Italy Tomorrow!

Today was a gorgeous day at sea!  Everyone had a Global Studies exam this morning that was 100 questions of matching and pretty easy.  We didn’t have Global Studies class this morning because of that so I go to sleep in a little.  My other classes were also really relaxed since we arrive in Italy tomorrow!  I did my reading out in the blazing Mediterranean sun this afternoon and survived without a sunburn – I was excited!

I also went on a bridge tour today where you get to see the front of the ship with all the controls and stuff.  The 3rd officer gave us the tour – he is from Croatia (same as the captain) and was really cool and let us look out with the binoculars and sit in the captain’s chair and all that fun stuff.  It was really cool to see the electronic map/gps chart that they have as well as all the equipment where they do old-fashioned mapping in case of a malfunction.

Tonight we had our pre-port meeting for Italy where we learned about all the fun cultural stuff that is different from America.  They gave us a paper with common phrases in Italian and a sentence to show a taxi driver that says “please take me to [name of our port]” in Italian.  At least we can sort of pronounce/understand a little Italian.  Things will probably get pretty interesting when we get to some of the countries speaking Arabic.

As far as plans for Italy, the ship docks in Ciavitavecchia and I will be taking a train to Rome where I will meet up with the rest of my family.  It will be so fun to swap stories about our European adventures so far!  I will spend 3 days in Rome then 2 days in Naples before leaving again on the ship.  I think that’s all for now – I’ve got lots to pack and an early start tomorrow!

Just Another Day at Sea

Today is just another day sailing through the Mediterranean!  It is a little cloudy today but still in the low 70s outside.  Everyone on the ship has their first paper and exam for Global Studies tomorrow.  I am trying to write the paper this afternoon so that I have time to study tonight.  The paper is only 2 pages so it isn’t very hard, and he set a really specific rubric of what you have to talk about like how it was for 6th grade papers when you wrote in “levels” haha.  The exam shouldn’t be too hard either since it is a matching exam.  He has given us key terms every lecture and the exam is just matching them to their definitions or matching cities to their places on a map – neither of which is very difficult.  Well that’s all there really is to report on today – I’m off to write my paper and cannot wait for Italy in 2 days!!

Some Final Thoughts About Spain

So I posted about pretty much everything I did in Spain so I thought I would write a little more about what I thought of the trip.  Overall we met some of the nicest people in Spain.  When we would try to speak Spanish they really liked it and tried to understand what you were saying.  I’m pretty sure most people in America are not that receptive when people come who don’t speak great English.  It was also very fun to get some affirmations about my Spanish and even though I had terrible grammar I was able to communicate with people.

Also the schedule in Spain is so different from America and it was hard to be on the Spanish schedule with the SAS tours that we were on.  For example, in Spain stores don’t open at all until 10:30 or 11:00am and people don’t eat lunch until 2:00-4:00pm and they don’t go out at night until 1:00 or 2:00am and stay out until 6:00am.  It was really hard to get acclimated to the schedule because our scheduled SAS tours still started early and the meal schedule was off because we seemed to eat lunch really early (usually around 12:30pm) and then dinner kind of late (around 8:30pm).

Other than that, I really enjoyed being on a SAS sponsored trip.  I know that if I had just been traveling by myself I would not have learned anything about the places we visited, and I was still able to go out and have fun while on the SAS trip.  They book amazing guides for all the tours, have really nice hotels (our one in Granada was 4 stars), you can never go hungry with all the food they give you, and everything is organized for you.  I cannot imagine how stressful it would have been in my month off from school before coming to the ship to be trying to plan all these things to do in such a variety of countries.

Overall, my time is Spain exceeded all of my expectations and everything about my time there was just amazing.  I feel like even if I had to go home today I would have had an amazing time, which makes it hard to believe that I still have 7 more countries coming up!

Today was the first day back aboard the MV Explorer and it was definitely hard to get back into school mode.  Classes were pretty relaxed today though because we mostly got to talk about what we learned in Spain and how it related to what we are learning in class.  Other than that the weather on the ship is great now that we are in the Mediterranean, and it was warm outside all day today.  Luckily we didn’t have any rocking today because we had a scheduled stop in Gibraltar for refueling.  Last night they told us that the stop would be from 5:00am-11:00am however we were there practically all day from the time I woke up until 4:30pm.  Hopefully that doesn’t put us behind schedule but I don’t imagine it will because the ship can usually go faster at night if needed.  Going through the Straight of Gibraltar was really cool because we were nearly surrounded by land and you could look one way and see Spain and the other way you saw Morocco.  It was neat to think about Europe being on one side and Africa on the other.  You can also see so many more ships around now instead of being completely alone in the Atlantic so it is definitely more interesting to look out my window.  Well I need to get to bed now – tomorrow qill be a long day of studying!

Granada!!

Granada was absolutely amazing and definitely my favorite city of the trip.  That may have been partially due to the fact that it was our last city and everyone on the trip had gotten to know each other, but I also found it to be the most beautiful and fun city that we went to.

