Can someone please invent a GPS for bathrooms?

Day one of Italy, complete. I am more tired from today, alone, than I was from every day in Spain combined!

At about 8:30, my friend, Carmella, and I started the day off by finding an internet café and getting our much needed Facebook fix. Then, we ate lunch and got on a train headed to Rome. When we got there, we grabbed a taxi to Via del Corso, this four-mile long street lined with a bajillion different shops. After many hours of intense shopping, and way, way too much money spent, we picked a cute outdoor café and had dinner. I ordered the pizza margherita, and it was the best pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life. No joke. After dinner, we wandered around for awhile and then headed back to the train station to catch our train back to the port.

At the train station, we made a bee-line for the bathroom. We’d gone to the bathroom at the station earlier that day, and it was pretty interesting. Basically, the doors to the bathroom are coin-operated, so you have pay 1 euro per person to enter. I mean, they were pretty nice bathrooms, but having to pay to use a public restroom? That bites. So, Carmella and I decided that we’d try to beat the system. We went up to the door and started fishing out a coin. Then, some woman came up to me speaking in what I think was Swedish or something along those lines. I tried to understand what she was talking about and managed to decipher something about ‘gentleman’…so, I figured she wanted to know where the men’s room was for her husband or something. I pointed toward a random direction where I thought it might be, but she just gave me a puzzled look. I figured the language barrier wasn’t gonna get any better, so I focused on the task at hand—getting into the bathroom without paying.

The door shuts pretty quickly after the one person goes in, so we knew we’d have to be pretty stealth. After Carmella put the coin in, she went through the door, and I ran through after her. I guess these things are equipped to detect when multiple people enter, though, because as I ran through, this awful buzzing noise started going off. Once I got all the way through, though, it stopped. Phew. We were safe. Then, all of a sudden, the bathroom attendant comes out of one of the stall he’s cleaning and starts to yell. At first, I thought he had caught us in our scheme, but then it seemed like he was yelling something at the woman behind us, so I quickly hurried into a stall to avoid the conflict.

When I got into the first one, I realized there was no toilet seat. Ew. Next. But the next one was the same way. And so was the third. And then the fourth. I shouted to Carmella asking if she’d managed to find a toilet seat, and she said she had, so I kept searching. Finally, I found one, but decided it was too disgusting to actually utilize anyways. After I came out of the stall, the bathroom attendant was glaring at me and Carmella. What the hell is up his ass?

As we were washing our hands, I did a routine look in the mirror to make sure I looked okay. As I’m looking into the mirror, I start to notice something I hadn’t noticed before…all the people walking around us are…MEN. Carmella looks at me and says, ‘Umm…I don’t think we’re in the right place.’…so, I quickly glance behind me, and the bathroom attendant, who I now register as a male as well, is still scowling at us. Oh….Shit. Bathroom attendant man was yelling at US before…because THIS is the MEN’S room! And that Swedish lady wasn’t ASKING me where the men’s room was…she was TELLING us that this was it! And no wonder the toilets had no seats...what the hell does a guy need one for?!
The following 20 seconds that ensued after coming to this horrific realization were, perhaps, the most awkward 20 seconds of my life. I finished washing my hands and turned around to a swarm of men looking at Carmella and I like we were the stupidest people to ever walk the planet...and in their defense, I would’ve thought the same thing if I was them. How the hell did we not notice the BILLION signs of a skirt-less figures plastered on the outside of the bathroom!? As we walked out, men were muttering things like, ‘wrong place, sweetheart’ and ‘come back again!’…All I could think was, why me?? Why do I do stupid things like this? I manage to walk around Rome ALL day and not get lost once…but when it comes to finding the right restroom at the train station, I’m stumped? Really? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!?!  Clearly, a lot. Including, but not limited to, my vision, my common sense, and my poor ability to interpret context clues.

So, I end Italy day one, a little sorer, a little poorer, and a lot stupider. Back to Rome in the morning, where we’ll be getting a hostel overnight, and then onto Venice for two nights. Might be a couple days before I get a chance to post again! I'll do my best to avoid men's bathrooms! Ciao!

Italy tomorrow!

Hi all!

Today was Italy Day on the ship. We had a bunch of lecture type things throughout the day that we could attend to learn about Italian culture and whatnot. I skipped all the educational crap and only went to the one about Italian shopping and nightlife. I also learned some key Italian phrases! Most importantly, I learned how to say ‘I’m innocent, I swear.’…not that I plan on needing it, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to know it just in case!

I spent the rest of my day laying out in the Mediterranean sun. I must say, my tan is coming along quite nicely. At this pace, I should be a different race in no time. 

