Days 1-2

1/12


        So I climbed into bed all excited to write a blog entry of my first day at sea, but turns out shits crazy and it literally feels like I’m laying on a sea-saw.  When I was younger I used to love cruises, I used to LIVE for them… I have no clue what I was thinking. I’m guessing it will get better as we’ve only been sailing for about 3 hours but still, this is ridiculous!
        Anyway, today was my first day. I’m not going to lie to you… it went shockingly well.  I may be so impressed because I was stressed out with relatively low expectations but already 12 hours in I will say this program has far exceeded anything I could have ever expected and I will vouch for it.
        From the moment I arrived this morning to climbing into bed just a minute ago, every single person has been overwhelmingly nice and everything has run smoothly.   My check-in time was 8:40.  Anticipating a long line I arrived at 8:09. I was in my room by 8:30.  Everything was set up at labeled stations with literally a 2:1 ration of people working to students boarding the ship, at least at the hour I was there.  I got all my paperwork figured out, wandered the ship for about an hour, and by the time I got back my luggage had been delivered to my door.  
        The rest of the day we were free to hang out, socialize, etc before we set sail at 8pm and our meetings started at 8:30.  More than anything else today, the faculty and the captain impressed me.  There are two deans who are both chill, sweet, accessible and hilarious.  They both gave speeches that were funny, lighthearted and inspiring.  The basic point they both made is that they can teach students anywhere and travel the world much cheaper while making a better salary – they’re here because they love and believe in the program.  I typically avoid authoritative figures at all costs because they make me nervous but both of their speeches left me wanting to sit with them at lunch tomorrow.
        I was also impressed with the students today.  I literally traveled with probably ten different groups over the course of the afternoon. Everyone was smiling, walking around introducing themselves and making conversations with anyone who would stop long enough to converse.  I was extremely overwhelmed at first but I actually ran in to the only two people I spoke to on facebook prior to the trip at the same time and the three of us ate lunch together. Talking to them instantly put me at ease and I felt better about making friends.
        I also got several compliments over the course of the day which boosted my ego a bit – two different people said my eyes were pretty, one said my hair was, and two people thought I was European (definitely a compliment).  Oh, and as usual… Lara’s hat got at least five compliments. 
        One funny thing happened at dinner – I was sitting with a group I hadn’t really spoken to before and I was pretty fried and starving at this point so I was kind of just zoning out.  Then, someone said they didn’t think cage diving would be fun and that it would be relatively lame and I went off on them.  I went on a two-minute rant about how great and epic great white sharks are and was relatively out of breath at the end of it. Everyone was kind of staring at me and this one girl goes “you don’t say anything for the entire meal and then you come out with this?! A rant about great white sharks?!”  It was pretty funny and pretty typical of my social interactions. 
        I’m getting exhausted so I’m going to wrap thisu p in a sec, but the last thing I’m going to do is tell you about my roommate.  Her name is Ashley, and I don’t think she is the type of girl I would usually be friends with, but she is an absolute doll…seriously, that is the only way I can describe her. She reminds me a lot of my friend Ellie from Israel.  She is from Chicago, cute, blonde and in a sorority, but really funny and sweet.  She’s the type of girl that thinks anything anyone does is great.  She’s never heard of Modest Mouse but loved it when I put the posters up and said they were “really cute!”  We have a window that looks out to the ocean and it turns out the water looks insane at night.  It’s really dark but when the waves crash they make a white foam that’s really bright, and when you turn off the lights it looks beautiful and terrifying. We discovered this by coming back into our room after hours of meetings – we jumped on our beds to look out the window and she’s goes “I wonder what it would look like if we turned off the lights…. Ahhhh! That’s crazy!!! OH my god!!!!” ::turns lights back on:: “Wow, that was scary. Ok… I need to do it again.” And we continue to freak out about the waves and then realized that we each have two lights by our beds, which control the four different lights in the room, so we flicked all of them on and off really fast to make a light show.  Now we’re both lying in bed writing our blogs before passing out.  It’s 11:30pm right now, and at 2am the clocks go forward an hour. We lose an hour of sleep every other night pretty much which is going to be a real bitch, then when we go from Japan to Hawaii we have one day twice to get all of the hours back. Yep, we sail through every time zone.  I kind of wish we were going the other way – we would lose a day early on (so what?) but then get 24 extra hours of sleep. That sounds much better to me. Oh well.  Also, some of the previous voyages apparently landed in Seattle. I’m super upset ours isn’t; that would have have been fantastic.
        This is already far more comprehensive than I anticipated so I’m going to see if sleep is possible. .

That is all!
Goodnight, world.


1/13 5pm

        So I’m not going to lie, Day 2 was a lot less fun than Day 1.  Because of the changing time zones, my phone alarm was confused and didn’t go off this morning. I woke up at 8:45 and had to be in the Union, ready to go, at 9:00.  I didn’t have time to eat breakfast or get coffee and barely made it there in time.  Today was orientation, and it was held in the Union which is the biggest lecture hall on the boat. It sits about 400 people, but there are 600 of us, which means people are also watching in TVs on the hallway, sitting on the floor, etc.  It’s also in a hot room in the front of the room and none of us have our “sea legs” yet so it was just hours of lectures (literally) rocking back… and forth… and back… and forth… yeah, it didn’t take long for me to pass out, especially after losing an hour last night.  We had lectures in the union from 9 – 12, then a break for lunch, then more lectures 1:15-3:30, then an hour long “assessment test” which was basically the SATs.  It’s 5:30 now and I’m in my room absolutely exhausted.
        I got my SAS email set up, so please write me!!! It’s jkfisher@semesteratsea.net. I would love to hear whats going on at home as I will NOT be able to get on facbeook at all until I’m in port because all of the pictures and graphics eat up my collection allowance and I would be out of internet time in about 20 minutes.
        I’m extremely anxious to start classes tomorrow. All of this wandering and meeting people is fun but I really want to get settled with a group of friends and  have purpose to my day.  I like having a lot of aquaintances whom I can chat with but I’d much rather have a smaller group of people I’m close with and can travel with. It’s hard to establish that right now with everyone running every which way all of the time so I’m looking forward to having classes, seeing the same people repeatedly and being able to make plans that make sense.
         Before coming here I went on a *huge* target shopping spree buying every single thing I could ever need but turns out I forgot the most important thing – motiong sickness medicine! Yup, so now I’m all kinds of wobbly with a killer headache.  I suppose it’s not the end of the world, because this way I’ll just get used to it and not be even more tired (Dramamine knocks me out) but I still feel pretty crappy. The on ship store opens tomorrow and I’ll be able to buy some and see if that helps.
        That’s about all of the news I have right now. My phone isn’t working at all but I’ll have it in Dominica.  I think we’re arriving there Sunday but I can’t be sure. That’s all for now – xo.