The last few dayssss!

Today we just went to the beach all day long. It was a bit cloudy outside but honestly the weather was actually perfect. I’m not a fan of hot hot weather and with the sun hidden it was perfect for just lying out. Me Kyle and Stephanie went on a banana boat with this hick family from North Carolina who kept swearing but it was pretty fun. We went to a beach called cabbage beach, which is on Paradise Island, which is right next to the Atlantis hotel. I wanted to walk through the resort but they wouldn’t let us! A day pass to the Atlantis costs 160 dollars so I may never see it lol. The towne hotel is pretty ghetto in the best sort of way lol. Its good for the fact that any time I see someone who is around my age I can almost guarantee that they are doing semester at sea, but it sucks because the rooms are pretty terrible. We have four of us crammed in a four-person room and yesterday our toilet overflowed and got our entire room wet. In a move to save our baggage I threw it on my bed but then I just got the mattress all wet. It was quite the ordeal but the guys across the hallway Maladin and Brian had the bathroom ceiling cave in so we could definitely have it worse. The breakfast at the hotel consists of hard-boiled eggs and toasts…a real winning combination. So needless to say we were starving by lunch however everything here is sooooo expensive and being on Paradise Island and a budget didn’t help. We went o a grocery store and the prices were crazy, I guess because they have to import everything but a jug of milk was $7 and a thing of ritz crackers was 10, if I lived here I would be hella skinny just because I don’t know how people afford to eat! We eventually settled on quiznos. We were outside talking about what deck we are on when a guy was like are u guys doing semester at sea? His name was Andy and he actually went on the Fall 2009 voyage as well. He hung out with us for the rest of the afternoon and it was really nice because he could answer all of our small mundane questions. We left the beach at around 5 and took a ferry back to Nassau. It was cool because we got a pretty good look at the MV Explorer. There are people on it now and its crazy to think that tomorrow I will be getting on it too! Last night was really fun we went to senor frogs and tons of people from semester at sea were there. Not sure what we are doing today but it is sooo hot in our room and so I was up by 8:00. I think I’m gonna try and go back to bed…we’ll see

We sort of bummed around all day but then we went and hung out with some locals. Stephanie had connected with this lady thru a company similar to couchsurfing. We went over to her house and met her son and they took us to a local restaurant and we finally tried conch. That is the animal that lives in the pretty shells everyone holds up to their ears to hear the ocean in. It was soooo good, Niko the son told us to get it with mayo and onions, which sounded weird, but I always take local advice. It was deep-fried with French fries and a roll in this spicy ketchup sauce with the mayo and onion. I felt a bit sick after lol but it was damn good. I get on the ship at 10:40 tomorrow! Finally!

Today we finally got on the ship! Me and one of my roommates Katie were supposed to board at 10:40 so we left the towne at about 10:15 and walked to the ship! It was a bit of a trek with all of our luggage but luckily we were walking with some guys that we met so they helped us out. When we got to the port there was an incredibly long line of SASers waiting to get onto the ship. At first we were stuck waiting in the sun but soon enough we made it into shade. We met a bunch of people in line and other than awkwardly having to shuffle our luggage up in line it was fun waiting. We found out what floors we would be on and I found out I was on deck 3! Going through line they kept telling us about prohibited items that we couldn’t take on and how all of our hair appliances have to be auto shut off. Some girls were freaking because there’s weren’t and they couldn’t take them on. I specifically bought an automatic shut off straightener to use because you aren’t allowed to use normal ones but they didn’t believe me so they took mine away! I have to get documentation and prove it to them before I can get it back, but at least mine made it on the ship unlike the girls who knew theres were not! I’m still trying to look up proof its auto shut off though, because I can’t find the one that I bought on my cell phones internet and I don’t want to waste my precious internet minutes looking ugh its such a pain. Once we got through customs I hit another roadblock because they couldn’t find my SAS ID. I had to get escorted onto the ship and get one at the purser’s desk and when I got it my face was stretched out super wide and I look double my weight! Then I went to find my room and it was soooooo hard to find. The ship is amazingly nice but it’s honestly like a maze. I’m living in an area of the ship that we have taken to calling the Bermudas triangle. It’s in the front of the ship and really hard to find and we are the only rooms who use keys! I’m in an economy room, which basically means my room is a bit more crowded because it is made to be for 4 people. Luckily I saw that I only had three a girl from New Jersey named Erin and another girl from Cali named Sam. Erin was work-study so she had already moved in, and Sam wasn’t there yet so I was able to move all of my stuff in fairly easily. Our room was set up with a bunk bed against the left wall and then a single on the right. Erin took the top bunk so I luckily snagged the single and got to work unpacking which took foreverrrrr. By the time I was done I was exhausted and we still had meetings and what not. Sam still had not arrived and although it sounded mean, Erin and me were secretly hoping she wouldn’t show up so we could have the room to ourselves. We got our wish and now we have a four-person room all to ourselves!!!! While our room is still small being economy and all it is really nice because we have a ton of storage space. Then we went to a bunch of orientations. At the initial orientation we just talked about expectations and found out that we were leaving Nassau at 8 PM. Leaving Nassau was crazy it was an unreal experience watching our ship pull away from port knowing that this was going to be my home for the 100 odd days. Everyone was really excited and we were all just taking pictures and cheering. Then we had another meeting to meet our small discussion groups and have a sea meeting. By this point I started to get really seasick. I felt super nauseous and my sea bands only helped a little bit so the meetings were pretty difficult, but it was nice to meet people and one of my roommates from the Bahamas and some other people I had already met ended up being in my small group which was tight! Its funny being from the west coast because so many are from the east coast or Cali and think that some of my phrases are really weird. For example no one says hella, and I keep getting made fun of. But I feel like the way other people speak is weirder for example Katie says water like “wooder” which sounds super funny and they things are “smoke” when they are cool I dunno its going to take some getting use to. Anyways I went to the sea meeting and met more people I am part of the yellow sea and we are determined to win the sea Olympics. The sea Olympics is a huge tournament against all the different seas on the ship and consists of different tournaments like basketball, a lip-sync competition, and synchronized swimming. I also signed up to try and get elected to be the representative for my sea to be on the sea council or the leadership council on the ship. By this point I was really seasick so I sort of just stumbled to bed among all the others weaving against the waves and tried to go to sleep. We were supposed to set our clocks up an hour but somehow I set mine up wrong and I ended up waking up really late! Today all we have been doing is going from meeting to meeting and learning about the expectations that we have on ship. We also have our involvement fair tonight which is where we can set up/sign up for clubs. I am planning on starting a dance club on the ship and also want to get involved with the community service club. Tomorrow we start classes. Classes are a bit weird because we have them everyday we are on sea even if it’s a Saturday or a Sunday. We rotate between classes on A or B days all of my classes are on B days so I actually won’t start classes until Saturday. We reach Dominica on Sunday and I am going on a bumping tour where we do a bunch of different activities like swimming, climbing, and zip lining it should be fun hopefully the weather is good because there are rumors it might be a bit cloudy out! I will check in soon!