Beyti Kebab!

Roman Cisterns

These were neat!  They had an on-going art exhibition in there, with lots of cool lights.

Interior View of the Blue Mosque

It's deceivingly un-blue, eh?

Turkey!

Slowly but surely, I'm working through all these blog entries...

Tuesday:
When we arrived in port, I went on a SAS tour of Istanbul.  We visited all the main tourist attractions: the Şehzade Mosque, the Blue Mosque, the hippodrome (with an egyptian obelisk and the serpent column), the Hagia Sophia, and the Roman Cisterns.  The bronze serpent column was cool to see because we had learned about it in Global Studies - it is made from the melted swords of the defeated persians after the battle of Thermopole. The Hagia Sophia was also really cool.  It was originally built as a christian church, but was converted to a Mosque when Mehmed II conquered Constantinople, changing it into (now) Istanbul.  Now, the Hagia Sophia is just a museum, and Turkey has even started restoration efforts to try to take away all the damages done when it was converted to a mosque (shaving off plaster over Christian mosaics, etc…)  It also rained that day, which was a little upsetting.  I was definitely not prepared mentally or clothing-wise for a downpour.  After this, we went back to the boat, met up with some friends, and ate dinner on the boat.  We also went out to a hooka bar, which was not my cup of tea (although I did actually have a cup of tea, too).  I like to put clean air in my lungs, thank you very much :) Then we went out to a club called Riddum, and then went back to the boat.

Wednesday
On Wednesday, I went on a SAS tour of a lot of the palaces around Istanbul, including some on the Asian side (yay! another continent!)  They were ridiculous.  Never in my life have I seen so much extravagance.  I would say that it would have been cool to live there, but that would likely mean I would have been in the harem, so I won't say that. Let's just say I envy the sultan's lifestyle; that is - before they got shoved out of power in the early 1900's.  Between tours of bejeweled palaces and enormous royal gardens, we stopped for lunch and I (may or may not have) made another kitty friend.  It was teeny weeny and white, with a splotchy orange and black face.  By far the most ornate palace we saw was called the Dolmabahçe Palace.  It housed something like 5 sultans, I can't remember the exact number, but it was really cool.  One little tidbit - all the palaces in the Ottoman Empire are completely symmetric. If you folded them in half, it's a perfect mirror image. I thought that was neat.  And not just architecture layout - the room furnishings too.  After the tours, I went back to the boat to meet up with Karyn, Megan, and Brett, and we all went out to Taksim square for dinner.  We ended up going down some back alley and found ourselves at this restaurant that looked pretty good.  We walked up like 5 flights of stairs, finally getting to these little rooms that all had pillows and pillow benches on the ground and a table like 6 inches off the ground.  So fun!  We had our own little room, and the food was awesome.  I got beyti kebab!!   It felt like I was back in Sunnyvale :)  It tasted pretty much the same, too.  I now have a newfound respect for the authenticity of the Sunnyvale restaurant.  Either way, it was delicious.  Everyone kept stealing little roll-y bites of mine.

Thursday
On Thursday, the four of us went to the Grand Bazaar.  The name doesn't do this place justice - its ENORMOUS.  You walk through the doors, and the place is a city in itself.  Side streets and alleyways and thousands upon thousands of stores - all under one big roof.  It's amazing.  We stopped at a tea shop to get turkish tea, and I also got a "toast with cheese," which is basically a little mini grilled cheese.  After shopping around for a couple hours, we got pretty lost.  We exited out of one of the exits to try to find our bearings, but we were completely lost.  We eventually went with the "walk in a straight line and you'll eventually hit a big road" tactic.  About an hour and a couple enormous hills later, we finally found a taxi and went back to the ship.  There was the Istanbul Modern Art Museum literally nextdoor to the ship, so we went there to check it out.  It was actually really awesome.  My favorite artists were Ergin Inan (i really liked one of his especially, but it was untitled), Mustafa Ata (i'm going to try to find a poster of his "Four Figures"), and Hüseyin Çağlayan (he was their special exhibit and he, besides awesome paintings, is a fashion designer.  they had really cool videos of his runway shows projected onto all the walls).  After the museum, we went back to the ship for dinner and watched Enchanted.

