Post Hawaii - the middle of nowhere ...

Hey everyone its day B4 of classes!

We have 11 days of sailing ahead of us on this incredibly vast Pacific Ocean.
 
Then we hit Asia!

 
Well I had an absolutely amazing time in Hawaii. 

Our first stop was in Hilo on the Big Island. My parents were there in 1993 with Uncle Jack's N.U. basketball team. The Purple Eagles played in a tournament at Univ. of Hawaii at Hilo. They left me home, I was only 3... go figure. I'll bet the town has not changed much since then.

We had a wake up call at 6am to go through U.S. Customs. (no drug sniffing dog this time) But I woke up at 5:30 to see the ship dock and then make some phone calls.  Eli and I didn’t have any plans for the day, so we ate breakfast and went back  to the room to take a nap for an hour. This was to let the line to get off the ship to go down a bit. When we finally disembarked we ran into a group of our friends who were going to the "Black Beach".  So Oliver, Kyle, Jenny, Sarah, Eli and myself grabbed a taxi to the beach. This beach is black because it is made up entirely of  black volcanic sand. We had a lot of fun just goofing off, mostly because the beach was packed with other SAS'ers !  At about 1:00pm we blew out of there for a little lunch. After some exploring around the "downtown" area, we found an amazing restaurant called Café Pesto.  I had a Caesar salad, with a Japanese eggplant sandwich .  After lunch we ran back to the ship to shower and change for our Hawaiian Luau ! We were pretty excited about this event. Almost a third of the kids on the ship were signed up because of all great things we heard.  I was pumped for a pig roast, but that turned out to be a bust.  First off we toured the University of Hawaii, Hilo Campus, the tour ended at the university’s farm, yes... I said farm. This is where they staged their fake Luau.  We were kind of disappointed that there wasn’t a genuine Pig Roast on the beach scenario but... being the adventurer’s that we are, we made it a good time and learned how to do some crazy Hawaiian dances.  I found out later from my Anthropology of Foods professor, that everything  was catered and not prepared there, which just didn't seem right. 

After the Luau a bunch of us SAS'ers took over a local bar called Shooters and enjoyed the Hawaiian spirit(s). 

The next day I woke up pretty early and went on a Volcano National Park tour. It was pretty interesting, but a also a very desolate area! 

There is a huge difference between Hilo and Honolulu! It was a fun trip though and I didn’t really know anyone on my trip but I met and hung out with a classmate, Carson from Hilton Head. We talked about HHI and I got a first hand perspective on all the tourism and local stuff.  Now I have a friend for the next time I go down there... right Mother ! We were all exhausted when we got back on the ship and the whole SAS community was out cold by 8:00pm that night as we were island hopping over to Honolulu.

The island of Oahu and Honolulu:

Well we got into Honolulu about 6am on Wednesday morning. I was off the boat at about 7:45am.  I had a tour of Pearl Harbor that was a fantastic! First we experienced the “Pearl Harbor Avenger, which is a submarine that sank numerous Japanese ships and was turned into a museum. Then I watched a video about what and why December 7,1941 happened. Then we got on a U.S. Navy boat and went out to the Arizona Memorial. It was a very emotional and exciting experience seeing theses massive ships sunk right there in the harbor.  

Pearl Harbor is  a beautiful place and it is hard to imagine that horrible day taking place there. After the tour I went with my friend Greg who comes from New Jersey and goes to school at Pitt, and we met up with a bunch of SAS'ers on Waikiki Beach! We stayed there from 2:30 until 9:30 at night. It was absolutley beautiful! The beach was perfect, and the sunset was amazing. We started out with a huge group and over time it gradually dwindled down to about 8 of us. 