We arrived in Granada at around 6:00pm on Friday and checked into our hotel called Hotel Axilares.  The bus ride was actually a lot longer than expected because Granada is in a mountain region so we had to take a lot of winding roads to get there.  Our hotel was basically on a giant mountain right next the La Alhambra (the main historical sight of Granada).  La Alhambra is on a giant hill overlooking the city too, so we had a great view of everything from out hotel also.  The hotel was really nice and had a great pool which everyone was excited about!  We had a few hours to kill before dinner, so a group of us walked around the hillside for a while.  It was gorgeous as we were walking along the outer walls of La Alhambra and the gardens were amazing.  We walked for a while and it was completely downhill then we realized we should probably not go any further because we would have to make the walk back up the hill.  So we turned around and went back to the hotel, stopping in a few shops along the way.  A few of us (including me) had forgotten our swimsuits so we ended up going back to the pool and just sticking our feet in the water.  After all the walking we had been doing the past 2 days it felt so refreshing.

Dinner was at the hotel at 8:30pm again.  It was another buffet style but the food was much better than at the last hotel because there was a variety so I was able to eat the Spanish food that I wanted.  After dinner we walked down the mountain using another path and actually ended up all the way at the bottom in the city center.  It was a really fun walk to take because it was all downhill and there was great scenery along the way.  We all knew we wanted to go out later though but everyone needed to shower and change so we took taxis back up the hill because we didn’t think we would really have time to make the walk.

I left with 2 other girls around midnight to go into the city and we walked down the same mountain path as before so it was really pretty.  We wandered around the city for a while just looking at how it was beautifully decorated – they have decorative Christmas lights up all the time so it was really lit up and energetic.  Apparently the University of Granada is one of the largest universities in Spain so there were a lot of college-age people there, which made it a lot of fun.  We ended up going to a club/bar called Babylon and it was so much fun!  They had really delicious drinks and we met some really great people from Barcelona and Granada.  I was the best in our group at speaking Spanish so I did most of the talking, but they also spoke some English.  They told me my Spanish was really good (even though I know that it wasn’t) so that made me feel like at least my 4 years of Spanish wasn’t for nothing!  They party pretty late in Spain, so we took a taxi back to the hotel around 4:00am.

We were very lucky that our tour on Saturday didn’t start until 10:00am (which is why we knew we could stay out a little later Friday night).  We had another buffet style breakfast at the hotel which was really good – they had tortilla hispañola which is my favorite!  Then we met new tour guides outside our hotel and walked across the street to visit La Alhambra.  La Alhambra was amazing and beautiful and it is pretty much the only place to visit in Granada but it is so huge (200 acres of palace, not including the gardens) that you could easily spend a whole day there.  First we walked around the gardens which were so pretty and gave amazing views of the city below.  In the gardens was a summer palace that was beautiful and had amazingly elaborate fountains that all worked by gravity of the water coming down from the surrounding mountains.  Then we walked through some more gardens on our way to another palace.  The area we walked through though used to be an entire city of people who lived inside the walls.  IT was lots of people in the military or who worked for the king, etc.  The second palace we went to is mainly La Alhambra museum because it was never finished on the inside.  I don’t remember which king started to build it, but he just had the outside done and then decided to leave so they use the interior for some concerts and events.  Finally we went to the grand finale palace which is the huge one and main attraction inside La Alhambra.  When you buy tickets for La Alhambra they assign you a time that you can enter the giant palace so that it doesn’t get too crowded (our guide told us tickets are sold out every day and that you have to get them 3 months in advance).  The palace was just HUGE!  There were 3 mini-palaces (I didn’t really think they were very mini) inside of the palace.  We kept walking through room after room and it was so beautiful and elaborately decorated with mosaics and carvings.  It was so cool to see it all – I can’t even really describe it.

After La Alhambra tour we went back to the hotel for lunch where there was another buffet, including a giant dish of paella.  It was so delicious that I had to have 2 helpings!  I was so glad that I got to have a final meal of delicious Spanish food before boarding the buses.  The ride back took about 4 hours so we got back to the ship at 6:30pm which was technically a half hour late but since we were on a SAS sponsored trip we don’t get in any trouble.  I really had such an amazing time in Spain that I know I am going to come back someday to see even more!

Córdoba!!

So after a long but beautiful morning in Sevilla we took another 1.5 hour bus ride to the city of Córdoba.  It is a much smaller city than Sevilla, but still just as beautiful.  I would say that there were more houses with the Spanish-style rooftops so it looked a little more typically Spanish.  The bus took us directly to check into the Tryp Gallos hotel.  We had all of our roommates assigned alphabetically already so we were able to go straight up to the rooms and relax.  We were free to do anything we wanted for about 2 hours while we waited for dinner at 8:30pm, so I just relaxed, napped, and watched TV with Janae.  We found it hilarious to watch some American shows in Spanish.  They had such a ransom assortment of channels like MTV in German with English subtitles, but also CNN in English.  We were able to get all of the news about Michael Jackson – it was definitely a very huge deal here and all over the newspapers.