Friday
On Friday morning, Karyn and I went to the Spice Market, which was just across the Golden Horn from the port.  True to its name, it did have a lot of spices in it, but it's mainly turned into a mini Grand Bazaar, with lots of touristy stuff in it.  I also tried turkish ice cream, which is appallingly disgusting.  It's really, really sweet, and has the oddest texture I've ever come across.  It's thick and gummy.  All the people selling it in stands do tricks with it - they'll start wrapping it around a stick and then pull up and the rest will follow and then they'll do stuff like you see men doing with dough in pizza places in the movies.  Thats how sticky and thick it is.  After walking around a bit and looking at the shops, we got some doner kebabs and went back to the boat.  We got our computers and walked across the street to a Starbucks for the free internet, and I played around for about an hour before we had to rush back to get on the bus to go see the Whirling Dervishes!!  It was pretty cool to see. Then we went back to the boat again, got a really late dinner at the pool bar (I got a grilled chicken sandwich), and went back out to Taksim square.  We met up with a guy named Volkan (pronounced like the planet), who Brett went to high school with.  Apparently his immediate family moved to the US when he was like 15, but all of his other family is still in Istanbul, and he has a job there this summer.  I think he goes to school at one of the UC's.  Anyway, it was pretty cool - we had a turkish escort getting us into all the fun clubs and making sure we didn't get lost in the windy streets.

Saturday
On Saturday morning, all of us got together to go to a turkish bath.  It. Was. Awesome.  As we walked in, they brought us up to a top floor, which had these fancy locker rooms.  We stripped down and wrapped ourselves in their little turkish towels, then got led into the big room with a huge, heated, circular marble slab in it.  The room must have been like 500 degrees, because I have never sweat so much in my life.  After laying there for a while, I got up and went over to one of the little alcoves where they have fancy little fountains with separate hot and cold faucets.  They have these little metal basins that you can fill up with whatever temperature water you want and pour all over yourself.  I had to do that a couple times with the cold water only because I was so sweaty.  After laying there for a while, you move out to the edge of the circular slab if you want to get scrubbed down.  You lay there while the lady scrubs you with this fancy scrubber thing and this soap that feels like liquid silk.  I had so much nastiness come off of my body when she scrubbed me - I had no idea I had so much dead skin grossness.  After that, I went and sat outside in the little sitting area and got a fresh squeezed orange juice - literally fresh squeezed.  I watched the lady squeeze like 4 oranges into a cup and hand it to me.  It was delicious!  I also got a cup of their apple tea, which basically tastes like the most delicious apple cider you've ever tasted.  Then I went back in and got a hot oil massage, which was fabulous as well.  After that, I took a shower in a shower stall where the head was on the ceiling, about a foot in diameter, and just rained down on you.  Best day ever!!  After that, we headed back to the boat and got ready to head off to Egypt.

View of a Greek sunset from the top deck of the ferry boat, on the return trip from Aegina

It was sooooooo windy up on the top deck.  I braved it to get a photo of the sunset.  I kept thinking of the Coles and their tales of the wind on the Alaskan cruise; mine wasn't nearly that crazy though!

Aegina

This picture was the view of the beach and harbor from our hotel room window!  So pretty!

A picture of me and my aforementioned kitten friend at Delphi

Delphi

Here's a view of the amphitheatre and and the surrounding valley at Delphi.  I love this picture!  It's actually my computer background right now :)

Karyn, Megan, and I at the Acropolis

GREECE!

slowly but surely, I am finding time to write blog entries.  It's going to be tough, though - I have 17 pages left to write IN SPANISH in the next three days! eek.

Here's the account of my time in Greece!

Wednesday:
The first day in Greece was one of the hottest days of my entire life. Karyn, Megan and I went on a tour of Athens and went up onto the Acropolis. I picked the best day of the trip to forget my sunglasses - all the white marble was reflecting like crazy in the sun, and I could barely open my eyes.  All joking aside, though, it was really really cool to see this place in person. The parthenon was awesome!  After walking around for a little, we came down off the hill and got frozen lemonade for like 5 bucks.  It was a total ripoff, but this place knew they had a monopoly of frozen goods right outside the gates, and they were totally taking advantage of it.  I also got a little salami, feta cheese, and tomato sandwich-on-a-roll thing, which was yummy.  After this, we went back to the boat and took showers, which was completely necessary; we were all really really sweaty.  We went out to eat at the first restaurant we found outside of the port - an (you guessed it!) Irish pub called O'Connell's. I was really craving some sort of american food, so I had a tuna melt - quite possibly the most delicious tuna melt of my life.  We also had a bottle of Greek white wine, which was so yummy.  I actually took close up pictures of the bottle so we could be sure to find it again.  For those of you who care, it was called Hλiδα ("Ilida"), a blend of 50% Moschofilero, 40% Chardonnay, and 10% Gewurztraminer.  I don't know what those mean, but it was good.

