Randiandersen's travel blogs:
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Day 3
Entry 9 of 92 | show all | print this entry |
So I'm cheating a little on these; putting different countries down when really we're just out in the water in between them, but it's the only way I can get the map pins close. It'll be interesting to see what it all actually looks like when I'm done, because I don't have time to put the pins where I really want them so I have to cheat to get the computer to get them close and then move them really quick and get offline. :D So forgive the crazy country names; the good news is that all those countries have actually been sighted from the ship!!! Woohoo!
Also sorry that I keep posting so many entries at once. I hope that's not too horribly confusing. Don't "jump to latest entry" or you'll miss a whole bunch! :D
So we crossed a time zone and changed our clocks last night. Thank goodness it was an hour back and not an hour forward because I forgot. But I did go to bed early and sleep in until 9 so I finally got a good night's sleep for the first time since before leaving home. I'm still sleepy all the time; I think it's all this sunlight and water and being gently rocked to sleep constantly by the ocean. Today is a really calm day though; the Mediterranean at its best. I can see some land Port Forward; I'm not sure what it is but it must be part of Africa. I haven't been back to the cabin to check the cruise channel that has our little ship icon on a map with our charted course. I'm hoping this blog map will look like that eventually, but I don't have the internet minutes to spend figuring out how to make it look like I want or tinkering with the map pins to get them in just the right place. Maybe I'll find a really cheap connection in port later this week and can spend half an hour posting pictures and fine-tuning the blog.
This morning I had my first class at 10:20: Politics of Terrorism. At first I was hugely intimidated; not only did I not have the book but everyone else was so much more worldly and experienced and intelligent. But once we all started talking and got into groups and shared our ideas for the course and our questions, I felt a lot more at home even though I still didn't have the background almost everyone else did. It is going to be a great class; the professor is great and the other students are all really nice and very interested in what we are doing. It helps that in order to be here one would really have to want to be here.
It's been an interesting opportunity to start completely from scratch; not as if I could change my personality or as if I would try, but some things, like dancing all night the other night and being the first to introduce myself instead of the last, might be negotiable. We've created a kind of third culture here, where we all came with such different backgrounds and, more importantly, different sets of expectations, that there is not really anyone to impress and no reason, really, to impress them anyway. That's the kind of students who are gathered on this amazing trip: the kind that have high expectations for the world but won't be disappointed if you yourself don't meet them single-handedly.
I had lunch immediately after my first class and today we had ice cream! That was most definitely the high point of the day. I ate with some people I hadn't met yet, and then went out on deck to read and promptly fell asleep. I did, however, remember sunscreen and have yet to get sunburned. Aren't you proud? I woke up fifteen minutes before my second class, Intercultural Communication, and was seated five minutes early just like I'd planned. That class was unfortunately not what I expected; the professor speaks very slowly and seems unaccustomed to his position. We could have accomplished three times the amount of introductions and course information than what we actually did. Oy. I still don't really know what the class is going to be about and I'm wondering if I should try to change professors. Although I don't know if it is possible, there is another section offered at the same time with another professor who I know to be much more interesting and engaging. I'll have to look into that.
That class just ended and I'm out on the deck again, waiting for dinner time. It seems I'm always hungry and always tired. Must be all this lying around. But this is the life, you know? Blue sky, the bluest water you've ever seen, a constant breeze in my hair - what could be more like Heaven than that? You can imagine I'm feeling a little spoiled.
The crew on the ship spoils us, too - someone comes in every day to make the beds and clean the bathroom and check to see if our laundry is ready. Wash and fold for a bag of laundry is $5; I haven't needed to do that yet and fully intend to fill the bag as full as humanly possible. They'll change the sheets and towels every four days and they keep everything neat and stocked. I sort of feel guilty sometimes, but it's also really nice to come home to a nice clean bed and a clean bathroom every day and not have to do it myself. Talk about being spoiled. They clean up after us at mealtimes, too, and to top it off they're all so friendly and helpful. Our cabin crew leader, Ephrain, is just the most friendly guy you'll ever meet and remembered my name from the very first introduction. I always feel like we're in great hands and not only safe but spoiled to boot.
I'm still standing behind my decision not to buy textbooks, but starting to get a little nervous about it. For one thing, the library doesn't have the books yet and doesn't know when they're going to get them. Apparently they're on the ship, but if they're on the ship why don't we have access to them? All the books that students had shipped to the boat went to Beiruit or somewhere instead of to Athens, so lots of people still don't have their textbooks and I'm certainly in good company where books are concerned. Also, the "readers" that were so expensive turned out to be huge packets of photocopied articles that may or may not even be good qualities Xeroxes. If I'd paid all that money only to find out I was paying for photocopies, I would be a lot more put out than I am, I'll tell you that much. Definitely not worth all the money they paid. I think what we really paid for was the copyright for the articles. But why couldn't they just make them available electronically? Honestly. All of us have access to a university library at home with free access to databases that should have all if not 90% of the articles we're using. They could have just sent out a list. As it is I'm not allowed to check out books because there's only one of each so I'm spending a ridiculous amount of time in the library. The good news is that it's making me get my work done. If I was out on deck reading my own books do you think I'd be working?
The Intranet is also not really working; it was down yesterday afternoon and they still don't have all the bugs worked out of it. I really hope it doesn't take them too long. It's too bad they only had a week's access to the ship before we boarded and set sail; there's still so much to be done. I really give them a lot of credit for the amount they have accomplished as far as logistics are concerned; it is rather frustrating to still have things in progress, but I'm not as put off about it as some of my classmates. We just have to remember that this is the first ever voyage and that we did indeed know that much from the start. You know, little things like a several hundred page reader that is punched for a three-ring binder but there are no binders to be found. Lots of little things like that.
The rest of the evening was lazy; I had dinner, killed some more time, caught the sunset. A spectacular one last night by the way, with two little islands in it that I don't think are even on the map. Something off the coast of Italy. I got some beautiful pictures. Then they showed a movie, The Last King of Scotland, which was actually about a dictator President of Uganda and a young Scottish doctor who went there to help and ended up being wrapped in the political conspiracy. A very intense movie that left me shaking at the end instead of crying. It was straight to bed after that; I was way to caught up in that to write or do homework.
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