Dinner was served at the hotel at 8:30pm (that was even an early dinner in Spain) and it was not as impressive as the lunch earlier that day.  It was just a buffet with American food like fries, chicken, fish, salad, pasta, and meatballs.  It was pretty good food it was just disappointing because I wanted to have more Spanish food while in Spain.  After dinner I went out at night with 3 other girls and we walked around the main streets of the city and found the area that was just 2 blocks of ‘discotecas.’  We went to a bar called Sojo and had a few drinks but didn’t get too drunk since we had to be up and ready to go at 8:30am the next day.  It was still really fun to be at the bar and attempting to talk to people in Spanish.  Janae was really good with her Spanish since she just finished taking it last semester so she did most of the talking but I could definitely understand most of the conversations which was cool.

In the morning we left at 8:30am with a new tour guide for a brief bus tour around the city for an overview.  Then we got off and walked around the Jewish area of the city and saw a really old synagogue which is important because I think our guide said it was one of only three synagogues left in Andalucía.  Then we went to the center of the city to the building that is now technically called the Catedral de Córdoba.  People generally just refer to it as the Mezquita though because that is the Spanish word for mosque and it was originally a mosque then converted into a cathedral when Christians conquered Spain.  It was huge on the inside and really pretty of course.  Our guide showed us all the different parts and where they used to pray in the mosque.  The Catholic Church seized it and built a cathedral in the middle of the building in order to show their power.  It was very interesting to see the different styles of architecture.

After the Mezquita we walked over to the Alcazar which was not much of a building but had the most gorgeous gardens that I have ever seen!  We spent a long time wandering the gardens and admiring the trees, fountains, and statues.  Inside the Alcazar was just a fortress-type thing so it was pretty plain and just stone walls and kind of smaller rooms.  They do have a really pretty room with some mosaic artwork on the walls that is used for celebrations and weddings.  Our whole group was sitting in the chairs and our guide was telling us about how if you were born in Córdoba you can have a free wedding at the Alcazar if you just book it 6 months in advance.  The city will pay for everything – music, flowers, etc.  We all thought that was pretty cool then all these people started coming in because there was a wedding there starting in like 10 minutes!  Our group of like 30 people was awkwardly there and trying to leave while floods of people came in for the wedding and it was pretty funny.  We even saw the bride in her room on our way out.

That was it for the sightseeing that day then everyone had free time for about 3 hours until we were leaving for Granada.  We had the option to return to the hotel for lunch, but I think most people wanted to enjoy the Spanish food so we ended up in a group of 9 people wandering around town and looking in shops.  We all ate at a restaurant called Bodega Mezquita because they were advertising that they were known for having over 40 different tapas.  We got lots of sangria for the group and tons of tapas that were all delicious.  They had amazing chorizo and croquetas – I’m getting so hungry just thinking about it!  It was definitely another one of my best meals in Spain!

We started walking back toward the hotel after lunch, stopping in and out of shops.  We were getting close to the hotel and were going to be kind of early so we stopped at a local cervezaria to grab a beer.  We went into the bar and the only other person there was our tour guide from the morning with her kids.  We thought it was so funny and she said that it was one of her favorite bars so we knew we picked a good place.  I just had a local beer that was on tap and I have no idea what it was called but it was pretty good.  Then we all got back to the hotel to meet the buses and headed off to our last city, and the one I was most excited for: Granada!

Sevilla!!

Well it is back to the sea for the MV Explorer!  We were supposed to leave at 8:00pm tonight but the SAS sponsored trip from Barcelona had airline trouble so they weren’t able to get here until 10:30pm which delayed our departure to 11:00pm, but we are now officially back at sea.  It is kind of weird to feel the rocking sensation again after being on land for 4 days.

Anyway, Spain was absolutely AMAZING!!  The people here were so great and I can easily see how everyone comes here to study for a full semester.  My trip went all over Andalucía (Southern Spain) and I’m going to post city by city because I’m pretty sure I would exceed our email limit if I tried to post it all at once!  I know how much you probably love my marathon postings…

So we started off at 8:00am on Thursday and headed off the ship for Sevilla, the capital of Andalucía.  It was about a 1.5 hour bus ride to get there, but it was good to have some naptime after my long day before.  Once we were in the city a tour guide got on our bus and told us a little about the city and some of the buildings as we drove into the center.  Then we all got off the bus and walked to the royal palace.  It was incredibly beautiful and we learned all about how unique it is because it has Islamic, Jewish, and Christian influence in the decorations (We learned over the rest of the trip that this was not unique to this palace alone, but it is unique to Andalucía because of its history).  Then we went to La Catedral de Sevilla which is the 3rd largest cathedral in the world (the largest one with gothic architecture) and it was absolutely amazing inside.  It was huge and the altar was like nothing I had ever seen before.  We also saw the tomb of Christopher Columbus here.  We had our tour guide throughout all of these locations which was really helpful because otherwise I would have had no idea what I was looking at or any of the history behind it.

For lunch we went to a restaurant called Hosteria del Laurel.  It was definitely my favorite meal of the trip!  There were bottles of wine on the table for everyone to share (a really delicious Spanish syrah) and then the food just kept on coming.  There were tapas of jamón, asparagus, mushrooms, tortilla hispañola, and calamari.  We were all pretty full after that but then they brought out lunch dishes of pork and chicken and then slices of ice cream cake for dessert.  It was sooooo good and everyone left feeling like they would explode!

