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