Currently, I’m out in the hallway checking my email since my roommate already went to sleep. About half an hour ago, a couple girls came to do their nails near me and all of our legs were sprawled out across the hallway and our hallways are pretty tiny (barely enough space for two people to pass). These two guys who live a few doors down from me were walking to their rooms, and they decided that it would be fun to jump across our legs instead of us moving them, like we offered. So, Jumping Boy #1 backs up a little and does a nice little jump over us, making it across our legs without crushing us. He turns around to his friend and yells a competitive ‘BEAT THAT!’ So, Jumping Boy #2, who is clearly ready to impress us with his leaping skills, takes a few big steps back for a running start. He catapults himself into the air and jumps super high. Unfortunately, though, our tiny hallways also have short ceilings. So, Jumping Boy #2 hits his head and falls to the floor next to me. Of course, we’re all cracking up because it was hilarious to watch. But then Jumping Boy #2 grabs the top of his head and starts making really painful grunting noises, and when he pulls his hand away,its dripping with blood! So, immediately we were like, oh SHIT! I quickly ran into my room and dialed 3333, the ships version of 911, and they rushed up here and got him. His buddy came back up and told us he’d be okay, but that they were going to have to shave his head and mend it with staples. Ouch! We were all looking at the ceiling trying to figure out how he could’ve hurt himself so badly, and realized that there was a chunk of hair stuck in the sprinkler on the ceiling. Ick. So, I’m still sitting out here and a bajillion different official-looking ship people have come up here to investigate and take pictures of the sprinkler, which is right in front of my door. This one  super-intense lady told me that I was forbidden to remove the hair because it was evidence.  Yea, lady, the first thing on my list is to pick the bloody hair out of the sprinkler. Thank God you were here to tell me otherwise. 

I’m off to get in a few hours of sleep before we dock! Farewell!

Chupitos! Chupitos! Chupitos!

Hi all! Just left Spain last night! I’m absolutely wiped. Thankfully, we don’t have classes today so we can rest up before we reach Italy.

A recap of my last night in Barcelona:

I met up with few friends and we headed to get tapas and sangria at about midnight. After that, we headed to a place we’d heard of called Chupitos. For those of you who aren’t Spanish scholars, chupitos roughly translates to ‘the best thing ever invented,’ or in more proper terms, ‘shots.’ A bar that only serves super cheap shots? I thought such a thing only existed in fairy tales! (I mean, if fairy tales were written for college students.) So, we headed to the hole-in-the-wall bar known for its infamously named shots, like the Monica Lewinsky (if you wanna know how this one works, ask). When we got in there, I maneuvered through the crowd of people and in my broken Spanish, I told the bartender that we wanted two rounds of his ‘chupitos favoritos!’ He replied with, “Te gusta el fuego?” (Do you like fire?) So I said, “Um, si?” Next thing I know, bartender man is whipping out shot glasses left and right and filling them up with a variety of alcohols.  In awe at all the fun colors, I picked up a red one and he quickly said “No! Un momento!” He pulled out a lighter and handed us each straws. Then, he lit the bar area around the shots on fire and let them simmer for a few seconds before fishing them out with tongs. “Ahora!” he exclaimed as he gestured for us to put our straws into the flaming shots. I figured he knew what he was talking about so, I did what he said and hoped that I didn’t burn my mouth. Turns out, the fire didn’t burn my mouth one bit. The alcohol, however, did. Whoever decided that sipping a shot through a straw was a good idea was clearly a masochist.

After recovering from shot #1, bartender man pushes the second round of shots toward us. He pulls out the lighter again and points to his thumb, then says “in” and points to the shot glass. Okay, so he wants me to put my thumb in the shot. Weird…but whatever, I’ll do it. Then he says “fuego,” points to his thumb, and proceeds to put his thumb in his mouth. I give him a confused look, so he decides to demonstrate. He puts his thumb into his shot…pulls it out…and LIGHTS IT ON FIRE. And as if that’s not bad enough, he proceeds to stick his flaming thumb into his mouth and then take his shot. I give him a horrified ‘you want me to do THAT???’ look and he starts laughing and yells ‘Ahora!’…So, I do exactly what he showed us to do and into my mouth goes my flaming thumb. And it didn’t hurt one bit! This dude knows what he’s talking about! Officially the coolest shot I’ve ever taken. And to top it off, the shots were only 2 euros each….Boy, this place is the closest I’ve ever been to Heaven on earth.

After taking a moment to say goodbye to the place that I’d come to love in less than ten minutes, we grabbed a taxi and told the driver to take us to Razmatazz, this club we’d heard about from other SASers.  As we got into the cab, the driver kept muttering, ‘ohh….muy guapa!’ (pretty). It was a little creepy, but I just giggled awkwardly and hoped that the club was close. We started taking pictures in the cab and the driver offered to take one of us. So, like any good European driver would do, he stopped the taxi in the middle of the road to take our picture. Then, looking at us expectantly, he said something along the lines of ‘un beso para mi?’ (a kiss for me?) while pointing to the camera. Did this old, creepy Spanish cab driver just ask to take a picture of one of us kissing him? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d envisioned finding a hot Spanish guy to sweep me off my feet…but this guy? Maybe if I was 70...and had really low standards. But even then, I doubt I’d want photographic proof of the incident.  Thankfully, he got the hint and we finally reached Razmatazz, where we practically catapulted ourselves out of the taxi. 