After lunch the tour guide showed us around the old Jewish area.  It was more of a living area with the cute narrow streets and tall buildings.  The tour guide also told us cute stories about old Spain like how women used to have to be separated from the men and they would use their fans to send message to the men.  Then we had about 20 min of free time to look around the nearby shops.  I wish we would have had more time to wander around but there was so much to see that we just couldn’t.

We went back to the bus to have a panoramic bus tour of the rest of the city.  We saw a lot of pavilions and buildings from the 1992 world expo that was held in Sevilla.  It was interesting to see the more modern looking buildings mixed in with the classic looking Spanish buildings.  Apparently 70% of the expo buildings have been destroyed so I can’t imagine what it must have looked like then.  The bus ride ended at the Spanish Square where we all got off and took pictures just for a few minutes because it is located in a very random part of town.  It is just a big fountain with a semi-circle shaped building around it.  Apparently the semi-circle faces toward South America and represents Spain’s welcoming arms for them.  It is also featured in the movies Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones…haha.  We were all exhausted after a full day of touring so we loaded up the bus and headed for our next city: Córdoba!

Vino, Tapas, y Flamenco ? My Day in Cádiz

I already love Spain!!  This morning I woke up at 6:30am to see the sunrise over the beautiful Spanish coastline.  The ship actually docked around 8:15am and then we were cleared by customs and allowed to get off the ship by 9:15am.  I thought there would be a huge line of people trying to get off the ship, but there was no one waiting (maybe because it was so early?) so my friend, Janae, and I just walked right off the ship and onto the first land we have seen in a week!  It was definitely a little weird to be walking around without the rocking sensation, and I felt like sometimes I was walking funny myself because I was so used to it.  Janae and I walked around the city just wandering the streets – we found a few monuments and walked a little of the coastline before grabbing a chocolate filled pastry in a shop that we found.  We sat and ate it in the Plaza de San Antonio where there were lots of cute restaurants.  It would have been nice to sit and have some café con leche or churros but we didn’t have time because I had to be back at the ship by 10:15am to leave for my wine excursion!

There was a group of 45 students and 2 teachers who boarded a bus for a 30min ride to the nearby city of Jerez.  Jerez is one of the cities in the Sherry triangle which is the only region allowed to put the name of Sherry wine on their product (I know we learned all about this in Napa!).  Sherry wine in Spain is actually called Vino de Jerez because Sherry is the British name of it that came from British mispronunciation of the region.  We had a tour guide on the bus and she was great and told us a lot about the history of the region and the cities we passed on the highway during our drive.

When we arrived in Jerez, we went right to our winery tour at Gonzalez Byass.  The tour was so cool and it was definitely a showy winery with mediocre wine to back it up, but it was still really cool to hear about the process of how they make both Sherry wine and brandy.  We actually got to ride around for part of the tour on an adorable little train through the gardens and statues of the giant Tio Pepe logo (Tio Pepe is the company that owns the bodega I think?).  I’m sure MK thinks the name bodega sounds familiar – well do you remember Bodega the winery dog?  Well I learned that a bodega is actually an above ground wine cellar and also sort of like the Spanish word for winery.  For example, the place we went to was Gonzalez Byass – La Bodega Tio Pepe (aka: Tio Pepe’s winery).  I’m not sure how that can actually be good for the wine because it was really hot outside and even though it was slightly cooler in the bodegas, they were just above ground and pretty similar to the air temperature, but I guess it works.  Some highlights of the tour included seeing how they make their Lepanto brandy and smelling the alcohol content of the brandy in 3 different phases of production, and also seeing the gigantic 16,500 Liter barrel of wine they have in the apostle room where the giant barrel represents Jesus and it is flanked by 6 slightly smaller barrels on either side named for each of the apostles in the order they are pictured in The Last Supper painting.

After the tour we went to the largest tasting room I have ever seen.  There were just rows and rows of 4-person tables with potato chips on them (no bland crackers).  Then they gave each table one small bottle of their wine to try and you could pay extra to get tapas or something if you wanted but we all had box lunches from the ship that we ate.  The wine was really strong and didn’t taste very good so I just had a glass but there were plenty of guys going around trying to get as drunk as possible and finishing any bottles that tables didn’t want.  The professor leading the trip was hilarious and made it really fun.  On the way back from the winery we drove around the city of Cádiz and the tour guide was able to tell us all about the buildings that I had seen when walking around the city earlier.  I found it interesting that pretty much every building in Cádiz used to be used for the military and has now been converted into anything from a university to a hotel.  A lot of the cool old stuff around Cádiz are military fortresses and walls because of its prime location on the very Southern tip of Spain.

