Ok. This has been quite a week. It caught me offguard when I just realized that this voyage has been under siege for 5 days.
Let me start from the beginning.
The ship is great. I have a cool roommate - my living situation was de-trippled. There are 730 students to be exact. Students are from EVERYWHERE! There are about 200 crew members that maintain the ship and we have about 30 faculty. I enjoy the food. The three designated meals a day is heaven. However, the first few days were really rough. I discovered my seasickness. The motion and unsteadiness made me so nauseaus. But because I had so much prior experience due to chemo I knew what to do - BE STILL! So when I wasn't working or in class I was in the bed.
*Random moment - Listening to "Again" by John Legend at a Starbucks in San Juan, Puerto RIco. Hey, gotta wireless internent *looks out the top of glasses. However, it isn't too hard to believe because Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the US. I almost feel like I am in Cali.*
In addition, due to wearing flip flops on the ship I managed to cut my pinky toe. I already had a slight cut from carrying things and helping the other students get acclimated to the ship, somehow I slightly cut it. However, the first day after waking up and headed to our orientation meeting I managed to trip over a step we must have hit a wave or something - I hyperextended my toe by missing the step and cut it pretty deeply. That hurt. So I missed some of the meeting and have been nursing my toe for the past few days. Good times.
Jan. 23, 2008 - Seeing a tugboat support in moving from the Bahemian port to get started on the journey was so wild for 2 reasons.
Reason 1: I didn't know tugboats were real! I was really excited to see it. I hadn't even said the word tugboat since I was like 6 or 7, I think. The name of the little tugboat - well, it looked small from where I was on the 6th deck of the ship - MV Explorer. The majority of the students, if not all, were all standing outside bidding our farewells to the people standing at on dryland. There were tears, there were faces full of happiness. Some happy to embark upon seeing many cultures and meeting many people, some to get the hell away - period, some of mystery, and etc. The common denominatior is that we all looked out and knew that we have an interesting couple of months ahead of us. I mean it's so wild to now have to live with 800+ new people. Well, yeah, granted, some folks have made myspace friends, facebook, clubs from school, but nothing can really prepare you for the rest. Luckily, I knew of one friend through a friend. Her name is Liane and she is actually sitting right in front of me at Starbucks as I write this piece. Even better is that she lives like 4 doors down.
Reason 2: I have a window with my cabin - LOVE IT! It was truly remarkable to go to sleep to the ocean at your side and to wake up and see the ocean. And as I've mentioned I got motion sickness, in the same breath, the ocean made me feel like I was being rocked, como un bebe, and I slept soooo well. I can't help but realize the fact that there are like schools of fish beneath the ship as we sail. After being on the ship for a few days it took me by surprise that I wasn't stressed, but actually felt pretty good. Well, we did hit a few rough patches that had me reaching for the motion sickness patch with a quickness. But it all worked out. Thus, getting closer to San Juan, Puerto Rico I was really confused when we are docked and I get to leveled land and it feels weird. I guess I've partially grown my "sea legs."
The name of the blog came from listening to one of our admin folks during his speech. I loved it when he said that we will be chasing summer. The time thing is not hard but weird. It takes me a minute to realize what time it is when I email or try to call someone. My little phone card was docked so many minutes from calling from an international payphone.
While in port I had the opportunity to go on a full city tour of San Juan y Old San Juan. In addition, we had a welcome reception and had the fortune of interacting with students at Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico. I had a great time and had a great time speaking Spanish and dancing salsa and really having conversations about the academic experiences that parallel and don't.
Our next port of call is Salvador, Brazil. I am really looking forward. More to come.
I am just writing off of the top of my head, right now. I realized the best thing for me to do is to write things in Microsoft Word and then transfe when I get internet access.
Fortunately, I am one of the folks that greets the students when they come to port.
Well, I must packup and get ready to head back. We hit the seas again, tonight.