Thursday:
Thursday I went on a day trip to Delphi, the ancient mountain city where the "Oracle" sat.  When we arrived there, we went around the museum to get a sense of what we would see out in the site, and the museum was great!  It was informative without being boring.  After looking around the museum for about an hour and a half, we went outside to the archeological site.  Because Delphi is built on a hillside, it was a bit of a zig-zagging climb, but it was awesome!  We saw the temple, the amphitheater, the stadium, and all sorts of other cool ruins - not to mention a beautiful view of the valley.  On the way out, I found a stray kitten friend.  I don't know if I've expressed my love for the stray kittens on this blog yet.  I may or may not pick them up :-/  Don't worry (especially lolo), I always purel heavily afterward.  After Delphi, we went to a small little family-owned restaurant in the valley below.  It had floor to ceiling windows almost all the way around the building, and the views of the mountains around were so gorgeous.  The food was awesome too!  They brought us out appetizers like dolmas, spanakopita, fried cheese, and a fried zucchini ball, not to mention the mass amounts of delicious pita and tzatziki sauce.  Then we got a salad, which basically consisted of feta cheese, olives, and a little bit of lettuce.  AKA the salad of my dreams.  New rule for my future household - there will always be a brick of feta cheese at hand.  And tzatziki.  And pita.  Then we got a plate with rice and what I can best describe as a burger patty made out of lamb, which was yummy.  I smothered it in tzatziki, too.  For dessert, I took the flaky pastry option that they called Baklava, but it was pretty different than any baklava i've ever had before.  It was like a roll that had these stringy things inside.  After lunch, we went to a Greek Orthodox Monastery back up in the mountains - it was really interesting to see the similarities/differences between catholicism and greek orthodoxy.  After visiting the monastery, we went back to PIraeus to the ship for dinner.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday (they all kind of mesh together)
Friday morning, Karyn and I woke up early and took the train/subway thingy into Athens to go to the flea market.  We shopped around for a couple hours and got lunch at a little gyro stand, which was obviously delicious.  I love how they put french fries in their gyros over here!  Around noonish, we went back to the ship met up with some of our other friends.  Then we all (Karyn, girl Brett, Ryan, Kati, and I) took a taxi over to the ferry station and hopped on a ferry to go to Aegina (a greek island).  The ferry boat was insanely nice - it had couches and a snack bar and we all spread out and lounged. When we got there, our first order of business was finding a hotel to stay in (we were winging it on the "somewhere to sleep" front) we walked down the road a little bit and got to a row of a couple hotels and walked in one - it was beachfront, pretty nice, and only cost 25 euros a person for the night.  The old man at the desk was also really nice; he would give us huge water bottles out of the fridge for free!  (water bottles have actually been a pretty large expense on this trip - i miss the US and free water with meals).  The rest of Friday and all day Saturday, we just hung around the town: walking around the alleyway shops, laying on the beach, and swimming in the ocean.  At basically every meal, I got some kind of meat and smothered it in tzatziki.  New favorite food, definitely.  At 1930 on Saturday, we took the ferry back to Piraeus and went back to the ship.  We met up with boy Brett and Megan, who had been on other SAS trips, and went back out to eat a really late dinner and go hang out in Athens for the night.  We went to a hole-in-the-wall gyro place in Piraeus on the way to the train station, and it turned out to be the most delicious of all, and the cheapest!  It was around 3 euros for a gyro (btw, "euro" and "gyro" sound the same - it makes for funny conversations).  I tried ouzo for the novelty of it, but I was not too fond of it at all - it tasted like liquid licorice, and I am really averse to licorice.  After dinner, we got on the train into Athens and went to meet up with some people that Brett had met the night before.  They were some traveling guys that basically did nothing else but wander europe with their guitars; they were just chilling and loving life.  Don't worry - it was totally safe and there were TONS of us SASers there.  I'm not stupid enough to hang out with strangers in a foreign country if my friends and I aren't the overwhelming majority.  Anyway, we sat around on this rocky hill near the acropolis and listened to the gypsy guys play music all night.  Literally all night - we stayed there to watch the sunrise.  It was really fun seeing the acropolis lit up in the dark; venus was crazy bright that night, too.  At sunrise, there was this random guy that showed up playing bagpipes, which was interesting.  Sitting on a big rock with a ton of semester at sea kids, watching the sun rise over the acropolis, and listening to a greek bagpipe player.  When the sunrise was over, all the SAS kids split up, most going back to the boat.  Brett and Karyn and I went to an Orthodox cemetery that Karyn had to visit for one of her classes (a really weird requirement, if you ask me).  Then we said goodbye to Athens and went back to the boat to eat breakfast (we got back in time for the ship's breakfast!) and sleep :)

