside dining hall to have some dinner, then headed over to the Union to figure out how to set up our computers for the ships “intranet” (a system that connects each student and allows teachers to post articles etc. without wasting internet minutes). Of course, we chatted to long at dinner and missed the first half so while Lindsay and Jenna figured it out right away, Gretchen and I struggled with our 2004 UNH sponsored Dell computers which would not connect for us. We seriously considered throwing them overboard if it hadn’t been for the Mac group’s turn to come in and figure out how to set there computers up. So we finally figured it out about 2 hours later while our “pre-port” meeting on Puerto Rico was going on. It was great to talk to Owen online and check email and send some more out. We even found ourselves staring at Father Tutu while he got a snack at the bar um…5ft from us. We thought about going over to him again, but we’ve heard that if he’s relaxing he doesn’t like to be bothered all that much. Oh well, we’ll have our moment! After Puerto Rico I’ll have a whole week of travel time to send out a huge mass email. Tomorrow after we disembark my friends and I are going to walk around Old San Juan until about 1 until we meet up with Gretchen when she’s done with her trip. Then we’re going to find some lunch, walk/shop some more, then hit up the best place in the world…Wal-Mart. Haha yes, we’re in Puerto Rico and going to Wal-Mart. But we REALLY want some fun snacks for our room, batteries, magnets, school bag, paper, etc. So that’s my plan for tomorrow, hopefully we don’t get to lost ;)

Monday Feb 5, 2007
First Day on the Ship

Wow first full day on the ship and I don’t think we stopped for more then a second. Okay, that’s def a lie because I don’t think I’ve been more sunburned in my life for the amount of time I sat on the deck. But we had meetings alllllll day today. About everything and anything; falling off the ship, what to do if there’s a fire, add/drop classes, meet the professors, etc. It was pretty deadly, but I was with my friends the whole time so that made it okay. I’ve met the best girls. This girl Jenna is really cool; she’s definitely going to be one of my best friends. Then there’s her roommate Katie and Katie’s friend Tiffany, then another girl from UNH named Gretchen whose friends with Owen. Then I met this guy named Garrett one night at the Atlantis and we’ve become really good friends as well. We’ve had the best time so far and I can’t wait to get to Puerto Rico in ONE DAY! Jenna has this rainforest walk planned that I can’t wait to do. We just have to figure out how to plan it all out. Everything is so confusing right now, even getting places throughout the ship is still weird. There are way too many staircases and the whole “aft” “port” and military time this is really hard to get used too, but I’m sure it will come to me. Everyone is so nice and willing to talk to everyone. We have our first day of classes tomorrow (nervous!) but I’m sure they will be fine. We also just moved ahead in time our first hour so I’m def going to be tired in the morning.

Sunday Feb 4, 2007
Move-In Day

So today was registration/move-in day and I don’t think I’ve ever been more stressed out. Lindsay and I had the first shift to get onto the boat which means 8am – 10am. We woke up around 6:45 and since we had already packed our bags the night before we really just had to roll out of bed, figure out how to check out of our room, and then drag our bags into the lobby. We had to wait for a couple of our friends that we’d made while staying at the Atlantis since we wanted to wait in line with them. So we managed to fit 6 girls and all of our luggage in ONE taxi which was quite a feat in itself. Once we got to the dock a line was already forming (about 7:30 at this point) so we drop all our luggage on the ground and wait about 45 min dragging all our stuff until we made it. We had to give the SAS people our passports, get our luggage checked (even though the guy couldn’t figure out how to open one of my bags so I got away with taking a straightener on board HA!) After that we boarded the ship; Gretchen, Lindsay, and I all walked on together, checked in, did all the forms stuff, then were shown our room. Wow our room is so nice. I mean it’s small, but not any smaller then a freshman dorm room. We set off to unpacking right away, got about half way done and decided to wander around to find our friends. After getting lost three times we decided it was time to finish unpacking, have lunch, and just chill out. Some of our friends came to our room and we all took a trip around the boat to look around before we had meetings for the rest of the night. We def walked past Archbishop Desmond Tutu and almost passed out at his feet we were so surprised! He even waits in line with all of us to get food. I can’t wait to sit down and get to talk to him. Tomorrow is definitely going to be way to busy, but it’s okay because I’m in paradise right now.