I am trying to test out whether I can update my blog by email...
Somebody email me at my sas email if this worked.
Somebody email me at my sas email if this worked.
Friday, January 23, 2009
halfway?
Before I talk about today I’ll start up back where I left off on yesterday… I had two more classes, world religions (which seems really, really, easy and super broad, but the teacher is pretty funny) the other is my class on the global arms trade. My professor was the chapel warden at the island Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on and recently started suing the man running for next term as South African president. He’s pretty famous I guess for publicizing a corrupt arms contract between some companies in the UK and South Africa – oh and his wife was Desmond Tu Tu’s personal secretary for over 20 years and just quit this year to go on SAS with her husband. Pretty cool I guess. The class seems like it may just be about South African politics and government conspiracies which are by no means my thing – today I tried to drop it in a last-ditch effort to get into the service learning volunteer class I’ve been waitlisted on for foreveerrrrr. No such luck, it seems I’ll be learning lots about South Africa this semester. Oh well… (Update: I switched out of this class and am now taking a philosophy class on death and dying! Which would be significantly cooler if it weren’t an 8am and I didn’t have classes from 8-12, an hour break for lunch, and then classes again from 13:35-15:00 [everything on the ship is in military time.])
Then they had a late-night showing of the Dark Night in the Union yesterday that I saw too. That movie is amazing! Now I understand completely why everyone talked about it over and over, it was really pretty awesome – so good in fact that I sat through all three hours in the union and that place normally makes me want to die I get so sea-sick. So today was pretty low-key, slept in and missed breakfast, went to Global Studies in the Union (it was pretty good today, we talked about sugar, slavery, and pirates; baller) just sat out on deck and read some for my Islam class, watched kill bill in Cassie’s room, had lunch and realized I read the wrong assignment so now I’m working on doing my homework all over again. Well actually that’s a lie. Instead I’m watching Shrek and typing this up. Tonight after dinner though I swear I will get my shit done. It’s not even all that bad, just a couple chapters for Islam and Global Studies and a chapter for World Religions annnnd the arms trade class. Okay so I need to get on it. Until Later! P.s. I miss you theme-unit friends!!
Another hour add on tonight, I don’t think it’ll stop until we get to Spain. Thankfully we only have 6 more days until we get there! So Allie and I went after dinner to sign up for a time at the gym tomorrow and we were there on 7th deck right at 7pm when they put the signup sheet out for the next day’s slots and even though we were there exactly at 7 the line was out the gym and down two flights of stairs. That’s the problem with 75% girls on the ship… The salad bar is always torn apart and the gym is always full. Kind of ridiculous… We got a time for 8pm though so it shouldn’t be so bad considering we usually have dinner around like 6; hopefully I’ll be able to stay awake that long with my new tortuous schedule.
01/23?/09 A2
So everyone says after a while you completely loose track of time on the ship; you loose hours and gain hours, there are no such thing as weekends, and it’s not as though you get off of work or school while aboard, and I’m beginning to see why. Today is A2, which means it’s the second day of A classes. Classes are held everyday I’m on the ship but the schedules alternate between A and B days with Global Studies at 9:30 on both. So today I had my second day of classes and since I have all my classes on A days it was pretty tiring. Also, I love, love, love, my new class that I added to the dropped Arms Trade class. Now I’m taking the class on Biomedical Issues: Death and Dying and it’s sooo good. Our professor is the dean of some law school and she’s so witty and smart, I adore her. She already knows everybody’s name despite it being my first day and the class having over 30 people in it. I took my seasickness patch off today with no real problems (knock on wood) I have a half of one stored away for emergencies but I think I might be starting to get used to it… For future SAS applicants who might have found my blog via google or something: this shit is nothing like a cruise ship in how it moves on the water. Rather, it is just a massive boat. We sway back and forth constantly – so much so that at least two or three girls fly off the treadmill or down a flight of stairs daily. You feel every wave and things rattle very loudly, a lot. Also, every now and then they reverse one of the engines or something (it was explained to us but it sounded pretty confusing) and this huuuuge shudder shakes through the whole ship and it feels like an earthquake, complete with doors slamming and light fixtures rattling. I was told today too that we aren’t going even a third of how fast the boat is capable of. God help us if they ever decide we need to pick up speed. Appearently the MV Explorer has 4 engines (we are only running two) and of those two, neither are at full speed. We actually sped up some today because people were starting to get used to the ship; originally I heard we were going at some number in the high 20’s knots and slowed it down to 16-18. Now we’re pretty consistently running around 20-25. You know, now that people have stopped throwing up EVERYWHERE.
