Sun, Surf, and Sand

Day 1 in Hilo, Day 9 of my voyage

We’ve hit land!!!!! Many of us woke up incredibly early this morning to watch the sun rise in Hilo…I myself was up at 5 am this morning and on the phone with my mom, dad, and boyfriend around 5:30. It was so great to watch us dock and watch the little tugboat that pulled us into port. The sunrise was absolutely beautiful and so worth the lack of sleep the night before. Everyone was woken up at about 6 o’clock by the intercom because we had to go up and claim our passports and get them stamped and whatnot. They called us by seas, so after my sea was called I went into the dining room to have breakfast. After breakfast, Brittany and I hung out for a little bit before our FDP. It was for our English class, and we were headed to an elementary school and university that are Hawaiian immersion schools. We stopped first at the elementary school which had K-5^th grade. The kids did an amazing welcome ceremony, in which they sung to us in Hawaiian and danced and played the drums and ukuleles (pronounced ooh-coo-lay-lay, so get it right people). We took a tour of the classrooms and got to see some of the teachers teaching, and it was great to see how much the kids, even the really young ones, knew about the Hawaiian language. After this excursion, we went to the university to learn more about the Hawaiian language. They once again did a small welcome reception for us, and we got to learn a little bit about the history of Hawaiian immersion schools. Basically, the Hawaiian language was beginning to die out because the US had imposed an English only rule once we took possession of the Hawaiian Islands, and the immersion schools were created to bring back the language and keep it going throughout the islands. It is easily one of the most beautiful languages I have ever heard, and it only has 14 letters, which is strange compared to the 26 in the English alphabet. Originally, I was not all that thrilled about spending my first day in Hawaii doing this FDP, but I had so much fun and it was great. I had a small realization about Hawaii as well. Last time I was here three years ago, I was only in Honolulu in the tourist area of the islands. Going to Hilo opened my eyes to the purely cultural side of Hawaii. There is so much culture here, and it is all amazing. They are so in touch with their ancestors, the earth, and their own hearts. They are the most welcoming group of people I have ever met, and I only have great things to say about the people here. After our FDP, Brittany and I came back here, and then decided to head out to the black sand beach relatively near our ship. Apparently sea turtles usually head up toward the palm trees and sit on the sand, but we didn’t see any. L After the wonderful beach, we then decided to head out to Wal-Mart for some necessities with our new friend Graham, who also happens to be the token boy in our group of girls. Mine included another bottle of shampoo and conditioner, a beach towel, tanning oil (Maui Babe, which you can only buy here in Hawaii, and it’s the best tanning oil EVER), and SNACKS. Snacks are a necessity on the ship, because our meal times are really far apart and we always seem to be hungry on this ship. I bought some chips, some M&Ms, and some more gummies. Very unhealthy, I know, but they’re called snacks for a reason. After the epic Wal-Mart adventure, Brittany and Graham and I came back here, and then decided to head across the street to Margarita Village. When we walked in, there were about 50 other SAS kids already there. After a week of “forced sobriety”, majority of the people were going crazy. We met two guys who were friends with the bartender and owner of the place, and they were in total and complete awe of the 50 students that were there. We hung out for about two hours; I had one beverage called the pop quiz which was quite tasty. We met people, watched pool, and sang music loudly and rather and obnoxiously. Watching the entire bar (guys included) singing along to Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” was great. I have a wonderful video of Graham and Brittany singing it, and it’s rather impressive that Graham knows all the lyrics. We left relatively early, came back and went to bed. Sleeping with perfectly still waters was difficult now that I am used to being gently rocked to sleep. Quickly going back to when we first got off the ship, many people were having some issues with landsickness. Some people couldn’t stand still, but were swaying back and forth as they were standing there. Brittany felt nauseous and got a headache, as did some other students.

 