We went back to the ship took a shower and then went out to dinner for some nice Hawaiian Pizza.  After dinner we met up with a bunch more SAS'ers and hit up the nightlife. A bunch of people got hotels on the beach because everyone is sick of our tiny hard beds on the ship, but I had a tour the next morning at 7:45 again, so I wasn’t planning on staying over, but when we all started heading in I didn’t feel like taking the taxi back at 2am so I stayed in my buddy Kyle’s room. So I woke up at 6am the next morn to meet up with my snorkeling tour. Snorkeling ended up being on the windward side of the island, and for all of those people who don’t know what that means, including me… it rained the whole time.  But it was still fun, we saw some nice fish went on a banana boat and had some excellent Mahi Mahi for brunch.  

After that, when we got back to the ship and ate lunch at Hooters with my friends and got on the internet to upload some pics, and also bought some postcards. Every single person made ship time, so no one got penalized with dock time!Which means if your late getting back before departure they hold you up next time were in port. 

My friends and I had hoped to hit up the Mac 24-7 Bar + Restaurant, 2500 Kuhio Avenue, Honolulu, HI 96815. This is where Adam from Man vs. Food attempted (and failed) a challenge of eating 3-pizza pie pancakes (14" round). They were loaded with all the toppings! I was very excited that I had met some other MVF fans who were going with Eli and me as well…..so it could have been a fun time, The pancake food challenge won against Adam....but it's surely would have been no match for Nicky T! Unfortunately we couldn't squeeze it in.

That pretty much was Hawaii in a nutshell! Check out some of my pics I could only get a few up but I put some of the better ones! We have a long stretch on the ship ahead of us, where there will be a lot of reading for school, club and planning meetings (I have a Sea Olympics and SAS Auction planning meetings tonight), school work, and laying on deck getting the last bit of warm weather before we hit Cold Asia soon and of course a nap or two.  It was a well appreciated laundry day for the Red Sea (deck 4 port side) today! 

My good friends in Buffalo (I won't publicly name any of them) and I had a fun filled Xmas vacation. Here is a link to a video that shows what we were up too.     Click on it ... I dare you.

http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/RJYcE2nrFv4HNL7f

 

Keep the emails coming, I will try to respond in a timely fashion, but we live a rough life out here so you never know…hahaha. All I can say to my friends who are sitting in class right now in the freezing north eastern United States is, you should have come on SAS with me, I am having the time of my life and the weather here... LOL

Take care, stay safe, and of course stay warm!

Average Water Consumption

Ensenada to Hawaii was 302 liters per person

Reminders

• Vegetarian and vegan options are available in both dining rooms... who cares! (This is for you Aunt Sue)

• Please do not put foreign objects in toilets -- only toilet tissue. Hahaha... Ben...oops!

• Semester at Sea will be posting a "Week in Photos" slideshow on the SAS website each week. They are looking for community submissions that highlight life on the MV Explorer! To submit photos for possible consideration, please add them to the Week in Photos folder in the public folder on the Intranet. – of course I will !

S10 Calendar Update

Wednesday, February 3 is the lost day when we cross the International Date Line. No Class Day is February 2.

Time change

Set your clocks back one hour (1/29).

Laundry Service

 (1/30): Deck 4 Port Side – "Red Sea"
 

Position Update:

22' 9min North

168' 9 min West of the Prime Meridian

Distance traveled since Hawaii: 577 Nautical Miles

Distance to Japan: 2932 Nautical Miles

Sea Depth: 10,000 Ft

Temp: 73 

“The greatest ship is friendship.”

- C.Y. Tung, Founder of the Institute for Shipboard Education

Nicholas Alan Tomkins 

Semester at Sea Spring 2010 

1/17/2010 - 5/5/2010 

Check out our current position or other info about my voyage:

http://www.semesteratsea.org/current-voyage/overview/

Please remember to Email me at Nicholas.a.tomkins@gmail.com

Almost there.......

Hello again from the world's largest and deepest ocean.

Did you know that if all the worlds continents were placed together like in a jigsaw puzzle, they could fit onto the Pacific Ocean.

 

Some updates for Day 7:  
It's finally been a week and in 
a few hours we will be in Hawaii !

