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!