Day 2 in Hilo, day 10 of my voyage

Where to begin for day 2 of Hilo? Rainbow Falls were the destination of the day for Brittany and I, and we left the ship right around 9 o’clock. We met up with two other girls in the port and started walking up the road. We were planning on taking a bus or catching a cab, but one of the girls stuck out her thumb and managed to hitch a ride in a little silver Dodge Neon with a native Hawaiian named Kaveka. He was headed to the farmers market which is exactly where we wanted to go, so it worked out perfectly. We got a little bit of his life story as we were driving. It was his 59^th birthday that day, so we sang him happy birthday in the car, and he told us that even though he was turning 59 and had 17 grandkids, he was still partying. He told us that his 21^st birthday party lasted 2 weeks and that it was the best time of his life. After we got dropped off at the farmers market, we had to wait for the bus to take us up to the falls. It was about a half an hour wait, so we decided to sample some of the fruit the vendors were selling. Brittany and I bought a fresh pineapple for 2 bucks, and they cut it right there for us and we dug in. It was some of the best pineapple I have ever tasted, and we sampled various other fruits as well, including lychee, tiny little bananas, and other stuff. The bus finally arrived, and the 20 of us at the bus stop hopped on for the short uphill ride to the falls. Once we got to rainbow falls national park, we were off exploring. The actually falls themselves were dry because the big island hasn’t been getting much rain this year compared to previous years. Despite the sadness at not getting to see pretty waterfalls, the park itself was still absolutely beautiful. There was a forest of some of the coolest trees I have ever seen. They were huge trees, and their branches went off in all directions and were strong enough for everyone to climb. Some of the more adventurous boys decided to climb the trees, and some made it to about 40 feet up. While we were there, the 4 of us that were all hanging out met a local who showed us some very interesting things and gave us some rather awesome local knowledge. After the falls, the four of us and our Hawaiian guide went to the bus stop to catch the bus back down to the farmers market. Sean (our guide), came with us, and while we were waiting for the bus stop, he told us a little bit about himself and our surroundings. He saw the sunburn I had on my shoulders, and told me that if I got a ginger root and squeezed the juice out of it and put it on my sunburn that it acts like aloe. He also told us that if we took a red hibiscus flower that was closed and we pulled it off at the stem, we could suck fresh honey out of it. Eventually we made it back to the farmers market and our guide left us, and Brittany and I began walking back to the ship around 12:30. While we were walking in the shade it was very refreshing, but once we hit the area with no trees and all pavement, it was hot. So, we decided to hitchhike the 2.5 or 3 miles back to the port. Eventually a guy in a truck who was taking a bunch of trash to the dumps pulled over for us, and we hopped in the back with the few bags of trash he had. Through our conversations though the back window, we found out that he was also from California! Woohoo! Right about now I know that half of my family is freaking out about the fact that I hitchhiked somewhere. This is the only stop on this voyage that I would ever even consider hitchhiking, and I would only do it during the day and with someone else. Hilo is also the only place I would consider doing it, as it is such a small little native town and the people all knew we were coming and were very curious about what we were doing. Hawaiian locals are the most welcoming and warm people I have ever met, and many semester at sea students were shown around by locals throughout the day. Brittany and I returned to the ship around 1, had lunch, and then ventured up to the top deck for some frozen yogurt and some sun. We were out there until about 530 or so, then we headed to dinner, and I went to my room to make phone calls before we departed Hilo. Most of us were excited to leave Hilo, as there wasn’t much for us to do at all. We departed at 8 pm, and we were off to Honolulu. It was nice to be back on a moving ship again. I couldn’t wait to get to Honolulu and head to some real beaches and get a tan.

 

Day 1 in Honolulu, day 11 of my voyage

Finally, a place with a bunch of sun and some great beaches and places to shop. 5 of us got off the ship relatively early in the day, and we were headed to Wal-Mart. Brittany and I had already been, but we went with the others anyways. We hopped on a bus and managed to find the store, ran a few other errands, then took the belongings back to the ship. We all changed into our swimwear and headed out again around 11:30. We took the bus to Waikiki, and walked around the mainly tourist area of town. It seemed as though we couldn’t go anywhere without seeing someone from SAS, whether it was a teacher, other faculty member, or other students. Since we won’t be eating much “traditional” American food in the coming months, we wanted to have some great American staples as our last meals here in the US. Our stop for lunch was Cheeseburger in Paradise. We all got big juicy burgers and we all got drinks in the little souvenir cup. We figured the cup was worth it because of the fact that we were headed to the beach across the street, and we could bring the cup back for refill whenever we wanted. We went back a few times throughout the day, and it was much cheaper than constantly buying soft drinks all the time. After lunch, we headed across the beach to soak up some sun and go for a swim.

After soaking up our rays for the day, we got ready at the ship then headed downtown to Senor Frogs for Kara’s 21^st birthday. There were about 20 of us at our table, and let me tell you, this place is one of the best as far as birthdays go. There’s a stage, there is karaoke, there are balloon hats, the hosts are absolutely hilarious, and it was just a generally fun time. After 10 o’clock they had drink specials from anywhere from 1-5 dollars, so many of the students were using this to the fullest. I had an FDP the next morning, so a dollar drink a friend bought me was all I had. Eventually, the place was absolutely packed with SAS students, dancing, drinking, singing, playing the games they had, and just having a great time. They had music videos playing, and everyone went absolutely crazy when they played “I’m On A Boat”. It is such a stereotypical semester at sea song, but it is so much fun to sing and get excited about when everyone is together. I left around 11:30 with 5 other semester at sea girls, and we caught a cab and came back to the ship and I went to bed in preparation for my morning FDP at 8:45.