Also, there’s a cute little map thing that shows exactly where we are at all times like the kinds on an airplane. Right now, to the tune of “My Humps” playing in the background we are sailing only at 14.9 knots (I don’t know what that’s all about, we were going much faster a little while ago), on an 82 degree course, the time is 15:11:17, our latitude is 31 degrees 7.6N, our longitude is 042 degrees 31.60W and we look to be about exactly halfway between Nassau and Cadiz. It’s pretty cute too, at noon everyday the captain gets on the ship’s speaker and tells us our “distance made good” and how much more we have to go. We also do muster station drills (I’m on lifeboat C5.) It’s all very legit.
So today in World Religions our professor talked to us about camel riding dress code versus elephant riding; it’s a very weird feeling to realize I will have the opportunity to do both as a class fieldtrip. For those of you wondering, long pants because the saddle on the camel or it’s hair will eventually chaffe and as for the elephant riding pants are also a good idea because the seats are somewhat weird in Thailand and you may have to try and straddle them (awkward.) Oh, and also wear close-toed shoes so the scorpions in the desert (while riding camels) don’t git’cha.
Tonight I’m going to the ship’s Shabbat dinner at 5:30 (everyone eats really early here and is in bed by 11.) Trust me to find the Jews on this ship, I’ve got it on lock. Maybe I’ll even do some homework so I don’t have to do everything tomorrow.
More later.
Oh! Also, I probably won’t be able to respond on the blog until Spain so I don’t have all my minutes eaten up, but you can always e-mail me at jabyerly@semesteratsea.net ! And mom, don’t forget to mail my mailbox key back to Ginger L Kirk please.
Then they had a late-night showing of the Dark Night in the Union yesterday that I saw too. That movie is amazing! Now I understand completely why everyone talked about it over and over, it was really pretty awesome – so good in fact that I sat through all three hours in the union and that place normally makes me want to die I get so sea-sick. So today was pretty low-key, slept in and missed breakfast, went to Global Studies in the Union (it was pretty good today, we talked about sugar, slavery, and pirates; baller) just sat out on deck and read some for my Islam class, watched kill bill in Cassie’s room, had lunch and realized I read the wrong assignment so now I’m working on doing my homework all over again. Well actually that’s a lie. Instead I’m watching Shrek and typing this up. Tonight after dinner though I swear I will get my shit done. It’s not even all that bad, just a couple chapters for Islam and Global Studies and a chapter for World Religions annnnd the arms trade class. Okay so I need to get on it. Until Later! P.s. I miss you theme-unit friends!!
Another hour add on tonight, I don’t think it’ll stop until we get to Spain. Thankfully we only have 6 more days until we get there! So Allie and I went after dinner to sign up for a time at the gym tomorrow and we were there on 7th deck right at 7pm when they put the signup sheet out for the next day’s slots and even though we were there exactly at 7 the line was out the gym and down two flights of stairs. That’s the problem with 75% girls on the ship… The salad bar is always torn apart and the gym is always full. Kind of ridiculous… We got a time for 8pm though so it shouldn’t be so bad considering we usually have dinner around like 6; hopefully I’ll be able to stay awake that long with my new tortuous schedule.