Wow, I can’t believe that was just the first half of the day!  We got back to the ship around 4pm then I met back up with Janae and we wandered around the city trying to find the landmark Catedral of Cádiz and some tapas of course!  We were in luck because when we made it to the cathedral (which was beautiful, of course) we also found a cute tapas place called “La Catedral” with outdoor tables right in the plaza in front of the cathedral.  So we ordered some sangria which was so delicious and refreshing after walking around in the hot sun and then we had some trouble with the tapas.  Both Janae and I have high school Spanish so we don’t quite remember everything and our waiter spoke really fast with a thick lisp from Spain and we could not understand a word.  After really long conversation of trying to order (normally you can just point at the tapas you want but since we were outside we didn’t have any menu or anything and we had no idea what tapas they had), we finally told him to just bring us his 5 favorite tapas.  The menu that day was 5 tapas and a drink for 10 Euro so we had to choose 5.  Our waiter just kind of laughed at us but it turned out to be the best decision we made because we have no idea what we ate but it was DELICIOUS!!  We figured out that the dishes were: ham, chicken, potato salad, paella, and some sort of mystery seafood.  We didn’t really care what it was because that meal, complete with delicious sangria, was the best I have had in a while!

There was another Semester at Sea sponsored trip scheduled for that night that Janae had a ticket for so I walked with her back to the ship.  Then on the way I decided that the event sounded like a lot of fun so when we were on the pier I just bought a ticket on the spot and hopped on the bus to head to the Andalucian Flamenco Night!  (Andalucia is the name of the Southern region of Spain).  This trip turned out to be so much fun!  There were actually 5 buses of students and faculty that went on this trip, instead of just 1 like the morning trip, but we still had a tour guide for the bus ride which was really interesting yet again.  We drove out to the countryside (approx. 30 min again) where we got off and were greeted with glasses of Sherry wine for everyone.  Then we all went into a small practice bull-fighting ring where we watched a really cool show.  First they had Flamenco dancing where the ladies danced with a horse and a guy walked beside the horse and pulled the reins a certain way to make his feet do different dance moves.  It was something I had never seen before and was really cool!  After that show we got to watch a test bull fight where a really hot matador-in-training just did some of the cape trick stuff in the ring with a small calf.  We learned from our tour guide that this is like a test for the calf to see if they are aggressive enough to mother a bull for the big-time ring or something like that.  Anyway it was pretty fun to chant along with the music and stuff, and it didn’t hurt that the matador was muy guapo.

After that we all filed out of the ring and they gave us another glass of Sherry wine and then we went into a room full of round tables.  The tables were set with pitchers of sangria and more tapas!  This time there was 1 plate of queso y jamón and another 1 of Tortilla Hispañola (a potato and egg tortilla).  Again, all the food and sangria was delicious!  After we munched for a little bit the dancers started performing another Flamenco routine.  This time since we were inside there was a live guitar player and singer and just the dancers (minus the horses).  They were amazing dancers and the show was a very fun atmosphere!  After they were done they put on regular Spanish dance music and started pulling up people to dance with them (luckily not me because I would have looked like a fool!).  Eventually the whole place was just dancing to the Flamenco music.  Then of course, because we are a bunch of stupid Americans, the place puts on the Macarena so imagine a giant room with like 400 Americans and 5 Spanish Flamenco dancers doing a massive Macarena – it was hilarious and amazing all at the same time!  Finally it was time to depart and everyone just got up and in the mood to dance with the Macarena and the night was over!  Everyone was ready to dance the night away there!  We all just rode the bus back to the ship (I’m pretty sure most people just fell asleep), but it was really cool to drive around Cádiz at night for the first time.

Now I am finally back in my room and I have so much to do before I leave tomorrow for my 3-day excursion!  I apologize for the crazy long and detailed post (a lot of it is for my own memories too!).  It’s hard to believe that I had this much to say after just one day in Spain!  If I wasn’t traveling tomorrow, I could definitely see myself spending more time in Cádiz because it was beautiful and we didn’t even scratch the surface of all the awesome things there are to see here, especially the beaches.  If you made it this far in the post – thanks for reading and congrats!  I will post again when I get back to the ship on Saturday!

Spain Tomorrow!

Fun fact that I learned today: my deck is named the Venus deck and my side of the floor is at Adriatic Sea…pretty sweet

Anyway, tonight is my last night on the ship before we arrive at our first port: Cadiz, Spain!  We have been on the ship for 8 days now and everyone is itching to set foot on land.  I haven’t heard anything about how it is supposed to be once we step on solid land.  I’m sure it will be weird after being on a rocking ship for a week straight!  We had a pre-port meeting tonight (we will have one before every stop) to talk about logistics, where to meet for excursions, emergency information, and they basically told us all to make sure we are on time for everything.  My itinerary for our 4 days in Spain is as follows:

Wed. June 24th – Touring a winery then attending a lecture about wine production and management in Spain (hopefully it will include some tasting!) then I have the rest of the day free in Cadiz

Thurs. June 25th thru Sat. June 27th – I will be on a SAS sponsored trip to Sevilla, Cordoba, and Granada.  I have heard such wonderful things about these places and Spain in general – I am so excited!!