 

Day 2 in Honolulu, day 12 of my voyage

Woke up around 7 for my FDP to the Hawaii Psychiatric Hospital. This was the FDP I was overall most excited for two reasons. One, I had never been to a psychiatric hospital. Two, 98% of the patients were forensic patients, or ones who were referred there by the court system after being deemed unfit to stand trial. We got there and got our visitors badges, then headed out to the psychology buildings. We originally were not allowed to even see any of the patients for confidentiality reasons, so we had a meeting with a woman who ran the facility and one of the psychiatrists on the medical team. After our meeting, we were supposed to head over to another building, but as we were headed outside, there was a fire drill and all of the clients (it’s what they call patients) came outside. We all had to go back inside the kitchen as they filed outside for the fire drill. 39% or so of the patients at the facility have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, most of them on the much more severe end of the condition. Schizophrenia does not involve, contrary to popular belief, multiple personalities. Schizophrenia can involve many different conditions: catatonia, in which a patient may sit in one position and appear completely unresponsive for long periods of time; word salad, in which their sentences do not make sense to anyone except for them; hallucinations, such as hearing voices talking to them or sometimes visual hallucinations (visual hallucinations are very rare); and delusions, in which they may believe they are someone else (Jesus Christ, someone famous), they are hearing voices of aliens from outer space, or they believe someone is following them or that they can control people in everyday life. There are some more mild forms of schizophrenia, but many of these patients have the more serious forms of the disease. One of the most unnerving stories the psychiatrist told us (this may be slightly disturbing) was of a patient who had incredibly serious delusions. He believed that everyone in his family was a vampire and that they were out to get him. In order to solve this problem, he decided to get rid of his vampire family in the way you are supposed to get rid of vampires. He shoved a stake through the hearts of his mother and his sister, and then he set the house on fire. The mother and sister survived for a little while in a burn unit under immense amounts of pain, but eventually died from complications. This was a case that my teacher was even slightly taken aback by, and he has been a psychiatrist for many years. One this about this case with the young man was the fact that not only did he have severe schizophrenia, he was also under the influence of drugs. Co-morbidity, which is when a person has one or more problems, is very common in psychology. Drug use is incredibly common with people who have mental illness, and they can usually make the persons’ problems much worse. The guy mentioned above was also a methamphetamine addict, which heightened his delusions and made them more serious than they actually were. Once the man was taken into custody and deemed unfit to stand trial, he was sent to the psychiatric hospital, where he was put into both mental health therapy and a drug rehabilitation program. He was put on anti-psychotic medications by the psychiatrist, and once he began to come out of his delusions and his drug addled haze, he began to realize what he had done, and a very intense depression set in.  He was put into a program for his depression as well, and I’m pretty sure that eventually, after many years of therapy, he was released from the hospital and able to function in everyday life as a fairly normal person as long as he stayed on his medication. For him, the medication and sobriety was the key to his treatment. This was the story the psychiatrist told us as the fire drill was going on. After the fire drill was over and the patients headed back inside, we were able to go to one of the empty wards and see what the rooms were like. Each patient has a single room to themselves, and two of them share a bathroom. The rooms were very bleak, and many of the clients did not have many belongings at all. Some of them did have photos of people on the wall, from actors and actresses to pictures they simply pulled out of Vogue. The ward we took a tour of had cameras and mirrors everywhere, and we learned that the unit used to be an “open” unit. They had an open reception desk, vases with flowers, and a fish tank. It wasn’t until the vases got thrown and the fish tank broken that they put walls up around the reception desk and everything became much more closed and had more of a prison-like feel. Despite this, the beauty of outdoor Hawaii still managed to shine. They would have small courtyards in the middle of the wards that were very green and grassy. We also got to head down to the Aloha Garden they have on the premises. Many of the clients that are at the hospital work down in the garden. They are pretty much free to roam around the garden and do what they want. They grow taro, passionfruit, coconut, and many other things. Many of the clients love to come down to the garden and get away from the incredibly structured day of the hospital. We got to try crackers with homemade passionfruit jam that some of the clients had made earlier in the day. It was absolutely excellent, unlike the poi that many people tried. I had tried it a few years ago and discovered that it tasted like glue, so I didn’t have any desire to try it again. After the garden we were able to head back up with our guide for the closing statements and last few points of the tour. One of my absolute favorite facts about the hospital was the fact that they used one of the wards on Lost to film Hurley’s scenes in the mental hospital. After a quick goodbye, we hopped back on the bus and headed back to the ship.

Once I got back to the ship, I waited for Graham to get back from developing his pictures, then we were headed out to get Japanese rail passes and to see Pearl Harbor. We hopped in a cab to get the Japanese rail passes, and we ended up at a Japanese travel agency. The ladies were very helpful, and we were in and out of there in about 15 minutes. After this, we hopped on the bus and took about a 30 minute ride to Pearl Harbor. People watching on the bus is a really fun time, as there are so many people that use public transportation. One of the more interesting experiences Graham and I had on the bus was when a rather large Samoan woman sat next to us. He and I were sitting in a group of three seats, and she got on the bus and wiggled her way right next to me, so that I was forced to move over and squish poor Graham up against the side of his seat. It was rather uncomfortable for about 5 minutes, until the woman moved across from us and sat down in an empty seat. Now, when she sat by herself, she took up about two seats, so you can imagine how uncomfortable it was for the two of us for a little while. In the end, we were just able to laugh about it and continue on our day. Once we hopped off the bus at Pearl Harbor, we made our way over to the ticket counter and were told that if we hurried up we would be able to catch the last boat out to the Arizona Memorial. We got out there, took some pictures, looked at a bunch of the names on the wall, heard a little bit about the memorial from the guide, then hopped back on the boat and headed back.