01/23?/09 A2
So everyone says after a while you completely loose track of time on the ship; you loose hours and gain hours, there are no such thing as weekends, and it’s not as though you get off of work or school while aboard, and I’m beginning to see why. Today is A2, which means it’s the second day of A classes. Classes are held everyday I’m on the ship but the schedules alternate between A and B days with Global Studies at 9:30 on both. So today I had my second day of classes and since I have all my classes on A days it was pretty tiring. Also, I love, love, love, my new class that I added to the dropped Arms Trade class. Now I’m taking the class on Biomedical Issues: Death and Dying and it’s sooo good. Our professor is the dean of some law school and she’s so witty and smart, I adore her. She already knows everybody’s name despite it being my first day and the class having over 30 people in it. I took my seasickness patch off today with no real problems (knock on wood) I have a half of one stored away for emergencies but I think I might be starting to get used to it… For future SAS applicants who might have found my blog via google or something: this shit is nothing like a cruise ship in how it moves on the water. Rather, it is just a massive boat. We sway back and forth constantly – so much so that at least two or three girls fly off the treadmill or down a flight of stairs daily. You feel every wave and things rattle very loudly, a lot. Also, every now and then they reverse one of the engines or something (it was explained to us but it sounded pretty confusing) and this huuuuge shudder shakes through the whole ship and it feels like an earthquake, complete with doors slamming and light fixtures rattling. I was told today too that we aren’t going even a third of how fast the boat is capable of. God help us if they ever decide we need to pick up speed. Appearently the MV Explorer has 4 engines (we are only running two) and of those two, neither are at full speed. We actually sped up some today because people were starting to get used to the ship; originally I heard we were going at some number in the high 20’s knots and slowed it down to 16-18. Now we’re pretty consistently running around 20-25. You know, now that people have stopped throwing up EVERYWHERE.
Also, there’s a cute little map thing that shows exactly where we are at all times like the kinds on an airplane. Right now, to the tune of “My Humps” playing in the background we are sailing only at 14.9 knots (I don’t know what that’s all about, we were going much faster a little while ago), on an 82 degree course, the time is 15:11:17, our latitude is 31 degrees 7.6N, our longitude is 042 degrees 31.60W and we look to be about exactly halfway between Nassau and Cadiz. It’s pretty cute too, at noon everyday the captain gets on the ship’s speaker and tells us our “distance made good” and how much more we have to go. We also do muster station drills (I’m on lifeboat C5.) It’s all very legit.
So today in World Religions our professor talked to us about camel riding dress code versus elephant riding; it’s a very weird feeling to realize I will have the opportunity to do both as a class fieldtrip. For those of you wondering, long pants because the saddle on the camel or it’s hair will eventually chaffe and as for the elephant riding pants are also a good idea because the seats are somewhat weird in Thailand and you may have to try and straddle them (awkward.) Oh, and also wear close-toed shoes so the scorpions in the desert (while riding camels) don’t git’cha.
Tonight I’m going to the ship’s Shabbat dinner at 5:30 (everyone eats really early here and is in bed by 11.) Trust me to find the Jews on this ship, I’ve got it on lock. Maybe I’ll even do some homework so I don’t have to do everything tomorrow.
More later.
Oh! Also, I probably won’t be able to respond on the blog until Spain so I don’t have all my minutes eaten up, but you can always e-mail me at jabyerly@semesteratsea.net ! And mom, don’t forget to mail my mailbox key back to Ginger L Kirk please.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
We still have 3,300 miles to go.
01/18/09
So we arrived to the Bahamas with relatively little drama after all. Cassie was flying out of Dulles with a layover in North Carolina rather than direct from National like Cassie and I. The flight looked 3 hours long from the ticket (8:30 to 11:30) but it was really only about 2 and a half. And even more bizarre I was really pretty calm about the whole thing… I mean, the two xanax didn’t hurt either, but I kept myself pretty composed I thought, even with a little turbulence at times. So anyways, we were in the airport waiting at our gate when I was asked to come up to the podium thing where they were still checking people in, I was already a little nervous waiting so I was really apprehensive walking up there – but then the incredibly adorable and a little bit effeminate gay flight attendant told me he was bumping me up to first class because the flight was so overbooked and I had status on United. So I threw up deuces to Amy and got on early (later it kind of backfired since I was close to the engine and it was just really really loud.)
So then the guy in the seat next to me sat down and scrunched himself up so his knees wouldn’t bump up against the wall in front of us while I comfortably stretched my legs out. He jealously glared at me because of this, but it was great because usually on flights I have to sit on my legs or they end up going numb because they don’t touch the ground. It sucks.
