Coming Soon

update to come Saturday, January 31st. Found a spot with free internet in spain and will write all about Espana then and upload pics before heading back to the ship!!

Tomorrow we arrive in Spain, I think everyone is very very ready to get off the ship. I’m most excited for the food, and judging by the continually decreasing amounts of peanut butter and jelly sandwich supplies at dinner, I’m not the only one sick of the cafeteria options. But eating is always my favorite thing to do in foreign countries; one of the best ways to experience the culture and meet people. We arrive in Cadiz tomorrow morning and I have the day free, then tomorrow night we are going to a Flamenco night event through SAS, and Thursday we are going on a tour through the white towns in the mountains. Friday we are going to visit Mallory in Sevilla, then the ship leaves Saturday night.
Thanks to everyone for the comments! I love reading them! The classes Im taking are Intro to drawing, Biomedical Ethics, and World Religions. There are about 722 students, and everyone on the ship also takes Global Studies, which just goes over the countries we are visiting. In world religions today we are having a guest speaker who worked as Desmond Tutus assistant for a long time. So that should be interesting. Not much else is happening on the ship. It seems to have become increasingly rocky the past day or two, last night things were flying all over our room, and my bed slid away from the wall a bit. It sounded like we were going through a storm, but my judgment when I’m half asleep is not the sharpest. Anyway, Dana and I were talking with a woman at the spa and she said it is so rocky because we are “traveling at the pace of the lobsters crawling across the bottom of the ocean”. Our ship, the MV Explorer, is the fastest on the ocean and apparently is able to travel much faster than we are, we could have made it to spain in 4 days, but they slow down to make time for classes, but I said they should go ahead and speed up because I don’t mind if we miss a few days…
And also apparently some of the emails we have been sending from our semesteratsea accounts are going into people’s junkmail as spam, so if you are waiting on an email from me us check those! Time to go back to bed now, we are still losing hours. Maybe I will have something more exciting to report later.

What time is it and where am i?

Today is an angry blog BECAUSEEEE we were laying out by the pool on the top deck today and I was listening to my ipod loud enough to block out all other distractions which backfired horribly because suddenly I noticed everyone was standing up and looking over the balcony and THERE HAD BEEN A WHALE!! AND I MISSED IT!!!! What a cruel, cruel trick of fate! And lunch was nasty and looked like all the past meals stewed together and my art class is overly crowded and I was the last one to walk in and had to do that awkward floaty dance looking for a chair while everyone was looking at me and I was getting stuck between desks and juggling all my art supplies. And I seem to have caught a tiny bit of a mom and dads cold and was awoken a few times in the night by my own coughing- and some of you may know I have a phobia of sneezing in public where I start to sneeze but then it just stops itself halfway so instead I just sort of choke a little and make a weird noise so that’s been happening a lot too. But good ol dana keeps taking care of me and feeding me healthy drink things and she makes sure I get to class because frankly I have no idea what time it is on this ship, let alone what time my classes are. But dana is keeping me on track. We lose ANOTHER hour tonight. Big woof.
Ok I might have been exaggerating a litttttllle, I’m just cranky cus we didn’t nap today. I can’t believe I missed the freakin whale. But all in all things are going well, we keep meeting more people and everyone seems to be relaxing around each other, I definitely feel more comfortable. Last night was open mic night and lots of people performed, a few boys with guitars and whiny emo voices, a couple people played the piano and sung, some drum players, a boy played this odd instrument called the melodica which he described as a harmonica and a keyboard having a baby and then that baby having a baby with a flute and that baby is the melodica. Anywaaaay, he played “So happy together” by the turtles on it, made me think of you mum and dad ☺ I think I mentioned earlier that most of the professors brought their families with them, and one their sons got up, a little 4 year old in an adorable sailor suit and sang this cute little song. I think everyone in the room wanted to kidnap him. It was also “pub night” last night, which are the evenings that alcohol is served. We are allowed two drinks at dinner, and then 4 drinks from 9-11, beer and wine being the only option. We have drink cards which we have to present to be signed each time we go up and get a drink, and after we filled the cards, (18 drinks), we go get new ones. We didn’t go last night, but the first night was rather interesting because some girls came totally decked out like they were going clubbing, which we found totally weird to come upstairs after dinner having picked out a whole new outfit. We decided the best analogy would be like staying home for a night and deciding to have a glass of wine with your roommates, but going upstairs and getting all dressed up first. And some really obnoxious people like to pretend they are wasted off 4 beers which at least is a nice source of entertainment.
The lack of internet is really the roughest part, I hate not being able to get onto facebook every day. Sorry if anyone is writing or posting, I promise I’ll get back to you it just will take a few days since I’m trying to ration!! And I can’t get on web md, so how am I supposed to know if I get any tropical diseases?? Classes again tomorrow, no such things as weekends on the ship. Arrive in Cadiz, Spain, Wednesday!! We had to slow down today because apparently there is a huge storm ahead of us we are trying to avoid- 40 ft waves allegedly.
This post is becoming unnecessarily long and I think I just shared way more information than anyone would care about. Sorry. Just count this as a few days post cus I only get motivated to write at few and far between rare moments. MISS EVERYONE!! Hope all is well on dry land.

still no call from oprah

Today is daayyyyy…3? The 22nd- like I said, no sense of time or dates. We lose another hour tonight, which means my 8am will arrive even quicker. We actually made it to breakfast this morning, and I was ever so pleasantly surprised when I discovered there was BACON!!! I had 3 plates worth then spent my next 3 classes feeling rather queasy, but it was totally worth it. Dana and I continue to struggle with our desire to do nothing but nap, we managed actually to make it to the pool today and lay out in the fresh air for a while, which made us feel rather accomplished (and provided me with a sexy sunglasses tan) so then we came back to our room and napped again without feeling quite as guilty. One girl at dinner told us that constant exhaustion is a form of seasickness, which would explain a lot, but we also came up with our own theory that the meals prepared for us by the ship are leaving us no choice but to seriously carboload, and seeing as the only physical activity I engage in is climbing the flights of stairs from our cabin to meals, the excessive carbs are entirely wasted.