The entire time Graham and I were touring Pearl Harbor, I was also texting my friend Colin. He is a friend of Perry’s from the military who I became good friends with as well, and he is stationed at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, which is right around the corner from Pearl Harbor. He had a promotion ceremony that started at two, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to see him at all that day. Fortunately, luck was on my side. He was done with his ceremony around 3:45, so he came and picked me and Graham up at Pearl Harbor. We didn’t want ship food for our last meal in the US, so Colin took us to Taco Bell. J You all know how much I love Taco Bell, so this was perfect, and Graham and Colin were very excited about it too. After Taco Bell, Colin took us back to the ship around 4:45. It was great to see Colin, as I hadn’t gotten to see him since July. He is getting deployed to Turkey for two and a half months in April, so it will be quite a long time before I get to see him again.

Once back on the ship, I made all my last minute phone calls before I had to shut my phone off for the next three and a half months. It will honestly be really nice to not have a phone or access to Facebook, but I will miss having the ability to pick up the phone and call family or friends whenever I want. On the bright side of being cut off from technology, you are forced to be social here on the ship. It’s great! If there is someone that does not like being social and doesn’t like people, this is definitely not the trip for them. One thing my group of friends is not looking forward to are the next 11 days on the way to Japan. It is the longest passage of the entire voyage, and I know many of us will be so excited to get off the ship once we get to Japan. On the bright side, we can rent games from downstairs, and we all split the cost of Twister at Wal-Mart, so that will give us something to do while we are stuck here on the ship. We also have cards and movies too, so hopefully that will make the time pass a little bit faster. There are a group of about 5 or 6 of us that always hang out on the ship, so we are getting as creative as we can with varying ways to play games and have fun. It is reading time for me, so I will be updating soon, maybe about halfway between here and Japan, even though there really isn’t much to update you on. Oh, and on another side note, the only way to really post photos is if I am off the ship and I have wireless internet. We can’t send attachments in an e-mail unless they are tiny, and I don’t know if my computer can get them down to that small of a size, or if you would even be able to see them. I will try to send them to my blog, but if you guys don’t see them, I am sorry. Love you all!

Ready To See Land...

Second day of classes. Started off my morning by going to English as a Global Language, my add-on class that puts me up to 16 units. My teacher is an adorable British man who knows much info about the subject he is teaching. I really like the class, and I have an FDP for it in Hawaii that should be interesting. After English (this makes it way shorter to type), I ventured across the hall to my Introduction to Socio-Cultural Anthropology course. I originally was taking this course simply to satisfy the prerequisite for my summer school class, but I actually think I am going to enjoy it. My teacher in very knowledgeable, and she has traveled to Africa and many other countries for field work, and she was also in the Peace Corps. I’m pretty excited for the class, but we shall see how it progresses as time goes on. At 2 I had global studies again, which I have every day.

One thing I noticed about every single teacher on this ship is how relaxed they all are. I know I mentioned this briefly in my first blog, but I find it so great that I have no problem writing about it again.  They aren’t fussed about cramming in all of the reading to make sure we get it all done in time. Pretty much every single one of them has said “I know you guys are here to see the world and study, but if we get behind on some stuff because we are talking about experiences in countries, it’s no big deal”. They are all just as excited as we are about this trip, as many of my teachers have never done this before. I was supposed to have a paper due three days after Hawaii, but my teacher pushed it back because we have been having really in depth discussions in class and haven’t gotten to all of the material we were originally supposed to get to by now in the book. It’s nice to not be so pressured and stressed by deadlines. Don’t get me wrong, there are still deadlines to be met and many, many  pages to be read, but it’s more relaxed here than it ever has been at USD.

 

Day 5

 I know day four was a little short, so I will try and make this one a little longer. I started off my morning in a way that I usually don’t start my mornings. I know I mentioned in one of the earlier days, day 2 I believe, that we had our involvement symposium in which we could sign up for things to do. I signed up for all of those listed above, and I had my first class this morning at 7 am. There were about 15 of us in one of the classrooms, and we were doing a half an hour of meditation. Our “instructor” is a lady who is here with her husband and their kids, and they are very hippie-ish. She loves things like meditation, dance as a spiritual practice, and yoga. Helen would absolutely adore her. I really enjoyed this meditation more than I did in the past, as the other (very few) times I did meditation, the people instructing would simply tell us to close our eyes and empty our minds of all those thoughts that go on. That was it. No possible hints on how to go about it. You try sitting still for just 1 minute and not thinking about anything…I bet you can’t. Our instructor here on the ship has accepted this fact, and has made it a little bit easier. She told us to sit in silence and try to empty our minds, but when other thoughts start invading, focus on our bodies.  Focus on breathing, how our hands feel sitting against our knees, etc. 30 minutes after the beginning of meditation, she rings her little singing bowl, we bring our hands together and do a little bow, then we all open our eyes. It really is a wonderful way to start a morning, and I will definitely be doing this every A day, since I have class at 8 anyways.