01/20/09
The Atlantis was awesome. Sarah (the girl my room was split with who was also n SAS) and I had a view of the inner courtyard of the atlantis – complete with manta ray and shark pool. Cassie and Amy and I wandered around a little bit and stopped at a place just out of the Atlantis to have lunch before planning to head out and meet some other voyagers at Senior Frog’s later that night. There’s a picture of the burger I had somewhere; Cass and Amy even tried conch soup, haha. Facebook said to be at the bar around seven (we wanted to get there early so that we wouldn’t be like the walking dead for our 8am check-in boarding time at the boat) so we headed over with some other girls from SAS and just drank beer and met a few people. It was pretty dead and by 10 we were all fading fast since we’d all gotten up at 5 that morning with little sleep to make it to our flights in D.C.
So after having like 4 dos equis we took a taxi back to the hotel – later we found out that’s about when Senior Frogs got packed full of SAS kids and shit got crazy… (Having sex on the dance floor before anyone had even gotten on the ship, girls who drunkenly fell off the bar and flashed everyone on the way down thanks to their super short mini-dresses.) Anyways I was out by about 10pm when my roommate finally showed up; her flight had just gotten in and she went off to get some food while I slept some more. The next morning we talked much more and took a taxi together to the port. Everything was a huge clustered mess on the way there though – Sarah’s bags went in a different van than we did, but eventually she found them after stopping all the drivers and inspecting their trunks. She got pretty lucky.
Yesterday we just did a lot of sign-in stuff and moved into our rooms. (I only finished unpacking today really…) My roommate’s name is Allie and she’s pretty cool. She’s a sophomore at Colorado State (along with 79 other students here; they’re the second most represented state after California. We’re pretty different but she’s very nice and we’ve gotten along really well so far. I also met lots of new kids, but considering there’s so many of us, and mostly girls (75%) everyone’s name has started to blend together after a while…
And I know it sounds like a huge blanketed statement but there are so many girls, and all of them are gorgeous. We’re talking the antithesis of me… Tall, tan, svelte looking sorority types, many of whom have never traveled outside of Canada/Mexico/Europe. I’m trying not to judge too fast, but I don’t feel like I have much in common with most the people here and I’m worried I’ll feel like the odd-man-out for the rest of the semester. No joke, I overheard one girl say, “I know it’s like gonna be really hot in Asia, and I want to feel clean, so I have these really cute white juicy gym shorts, and so I’ll like, wear those in India.” Really?
When we pulled away from port at 5 it started to really hit me just how monumental this whole trip is. There is no going back from it – whether I hate it or love it I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I doubt I’ve ever made such a commitment and it’s a little daunting.
Sooo today. Today was orientation and they ran us ragged. I had a really hard time getting my laptop to work and load properly but now it seems to be working okay… Hopefully this’ll last enough for me to get through the semester. So today I woke up at like 7 and showered (Allie does this at night so we both wake up at the same time and while I shower she straightens her hair and does her makeup and then we get breakfast together.) Then we had mandatory orientations pretty much all freaking day – very nearly all of which took place in the Union which is on the 6th deck in the very front of the ship. It’s also the worst place to be if you’re even a little sea sick as every rolling wave pushes you out and then back into your seat. Terrible! Tomorrow is the first day of classes and two of mine take place in the Union; global studies at 9:30 am and upper level classical Islam in the afternoon.
Oh! So also they shut down all the computers in an effort to get a good satellite signal through the ship and then they streamed the innaugeration to all the classrooms and cabins so I watched while I finished unpacking my bags. I’ll upload a video I did of it later somehow.
Well I know I’ve forgotten a lot, but I’ll try to write more tomorrow. Bye guys!
01/21/09
It’s the third day on the ship and the first day of classes. Allie and I woke up at 8am so she would have time for makeup and hair curling and I for a shower – Everyone on the ship – and I do mean everyone, all faculty, life-long-learners, and even the babies of professors all show up in the union and satellite classrooms to listen and watch the hour and 15 minute class. It’s incredibly boring, but it’s kind of cool to know the whole ship shuts down (though we obviously keep sailing) just so everyone can be in the same places at the same time. Today we mostly just talked about anthropology and the earliest migration of people across the world; it’s all stuff I’ve heard before from other classes at college back home, but for whatever reason the information seems really different in this context. Thinking about our own migratory patterns around the world, I mean. For instance, today we were talking about natural selection and how we adapt to viruses and then those viruses mutate (often inside the animals that initially carry the virus – oftentimes in Asia - into something new our bodies have never seen, so we get sick again and again and it’s a never-ending cycle. One girl raised her hand in the Union and said, “Wait, so I’m sick from something I got back home in the US and now I’m seeking out the original virus but now with a mutation my body doesn’t expect just so I can get sick again? I’m following this virus around the world?” And the professor says, “Well yes, I guess you are.” Weird to think about, huh?