After we paid the cover charge, we walked into the club, which was MASSIVE. There were five floors and huge crowds of people dancing. It was pretty interesting because basically everyone in there was speaking different languages….which made it a little awkward when you bumped into them and said sorry and they just looked at you, like, huh? Dancing there was a lot of fun though and we ran into some other SAS kids. We danced for a few hours and headed back to the ship around 5am(substantially earlier than a lot of people) because we had to be up early in the morning.

On the last day, Brianna and I had signed up for a tour of the Chocolate Museum, which was pretty cool. They even let us make our own chocolate houses and a chocolate painting. After that, we shopped for a few hours and headed back a little early so we wouldn’t be late. Although we weren’t scheduled to depart until 8pm, we all had to be back on the ship by 6pm, which was designated ‘on-ship time.’ If you don’t make it to the port by on-ship time, you get dock time, which means that when we get to the next port, you have to stay on the ship for an allotted amount of time while everyone is off exploring. 1-10 minutes late=3 hours of dock time, 10-30 minutes=6 hours, 30-45 minutes=9 hours, 45-1 hour=12 hours. If you’re later than an hour, you might as well just forget your plans in the next country. Some people were asking why they were so harsh about giving dock time…turns out, for every hour that the ship is docked in a port beyond schedule, it costs SAS $10,000. Yikes.

We dock in Civitavecchia, Italy (which is right outside of Rome) tomorrow morning! I’m gonna do my best to find internet and post pictures!

Sangria and Soccer and Wet-Suits, Oh My!

Hola from España!

My, oh my, how I’ve missed this country. We docked in Barcelona Thursday morning at about 8, and I’ve been crazy busy ever since! We had a diplomatic brief while all 1000 or so of us were being cleared through customs. By ten, we were off the ship. I headed over to Las Ramblas (a super long street with all these vendors and cute places to eat) with a few friends, and we walked around for a couple of hours before we had to be back to the ship for our first trip.

Before we went back, Brianna and I stopped for lunch since we hadn’t eaten yet. And of course, it being 11:30 in the morning, it was imperative that we get our first doses of sangria in. So, we each ordered pizza and a small sangria. Next thing I know, the waiter is bringing us both these HUGE glasses of sangria, in mugs that were about 2x the size of a typical beer mug, claiming that these were the smallest they offered. So, obviously we couldn’t turn them down and started drinking away. After we ate, we asked for the check…and realized that the huge sangrias came with even bigger prices. 15 euros for each enormously large drink…aka 20 bucks. For one drink. That wouldn’t be a bad bar tab to have after a few hours of drinking…but for a ‘let’s just get a quick bite to eat’ kinda thing, it didn’t exactly fly. Note to self: ask for the drink prices before you order, idiot.

After recovering from the mild heart attack that accompanied my midday alcohol intake, we headed back to the ship where those of us who signed up for it went on an orientation of Barcelona. It gave us a chance to see the highlights of the city so we could go back to them on our own time if we wanted. Although I’d already seen a lot of it, it was a nice chance to refresh my memory…and our tour guide was quite a hoot. He had a horrible English accent and a slight lisp, so listening to him tell us about the wonders of Barcelona was something like… “Ah, we have some of ze most beeeeuuuutifullll bitches in all ze world. I recommend zat you visit one of ze many bitches zat our coastline has to offer.”… “If you look up on ze right, you will see Cheesus and his apostles.”… “If you enjoy ze hiking, I sink you would really enjoy going to ze Peeeeenis (Pyrenees) Mountains.  You can really see a beeeeuuuutifulll view of Barcelona from ze Peeeeenis.”  Suffice it to say, he really challenged my maturity level. Turns out, I’m about as mature as a 6th grader learning about the ‘beauty of the reproductive system” or whatever crap our teachers used to call it.

While I was doing my best not to giggle uncontrollably at our tour guide, I ran into Saudi Arabia Boy #1 who was also on the tour. After chatting for a bit, I asked him to take a picture of me and a couple of my friends in front of La Sagrada Familia (this big unfinished church by Gaudi). He did so happily…and then, as if he’d read my mind, he asked if I wanted to be in a picture with him! I replied with a cool, ‘yea, sure’…but inside I was thinking ‘YESSSSSS! My friends are gonna love to see SAB #1!’ So, for all of you who have a vested interest in my budding friendship with SAB #1, you will now get to put a face to the three-lettered, one-numbered nickname. Get excited.

After the orientation, I went to this placed called El Palacio del Flamenco to have dinner and watch a flamenco performance. It was really fun! When we got back, Brianna and I were still not ready to call it a night, so we grabbed a cab and told the driver to take us to his favorite, non-touristy place in the city for tapas and drinks.  At first, I wasn’t sure if that was the right call, but when I saw where he took us, I was glad we trusted him. He dropped us off by a little narrow pathway that led to a bunch of cute cobblestone pedestrian streets that were filled with bars and restaurants and vendors. Brianna and I walked around for a bit and then picked a place to sit outside. We ordered some tapas and a pitcher of sangria (we asked for the prices first this time). It turned out to be a really fun, chill night.