After my ridiculously hectic A day was over, Brittany and I went to the gym. Brittany is basically my new best friend here on the ship. We talked on facebook one time before we got here, and discovered that we had a lot in common. We are both 21, members of Alpha Chi Omega, and we go to school 15 minutes apart (she goes to UCSD). She is a human development major, which is somewhat similar to psychology, and we both love to read. We will be sleeping on the Great Wall together, and we discovered that both of us write and eat left handed and play sports with our right hands. Not only do we have all of this in common, we have had numerous people ask if we were sisters. I guess it’s the dark hair and dark features that prompt the question, but who knows. It’s nice because I know I’ll actually get a chance to see her after this is all over. So anyways, we went to the gym for 30 minutes and hopped on the elliptical machines. Let me tell you, exercise machines+rough sea=interesting workouts. They have the machines set up so that they are facing the same way the ship if rocking, so it is pretty easy to deal with, it’s just weird because sometimes you feel like you’re running uphill, then you feel like you are running downhill. I don’t understand how people run on the treadmills, as they are facing the other way, so one is constantly running from side to side and looking rather drunk as they run. It can be really funny at times. After the wonderful half an hour elliptical session we took two yoga mats out to the fitness deck and stretched and did some other strength exercises. Then we just lay down on the deck. We could hear the ocean, see a million stars in the sky, and the moon was big and beautiful. It is hard to believe that this will be our lives for the next 100 days. Yes we do schoolwork, but other than that, there isn’t much to do other than tan, eat, work out, and hang out.

So not only was this my night of really wanting to pass out and go to sleep, it was also the night of insanely rough seas. I got maybe 2 hours of sleep the entire night, as the ship was rocking constantly and our drawers wouldn’t stay closed until we finally shoved t-shirts into them and kicked them shut. Stuff was falling in the bathrooms, the rooms above us, everywhere. I’m happy I didn’t bring perfume, as a girl I know had a bottle shatter on the bathroom floor. The next morning when I got to class, you could tell that no one had slept the night before, and even the teachers looked absolutely exhausted and many made comments about the lack of sleep. Honestly, I don’t really think it’s fair to have school after nights like that because we all know no one slept. It’s like a snow day, only a rough sea day. I know this won’t be the last bit of rough seas, but hopefully by a little later in the voyage I will be used to it and can sleep through it a little more.

 

Day 6

 Despite waking up ridiculously exhausted, this was probably the best day I have had on the ship so far. I finished my classes, and then I was meeting Brittany up in the Garden Lounge to sit and have some study time and get some reading done. I wandered up around 3, and the two of us sat around and read until about 4:30. One of our friends came and sat with us, and we started talking. Then he left and other people sat down. Then our first friend came back again. Then it was dinner time. Then the deck of cards came out, and we played an improvised game of spoons with coffeemate packets.  Then 2 others joined us, making us a group of 5. Then another table of 4 girls joined us, making us 9. We played some more spoons, and then moved on to catch phrase, yeehaw, bang-bang, and other random games that we knew of. Overall I didn’t leave the Garden Lounge until 10:30, seven and a half hours after arriving and of course after snack time. The Garden Lounge is one of many places on the ship where you can basically always find people playing some sort of game. Like I said, there isn’t much to do on the ship, so we make do with what we have. We get really really creative, so it will be interesting to see how much more creative we get as time goes on. I came back to my room that night and passed out absolutely exhausted from the lack of sleep and the fun events that took place.

 

Day 7

 See above. A little less rowdy, but a good time nonetheless. Still played games, got my ass kicked by the stairmaster in the gym, and had our cultural preport for Hawaii. Pre-ports are basically information about the port before you get there. We learned about the culture of Hawaii, music, history, etc. A little interesting but nothing that needs to be elaborated on. They will definitely be more interesting for other ports. Tonight will be another good night of sleep, as the ship isn’t rocking badly at all. Tomorrow I think I may start laying out on deck 7 with a book and getting some color. I feel bad for all of you in California who are freezing. Also, they have started yoga classes out on deck. Apparently a ton of people went today, so I think I may try and go tomorrow. Not only is it a great workout by itself, but it’s better because we have to try harder to stay balanced with the rocking of the ship. I’m pretty excited, as I have never done yoga before. We land in Hilo in two days, and most of us are really excited to see land. We have a blast here on board, but we also can't wait to get out and explore these places.

 

Day 8

Last night on ship. Ready to see land. Logistical preport tonight, which is all about getting off the ship and getting our passports stamped and whatnot. Got a tiny bit of color today, as it was warm and I got to lay out on deck 7. Got reading done. Ready for HAWAII!!!! I will post once my Hawaiian adventures are totally over, so ALOHA until then! Oh and hopefully I will be posting some pictures soon. J

 

It's A Ship, Not A Boat; It's A Voyage, Not A Cruise...