Then I went to Classical Islam. That class is PACKED. And it’s in the union again which I’ve been trying to avoid considering all the rocking you can feel in there… I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this ship. People are still getting sick, but it’s a lot better than before. However, I haven’t been sleeping well, and shaving in the itty bitty shower while the ship rushes from one side to the other is pretty much impossible. Anyways, back to Islam. The class seems alright, the professor is very soft spoken and there aren’t enough chairs for everyone in the room… Also, he’s trying to insist upon our doing all this field work in Casablanca, so I’m going to have to talk to him day after tomorrow about how I’m going to be meeting up with Angie and my mom and won’t be able to do all his crazy shit.
Then I went and bought a sweatshirt and had lunch. There are a lot of vegetarian options all over each meal time, but things close soooo early. Allie and I missed breakfast today because it’s only served from 7am to 8:30am. It’s hard to stay up on the boat anyways though because of all the sun making things warm and the rocking of the boat makes a lot of people tired when combined with all the anti-motion sickness stuff they’re taking; drowsiness is a side-effect of all of them. I’m exhausted by like 9pm even with a nap it seems. It also doesn’t help that the past two days we’ve had to move our clocks an hour forward so we keep losing time. So for lunch I had vegetarian lo mein, pineapple juice, and a salad. Amy and I ate outside though and stuff was flying everywhere we were moving so fast (I think they said 20ish knots? However fast that is…) Now I’m back in my room typing this and watching Out of Africa. They play a couple movies over and over on the t.v. and this one’s my favorite.
Much more later - my laptop is working off and on.
So we arrived to the Bahamas with relatively little drama after all. Cassie was flying out of Dulles with a layover in North Carolina rather than direct from National like Cassie and I. The flight looked 3 hours long from the ticket (8:30 to 11:30) but it was really only about 2 and a half. And even more bizarre I was really pretty calm about the whole thing… I mean, the two xanax didn’t hurt either, but I kept myself pretty composed I thought, even with a little turbulence at times. So anyways, we were in the airport waiting at our gate when I was asked to come up to the podium thing where they were still checking people in, I was already a little nervous waiting so I was really apprehensive walking up there – but then the incredibly adorable and a little bit effeminate gay flight attendant told me he was bumping me up to first class because the flight was so overbooked and I had status on United. So I threw up deuces to Amy and got on early (later it kind of backfired since I was close to the engine and it was just really really loud.)
So then the guy in the seat next to me sat down and scrunched himself up so his knees wouldn’t bump up against the wall in front of us while I comfortably stretched my legs out. He jealously glared at me because of this, but it was great because usually on flights I have to sit on my legs or they end up going numb because they don’t touch the ground. It sucks.
01/20/09
The Atlantis was awesome. Sarah (the girl my room was split with who was also n SAS) and I had a view of the inner courtyard of the atlantis – complete with manta ray and shark pool. Cassie and Amy and I wandered around a little bit and stopped at a place just out of the Atlantis to have lunch before planning to head out and meet some other voyagers at Senior Frog’s later that night. There’s a picture of the burger I had somewhere; Cass and Amy even tried conch soup, haha. Facebook said to be at the bar around seven (we wanted to get there early so that we wouldn’t be like the walking dead for our 8am check-in boarding time at the boat) so we headed over with some other girls from SAS and just drank beer and met a few people. It was pretty dead and by 10 we were all fading fast since we’d all gotten up at 5 that morning with little sleep to make it to our flights in D.C.
So after having like 4 dos equis we took a taxi back to the hotel – later we found out that’s about when Senior Frogs got packed full of SAS kids and shit got crazy… (Having sex on the dance floor before anyone had even gotten on the ship, girls who drunkenly fell off the bar and flashed everyone on the way down thanks to their super short mini-dresses.) Anyways I was out by about 10pm when my roommate finally showed up; her flight had just gotten in and she went off to get some food while I slept some more. The next morning we talked much more and took a taxi together to the port. Everything was a huge clustered mess on the way there though – Sarah’s bags went in a different van than we did, but eventually she found them after stopping all the drivers and inspecting their trunks. She got pretty lucky.