Well I really have to get to bed tonight because it is already midnight and tomorrow will be an early day!  I’m hoping to be able to get up at 6am to see the coast of Spain before docking in port.  I know I will be restless tonight because I’m so excited!

mmm...Spanish Food

Well today was just a regular day of classes and every night they usually have a lecture on something that you are able to attend called “Explorer Seminars.”  Sometimes they are really random like one night was for if you wanted to learn beginner sign language.  Tonight was the first night that I went because this one was given by a UVa Spanish professor called “How to Dine Out in Spain.”  Let me just say that my mouth was pretty much watering the entire presentation!  All the food looked soooooo amazing it made me so excited to get off this ship!  First we learned about all the Spanish meal times and siesta which I vaguely remembered from middle school Spanish culture lessons.  Then the professor just went into lots of different types of food that we would find like churros con chocolate, tons of paella, and of course lots of tapas!  I don’t even normally like olives, but his description of the olives that they have there even made me want to eat a whole bowl!  Anyway, now I am pretty sure I will be constantly hungry for some Spanish food all day tomorrow, then Wednesday we all get to wake up in Cadiz!!

Rock the Boat

Tonight was the first night of an event from the Special Events Committee.  It is obviously planned kind of on short notice, but it was the “Rock the Boat” dance tonight.  I think it is kind of hard for them to plan events because they have to include everyone on the ship – students, faculty, lifelong learners, and families.  So basically it wasn’t a normal dance with popular music – more like wedding music with lots of YMCA-type stuff.  Everyone pretty much hung out around the union and ate the free food before dispersing to various other nighttime activities.

We also discovered that they show movies on the TVs in all the rooms.  They change the movies every day but each channel has a theme.  There are 2 cultural channels (currently showing Spanish-related movies), 1 kids and family channel, and 1 popular movie channel.  It’s kind of nice to know that there is something to watch if you got really bored.

Now it’s off to bed for the first night without a time change in a while.  Got another full day of classes tomorrow and we are one day closer to Spain!

Tour of the MV Explorer

I realized that I never told you all about the ship (MV Explorer) so I will let you know all of the awesome stuff that we have.  Ideally I would love to have photos with this, but our Internet doesn’t allow for sending photos.  So here is how it goes:

Decks 2 thru 4 – Just lots and lots of cabins.  Deck 2 is partially crew area and partially student cabins while decks 3 and 4 are completely student cabins.  I live on deck 4 with a big window in room 4137 which is great because we are toward the back of the boat so there is very little rocking and we are right by the stairs so dinner is literally 12 steps away.  The rooms also decrease in size as you go on lower decks and the noise gets louder so I have a perfect location.

Deck 5 – This deck has the main dining room which is the largest dining room and usually has less of a line to get food since there are 4 food lines instead of 2 on the upper deck dining room.  The main dining room is considered the quiet study area when it is not meal time while the lounges on the 6th deck are for group study.  My personal favorite study space is on this deck – Classroom 9.  It is right next to the dining room but is sectioned off so it is really quiet and there are never very many people there.  This deck also has the main front desk area which is where you go for all your questions and to turn anything in.  There are also more cabins – mostly suites for the lifelong learners, some students, and some faculty.

Deck 6 – This deck has pretty much everything.  The student union is at one end which is where they hold the large Global Studies class and special events or lectures.  Next to the union is the library and computer lab.  I was surprised that there wasn’t really space to study in the library – it is literally just the bookshelves.  But the computer lab is nice with lots of computers and table space if you bring your laptop there.  The other end is the Garden Lounge which is another place to get meals and also has snack time at night.  The Garden Lounge extends to the back deck with tables and chairs when it is nice outside.  In the middle and scattered around the rest of the deck are the campus store, piano lounge, and the majority of the classrooms.  The piano lounge is just like a bar and chairs along the hallway with classrooms on the other side.  The bar is only open from 5-8pm and sells candy bars, chips, pop, etc.  A lot of the classrooms are made with those removable walls which are taken down at night time to open up for more sitting space.

Deck 7 – This deck consists of the faculty lounge, wellness center/spa, and pool.  The faculty lounge is beautiful with floor to ceiling windows and a fully stocked bar (we only get beer or wine offered to us).  The wellness center is kind of sad because it is very small and hot with 5 ellipticals, 2 treadmills, and 2 stationary bikes for all 800+ people on the ship.  There is a sign up sheet that goes out at 7pm the previous day that you have to sign up for a 30 min. time slot if you want to use the machines.  The spa is really nice and offers a lot of the usual salon services and lots of different massages and stuff.  They keep passing out coupons for services so maybe I will use one someday.  The pool is really small but on a large deck with the pool bar/grill.  This is the “party deck” at night because the bar/grill is open from 8pm-midnight and it is the only place for students to get any alcohol (even though they limit you to 3 drinks of beer/wine a night).  It also serves the burgers, hotdogs, fries, candy, etc. until midnight.  I don’t think that the pool has even been filled yet since there hasn’t really been a nice enough day for people to go swimming, but I’m sure that it will be once we get to the Mediterranean!

Officially in Europe

Today was another normal day at sea except we did have something exciting happen: we have officially crossed into Europe!  About 2 hours ago we saw our first land since we left.  There were 2 very small islands in the middle of the ocean that were formed from volcanoes (similar to the Hawaiian Islands).  They definitely look like islands that could be in the show LOST since they are so far out here in the middle of nowhere.  They are formed here because of the Mid-Atlantic ridge which is where the North American plate and European plate collide.  This means that since we have passed it we are officially in Europe!  I overheard someone saying that the islands are owned by Portugal and we were close enough to see that there were definitely some people living on the larger one (approx. 4,000?).  All I know is that must be one close-knit town because it is pretty much impossible to leave!