I had my first art class today which I was rather worried about but it went very well and I was pleased to discover most everyone seemed to be just as bad or worse than I am at drawing. My homework is to draw self portraits of myself for an hour using different techniques she taught us in class…. So pretty much I have to sit in front of a mirror and draw myself for an hour- a little awkward.

Still no sign of whales. Its getting a little erie looking out and seeing nothing but ocean for miles and miles and knowing that we are the only ship out here….ok its getting really erie. Dana and I were contemplating whether or not icebergs form in open water like this? Any ideas? I would wiki it but seeing as our internet minutes are entirely worthless it seems like such a waste.

Tonight we tried to study in the dining hall, I even whipped out my leopard reading glasses mother! But somehow that didn’t help me manage to read more than 2 pages. Other than that not much has changed, Dana and I got lost in the halls trying to find our rooms from a different direction quite a few times, but we are sorta getting the hang of it.
Check out danas blog for similar information but different wording: whereswanar@blogspot.com
I also think she managed to upload some pictures tonight which I am still too lazy to do so check those out.

Things I am grateful for:
- my comfy bed and Rouel who so dutifully makes it every morning for me and greenbean.
- lanyards→ bought one today to attach our id cards to which is already very helpful, (and mother by the way that hideously creepy passport photo we sent in is stamped right on my freakin ID card and is also posted outside the union!!!) Slightly embarrassed every time I have to use it.
- BACON
-books on tape
-voicenotes from Caitlin on danas blackberry, although they are providing us with false information about people that don’t exist…
- the warm weather
-satellite classrooms

that’s all I can think of for now. Rather uneventful couple of days.

So it is day 2 aboard the MV Explorer, although it feels like its been weeks already. Dana and I thoroughly enjoyed our short time in the Bahamas and I managed to sneak aboard the ship during registration with her for last names A-C, allowing us to maneuver the system successfully enough that we did not have to carry our own luggage for more than a few inches. We had more mandatory orientation meetings on the ship today, and I almost made it to all of them, but was not so successful at staying awake during each…. Dana and I even managed to motivate ourselves to get out of bed and keep meeting more new people. Everyone so far is really nice. I also introduced myself to a few of my professors and informed my 8am teacher I am not to be relied upon so early, or really anytime before noon for that matter, and she was very understanding. Our closest friend thus far is Tanya from Toronto, who has struck my fancy simply by her use of the word “eh?” at the end of sentences and her patience with my obsessive desire to whale watch at all times. We were able to watch the Obama inauguration, (also broadcast to our rooms, so of course we enjoyed that from bed), and there was also a little party this evening with cake and champagne. Dinner looked oddly similar to dinner last night, but luckily I discovered we discovered the 7th floor snack bar pizza right after. We met a guy named Jordan who is a college recruiter from Atlanta but has actually been to Villa a bunch for recruiting, he even referred to it as “vdoh”. Small world. But the staff- faculty and ship crew- thus far are all incredibly friendly and are proving to have a wealth of knowledge and stories: we talked to Edu at the snack bar for quite some time- this is his 21st voyage and he even has a wife and 5 kids at home in the Philippines. A lot of faculty brought family, one teacher has his two little girls with him who are ADORABLE, and I keep catching Dana eyeing the 10 month old rather longingly . . .
Tomorrow will be our first day of classes. I’ve already officially lost track of the time and day and seeing as we have to set our clocks forward for like the next 5 nights in a row I can only assume that will get worse- although I would like to thank ally vain for inspiring me a few years ago to change my phone to military time, as that has come in rather useful around here. Around noon we had traveled about 400 nautical miles and still had 3,000 to go before reaching our first port, Cadiz. Crazzyyyyy

Things I learned today:
- we are the first voyage to actually circumnavigate the globe in a long time
- Our lovely cabin stewards’ name is pronounced, Roo-ell, NOT Ra-oool. Rouel takes pleasure in turning our cabin temperature as cold as it can go, but does not like it when we remove cabin decorations from our walls… which leads me to my next point
- paintings bigger than you and your roommate combined are much easier to take down then hang back up
- The advice previous SASers write on the back of the paintings in the rooms are not exactly pearls of wisdom. Comments, for example, include: “you WILL get fat”, and “the poor people in India are faking it”
- The snack bar by the pool always seems to be open and ready to cater to my candy cravings- even when other snackbars remain closed so inconsiderately during my times of need
- aside from initially inducing seasickness, the constant rocking and swaying of the boat creates effects similar to those of alcohol and also seems to make us constantly sleepy
- Canada has a prime minister, not a president, (thank you Tanya for teaching me more about Canada in the 2 hours at dinner than my 14 years of schooling has done)
- people get real desperate fast for activities when cooped up on a ship: sing a longs, apples to apples, and catch phrase have already made numerous appearances.
- There is no hope of saving the free internet minutes: we are down to 2 free hours to start with- not even the original generous 4 we had thought.
- unfortunately, not every shadow or wave break seen in the ocean is a whale surfacing.