So the formatting on this page isn’t going so hot. I would normally fix it, but I don’t really want to use up my internet minutes to do that. I got rid of the black text on prior posts, but now the linebreaks are kind of screwed up. Hopefully that will only happen to those two posts, and the rest should be good…
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On the first night that we shoved off from port, the doctor told us that drinking a lot of fluids helps to fight seasickness. I took his word to heart, and started using my Nalgene bottle first thing the next day. I filled it all the way up before I went to my African history class.
I didn’t realize quite how much I was drinking, and by the end of class, I think I’d taken in almost the whole 32oz in the bottle. I had to go to the bathroom so badly – I’d never done that to myself before. I didn’t really make a note not to do it again, and so it’s actually happened a few times since then because I was still using fluids to help fight seasickness. It’s really weird that I just have absolutely no concept of how much I’m actually drinking when I have it with me. Many times I’ve almost finished the whole thing within a 75 minute class, and been itching to go to the bathroom at the end of class.
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If you check out the Semester at Sea website, you can probably see a double that looks exactly like the one that Pierce and I have. Between the two beds, there are two little sets of drawers. I have one and he has one, and each one has three compartments to pull out, each of which is maybe five or six inches high.
There was a particularly huge swell on the morning of January twentieth at almost exactly three in the morning. It three Pierce’s entire set of drawers right across the floor of our cabin. It’s a good thing we weren’t standing around in the room when it happened, because it would have been pretty painful. We both woke up when it happened because it was so loud, and just cursed at the insanity of what must have just happened. We picked it up together and tried to wedge it back into place. It sort of creaks now at night, so I don’t think we got it in perfectly. I think I might ask one of the housekeepers if there’s a way to fix it, of if I’m crazy and it always creaked.
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Breakfast is definitely the best meal of the day here. It seems like they always have at least either pancakes (which are WAY better than the ones Penn State serves) or French toast (which is about equivalent to what Penn State has, but not as good as IHOP). I never really know when the next dinner or lunch that contains something I really like will be coming up, so I find excuses to wake up for breakfast. Yesterday I decided to sit in on a class (English as a Global Language) early in the morning just so I’d have an excuse to wake up for breakfast. Today it was shaving my face (finally) and filling out the form for the next sale of Semester at Sea-approved trips.
It’s nice in the morning. The wind is usually calmer than other times of the day, so you can eat right up against the back railing of the boat instead of having to sit under the awning near the doors. Today was nice, but it started to rain (pretty cold rain, too) suddenly at about 8:15 or so, so we all rain inside. Some people were about to go anyway, so they left. I sat with Aleeza and a few others until 9 or so.
I think most people on the ship are pretty upset about the breakfast timing schedule. It goes from 7:30 – 8:30. Classes start at 8:00 or 9:30. So that means that basically only people with 8:00 classes have any reason to wake up for breakfast. If you have a 9:30 class and you wanted to eat breakfast, you’d have to wake up in time to eat by 8:30, then sit around for an hour, and then you could go to class. It should definitely be served for two hours instead of one.
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Everything is extremely close. I mean, imagine if your entire college experience were crammed into a 70’ x 600’ area. That’s what we do here. We have fifteen minutes between classes, which is totally necessary at Penn State, but when Classroom 1 and Classroom 9 are seriously less than 150’ apart, it seems kind of silly. People always get to classes incredibly early, partially because people want the good seats, but also partially because we’re used to leaving more than sixty seconds ahead of time, which is about all you’d ever need on the ship.
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The only way I can tell that I have internet access on my phone is that I get two vibrations to notify me someone sent an email to my Gmail address. I get tons of listserv things from Penn State clubs that I don’t care about, and the Songwriter’s Club president sends a minimum of one email a day, and sometimes other officers write too. It’s kind of annoying, but I do always know when I have a few seconds to try to check out XKCD or Dinosaur Comics.
I think our email accounts here clear things out after just a few messages, which is really dumb, and I wish I had known that. I’m going to forward everything to my Gmail account, I think, so that I can save them to look at later.
Peace out.
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