This title was the first phrase they said to us at orientation.
January 17th, Embarkation day, day 1 of my around the world journey. I was able to hop on the 9:30 shuttle instead of the 10 o’clock one, so I arrived a little bit earlier than I originally thought I would. We all got on or shuttle, which was basically a regular passenger bus, and listened as the lovely announcer man made his announcements. He said it would take about 2.5 hours to get to Ensenada; it took about 2. I spent the majority of my time talking with a girl named Clara, who (ironically) goes to USD and knows about half of my younger sorority sisters. We had a good time talking about the various trips we were taking and how excited we were to finally be doing this trip. Eventually, all of us on the bus were going crazy with anticipation, and a bit of excitement ensued when the ship was finally seen from the windows. It was rather funny, as there was a massive Carnival cruise ship in the port next to us that totally dwarfed us. We pulled into the docking area, got off the bus, did a few minor check in items, got our ID cards (the coloring is off a bit, so I look like I have a bad spray tan), and were able to go to our rooms. When I got to my room, my roommate was nowhere to be seen, but there was a backpack on the bed and some books. There were various random little packets of stuff on our beds with orientation stuff and whatnot, so (me being me) I sat down to read through some of it. About 20 minutes later, my roommate came back! For some reason, her key wouldn’t work in the door, so we both had to go up and get our keys reset. Her name is Simone, and she is from South Carolina! I am really excited to have a roommate from out of state, and I adore her cute accent. We sat in our room for a little bit until all of our luggage finally arrived, and then we had our lifeboat drill at 4. Everyone looked rather funny with their lifejackets on inside the dining hall, but it took about 45 minutes and we were off again. Originally we were supposed to set sail at 5, but due to some “immigration issues” (not sure what they were), we ended up taking off at about 6:15ish. Dinner started at 5:30, and we had a pretty good meal. Pork chops and onion gravy, pasta primavera, grilled snapper (it was very good), salad, potatoes (which I didn’t touch), and other yummy stuff. The food was pretty good, but I heard it tends to get worse and very monotonous as time goes on. I should be ok, as long as there is salad, pasta of some kind, and a meat.
In other news, we had our “sea” meetings tonight. For those of you who don’t know what the seas are, each hall is divided into a sea based on room numbers, and each sea has a living learning coordinator, which is basically an RA. The seas are also our teams for the Sea Olympics, which happen later in the voyage. We had an orientation meeting as well, and they introduced all the teachers, which was pretty interesting. People have already gotten seasick; luckily my roommate and I have both been ok so far. Maybe all those years of reading in the car when I was younger will pay off and I won’t get motion sickness at all. Tomorrow is a full day of orientations and other mandatory (but not so fun) things, then we start classes on Tuesday. I have come to the conclusion that sleep will not be a priority of mine at all this semester, as I will have 8 am class every day, and sleeping in while traveling around usually doesn’t happen. Great. I’m the girl who likes 10 am classes because I get to sleep in a bit. Not this semester. But that’s ok…I can sleep later. Speaking of sleep, I constantly feel relaxed and sleepy while on the ship. If the rocking isn’t too bad, it has a very calming effect that basically just makes me want to nap all day. On the other side, I’m having no problems falling asleep at night; the staying asleep is a bit of a challenge. I think I’m constantly nervous about not waking up for classes, since mine are at 8 am, and breakfast starts at 7. Yes, I the girl who loves her sleep will probably be up around 6:30 every morning, if not earlier. Eep. But enough about sleep, it’s making me tired just thinking about it.
After only a few hours of being on the ship, I am already absolutely in love. I love my little itty bitty cabin with its magnetic walls, the awkward bathroom light switch that is on the outside of the bathroom that you flip up to turn off and down to turn on, and the general coziness of it. Yes, it is tiny…but that is totally fine with me. Everyone I met on the voyage so far has been really nice, and everyone in general is just really excited to be going on this journey. The crew members are all absolutely amazing and basically are there for everything…serving us juice and refilling our water at dinner, helping us find our way around, cleaning our rooms, and everything else. Most of them are from foreign countries, so it’s really neat to hear all of their accents and stories.
Day 2: Nothing to report. Very boring day aboard the Explorer. Orientation for 6 hours, followed by the involvement symposium later at night to sign up for fun stuff. I think I hear the salsa class calling my name. Maybe Qi Dong too. And the meditation class (this one is for Perry). And the extended family program. And the Greek Council. No volleyball, as that could be a problem on a moving ship and because the fact of the matter is that relatively decent depth perception is required.