Yesterday morning I had to be up early to go to an FDP (faculty-directed practicum) for my biology class.  For every class, 20% of our grade is based on attending these trips and writing a paper about what we learned from them.  My professor decided to take us snorkeling at the Medes Islands, which are off the northern coast of Spain.  It was about a two hour drive from Barcelona, but it was totally worth it. When we got there, we listened to a little presentation about the marine reserve. After that, we headed over to pick up our snorkeling gear. I got my snorkel, goggles, and fins and started to walk away when the lady told me to hold on and proceeded to hand me a wet-suit. Yes, a WET-SUIT…aka the MOST unflattering piece of nautical attire ever invented. Stubbornly, I thought to myself, there is NO WAY I’m wearing this thing. I asked if it was optional and the lady told me that the water would be very, very cold and that they didn’t want to risk any of us getting hypothermia. Great. What a nice gesture.

We all got onto the boat to take us to the islands, and everyone started putting on their super fashionable outfits. We were all equally thrilled about the prospect of wearing a wet-suit in front of a bunch of people we didn’t know. Grudgingly, I waited till the very last minute before I put on the dreaded turquoise ensemble and zipped it up. Apparently, these things weren’t made for people who enjoy the luxury of breathing. And lucky girl that I am, I was one of the few whose wetsuit was equipped with an oh-so-sexy HOOD! YES! As if these full-body spanx weren’t unflattering enough, I also got the pleasure of covering my entire head. Thank you, wetsuit-picker-outter lady. How on earth did you know that I’ve always dreamed of looking like a turquoise banana?

I jumped into the water…and okay, they were right…it was FREEZING. And despite the fact that my head looked like a buoy, I was warm!…unlike cold, hoodless counterparts.  THANK YOU, wetsuit-picker-outer lady! I might look like shit, but at least I’m doing it with a substantially higher body temperature than all those other kids!

After my snorkeling extravaganza (and octopus sighting!), we headed back to Barcelona where I met up with a bunch of girls to go watch the Spain/Chile World Cup game.  One of our deans, Lynnette, was heading to meet her kids and her husband, Mark, to watch the game, so we tagged along. All of the faculty and administrators get to bring along their families on the voyage, so there are tons of kids and spouses on the ship along with the students. We had dinner and drinks at a sports bar, cleverly named ‘Sports Bar,’ while we watched Spain beat Chile 2-1. After the game, we grabbed a couple taxis and went to the Magic Fountain which is this huge fountain that does a dancing water show every night. There were tons of people there, and we had a lot of fun hanging out with Lynnette and her family.

Today, I didn’t have any trips planned, so I explored the city with my friend Erin. I had brought my computer along, so we stopped at a McDonalds and used their free internet to get in some precious Facebook time. After we got our fix, we went to this huge market that we’d heard about called La Boqueria that has a ton of vendors selling fresh fish, meats, breads, fruits, veggies, candies, cheeses, and basically anything else you could imagine. I got a small baguette to eat as we walked, and it was mouthwatering. After the market, we walked over to some areas that had a bunch of tents set up with people selling all kinds of things. Four pairs of earrings, three bangles, two shot glasses, and one magnet later, I was one happy girl. We had some time to kill before we met up with our friends who were coming back from a trip, so we decided to take a speedboat tour of the harbor. I was a little hesitant about it at first because the last thing I wanted was to be on the water again, but I’m glad Erin pushed me to do it because it was so refreshing. After 5 hours of walking around outside in the Barcelona heat (which actually isn’t as bad as I expected it to be for this time of the year), it was a nice change.

Off to dinner now! Adios!

Voy a estar en España, mañana!

Yep. I’m gonna be in Spain tomorrow. Finally…LAND! That I get to TOUCH! And not just take pictures of from the decks of the ship! I’m so excited to go back to Spain! Shout out to all my Alicante buddies!

As for ship life today, it went pretty swell. I had my bio exam and it took me all of…twelve minutes? Apparently, my late night study session with the Saudi Arabians paid off. Score!

I had lunch at the captain’s table today, too! Basically, he gets this special table in the back of the dining room with fancy napkins and glasses and servers. A couple of my lunch buddies and I got asked to sit there with him, which we’ve been hoping for the past few days! There were ten of us total, but once we got past the typical “what’s your name?, where are you from?, what are you studying?” bit, though, we started having awkward silences.  I’m generally not a shy person…but he’s a scary British man who likes to joke about execution. What do you say to those kinds of people?

I also did some laundry in my sink today. That was loads of fun (ba-dum-ch!). Okay, sorry. No more lame puns. Seriously, though, I don’t know how people lived before washing machines. I didn’t even wash that much, and I still sucked at it. Perhaps I missed out on the how-to-do-laundry gene. 

Brianna and I also took a bridge tour today!  The bridge is the area in the very front of the ship where the captain and officers steer and make sure things are going smoothly. We got to sit in the captain’s chair and wear a captain hat and everything. It was pretty sweet. So was Luis, the officer that gave the bridge tour. Luis is gorgeous. Luis is single (thank you, slightly rude girl who insisted upon asking the personal question that we were all wondering). Luis made me rethink the whole law school thing and consider the possibility of entering the cruise ship industry. Unfortunately, fraternizing with the crew is looked down upon for some reason…but if I WAS the crew…ah, the possibilities.