 

LAT 19° 52.8 min North of the equator

LON 154 ° 18.6 min west of prime meridian 

COURSE: 273°

SPEED: 11.2 knots

DISTANCE:

WATER Usage as of 1/22/10: 308 liters per person

Sea Depth: 5000 meters

Sea Water Temperature: 23 Celsius° (73° F)

Air Temperature: 22° Celsius (72° F)

 

Well I am guessing that you have heard all about the rain storm that we just by-passed? Well... we are like in outer space right now, so we know nothing about that is going on in the outside world. But I'm guessing that  it destroyed California! This storm (from what we hear) is like the biggest one since they started recording the weather. We are in the clear now, but are lucky that the Captain rerouted us to avoid going through it.  

In other news, we played the "Name Game" the other night. It was great..., we got name tags and met a ton of people. At the end they had a competition to find out who knew the most names, the winner won a $50 credit for the spa. I was one of the 15 people they had to name and every one of them knew my name... so I got that's going for me! My buddy Stephen won.  

As I was telling you all earlier, I signed up for many various organizations, well I just found out that I was selected to be on the Sea Council. This entails weekly meetings with all the Deans to discuss what needs to be changed. Conducting "rumor control" is huge, the boat always has crazy rumors flying around. One of our jobs is to get trip and school info directly from the Deans and then pass it along to the shipboard community.  

I had dinner with my Business Professor today! He is a Brit. and we had an interesting in depth convo on the international market. I am starting to have meetings like this most nights, mostly for the clubs I have joined as well as to facilitate all of the group projects that we have to complete by the end of the semester. Everyone is trying to get things started up before we have a week off while on break in the beautiful Hawaiian Islands. 

Today some of my friends and I had a planning session on what stuff to do in Japan. We have two nights in Tokyo to fill up.  Some of the events on our must do list are Sumo Wrestling, a Baseball game and touring the Imperial Palace. While we're in Kobe we are going to consume copious amounts of Kobe Beef - delicious!!!!

We are officially on Hawaiian time so if you want to call me this week, plan accordingly we are minus 5 hours. I will have regular cell service while in Hawaii so shoot me a text or call!

Here is a list of my trips for Hilo on the "Big Island". After which I plan on hitting the beach scene.

HIL07 Hawaiian Lu'au Experience - 4:30pm Monday

HIL14 Volcanoes National Park - 9:00am Tuesday

Well we're getting into Hawaii in a few hours and I have to go through Customs at 6am, so I better get some sleep! My pictures should be up sometime soon. Whenever I can find some WiFi……. talk to you soon!

"Ua Mau Ke 'Ea O Ka 'Aina i Ka Pono"

The Life of the Land is Perpetuated in Righteousness.

- Kamehameha III

Nicholas Alan Tomkins

Semester at Sea

Spring 2010

1/17/2010 - 5/5/2010

Check out our current position or other info about my voyage:

http://www.semesteratsea.org/current-voyage/overview/

Email me at Nicholas.a.tomkins@gmail.com

The Pacific - pre Hawaii

Hey everyone its day 5!
 
Position Update:
LAT 19° 13.8 min North of the equator
LON 137 ° 10.6 min west of prime meridian
COURSE: 267°
SPEED: 11.2 knots
 
This info is from one of a few channels we get on our TV’s! 

At night they show some educational movies on one channel, older movie like "Angels in the Outfield" on another, and they have children’s movies on the last.

We are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean right now! It’s great outside. Warm, sunny, with a very nice breeze! I just finished my classes for the day and am sitting out on deck just relaxing. I have a Leadership meeting tonight, which is pretty much Student Government stuff. The last two days have been just classes and trying to get used to studying on a ship. I read some 30 pages in my Communications book while out on the deck (in the shade). It's certainly weird looking out the window of a classroom and seeing the rolling waves of the ocean, but don't get me wrong - its pretty cool! I also love sprawling out on deck at night just looking up at the vastness of the Universe. I hear that one night they are going to turn off all the ship lights so that we can see the stars and planets. 


