Middle of the Atlantic!

As I am typing this, we are about half way in between the Bahamas and Spain, so right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  I'm only going to post a couple of pictures because I learned that they eat up my internet limits.

So let's start at the beginning.  After a fiasco at the airport because my flight was cancelled from Fort Lauderdale to Bahamas was cancelled, I eventually made it to the hotel, which was really nice and I met most of the people I am friends with now that one night.  The next day I waited in line with some friends for 1.5 hours dragging all of our stuff along in order to check in.  When we finally made it through the whole process, we saw this:

(I couldn't fit the other half of the ship in the picture)

We've also been told that we are on a ship, not a boat, and we are on a voyage, not a cruise.  There is a picture of my room right when I got there below.  My roommate's name is Rachel and we get along well.  Our cabin is at the very front of the ship on the 4th deck.  This is also the rockiest part of the whip and I had been seasick for the first couple of days, but now I just take half a dramamine every morning and I am totally fine.  Cabins in the back of the ship get the engine noise, but they don't rock at all.  I would definitely prefer noise over rocking, though I have been getting used to the rocking.

We left Nassuau Bahamas about 6pm on Monday, January 19th.  Since then, we've had orientation (most of which I missed because I felt seasick that whole day) and three days of classes.  I've pretty much enjoyed my classes and it has been nice not to have any pressure since I've already graduated.  

Below is the 7th deck, which has a small pool and a snack bar and is the favorite place to lay out in the afternoon.

There are a bunch of classrooms on decks 5 and 6 and students live on decks 3 and 4.  There is one big room called "the union" for big classes and also for various activities, like showing movies and even swing dancing tonight (which could get interesting since that is the rockiest part of the ship)

That's all for now, but here's a picture of my view from where I am sitting.

first post!!!

Okay, so I am not a blogger.   The longest diary I have ever kept is two weeks.  But I am really going to try with this one.  And it won't be so much a diary...it will be mostly pictures with short paragraphs about what I am doing and such...

So what am I doing?  I am sailing around the world (on a cruise ship with no sails) on a program called Semester at Sea, with 700 other students from all over the country.  I will be taking classes while I'm on the ship and stopping at amazing places all over the world.  Our current itinerary (which was changed from the original because of the Somali pirates) is posted to the right.  While we are in each country, we can go wherever we want within that country.  If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

here is a link to the website if you want more info (go to "voyages" and then "spring 2009" to see mine)

semesteratsea.org

here is the link if you want to send me mail (scroll down to the bottom of the page) which I would love, but definitely don't worry about it if it's too expensive.

mail!!!

I will be taking four classes while on the ship: Global Studies (which everyone has to take), Marine Biology, Nutrition Around the World, and Physics for Mariners.  I'm excited about them in my nerdy way of being excited about most classes before they actually start.  These classes aren't transferring anywhere because I have already graduated, but I have signed some academic integrity form saying that I won't fail on purpose, even though you probably know that I couldn't let myself fail a class anyway.  :)  

I think that's all for now.  I'm actually in San Francisco right now doing early grad school interviews at UCSF, Berkeley, and Stanford.  I fly back to Midland on Thursday and leave for the Bahamas on Saturday, so it is going to be a crazy week.  We set sail on Monday, January 19th.  I'll post more when I've actually been on the ship for a few days.