Yesterday we just did a lot of sign-in stuff and moved into our rooms. (I only finished unpacking today really…) My roommate’s name is Allie and she’s pretty cool. She’s a sophomore at Colorado State (along with 79 other students here; they’re the second most represented state after California. We’re pretty different but she’s very nice and we’ve gotten along really well so far. I also met lots of new kids, but considering there’s so many of us, and mostly girls (75%) everyone’s name has started to blend together after a while…
And I know it sounds like a huge blanketed statement but there are so many girls, and all of them are gorgeous. We’re talking the antithesis of me… Tall, tan, svelte looking sorority types, many of whom have never traveled outside of Canada/Mexico/Europe. I’m trying not to judge too fast, but I don’t feel like I have much in common with most the people here and I’m worried I’ll feel like the odd-man-out for the rest of the semester. No joke, I overheard one girl say, “I know it’s like gonna be really hot in Asia, and I want to feel clean, so I have these really cute white juicy gym shorts, and so I’ll like, wear those in India.” Really?
When we pulled away from port at 5 it started to really hit me just how monumental this whole trip is. There is no going back from it – whether I hate it or love it I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I doubt I’ve ever made such a commitment and it’s a little daunting.
Sooo today. Today was orientation and they ran us ragged. I had a really hard time getting my laptop to work and load properly but now it seems to be working okay… Hopefully this’ll last enough for me to get through the semester. So today I woke up at like 7 and showered (Allie does this at night so we both wake up at the same time and while I shower she straightens her hair and does her makeup and then we get breakfast together.) Then we had mandatory orientations pretty much all freaking day – very nearly all of which took place in the Union which is on the 6th deck in the very front of the ship. It’s also the worst place to be if you’re even a little sea sick as every rolling wave pushes you out and then back into your seat. Terrible! Tomorrow is the first day of classes and two of mine take place in the Union; global studies at 9:30 am and upper level classical Islam in the afternoon.
Oh! So also they shut down all the computers in an effort to get a good satellite signal through the ship and then they streamed the innaugeration to all the classrooms and cabins so I watched while I finished unpacking my bags. I’ll upload a video I did of it later somehow.
Well I know I’ve forgotten a lot, but I’ll try to write more tomorrow. Bye guys!
01/21/09
It’s the third day on the ship and the first day of classes. Allie and I woke up at 8am so she would have time for makeup and hair curling and I for a shower – Everyone on the ship – and I do mean everyone, all faculty, life-long-learners, and even the babies of professors all show up in the union and satellite classrooms to listen and watch the hour and 15 minute class. It’s incredibly boring, but it’s kind of cool to know the whole ship shuts down (though we obviously keep sailing) just so everyone can be in the same places at the same time. Today we mostly just talked about anthropology and the earliest migration of people across the world; it’s all stuff I’ve heard before from other classes at college back home, but for whatever reason the information seems really different in this context. Thinking about our own migratory patterns around the world, I mean. For instance, today we were talking about natural selection and how we adapt to viruses and then those viruses mutate (often inside the animals that initially carry the virus – oftentimes in Asia - into something new our bodies have never seen, so we get sick again and again and it’s a never-ending cycle. One girl raised her hand in the Union and said, “Wait, so I’m sick from something I got back home in the US and now I’m seeking out the original virus but now with a mutation my body doesn’t expect just so I can get sick again? I’m following this virus around the world?” And the professor says, “Well yes, I guess you are.” Weird to think about, huh?
Then I went to Classical Islam. That class is PACKED. And it’s in the union again which I’ve been trying to avoid considering all the rocking you can feel in there… I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this ship. People are still getting sick, but it’s a lot better than before. However, I haven’t been sleeping well, and shaving in the itty bitty shower while the ship rushes from one side to the other is pretty much impossible. Anyways, back to Islam. The class seems alright, the professor is very soft spoken and there aren’t enough chairs for everyone in the room… Also, he’s trying to insist upon our doing all this field work in Casablanca, so I’m going to have to talk to him day after tomorrow about how I’m going to be meeting up with Angie and my mom and won’t be able to do all his crazy shit.