Africa knows how to do Ice Cream too

PS - sorry i'm so behind on the blog.  tomorrow is my last day in Morocco, and I have yet to write about Greece, Turkey, and Egypt, not to mention Morocco now too :-/

Fireworks at the opening ceremony of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival

The Old Bridge in Mostar

The Old City of Dubrovnik

CROATIA!!

I know this blog is really late, but here's the story of my time back in Croatia.  Greece blog is forthcoming as well, as soon as I find the time to write it!

Thursday:
Thursday morning, after the boat cleared all the customs checks in Croatia, a couple of my friends and I took the bus into the old walled city of Dubrovnik.  The city bus is only 8 kuna per ride, which is around $1.50 or so.  (Kuna is the currency of Croatia - it runs about 5.50 - 6.00 kuna on the US dollar.)  We got pizza at a place right outside the city walls (margherita) and then walked around inside the walls for a little bit.  Then I took the bus back to the ship and got on a 1:00PM tour of the city walls themselves.  We took a panoramic drive up the mountain a little and stopped for various photo ops along the way.  The tons of islands in the distance and the walled city with all red roofs was really cool to see from above.  Then we went into old town and walked up onto the city walls.  Then, in the 100+ degree heat, we proceeded to walk around the ENTIRE thing.  The views were awesome, but about 3/4 of the way it got to be a little hot for my taste.  A group of us decided to come down off the walls and walk around until we had to meet up on the bus again.  But on the way down, I actually found my friends, who coincidentally happened to be lost in the random alleyway I came off the wall into!  It was such a random coincidence, but we were excited!  Instead of going back to the boat with the SAS trip, I stayed in the city with them, and we to a restaurant on the outside of the city walls called Cafe Bujo.  We went cliff jumping.  Don't hold your breath - I'm a wimp.  I jumped off the lowest possible point into the darkest blue water possible.  It was around a 15-20 foot fall, I'd say, but I was terrified.  I didn't realize I would be so scared until I got up there on the rock, and I felt like my feet were glued to the rocks.  I'm pretty sure I had a mini panic attack, actually.  Meanwhile, the local children are running up onto my little rock and yelling at me to move so they could jump.  I'm pretty sure they were calling me a scaredy cat in their language.  Eventually I got enough nerve to jump, and it was admittedly fun; not fun enough to make multiple jumps like my friends, though.  I stayed in the water.  The waves were pretty strong that day too!  When getting out, you had to climb up onto the rocks again, which is really hard.  You had to stay about 4 feet away, wait for a wave to push you into the rocks a little bit, hold on for dear life so the receding wave doesn't suck you away from the rocks, and then miraculously spiderman yourself out before another wave comes again.  I cut my knee a little :-/  After this, we walked around the old city more and got dinner at a restaurant off the main street of the old city.  I got lamb kebabs!  Oh heyyy, mediterranean food.  After dinner we went to an irish pub, which was so fun!  (i'm sensing a trend in my bar choices)  The bartender's name was Blajenka (no idea how to spell it, but Brett is friends with her on facebook now) and she was so fun.  We also tasted this yummy, really mild liqueur she called "Pear."  To me, it tasted like maple syrup, and it was delicious.  I'm determined to find it again somewhere; i looked it up online and i think it was actually a dessert brandy (?).  After hanging out there for a while, we went back to the boat to get some sleep before the next big day.