I’ll do my best to keep up with posting! Cheap pitchers of sangria, here I come!

Land, ho!...sort, of

Hello all!

Sorry it’s taken me so long to write! I planned on putting up a new post yesterday, but the waters were sooo rough! There was this rare bird that flew onto one of the decks yesterday and apparently someone touched it...so according to the superstitious crew, we got punished by having rough waters. Wonderful. Thank you, asshole who decided to touch the dying bird and cause us all to feel unbelievably nauseous.

We passed through the Strait of Gibraltar today and it was so cool! It’s an 8 mile stretch between Europe and Africa. I was in bio while we were passing through it, so my professor let us out early for this twice in a lifetime experience (since we have to sail through it again to leave the Mediterranean).  You could see Africa on one side and Spain on the other! And that’s when I saw whales! Guess I can mark that off my bucket list. For those of you who don’t know me well, whale-watching is in my top five list of things to do before I die, right up there with going to every location that Mary-Kate and Ashley ever made a movie. Okay. Just kidding. About the whale-watching part. Not the Mary-Kate and Ashley part. That’s legit.

Sunday, I made a call to the pops to wish him a happy father’s day. After a whole 4 minutes and 14 seconds on the phone, and an accompanying phone charge of somewhere upwards of 20 bucks, I’m sure he would’ve preferred that I’d just emailed. But hey, that’s the cost of appreciation these days.

In other ship news, I accidentally saw a naked chick yesterday. As my new buddy Brianna and I were walking along the 5th deck, we passed a row of windows that look directly into rooms. Naturally, we would kinda glance into the rooms as we passed them. We learned our lesson quick, though. As we were walking past one of the rooms, a girl, who had apparently just gotten out of the shower, was lotioning herself on her bed. I mean, I do that…but I have a view of the Atlantic. Immediately I wondered to myself, what person in their right mind parades around naked and leaves their curtains open when tons of people are constantly walking by their window?  Then I remembered Aquinas…and our wonderful view of the quad…and our big windows…whose shades stayed open about 99.9% of the time. I guess I should think before I judge.

Today at lunch, I met a girl from India who asked me where I was from. When I told her Tennessee, she got all excited and exclaimed/asked, “You are from the home of the HANNAH MONTANA!?!”  It was really a beautiful moment for me to realize that Tennessee’s worldwide recognition is based on a fictional television character played by a sub-par actress who is the daughter of a one-hit-wonder country star. Tennessee, we should be proud.

Every day on the ship, we have the 1730 announcements (that’s 5:30pm for all you lucky people who don’t have to deal with strange military time). During these announcements, the “voice,” as we like to call him, informs us of ship news and a “question of the day” that’s been overheard on the boat. The past couple of days have been pretty funny so I decided to share them...today it was “Will we be crossing the Atlantic on our way back home?” (how the hell was this person’s GPA high enough for this trip!?) or my personal favorite, “Where in Italy is the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”…Elaina’s goal for the next two months: to not make this list. Given my background in super-stupid question asking (i.e. when I innocently inquired to the hermit crab seller at the mall kiosk as to how we would go about changing our crab’s shell when he grew out of his old one…along with a variety of other enlightened questions that I’m sure my roommates would be more than thrilled to divulge), I think that the task ahead of me is no easy one. Whoever said “no question is a stupid question” apparently never met me.

Tonight, I met another kid from Saudi Arabia who’s in my biology class while studying for our exam that’s tomorrow. He goes to Northeastern and comes to RI all the time for Arabic food. Didn’t get a chance to smell him, though. I’ll look into that. (Please refer to previous post and not think I’m a total weirdo) He was studying with Saudi Arabia Boy #1. Both SABs are quite nice, actually. SAB #1 was explaining the plight of everyone thinking that just because he’s from Saudi Arabia, he’s super rich, which just isn’t true…as he sits there in his a Burberry shirt. Hah. Okay, SAB #1.

Bio test tomorrow. Barcelona on Thursday! So exciteddddd!

p.s. the email on this ship sucks! So, don’t be sad if you haven’t gotten a message from me yet.

ELAINA SAW WHALES!

That is all. I'll post more later!

What is this Rhode Island you speak of?

Hi all!

It’s the third day of classes and so far, so good! Well, mostly. Global studies is kind of a bore, not to mention really random. Today’s lecture covered Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the foundations of Islam. Maybe Civ has made me a snob, but NONE of those topics belong together. I think we learned about each of those in different semesters, let alone the same lecture. We also have a map quiz over the Mediterranean region tomorrow night after dinner. Who knew that within the Mediterranean Sea, there’s a whole bunch of other seas? News to me.