Global Studies class today was interesting. our teacher loves statistics and he has some crazy ones: More money was spent on lawn care in the U.S. last year than on health care in all of India. 97% of people in Tanzania are living on less than 2$ a day. By 2050 Asia is going to have 5.5 of the 8.1 billion people in the world. In Russia the life expectancy for men is 61 and for women its 74 years…. the difference is mainly because of excessive vodka consumption. Just a few of the interesting facts I learned that I wanted to share with you all. I am keeping a log on my computer of all this kind of stuff. 

We are now learning about Hawaii (all 134 islands of it). An Interport Lecturer is onboard from Hawaii,  he is teaching us about the geography, culture, demographics etc. For every port of call they have an “expert” from that country come on board to give us the info. 

I have to give a SHOUT-OUT to my man Hector!  He's our cabin attendant and Hector takes great care of Eli and myself. Little side note I was very surprised with how soft the toilet paper is, unusual for a “cruise ship”. In my experience the t-paper is usually not that great.

But anyway, lunch today was great! I had caesar salad and fedichini alfredo with this really good chicken and rice. I have been extremely pleased with the food, their doing a great job so far! 

The Pacific is still really rough, we are cruising along at only 11 knots night now, and have been that slow for the last 2 days. That causes us to get thrown around a lot by the waves. We were going 19-21 knots the first couple days trying to out run all the storms that are now hitting California. So now we're going really slow in order to time our arrival in Hilo, Hawaii properly.

Other than that, all is well. Just getting adjusted, not in a routine yet, but getting there.       Hawaii on Monday!



Nicholas Alan Tomkins

Bring on the sea sickness.

Well, Day 2 of my 108-day voyage around the world has come to a close and …
 

            My dorm room door tags

Crazy story #1 

We left San Diego yesterday and I was on the 8am shuttle(1st). When we crossed the US/Mexican border the US Customs agent brought their drug dog on board the bus for their inspection . After sniffing everyone thoroughly, the mutt makes a run for a girl near the back of the bus, scaring the heck out of her and everyone else close by. He then nonchalantly proceeded to relieve himself! That would be a #2 of course and it was hilarious!!! Until that is, we realized the bus stunk like shit and it had no windows that opened! The dog handler just turned around and chuckled a bit while he said, “Well... just wait till you all get into Mexico. Then you'll know what really stinks”.  I'm not sure what he meant, but we weren't amused.

After that it was a pretty uneventful 1.5 hr to Ensenada. I met some great people on the bus. Everyone is pumped up, which makes the conversations interesting. I've seen many of them around "campus” already. The boat was delayed about 1.5 hrs leaving Ensenada, but after that it’s been “smooth” sailing. Well not literally smooth, but you get what I’m saying. Speaking of that, it’s been a pretty rough ride and the ship rolls ALOT. But I'm starting to get used to it. I hope my sea legs stay with me! I took the seasick pills the first day and have been fine. Everyone’s pretty tired, but I'm not seeing anyone really really sick, so that’s good.


My roommates name is Eli and he is from Boston, Mass. I got lucky he is a nice kid, and it’s a lil scary to admit this but he reminds me a lot of a tamer Eduardo. hahaha. We get along great, our room is all situated, and we both love the room temp set cold! We have been roaming around trying to meet as many people as possible. Our thing is to try and eat and/or sit at meetings with different people each time. There are 605 Students about 70 Professors and 20 professors children, so we hope to get to know as many of them as possible. It’s going to be hard to remember everyone’s names. I just try to remember everyone’s face and go from there. hahaha. The ship is a little confusing to get around but I am slowly starting to put the pieces together. Being on the highest deck for students (Deck4) I am right below everything as far as the social and school areas. I made a pact to myself to always use the stairs, and starting Day 2 I'm going to be utilizing the gym.