Friday:
I got up and got on the bus at 8AM to go to Mostar, in Bosnia & Herzegovina.  Along the way, we stopped at a little town called Pocitelj.  I got dried apricots from a little lady selling fruit out of a basket, and they were a yummy snack :) Coming into Mostar, we saw an enormous cemetery for all the people of the town - mostly all brand new graves from the recent war.  Mostar, during the Yugoslavian implosion, was pretty badly hit.  A lot of buildings have tons of bullet holes in them still, and the famous bridge was completely destroyed.  They used it to separate the muslims and christians on different sides of the river.  The people were really optimistic about rebuilding the city though; they said that even though they didn't have enough money to rebuild it all now, they would do it when they can.  The bridge was completely restored after the war, and it's one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture i've ever seen; it looks like something that would fit in Rivendell in LOTR.  We also visited a traditional Turkish house that was somehow not destroyed during the recent war.  That was pretty cool - everything was super intricate.  After that, we also went into a Mosque.  That was also really neat - i've never been in a mosque before.  It was very small and simple - nothing extravagant or over-the-top.  Next: probably one of the best meals i've had yet on the trip.  As an appetizer we had what i think was a Bosnian form of spanakopita.  It was shaped like an egg roll.  There was one regular one with spinach and cheese and one with just cheese too.  It came with really really thick greek yogurt - it was like a cube of it - kind of the consistency of a jello cube but more delicious and fit to put on a spanakopita roll.  Next we got a cabbage and carrot shredded salad thing.  Our best description of it was cole slaw, without the cole.  I don't know if that makes sense at all.  Next, they told us we were going to get a meat dish, which was a gross understatement.  It came out, and there was so much food.  A huge slab of chicken, a circular meat patty thing, a couple smaller meat things shaped like lil smokies but called "dumplings", a huge sausage running around the edge of the play, and an enormous pile of roasted potatoes.  Ah. I forgot to mention the bread.  It was like super thick pita bread, and we had to stop ourselves from eating our weight's equivalent of the stuff.  After the piles of meat, we had dessert, which was a soggy, spongey cookie soaked in really thin honey.  Don't let the word soggy throw you off - it was soggy with honey, and anything soggy with honey is automatically delicious.  After that, we had free time to walk around and shop at all the little venders' stands in the town.  I got a pair of pretty little earrings for my port pal (on our hallway on the boat, we have anonymous "port pals" for whom we're supposed to leave little presents and happy notes).  After that, we drove the 3 hour drive back to Dubrovnik and I went out to dinner with my friends in the old city.  I got a yummy chicken risotto dish.  The sunset that night was so pretty over the water!

Saturday:
Saturday I borderhopped into another country - Montenegro.  The drive was also about 3 hours, and our first stop was at the port town of Kotor.  Out in the water, there were these two teeny tiny islands - one natural and one man-made.  Apparently back in the olden days there were these two fisherman that found a rock with the face of the virgin mary on it in the water near the natural island.  They dove down, got it, and took it to a church.  The next day, the same thing happened, and it kept happening for about a week I think.  Eventually they realized that Mary wanted to stay out there, at which point the townspeople built an island, upon which they erected a church honoring the virgin mother.  There's some Montenegro history for you.  We had around an hour to walk around Kotor, which was neat.  They had a cool gothic church that looked a lot like the churches we had seen in Italy, just built with completely different materials.  We also got gelato; you can guess what flavor I chose.  After that, it was time to get on the bus again and drive to Budvah, another port city in Montenegro.  We went to lunch there, which was most definitely not as good as the meal in Mostar the day before.  There was this weird pork wrap thing that was as hard as a rock, some watery soup with chopped chives in it, and some pretty disgusting looking peas.  I tried everything but the peas; like father like daughter with that one. After lunch we walked around a little bit, then got back on the bus to go back to the ship.  I think it would have been a much more fun trip, had we not tried to go to two different cities within Montenegro; everyone agreed it seemed really rushed.  That night, when we got back to the boat, we showered really quickly and went into the old city of dubrovnik to see all the festivities for the opening of the summer festival - sooooooo fun!  We got great seats and sat on the end of the pier to watch the fireworks over the water.  Then we went back to our favorite irish pub Katie O'Conners and our favorite bartender Blajenka, hung out for a while, and went back to the boat - I had a realllllly early trip the next day.