Day 3: First day of school! First day of school! Started off my morning with Global Mental Health. It counts as an upper division psychology elective class at my school, and I am really excited to take it. Not to mention I absolutely adore my teacher. He’s a cute little psychiatrist, probably in his mid 70’s, as next year will be his 50th year out of medical school. He has taught and worked at UCSF for a while now, and he has an absolute ton of knowledge in his field. I have a feeling I may be spending quite a bit of time in his presence, and more likely than not we will be eating breakfast together at least once on the voyage, as we arrived in the dining hall at the same time this morning. The class sounds really interesting, and I am really excited for my FDP (faculty directed practica) to the Hawaii Psychiatric Hospital in Honolulu. It is mainly a forensic psychology treatment center where they work with people who have been convicted of criminal offenses. If any of you really know me, you know that these are the type of people I want to work with, so this experience should be really fun. I am really excited for this class, as it also sounds like an extension of my abnormal psychology course, so (hopefully) it will be relatively easy for me since I already have a background in abnormal psych. On to global studies. This is a course required by SAS for everyone to take, and we take it every single day we are on the ship, both A days and B days (this is how our classes are divided and it switches off every other day). Originally I wasn’t very excited about this class at all, as “mandatory” classes tend to be the most tedious and boring. After going to the class this morning at 9:30, I think I have changed my mind about this class. The teacher is incredibly funny and enthusiastic, and in turn it makes the students more ready to learn. He uses great teaching techniques that enable his students to remember the information he gives us, which is always nice. I can already name the top ten most populated countries in the world off the top of my head, but I will not bore you with that information here. We will mostly be learning about the countries we are going to be visiting, and I am so excited for the interport lecturers to come on board. Interport lecturers are people from the ports we are going to next who teach us a bit about their country (or state in Hawaii’s case) and their culture. A few years ago they had Desmond Tutu as an interport lecturer, and I must say that I am rather jealous. The class doesn’t seem like it will be too difficult as long as I go (which I will, as I am going to be awake for my 8 am global mental health class anyways) and pay attention to what he says. Paying attention is easy to do in classes when you sit right in front, which is my new favorite thing to do as it helps me see the presentations much better, especially because some of the stuff can be a bit shaky at times. Next on A days is Theology, Spirituality, and the Ethics of Sustainability. It starts at 2, and thank goodness it is after lunch because I am usually wide awake and content because of my full belly. This is the first time in my college career I can truly say I’m excited about a “theology” course. My teacher is great and has a fair amount of random knowledge to disperse among his students. In 20 years of teaching, we are his first class to contain girls. He has taught at an all male campus since he began teaching, so he said that he will have to tone down the “locker room attitude” that usually pervades his classroom. His wife is also teaching classes here on the ship, and their three kids (2 boys, 1 girl) are also on the voyage with them. This class seems interesting in that we get to look at basic theology, which is a bunch of the simple stuff I learned in high school. Then we move to spirituality, which is a broader concept than theology and is often thought of to be outside of organized religion for many people. Last but not least, we move on to ethics, which involves ethics of certain religious practices. One of the main questions raised here involves eating meat and the care of animals. I am quite excited for this class overall, as it seems like the teacher will be engaging and there will be a lot of classroom discussion. My final class on A days is Gamelan, a 1 unit music course. A gamelan is a musical ensemble of percussion instruments like gongs and metalliphones. They are most often found in Bali and Java, and there are competitions and prizes awarded. Our teacher gave us a bit of an introduction, and then he told us to take off our shoes and sit at an instrument. He taught is the basic rhythm for one song and there are many interlocking parts and sounds that all fit together to make one beautiful harmony. My teacher is great and really knows what he is talking about, and I think it will be a really fun course that will be great to get 1 unit for this semester. I realized that out of 6 classes, only one of my teachers is female, which is unusual, since the breakdown on the ship is something like 66% female, 33% male. I’m not sure exactly what the other 1% is, but those were the numbers they gave us. Tomorrow I have Introduction to Socio-Cultural Anthropology (a pre-requisite for Surf Culture and history, which I am hopefully taking this summer) and Global Studies again, and I am also trying to add another course so I can take a full 16 units and still graduate a semester early. I am really looking forward to classes this semester, as my teachers are all very go with the flow and see where the sea takes us. Many of them are not afraid to have to cut out some material if discussions run long or if something happens in a port that we should talk about, which is so much better than trying to cram a ton of information into not nearly enough time because they want to get it all done. I can already tell that I will be getting to know my teachers very well, as I see them everywhere on the ship; not only in classes, but dining halls, hallways, lounge areas, everywhere. The lifelong learners are also so much fun. I have some sitting in on my global mental health course, global studies, and gamelan so far. Most of them are of the older generation, probably in their 60’s or 70’s. We have a few younger ones; the youngest I have seen is probably in his early 30’s and he is a concert jazz pianist. I love the fact that our lifelong learners are so much less particular about who they sit with than people my age. People my age tend to be so picky about who they sit next to for meals, but the lifelong learners have no shame and just walk right up and ask to sit with you. I joined the extended family program last night, so within the next two weeks a few other students and I will be assigned to either a lifelong learner or a faculty member and our little group will be able to get together for dinner. I am really excited about this, as some of my friends who have already done it said that it was really fun and rewarding.

