Learning to Walk

Yesterday morning Michael and I boarded the M/V Explorer to set sail for Barcelona. We spent most of the day unpacking our bags into our deck 4 cabin. We have a window which is really nice and we wake up to blue water washing by. The ship pulled out around 530pm and we all watched from the rail as we waved our last goodbyes to parents ashore. It hadn’t really sunk in until that moment that we are actually going to spend 10 days at sea. After dinner on the back deck we napped for a little while then went to our Sea meeting. They divide the ship into different seas and we are in the Bering Sea. There are a lot of nice kids in our sea so it has been easy to meet new friends. The waves rocked us to sleep easily as we were pretty tired from all it took to get ready for the trip. Some students aren’t having as much luck and have been fairly seasick but in general people are doing ok. The food has been alright thus far but nothing extraordinary. The pool deck snack bar seems inviting because everything is so cheap there. A large burger is only $3! This morning we got up early for breakfast and began our long day of orientation. The meeting are fairly repetitive but not too bad. We are on a break now for about 2 hours so I may go layout by the pool or grab some lunch with friends. We’re still getting everything around the ship figured out IT wise, so my email isn’t quite working properly yet. It’s really nice not to be dealing with texting, tweeting, or facebooking while out at sea. It really makes us appreciate and the enjoy the endless expanse of ocean we are crossing.

p.s. anne marie – I met Karen! She is hilarious and very friendly. Everyone is jealous of the fact that I have a SAS sweatshirt already. The ship is indeed cold!