Sunday:
Sunday morning I got up really early and got on a bus to Medugorje, a place in Bosnia to which Christians make pilgrimages.  There, the virgin mary appeared to six children playing on the mountain - they call them the "seers."  We climbed up the rocky mountain to the site of the apparition - the tops of most of the jagged rocks were worn down and polished from the masses of people making pilgrimages there.  After climbing the mountain, we went back down into the town and walked around.  We missed mass at the church (our tour guide said they had them every hour, but they didn't), but I sat inside to escape the heat and pray for a little.  It was nice to be in a silent place for a little bit.  We got lunch at a restaurant that was really nice and really cheap.  I got a pita that was wrapped around a ton of the little sausage things they called "dumplings."  It was enormous and came with fries and it was only 5 euros!  After that, we got back on the bus and drove back to the ship just on time for on ship time.

Europe knows what's up when it comes to ice cream bars

The lowdown:

center : pistachio ice cream with fudge ripples
next layer : crunchy hazelnut layer
next layer : milk chocolate hazelnut gooey layer
outer layer : crunchy chocolate with nuts

amen, my life is complete

The Vatican

Here's a photo of St. Peter's basilica in the Vatican in Rome.

The sunlight was coming in through the windows on the dome, and it must be really dusty or foggy (I don't know why it would be foggy in a cathedral...) or something in there, but it was so pretty!


If you can't tell already, I've figured out how to post pictures to my blog without using up my precious internet time.  I'm pretty excited about it.  More pictures to come.

Pizza in Naples!

Here's a picture of my friend Pam and I with our pizzas in Naples.  I know said this earlier, but they were DELICIOUS!

I also have a picture of my empty plate an hour later  :)   I am going to come home obese; I've resigned myself to that fact already

Pisa!

Here's a picture of me holding up the leaning tower of Pisa! :)

ITALIA!

