Friday January 14, 2011 2nd full day at sea

This is ridiculous. I still can’t believe it is finally here.

Today is my second full day at sea. We departed at 2200 hours on Wednesday and it was pretty emotional on the ship. A ton of parents were standing with huge signs and screaming up at us from the dock. Many pictures were taken and I witnessed some tears as the ship started to inch away very slowly. The ships horn blew 3 times to symbolize the start of the journey around the world. We will be arriving in Dominica on Sunday so everybody is pretty excited for that.

The first thing I was pretty worried about was meeting my roommate. A little worried he might be weird or the chance I don’t get along with him. But thank god he is normal. His name is Charlie DeMar from Chicago but attends U of Arizona. We get along really well and I’m sure we will be doing a few field practica in the countries together. I am one of only 2 or 3 kids on the ship from WNY which sucks. Seems like everybody is from San Diego, Arizona and PA.

After exploring our ship (the MV Explorer), I am very surprised to see how nice it actually is. Everything seems so new and modern and much better than I pictured. I have been on cruise ships which were not as nice as this one. The stateroom my roommate Charlie and I have has plenty of room to store everything we brought along. It is on second deck outside (room 2040) and contains a porthole so we have a great view low on the ocean.

Classes started this morning and I already attended my Food and Culture class. It is a little bit of a joke but extremely cool at the same time. I will have the opportunity to try so many new foods and to write about them. Most of our assignments consist of taking pictures of the foods we try as we travel. I also have International Business and International Marketing later today. As much as I looked forward to going to school on a ship, I never imagined it would actually be this sick. I literally am sitting in a class of 70% women and look out the window at the wide open ocean. It is JANUARY and I am walking along an outside deck to class in short sleeves, sunglasses and shorts, feeling the rocking of the waves. I promise it gets no better than this. Marv Levy, “where would you rather be?”