My biology class is actually turning out to be really fun, though. Today, in the middle of class, a girl shouted that she spotted dolphins out the window...so, as any normal biology class would do, we all immediately jumped out of our seats and spent the next fifteen minutes waiting for the occasional fin to pop out of the water so we could “oohhhh” and “aahhh” at the “magnificence of aquatic life,” as my professor called it. I didn’t really see anything so I just kinda nodded my head and made ogling noises when everyone else did, which seemed to work just fine.

While I was fake dolphin watching, I met a kid from Saudi Arabia who’s in my class. His name is Michelle but, it’s pronounced more like Meee-shell. I thought he was French or Spanish at first. But I guess not with a last name like Al-something-super-arab. After he asked where I went to school and I said Providence College in RI, I proceeded to give him a United States geography lesson and assure him that although he hadn’t learned about it, Rhode Island was, in fact, a state, and that no, it was not an island. He was pretty perplexed by this concept. Anyways, he must’ve been really taken by my geography lesson because he asked for my hand in marriage on the spot. I’ll be going back with him after the voyage. I can’t quite remember if I’ll be wife number two or three…but it should be quite a hoot!

Okay. Fine. There’s no marriage in the works. But if he had proposed, I probably would’ve said yes because he smelled really good. Do Saudi Arabians normally smell good? Maybe they use some of those oil reserves of theirs to conjure up some sort of really seductive-smelling cologne. Regardless of where he gets it, though, I now completely understand how those guys get a bajillion wives. Trust me, you would too if you smelled this kid.


Off to study a map of the Mediterranean! Spain in four days! Yay! 

Day 1 of Classes!

Hi all!

This morning, I was abruptly awoken at 6:30am to all of my stuff falling off my side-table from the rough seas. Thankfully, I put my perfume and other fragile stuff into my drawer so they wouldn’t fall and break.  Today’s definitely been the roughest day, waves-wise. Walking around, for everyone, has been quite a feat.

I went to breakfast, for the first time, and it looked pretty promising! Although I’m not normally a breakfast person, I might actually wake up every day to go to it since it seems to be fairly dependable.

After breakfast I headed to the bookstore, which opened for the first time today. I’m glad I went early so I could beat the big rush that there was this afternoon. There’s only a limited amount of SAS gear, so it’s been a mad rush for everyone to stock up on various sweatshirts and the coveted Summer 2010 Voyage t-shirt. I got a sweatshirt and a couple shirts, but I may head back for another shirt or so.

Even though I missed the really big rush to the bookstore, there were still a ton of people in there…so I might’ve perhaps been ten or so minutes late to my first class, Global Studies…but no worries, because my professor didn’t even know! All the students on the ship are required to take Global Studies. There’s only one time for it, so basically all of us cram into the Union and when that fills up, we can go to the one of the 8 or 9 satellite classrooms to watch the professor give his lecture on TV. We get to see his PowerPoint, and then he pops up in a little bubble or box in the corner of the screen. It’s a pretty sweet deal. So, anyways, since I was late, I just headed over to the piano bar, plopped down on the floor, and watched class. Cool, huh? I think I’m gonna try to make it to the Union from now on, though, because I was getting pretty distracted…when there’s no one actually there to make you pay attention, it’s not the easiest! Oh, but while I was sitting there, not paying attention, I met a girl who’s also thinking of taking a train up to Venice when we get to Italy (which is what I’d planned on doing too). She seems pretty cool…plus, we have the same name. Slightly different spelling, but that’s not her fault.  Moral of the story: if you don’t pay attention in class, you might meet a nice travel companion!

After Global Studies (which seems to be the Civ of the ship, but slightly more bearable since it’s only 2 months and not 2 years), I had Comparative Economic Systems. My professor is this little, old Indian guy who wants us to call him Dr. D. That class seems like it’ll be pretty interesting, and you can tell he’s super smart. And despite the really skewed 3:1 overall girl to guy ratio of the ship, there were a lot of guys in that class. Yay for male interaction!

I had a few hours before my next class, so I went to lunch (pastrami sandwiches…yum!), signed up for some trips for the second half of the countries, and took a pleasant little nap. I’ve only been here a couple days now, but it looks as though napping has become a part of my daily routine. It’s just so easy to fall asleep everywhere!

After my nap, I went to Biology, which seems like it’s going to be a lot of work. We’ve got three tests, three 6-10 page papers, and a quiz every day. Yikes. I’m definitely going to need to find a study partner in there since I suck at science.

I’m off for now! We go forward another hour tonight. I’ll be 4 hours ahead of Nashville then!

Annndddd...we're off! (Warning: kinda long post!)

Hello land-dwellers! It’s official. I’m on a boat. But really…boat doesn’t even begin to describe this place! It’s HUGE!

I shared a cab over to the pier bright and early yesterday morning…and I got to board in the first group! For once, my last name starting with an A is actually paying off! As I child, I used to loathe my last name because it always meant that when no one volunteered in class (which they NEVER did), then I got to do my presentation first or recite my poem first or do whatever other crappy thing FIRST…which SUCKED. After many years of therapy to deal with the emotional scarring that my last name has brought me, I have finally come to terms with it. And today, this last name of mine actually did something good for me! Thank you, Arabs, for deciding that “Al” was a necessary part of a good last name.