WEDNESDAY
Call time at the bus was 08:00, and I was actually on time!  We met our guide, Stefania, and our bus driver, Angelo, who were with us the whole trip.  The bus ride was gorgeous - the Tuscan countryside is beautiful!  We stopped at a convenience store named Autogrill along the way for a potty and snack break; I got a Twix and a pack of dried sausages (basically fancy european Slim Jims).  When we got to Pisa, we all (obviously) took pictures "holding up" or "kicking over" the tower :)  It is actually really cool to see in person, though.  The marble isn't perfectly uniform like it is in the washed out pictures; it's much more varied - textured in some places and perfectly smooth in others.  It's really neat.  After, we tried to find the least touristy place we could (which is scarce in Pisa) and got lunch.  I got Gnocchi al pesto and pistacchio gelato.  After walking around for a little, we got back on the bus and drove to Florence.  Along the way, we saw gorgeous mountain hillsides dotted with ENORMOUS villas.  It actually also rained on that leg of the trip - we were surprised to see rain in Italy in the summertime!  When we got to Florence, we stopped by the hotel (Hotel Adriatico) to drop off our suitcases (in my case, only a backpack, not even filled - go me!)  It was around 5:30 or so by this time, and we didn't have much time before dinner, so we walked over to this huge outdoor market in the Piazza del Mercato and browsed all the stands.  One man gave me a free rainbow friendship bracelet and told me I was his new friend, which was kind of creepy, but I like the bracelet :)  I also resisted buying every single piece of italian leather around me.  Dad, I really wanted to get you an italian leather wallet, but I know your specifications, and apparently europeans don't have those same specifications - i'm sorry!  I searched in so many leather stands and couldn't find one :-/   After this, we had a group dinner at the hotel - a risotto dish with chicken and spinach, then beef with a burgundy sauce, carrots, and mashed potatoes (we were all a little confused by the supposed italian-ness of the second course, but the waiters assured us it was a staple dish).  Either way, so yummy!  Then we had this apple tart with cream on it.  Not whipped cream, just cream.  Liquid love handles, i'm sure, and it was delicious.  After dinner, I went upstairs to take a shower (which only had a half door - confusion about this as well) and watched about 20 minutes of Dodgeball dubbed in italian.  We tried to mute it and read the actors' lips, but that failed miserably.  I fell asleep really quickly anyway.
THURSDAY
On Thursday we went on a walking tour through Florence.  Some of the highlights were the Duoma (, the Palazzo Vecchio ("old palace"), the Ponte Vecchio ("old bridge"), the Museo del Bargello (where we saw a lot of work by Donatello), and the Basilica di Santa Croce ("holy cross" church; it had Michelangelo and Galileo's tombs!).  Then we had lunch at a restaurant called Baldovino, where they proceeded to serve us bruschetta (it was covered in raw tomatoes and I ate it. it was delicious. i had two pieces), SIX pizzas, and a delicious blob of tiramisu smothered in more cream.  After lunch we went to the Galleria Dell'Accademia, where Michelangelo's David is housed.  It is incredible.  The detail and the feeling and the human-ness is pretty spectacular.  At the giftstore of the Accademia, I bought my one souvenir  from Florence - a 1 euro postcard showing the city - it looks pretty on my wall in my itsy bitsy bedroom on the ship :)  After that, we were released for free time.  My friends and I went back to the famous Ponte Vecchio to actually go on the bridge and look in all the WAY OVERPRICED shops selling fine jewelry.  We took a lot of pictures of the view from the bridge.  After that, we went on a mad search for what our tour guide deemed the best Gelato shop in Florence (and she lives there!), called Grom.  It took a while to find, and we ended up asking one of the carriage drivers, and we finally got there.  I had a coni medio (medium cone) of stracciatella and pistachio.  Stracciatella is basically their version of chocolate chip.  After getting our cones, we made our way back to the market that we went to on Wednesday and walked around a little.  Then we went back to the hotel, and I took a cold shower - it was unbearably hot our entire time in Italy and I got used to taking cold showers when possible.  Then my friends and I went out to dinner at a place called Sasso di Dante.  I had a tomato and ricotta cheese risotto and it was sooooooooo good.  We also got free shots of this wine-like liquor from the owner of the restaurant.  I think he liked us :)  After that we went across the river to St. Marks church to see a small little production of Le Nozze di Figaro.  I really had a lot of fun that night; it was cool to finally see the opera after having sung a couple of its songs in voice lessons over the past couple years.
FRIDAY
We woke up pretty early and got breakfast at the hotel, where I discovered that Italian hotels always put out small little to-go packets of Nutella.  I'm moving here after graduation.  Armed with enough Nutella packets to last me a lifetime (get ready, Ivy, I got a different brand of one at every hotel for you!), I boarded the bus and we drove to Assisi.  We saw the Basilica di S. Chiara (St. Clare) and the Basilica Papale di San Francesco (St. Francis).  Both were beautiful.  St. Francis basilica was enormous and actually had two churches, one called the lower church and one called the upper church.  Since Assisi is on the side of the mountain, lower church was halfway in the basement of upper church and halfway exposed on the other side of the hill.  It was pretty cool.  After our tour, we got our bags from the bus and put them in our hotel rooms at Hotel Giotto.  The view was beautiful from our room, which had a cute little balcony :)  We could see the top of the Basilica di Santa Chiara and the pretty umbrian valley with its little farms and vineyards.  Then we just wandered around the town for the whole afternoon.  We got lunch - vegetable pizza, and gelato - chocolate and raspberry.  