 

The rest of the day was pretty much uneventful – just a regular class day and no special events tonight.  We get to jump forward another hour tonight so we are moving right along!

3rd Day at Sea

The weather was back to being dreary today, and it was just another regular day of classes.  In global studies all we did was learn a map of the Mediterranean – good thing I love Sporcle and learned it already :o)  Some people are freaking out that our teacher goes like really fast, but I think it’s fine.  Then in Stress Management we just laid in the big student union and “meditated” for like an hour.  Everyone just fell asleep with the rocking of the boat.  It is like a main area of the ship so other people would like walk in and be like wow what is going on?  I’m pretty sure everyone is jealous of our class since we get naptime everyday.  My last class was just a normal lecture, but we already had to start doing group meetings tonight and I have a great group so that is a relief.

The food on the ship is pretty decent.  I have never made it to breakfast (it stops serving at 8:30am and my first class isn’t until 9:20am) because I would clearly have to make the effort to get up almost an hour early.  The lunches and dinners always have a lot of variety – usually salad bar, a pasta, potatoes, steamed veggies, and 2 types of meat to choose from.  It’s not the best food but it is definitely edible and the pastas are always pretty good since that is hard to mess up.  I’ve been trying to eat the salad these first few days because pretty soon the lettuce will most likely not be fresh anymore.  The best part of the night is snack time which is from 10-10:30 every night while we are at sea.  The have little triangular PB&J, chicken salad and tuna sandwiches, veggie wraps, and also a different variety of sweets every night.  There is also a pool grill/snack bar that is open from 8pm-midnight that has burgers, hotdogs, pizza, candy, chips, pop, etc. but those all cost additional money and I haven’t eaten anything from there yet since I go to the free snack time!

Our clocks moved forward an hour last night and they jump forward again tonight!  We are losing so many hours but at least none of us will have jet lag.  It is kind of weird to be having 23 hour days on the way there and then 25 hour days on the way back.  Also sort of interesting – I heard that the captain pretty much gets to choose when we move the clocks since there aren’t really specific time zones as we cross.  I guess it makes the most sense to just change an hour every day.

On another note – we reach Spain in only 4 days!!  We will be docking in Cadiz (where I will spend 1 night) then heading on a SAS sponsored trip to Sevilla, Granada, and Cordoba.  I have free time for one afternoon in Sevilla and one evening each in Granada and Cordoba.  Let me know if you have any suggestions of things to do or great spots I should visit!  Thanks for the comments!!

First Day of Classes

Today was the first day of classes on the ship!  It started off at 9:20am with Global Studies.  That is the class that everyone is required to take and the professor seems like he will at least be entertaining.  Today’s lecture was all relating back to the movie 300 so it was good to see that he was trying to connect Mediterranean history with everyone.  It should end up being a pretty easy class though.  The book for it is a coffee table book filled mostly with artsy pictures so I will have a nice book to show off my time in the Mediterranean.

My next class was Physiology of Stress and Stress Management at 10:45am.  The professor of this class is a psychiatrist who lives on an Indian Reservation and doesn’t normally teach classes so he was definitely a little out there.  He had us doing meditation exercises already and is burning CDs with meditation music for everyone to have.  The workload for the class is definitely smaller than the other ones because our homework involves some reading and then doing meditation like 5 times a week.

I took my lunch break after stress class then I had Abnormal Psychology at 1:35pm.  I really liked the professor for this class and the material seems the most interesting out of any of my other classes.  He seemed like a really good teacher and also funny so it kept us all entertained.  The reading for this class is from a huge textbook combined with case studies so there is also a lot of reading but should be manageable.

I went to a 4th class, Cross-Cultural Psychology, at 4:15pm because I was interested in switching to that instead of one of the other ones.  It is the same professor as Abnormal Psychology, so he was entertaining yet again.  The class went over the syllabus and was mainly repetition from his other class.  This class definitely has a lot less work involved than Abnormal Psych.  I ended up being able to switch into this class instead of Abnormal Psych because I can take Abnormal Psych at UVa and the cross-cultural class will be a lot more relevant for the voyage.

My final course schedule will be as follows:
Global Studies 9:20am-10:35am
Physiology of Stress and Stress Management 10:45am-12:00pm
Cross Cultural Psychology 4:15pm-5:30pm

Most people on the ship are freaking out because they actually have to do reading.  I think all the professors definitely seem more relaxed than normal UVa professors.  They are all about flexibility and having things change to go with the flow.  Since a lot of people are getting seasick they are already telling you how to miss class and that it would be ok to make up work, etc.  I definitely think that it will not be a walk in the park, but the classes are very reasonable and manageable if you are careful your time.

Well I’m going to go ahead and get started on my reading for tonight – it is actually a sunny day outside finally so I will probably go sit out on the back deck!