Now on to the important stuff, the food... and so far it's been decent. They certainly have a good variety. So if they keep that up I believe we can manage. For example there are salads with different dressings, different pastas, meat and multiple potatoes at each meal. The first meal I had when we got on was Sunday lunch, and low and behold it was Taco Day, incredible insight on their part! There is a Snack bar (thank god) that is open from 9am to midnight, and serves, burgers, fries, salads, ice cream and so on. Also we have a “late night snack bar” from 2200-2230 that has sandwiches and light snacks. They have one type of sandwich only and that is a meat combo unit. Surprisingly I liked it, even though it has salami, ham, turkey and bologna all mixed together. I know that sounds crazy, but... life can throw you curve balls every now and then and you just gotta figure out how to hit 'em. 
 

Today we had a weeks worth of orientation squeezed into one really FULL day, and with the Rocking and a Rolling of the ship you can only imagine the bobbing heads! After sitting through my Global Studies Intro. today I am really excited to start that class. I bet no one has ever heard me say that before! The Professor is very energetic and likes to get everyone involved (even though this is the class everyone on the ship has to take). I have met the majority of my professors by just running into them in the hallways and introducing myself and then finding out they are my teachers. They all seem energized and excited to start teaching. As Dr. White the Academic Dean said, "These professors are hand picked by the Univ. of Virginia and are the best of the best". Yes everyone, I am a student of the University of Virginia.


We had our “Sea Meeting" last night, and I am in the Red Sea, which is Deck 4 - port side. We'll have competitions and whatnot throughout the voyage. Another event I went to today was called Involvement Symposium. Aka an activities fair where I signed up for a lot of leadership roles, such as Ambassador, and  Student Government, so hopefully I will be chosen for something. I was also the second student to sign up for the extended family’s program where I will get “adopted" into a family with a professor and lifelong learner as our “Parents” and I will have 6-8 siblings. I also signed up for some service learning stuff. 

Classes start tomorrow, hopefully we get into the grind soon because the last 2 days have been all over the place. The last two nights people have been crashing early due to the adjustment to sea life and all the meetings. I still can't believe that I'm on a ship… at sea… for a whole semester! I love to go out on deck and look out onto the sea. It's even better at night when its pitch black out and all you see is the moon and so so many stars. Thank you Mom and Dad so much for allowing me to partake in this adventure! Well I am going to hit the hay. It’s officially Day 1of classes tomorrow, then 1 week till Hawaii!

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

- Marcel Proust

Fast Facts:

Water cumsumption per person:   265 ltrs per person 
Distance traveled since departure in Ensenada:   803.9 nautical miles
Distance to next port, Hilo, Hawaii:   1701 nautical miles
Current air temperature:   68 degrees

Skywatch:

Sunset: 1742 today

Sunrise: 0703 tomorrow

 

P.S. 

- Keep them emails a comin!

- The internet is really spotty and they only let a certain number of people on, so it may take me a while to respond.

- Post comments please ! And when you post, don’t use anonymous, scroll down to Name/URL and you can put your name so I know who it’s from!

Departed !!!

We finally just departed from Mexico at 7pm. My roommates name is Eli, he is from Newton, MA.

Can't wait till Hawaii.... its suppose to be a rough ride though !

~ Nicholas Alan

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Goodbye San Diego,... Hello MV Explorer

 

 

Good morning everyone! It's 6:30am here in San Diego, Ca…

 

It is a gorgeous morning here. Ben should really check out colleges here in southern California, great baseball weather.  

 

My mother just woke up and I'm getting everything ready for my departure!  Last night we ordered our room service breakfast to come around 7am, hopefully we'll be out the door by 7:30.

 

Then to the lobby to check me on to the bus, or the boat, or the whatever ~ Let the excitement begin!

 

My shuttle leaves at approx. 8am and it's about an hour and a half ride down to the Port of Ensenada, Mexico, where I board my home for the next three months, the MV Explorer!

 

I'm a little anxious to meet my roommate, but I have a good feeling everything is going to work out just great! From here on out who knows when I will be getting reliable internet service, so if you don't hear from me for awhile  ~~~  Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and/or Good Night to you all!

 

~ Adios Amigos!

San Diego

It is 10 am on Saturday morning here in Beautiful San Diego! Its currently 64 degrees out! They should name this Nick Tomkins weather because it’s my perfect weather, a slight breeze but sunny and warm enough to wear shorts!

