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.