Then I went and bought a sweatshirt and had lunch. There are a lot of vegetarian options all over each meal time, but things close soooo early. Allie and I missed breakfast today because it’s only served from 7am to 8:30am. It’s hard to stay up on the boat anyways though because of all the sun making things warm and the rocking of the boat makes a lot of people tired when combined with all the anti-motion sickness stuff they’re taking; drowsiness is a side-effect of all of them. I’m exhausted by like 9pm even with a nap it seems. It also doesn’t help that the past two days we’ve had to move our clocks an hour forward so we keep losing time. So for lunch I had vegetarian lo mein, pineapple juice, and a salad. Amy and I ate outside though and stuff was flying everywhere we were moving so fast (I think they said 20ish knots? However fast that is…) Now I’m back in my room typing this and watching Out of Africa. They play a couple movies over and over on the t.v. and this one’s my favorite.
Much more later - my laptop is working off and on.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
My fav. sites by other SAS students from past voyages:
My favorite blog I think so far is Frank's Semester at Sea on Blogspot ( http://frankatsea.blogspot.com/ ) even though he sailed in 2006 he saw a lot of the same places I'll be going to and it's so hilarious and well-written.
Other honorable mentions include:
http://alanshihatsea.blogspot.com/ and http://mara-at-sea.blogspot.com/
Also, Cassie and Amy two of my best friends are sailing with me and they're keeping blogs as well: Cassie = http://cassiegrooversas09.blogspot.com/ and
Amy = http://amybee88.blogspot.com/
Here's a link to an outside double room - the same kind I'll be staying in: http://www.msnusers.com/SemesteratSeaFall2005/detailedcabinphotos.msnw
And here's some of my favorite youtube videos on SAS:
This youtube video shows a ship tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hq6CdIj2Ak it's pretty good but a little shaky so don't make yourself nauseus trying to watch it - I plan to take lots of photos of and off the ship (though the more I read about the internet connection on the ship the more it seems like I won't be able to really upload any large files and I'm charged also by the amount of data I send and recieve - which also means if you all email me videos or pictures I probably won't be able to view them until I'm at an internet cafe in port.)
Here's a ridiculous clip from Storm Stories that shows interviews and footage taken when a big storm took out the entire control panel and rocked the ship - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DBGhXI586k
And the three-part series of videos a guy named Tyler made showing his adventures throughout the ports - I've been messaging him on and off since I first heard about Semester at Sea and he's been incredibly helpful. 1.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG9b9aBJH28 2.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrK525jQ1e8&feature=related and 3.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCUR9Whd2-I&feature=related They're really really wonderful and definitely helped to solidify how much I wanted into the program.
Other honorable mentions include:
http://alanshihatsea.blogspot.com/ and http://mara-at-sea.blogspot.com/
Also, Cassie and Amy two of my best friends are sailing with me and they're keeping blogs as well: Cassie = http://cassiegrooversas09.blogspot.com/ and
Amy = http://amybee88.blogspot.com/
Here's a link to an outside double room - the same kind I'll be staying in: http://www.msnusers.com/SemesteratSeaFall2005/detailedcabinphotos.msnw
And here's some of my favorite youtube videos on SAS:
This youtube video shows a ship tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hq6CdIj2Ak it's pretty good but a little shaky so don't make yourself nauseus trying to watch it - I plan to take lots of photos of and off the ship (though the more I read about the internet connection on the ship the more it seems like I won't be able to really upload any large files and I'm charged also by the amount of data I send and recieve - which also means if you all email me videos or pictures I probably won't be able to view them until I'm at an internet cafe in port.)
Here's a ridiculous clip from Storm Stories that shows interviews and footage taken when a big storm took out the entire control panel and rocked the ship - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DBGhXI586k
And the three-part series of videos a guy named Tyler made showing his adventures throughout the ports - I've been messaging him on and off since I first heard about Semester at Sea and he's been incredibly helpful. 1.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG9b9aBJH28 2.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrK525jQ1e8&feature=related and 3.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCUR9Whd2-I&feature=related They're really really wonderful and definitely helped to solidify how much I wanted into the program.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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