We got in at 6:10 pm Pacific time last night. After we got our bags, we went to go find the shuttle to the hotel. After waiting for a little while it finally came. This guy had no idea what he was doing. Mom told me to make sure the bags got on, and she went to go get a seat. Well he almost didn’t let me on the shuttle because our “bags didn’t fit”.  I said “ listen my mom is already on the bus I got to get on”. While he was on the phone calling his supervisor for help because he was so confused because of all the people, I said, “Ill put my own bags on”. So I put my bags in the back of the shuttle, which was not full at all and walked to the front were my mom was already sitting. When we got to the hotel we checked-in and put our things in our room. Our room is on the 8^th floor, nice view of the harbor. Then we went to dinner at the nice hotel restaurant. We were both exhausted and starving. I had a nice baby Caesar, and a great filet! Mom had a wedge salad and crab cakes. We just made it up to the room before we both passed out at 9pm our time or Midnight back home. We got a nice 12 hr sleep in and we are ready to go. We are just waiting to check my mother in on Southwest for her flight to Vegas and then we are going to go explore before our afternoon SAS meetings. We learned that there are approx. 605 students on this trip, and due to maritime laws since the ship is registered in the Bahamas it cant start and end in a US port, so we are departing from a lil Mexican city less than an hour away from SD. It’s my last day on Land before I hit the high seas!

Plane Ride

Well it was time to say good-bye to my father and Allie who drove us to the airport.  We checked our bags at the curbside check-in. We got to the Buffalo Airport at 12pm for a 2:30 flight, anticipating that they tightened up security and that it would take awhile. Well at 12:07 we were through and by 12:12 we were at our gate. So we decided to go have a nice lunch at the Anchor Bar. Great Food! I had a Caesar salad and Tuna Club. Donnie had a Chicken Caesar Salad. So that took up a lot of time. Flight to Phoenix was interesting. It was a 6 hr. Flight and of course since we were on Southwest Donnie made sure we were # 1 and #2 in line.  Word of advice: Do not sit in front of “mommy”, “lil Joey” and “Aunty T” even if you are in the spacious exit row seat. It was not a pleasant plane ride with “lil Joey” crying and kicking your seat the whole ride! Other than that it was nice we sat next to, who I thought was a nice guy, who I talked to about his business with, but mom though was rude because he kept elbowing her. I slept for about 4hrs. We got in 30 mins early. Our next flight was less than an hour Into SD!

Goodbye Grand Island ........ Hello California !

Im leaving all of this... and going to California today? You better believe it! hahahaha

Well, it is 8am on Friday morning and after a failed attempt by Allie and me to pull an all night movie marathon..... which I really only fell asleep for a few hours.... I am up and putting the finishing touches on my packing. My Father and I are gathering all my electronics, I am going out to breakfast with Allie, then coming home to gather my things before heading to the airport. 

My Mother and I are on a 2:30 flight out of Buffalo and after a brief stop in Phoenix we will be in San Diego! Goodbye Grand Island, hello California.

I hope you all enjoy "traveling" with me through this blog, I am going to miss everyone back home, BUT... I will be home in a little over three short months!

With Love,

Nicholas Alan

Official Trip List

Trip Code	Title	Country
SAN06	8:00 am Shuttle to Ensenada #2	SD, Cali
SAL33	Amazon Riverboat Adventure - Group D	Brazil
SHA15	Beijing	China
HCM11	Ha Noi and Ha Long Bay	Vietnam
HIL07	Hawai'ian Lu'au Experience	Hawaii
YOK01	Modern Tokyo/Global City [FDP: Amine]	Japan
YOK11	Mt. Fuji and Hakone	Japan
HON03	Pearl Harbor's Arizona Memorial & City Tour - Gr A	Hawaii
HON16	Snorkeling Adventure	Hawaii
CHE19	Taj Mahal (3 nights) -- Group A	India
CAP13	Three-Day Safari to Kapama (River Lodge)	South Africa
HIL14	Volcanoes National Park	Hawaii