While these last few days have been rather tiring (I have been in bed before 10 and up at 6:30 every morning) they have also been very exciting. I have already made some new friends on board, met an absolute ton of sorority sisters from everywhere, and I love all of my teachers. I know this semester is going to be great, and I can’t wait to see what adventures await!

One week...

With only one week left until I step foot on the MV Explorer, I figured it was time for a blog update...

Trips. Way back in the middle of December, I had to pre-register for some of the trips I want to do while visiting various countries. We had to register for trips in Hawaii, Japan, and China, as well as any overnight trips we wanted to take while on our voyage. I got confirmation for some of the trips I will be doing, and I am SO excited! Here they are:
Hawaii:
Visit to the Hawai'i Psychiatric Hospital (this one is for a class, but I am so excited)
Japan:
Zen Temple & Meditation Led by Zen Monks: We get to visit a temple and get instructed in Zen Buddhist meditation, as well as enjoy a "Zen" style lunch.
China:
Sleep on the Great Wall: This one isn't done through SAS, but through another reputable company that many friends have used. I am so excited for this trip, although I am not looking forward to freezing while sleeping on the wall. Not only do we get to see the Great Wall, we will complete a 6 mile hike (which I have heard is rather challenging), then we get to zipline off the wall once the hike is over, which is great incentive for me to finish the hike, as I can be a bit of an adrenaline junkie. While the wall is the main highlight of the trip, I also get to visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, as well as the Silk Market. During our time in Beijing, we also get to see the outside of the two Olympic stadiums, the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. I can't wait for this trip!
India:
Taj Majal and Jaipur: On this trip, I get to travel to various places in India, including Delhi, Agra (this always makes me think of Aladdin), and Jaipur. It is going to be a very rigorous three days full of very early mornings, but it should be amazing.
South Africa:
Aquila Game Reserve: A one day safari at a relatively new game reserve. They have many different tyes of animals, including rhino, zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, giraffe, and lions. The lions are in an enclosure until the other animals have time to increase their population, and eventually the lions will be released with the rest of the animals. Despite this, I am very excited for this adventure.
These are my trips that I have for now, but I will hopefully be adding some along the way for various other countries. I'm hoping to get into a few community service trips, as well as some visits to some temples and even a circus school in Brazil.

Packing. I have never enjoyed it and I have always put it off until the last minute (which drives both my mom and my boyfriend absolutely nuts), but I always manage to get everything done. When packing for my previous semesters at school, I always had my car to fit an entire semesters worth of stuff into. This semester, packing is proving to be a teensy bit of a challenge. I have to fit everything for three and a half months into two rolling duffle bags and a backpack. This list includes but is not limited to: Clothes (for weather varying from 35-90 degrees), bathroom supplies (shampoo, conditioner, make-up, and every other wacky bathroom thing a girl needs), school supplies, electronics, and other random things one needs for a life onboard a ship. I know I will be able to fit it all right now because my mom is the queen of packing things, but how on earth am I going to be able to get all of it home at the end of my voyage?!?! Not only will I have the stuff I took with me, but souvenirs as well. And I have to pack it all myself. Without my mom. It's little things like this that make me appreciate her presence even more. :-)

And last but not least...
Anticipation. While I did decide to join this program relatively late compared to some of my peers on the voyage (some have been planning for a year!), I am easily just as excited as many of them. Anyone who knows me knows that I am obsessed with traveling and seeing new places. I am rather excited to say that after this trip there will only be two continents in the world I have not set foot in, and they are Australia and Antarctica. I figure I still have a chance at seeing Australia, and Antarctica, well, I'm not too concerned with seeing that one. At this point, after so many months of frantic planning for this trip, I just want to set sail already. I want to be on the ship and meet my roommate, I really want to experience Neptune Day (for those of you who have no idea what this is, you will find out when I post), I want to partake in the Sea Olympics, I can't wait for taco day, and I look forward to trying to find ways to spend my endless time aboard the ship during the long stretches between countries. What I am most looking forward to though, is experiencing other cultures. I've been stuck in a little California bubble for so long, with my Europe experience lasting only three weeks, that I cannot wait to get out of here. I know that I will definitely undergo some culture shock, especially because we are going to so many different places. I also know that I will experience some culture shock when I get home. American culture is so different from other cultures. I noticed this even when I was just in Europe, and I know that it is going to be a hundred times more different in every country that I am going to be visiting. Always being a person who likes to go with the flow of things, I think experiencing new cultures is going to be an absolute blast. I know there will be challenges (communication, perhaps?) but I am looking forward to all of them.
As much as I want to set sail and leave for my semester abroad, I know that I will miss everyone here at home. Talking on the phone won't happen very often, and when it does, most conversation will most likely be relatively short and inconsequential (hi, how are you, what have you been up to, etc.). E-mail will be my main way of keeping in contact with people, and even that will only occur when I am on the ship and can access my e-mail account. This is the one thing I am not looking forward to at all on my trip, as I love keeping in contact with my family, boyfriend, and friends when I can't see them very often. Other than that, I am so looking forward to having adventures in foreign countries. SEVEN DAYS!

My next blog will most likely occur once I am on the ship and settled in, maybe with a few pictures of my teeny tiny room. Until then, tchau! (Bye in Brazilian Portuguese) :-)