Anyhow, when I got to the pier, we had to go through security. I made it through with only my dinky pair of kids scissors taken away from me. I was informed that they were a safety hazard…but was reassured they were available at the on-ship bookstore…interesting, huh?

I got onto the ship about half an hour later, went through a few intake things, and then headed down to my room, room 4114, which is located port-side, aft (which I have recently learned means on the left, towards the back of the ship). I unpacked and explored the ship a bit with Chrissy, one of the girls I stayed with in Halifax, who’s super nice. We got our emails all set up (p.s. my new one is esalnimri@semesteratsea.net ) and got lunch.  The food is…okay. I mean, the salad is good. They always have freshly cut cucumbers, which is a plus in my book since that’s my favorite veggie. And the rolls are good. There’s usually fish and meat options along with a couple pastas.  I’ve found at least one entrée at every meal that I’ve liked, so, so far, so good.

We had a nice long lifeboat drill yesterday, too.  Imagine 1000+ people all crammed on one deck of the ship, each donning their puffy neon orange lifejackets and silent…for 45 minutes. Sounds like fun, right?
We had a little orientation type thing last night where we were introduced to our the captain (an intimidating British man whose motto seems to be “The most important thing on this ship is the execution of safety…but I’ll resort to execution if need be.”…which I think was supposed to be a joke, but his accent makes everything sound scarier.) We also heard from our Deans and other random people. 

AND GUESS WHAT! Apparently, the whole taking classes thing was just a joke they tell our parents to get them to fork over an obscene amount of money for an extended vacation!! Isn’t that great!?...Okay, not really…Mom, please recover from the minor heart attack you just had. I was hoping that that’s what they’d tell us when we go on board, but no such luck. There are real classes. With real professors. And real papers and tests. Boo.
We also had a short “Sea” meeting last night.  Basically, all the hallways are designated as different seas,
and we have regular meetings just like we do in our dorms at school.  Sometime in the middle of the voyage, we’ll have Sea Olympics and each sea will compete in various events in order to win the ability to be let off the ship first when we disembark in Virginia at the end of the voyage. My room is part of the Red Sea. Haven’t quite figured out where that is since I can’t look it up online. Apparently, my geography skills have deteriorated immensely since my success in the seventh grade geography bee...however, I think that that’s the one that Moses did his thing with…the whole 'let my people go'/parting of the sea shindig.it was kind of a big deal.

Anyways, I met my roommate too! She’s from Colorado and seems pretty nice. I don’t think we’re going to be bffs or anything because she came here with a bunch of her friends from school, but I think she’ll be easy to live with, which is good! We have super different sleep schedules though. She’s much more of an early riser and early to bed, whereas I’m more stay up super late, and sleep-in till right before I need to be somewhere.

All day today, we’ve had unbearably boring orientation meetings. We all met in the Union (which is basically just a big lecture hall…but cooler since it was originally intended to serve as a cruise ship’s entertainment facility). We got extended lectures about rules and regulations from the captain, the deans, the medical staff, and the list goes on. I fell asleep in the one this morning. It’s not easy to stay awake when you’ve got sea sickness meds in your system (which cause drowsiness) and a rocking ship (which sways just the perfect amount to make you doze off). While I was awake though, I learned what to do if someone goes overboad (you yell ‘man overboard’…SHOCKER! did we need to spend 20 minutes discussing that!?!), I learned not to put my hands in the door frames (because apparently, losing fingers and toes when the door slams shut is just another part of the unique SAS experience!), and we learned that we’re not allowed to fraternize with the ship’s crew when they’re off duty…aka no sex with Erwin, the nice man who cleans my room  (oh yeah, our rooms get cleaned daily! It’s like having an invisible mom at college who picks up after you leave your crap everywhere!)

Walking around the ship has been quite interesting, too. It basically feels (and looks) like we’re all tipsy, but without the judgment impairment, so we all know how ridiculous we look. We were informed that it’ll take a few days for us to get our ‘sea legs.’ The ship is big, but much smaller than most cruise ships, so we feel the waves a lot more than those do. 

As far as the people go, so far everyone seems pretty cool. I met a couple guys who go to UT-Knoxville (University of TN, for my non-Tennessean pals) earlier today, and we spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out if we knew anyone in common. We didn’t…but it was nice to make the connection, anyways! There are people from everywhere on the ship…24 countries and 49 states accounted for…I wonder what state didn’t make the cut? Fun Fact about our voyage: 75% female. 25% male. Greatttttt.

On another note, who the hell came up with military time? I mean, I guess the military did…but was it really necessary!? It’s a simply concept, but I’m constantly getting confused by it!

Anyways, enough for now! I should get to bed since we moved clocks forward another hour (p.s. 23 hour days SUCK), and we start classes tomorrow! I’ll let you all know how that goes! Adios from the Atlantic!

Canada, eh?

Hi all!

First post from abroad!