Orientation Day

So apparently my blogs weren’t posting!  Good thing I had written them and saved them in a Word document :o)  Here is the post that I wrote yesterday about the first day at sea, then I will post my blog for today in a little bit.

Last night we had a brief overview meeting where they introduced all of the faculty and staff.  The dean told us some pretty cool facts about our voyage so these are some of the ones that I found interesting:

There are 721 students on this voyage (847 people total with faculty, staff, and families) and this is the first voyage ever to have full enrollment.

There are 300 schools represented on this voyage, and the top 3 are as follows: U of Colorado, U of Pittsburgh, followed by UVa with 32 students.  Colorado and Pittsburgh were the previous schools that sponsored the Semester at Sea program.

Anyway, at the end of the meeting we broke up into small groups that had been assigned to us when we boarded the ship.  These groups are pretty nice because they are smaller (mine has 12 people) and led by a staff member to talk about experiences or questions or anything.  It is a pilot program to have these groups so they are not quite sure how often we will meet, but last night we did get to know you activities and then this morning we met again to talk about the trip so far.  The rest of the day today we have just been at presentations straight through.  There was a lunch break when everyone took naps and ate and then it was back to presentations about various topics for another 3 hours.  A lot of it was extremely repetitive from UVa orientation about honor code and such, so I found it pretty boring.

Seasickness has definitely hit the ship!  They give out free seasickness pills everywhere on the ship, so I haven’t been sick at all and my room is in the back of the boat which is much smoother than the front.  It is getting pretty hard to walk around the ship normally since it is pretty up and down, but everyone looks stupid trying to walk with the handrails so it is fine.  The TV in our room shows 2 channels: one with ship announcements and daily schedules and the other one has a map of where we are in the ocean and how fast we are going, etc.  The map channel shows that we are definitely in the middle of the Atlantic right now and the water looks like it!  It is pretty cold and misty outside and the water definitely looks extremely cold and isn’t as blue as tropical ocean.

I think that is pretty much all for this afternoon – not a very exciting day.  Classes start tomorrow so it will be interesting to start those and then there will definitely be more free time to explore the ship instead of being stuck in meetings all day.  Hope to hear from everyone soon!!

Arrival in Halifax

Hello everyone!
I successfully arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia earlier this afternoon!  I met up with one of my roommates for the night, Janae, and we took the shuttle (which was completely full of Semester at Sea kids) from the airport to our hotel.  The city was just crawling with students here for Semester at Sea and you could just see all the little clusters of people walking around and exploring. When we went to check in we were informed that there were no rooms ready yet and that we should check back later when they would all be clean.  So we stored our luggage at the desk and went over to mingle with a group of 4 kids who were hanging out in the lobby of the hotel.  It was great to start meeting a bunch of people and everyone around is here for Semester at Sea so there is always something to talk about.  Anyway, the group we were talking to was headed to the Citadel (which I had no idea what is was, but when we got there I saw was some sort of important historical site that I should probably google).  So we walked to the Citadel and looked around inside - it is just like a big military fortress and there was a Canadian military museum inside also.  It was pretty cool and I already took lots of pictures!  Then we continued to walk through the city to the Public Garden which is just a huge garden that is so gorgeous with trees, flowers, and fountains.  It was clearly smaller that Central Park, but I definitely thought it was prettier.  We spent some time wandering around the garden and found out that there were actually a lot of people out enjoying the beautiful weather since it was Canadian Earth Day!  After the garden we decided to walk down to the water to see our Semester at Sea ship which looked awesome - I can't wait to board tomorrow!  We continued to walk down a cute boardwalk area with restaurants and ended up eating at a pizza place that was really yummy.  Then we all headed back to our hotel - Janae and I really needed showers and a nap!  When we got back to the hotel we tried to check in and apparently they only had one room with a king size bed - but we had 3 people staying the night.  I asked what he suggested we do, and they happenned to have one more rollaway bed left in the hotel which they sent up to our room.  And the best part is that our room is kind of an upgrade because we are on the top floor (the special floor that you need to have a key to swipe into) which also includes a free breakfast for tomorrow morning that is only avaliable to guests on the 6th floor!  I feel pretty cool, haha, and I'm glad that the lack of rooms ended up turning out to be great!  I'm looking forward to meeting more people tonight and then boarding the ship tomorrow!

Semester at Sea Itinerary

Hello to all my friends and family!  This website is where I will try to keep you all updated on where I am in the world and what I am doing while I am on my amazing Semester at Sea!!  Feel free to leave comments on these blogs (you don't have to sign in or be a member to do so) or you can also send me an email and I will try to check it as often as I can.

With only 2 short weeks until departure, I am going to post the itinerary for the voyage this summer.  I will be going to 8 different countries in Europe and Africa, and couldn't be more excited!

June 16: Depart from Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 24-27: Cadiz, Spain
July 1-5: Naples, Italy
July 7-10: Dubrovnik, Croatia
July 13-16: Piraeus (Athens), Greece
July 18-22: Istanbul, Turkey
July 24-27: Varna, Bulgaria
July 30-Aug 3: Alexandria (Cairo), Egypt
Aug 9-12: Casablanca, Morocco
Aug 22: Return to Norfolk, Virginia