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!

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“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!