A little recap of my day:

I woke up at 5am this morning and headed to the airport for my 7am flight to destination number one: New York. I spotted my rowmates (19 C and D), a grumpy-looking old couple, who had evidently been in Nashville for the CMA Fest (as made apparent by their cowboy hats and other various music city souvenirs). Mr. Grumpy sat in the middle seat and proceeded to whip out his newspaper. I’ve never fully realized the unnecessarily massive size of newspapers until one was unwillingly shoved in my face. So there I am, clearly making an effort to squeeze myself as close to the window as humanly possible while the Grumpster proceeds to bump elbows with me every 2.5 seconds as he turns the page. After half an hour of this sort of thing, I’m about to go nuts. Then, a brilliant thought comes to me. Mr. Grumpy is OLD. Really old. And he’s wearing glasses…so if I shut the window and thus blocked the light, he probably wouldn’t be able to read his enormously large newspaper. So, I did what I had to do and shut the window….and BAM! Less than a minute later, the Grumpster folded that thing up and put it away! I mean, it very well could’ve been that he was finished reading it…but I like to think that it was my clever ruse that caused him to put the newspaper away. Then, the drink cart came around and Mr. and Mrs. Grumpy loaded up on coffee…and, to my shock and awe, they started chatting me up! Turns out that after a couple cups of joe, Mr. and Mrs. Grumpy turn into Mr. and Mrs. Not-So-Grumpy-After-All.

We landed in La Guardia airport, and I bid farewell to my rowmates. I had about an hour to make it to my next flight. Thinking that I was in the right terminal, I meandered around slowly looking for the departures screen. As I read through the departures, I quickly came to the realization that my flight was not on the list. I hurriedly went and found a security official whom I thought would be able to point me in the right direction. He pointed me in a direction alright—the WRONG one. Dumb security man sent me back to the terminal I had just left, ensuring me that it was definitely where I needed to be. As I’m standing in line to be re-checked through security, I decided it would be wise to make sure that I was in the right spot. The security lady was shocked to realize that her security buddy up at the front had given me the wrong instructions. She quickly sent me on my way toward the right terminal. After a little more running around like mad trying to figure out where the hell my plane took off from, I finally made it to my gate and made a mental note to never, ever fly through La Guardia again.

I felt completely relieved after we finally landed in Halifax. I’d even met a few people along the way that were also doing SAS! I got through customs in like 2 minutes and went to pick up my bags. From here on out, I was thinking it was smooth sailing (no pun intended). I excitedly picked up my first bag and waited for my second bag to come around the belt. I didn’t see it, so I waited some more. And waited. And waited And waited. And then the belt stopped. And there was only one bag left on it. Was it mine? Hah…that would’ve been too easy, now wouldn’t it have? Nope. Great. I soon learned that a bunch of other people had lost bags too. After a few hours of “where the hell did my bag go?”…the nice baggage lady informed me that my bag was in Detroit. DETROIT!? WTF?! I NEVER EVEN WENT TO DETROIT! Anyhow, I just received a call that my bag has arrived safely in Halifax and is headed to the hotel. Phew.

Currently I’m chilling in my hotel room with two girls that I met beforehand via Facebook and decided to share a room with. We walked to the nearby grocery store earlier and I picked up some toiletries and essential snacks, such as gold fish and Swedish fish. I board the ship tomorrow at 8am! I can’t wait to meet my roommate. Hope she’s not a weirdo! I’ll update soon! Farewell from Canada!

ONE WEEK!

I can't believe it! In seven short days, I'll be boarding a plane to Halifax. I've been super busy getting stuff ready for the trip! I went to the bank to exchange a bunch of money (thank you, Greece, for screwing with the European economy and making the exchange rate for euros better than its been in years!...more cheap souvenirs for me!). I also found my super duper not-unflattering-at-all travel money belt to carry all the stuff I don't want stolen. Take that pickpocketers! Now, I just need to start packing. I honestly don't know how I'm gonna fit over two months worth of my crap into only two bags. But I guess I'll just fit all the extra crap into my carry-on and hope that I sit by a cute, muscular guy on the plane who will be more than eager to put it in the overhead bin for me. Okay, he doesn't have to be muscular. Just cute. But muscular wouldn't hurt.

On another note, I watched Titanic last night. Probably not one of the best ideas I've ever had. As I’m flipping through a bajillion channels with plenty of other perfectly watchable things on, I see Titanic…so naturally, I choose to watch it. Because I realized the detrimental effects that could come from this, I maturely decided that I’d only watch the first half with all the gushy love stuff, but that once shit started going wrong, I'd switch channels. Bad call. I completely overestimated my channel-changing ability. So, like always, they hit the iceberg. And idiot that I am, I continue to watch. So now I've got all these Titanic-like thoughts going on. I mean, I'd be completely okay with the first half. Bring on the Leonardo Dicaprio! But all that iceberg crap kinda scared me and led me to research icebergs in the Meditteranean. Turns out, the chances of hitting an iceberg in the Meditteranean are pretty slim. I don't even know if there are any there. Then I remembered I had to cross the Atlantic to GET to the Meditteranean...oops. I guess I'll take my chances.

My flight from Halifax leaves at 7am next Monday! I promise there will be more interesting posts then!