Then we walked around and popped into a lot of the little shops.  I had been wanting to get a pair of italian leather sandals really bad, and I finally found a pair that I liked and was pretty inexpensive.  They are super cute and super comfy and smell so good.  I've been wearing them around the boat to break them in.  After wandering, we found ourselves dying of heat, so we went back to the hotel.  I took a cold shower, of course, and then read for my Religion class a little bit.  Then we had dinner at the hotel - cheese lasagna (it had some sort of creamy cheese in it that I'm pretty sure was made by God) and a beef and potatoes dish like the one we had at dinner in the hotel in Florence the first day.  Dessert was tiramisu, and it was, yet again, delicious.  I'm starting to doubt that I will ever again be okay eating in America. I'm spoiled.  Then we walked around the city more - took tons of pictures of the sunset.  After that we got gelato again (I'm starting to see a trend).  This time I got Crema and Pistacchio.  I don't know what "crema" was, but it was delicious, and pistacchio was delicious as always.  I'm in pistachio ice cream heaven here.  I'm either going to have a heart attack or become morbidly obese; either way, I'm probably going to need to be wheeled off the ship at the end.
SATURDAY
Again, we woke up pretty early and got breakfast at the hotel.  Hotels here, in addition to having Nutella-to-go, always have hard boiled eggs, croissants filled with some sort of creamy substance, and sliced peaches.  Needless to say, I got breakfast everyday.  On our way out of Assisi, we stopped at the Basilia di Santa Maria Degli Angeli.  This church is weird because inside it, where an altar should be at the center of the big dome part at the front, there is a really old, small little chapel that they built the basilica around.  It's called the Porziuncola, and its the church were St. Francis actually died.  We had about 20 minutes to walk around and see the church, so I actually dropped in on the 2nd half of mass in the teeny tiny Porziuncola.  I love how mass is always the same, no matter what language it's in.  After that, we got back on the bus and drove to Rome.  Along the way, we passed so many sunflower fields, which are just incredibly gorgeous.  Sunflowers, in italian, are called Girasoli - gira means "turn" and soil means "sun."  Effectively they are called flowers that turn towards the sun, which I thought was a cool little tidbit of information.  After we got to Rome, we were set loose for a really quick lunch.  The restaurant we went to had a pasta + drink + gelato = 10 Euros, and I got a basic pasta with meat sauce, a white wine, and (again) pistacchio gelato.  Then we went into the Vatican, the highlights of which for me were the map hallway, the sistine chapel, and the Basilica.  Then we walked around and shopped for a little bit.  Dinner was another group dinner at a restaurant called Da Meo Patacca.  We sat outside, the walls were covered in ivy, and it was really fun.  They, for some reason, decided to give the college kids endless refills of wine, so there were many many people who got pretty drunk.  There were also men walking around singing italian songs to all the tables.  All in all, it was a fun time.  After dinner, we went on a walking night tour of the Trevi fountain, the pantheon, and travona square.  All three were awesome.  After that, I went back to the hotel and crashed.
SUNDAY
Fourth of July! And Italians don't really seem to care…  This morning we went on a tour of the ancient side of Rome - the Colosseum, the Constantine arch, and the Forum (which was so cool!).  Then we saw a huge, modern marble building that the italians apparently call "the wedding cake" as a derogatory term.  They think it doesn't fit in well with the roman style of architecture.  Then we had free time for lunch, and I got pasta bolognese.  Then we walked around a little and got gelato before getting back on the bus to go to Pompeii.  This time I gave up my pistacchio obsession to get a new flavor I had never seen before - NUTELLA GELATO.  When I ate it, I'm pretty sure I heard choirs of angels.  Then we got on the bus to head over to Pompeii, and I passed out the entire way.  I was so sleepy!  When we got to Pompeii, our tour guide was Marcello and he was a very hot italian man.  All the girls giggled at everything he said, and he showed us around the ruins for a couple hours.  My favorite part of the ruins was a mosaic of an angry dog that was at the doorstep of a house.  Under it, it said "cavi canum," which roughly translated, means "beware of dog."  Even back in the 1st century, people were kind enough to put out doormats to warn their neighbors of their mean dogs.  Back then, they were just fancy mosaics.  We also saw a couple of the preserved bodies, which were horribly sad.  There was a pregnant woman lying facedown and covering her mouth and eyes, and other man curled up in the fetal position covering his face too.  It was just horrible.  But the preservation of all these places was pretty incredible.  There was even this one place called the "thermopolium," which was basically a hot, take-out food shop.  There were empty basins that held the hot soups, ready made for a meal on the go.  It was really cool to see how the people lived.  After this, the trip finally had to come to an end, and we came back to the ship, now docked in Naples.  My friends and I decided to take quick showers and go back out for true Neapolitan pizza (pizza was invented in naples!)  We went to a place called Ciro a Medina, a shop that our tour guide Stefania had recommended.  I got a traditional neapolitan pizza called "Regina Madre."  It had fresh tomatoes, basil, olive oil, and buffalo mozzarella on it.  I literally ate the entire thing.  Seriously, I need liposuction after this little jaunt through Italy.
MONDAY
On Monday, I went over to the island Capri with my friend Keri from the trip.  We took the 7:30 ferry over and got there around 9, ready to quickie see everything that people had told us to see before having to go back to the Ship.  We immediately hopped on a little boat to go see the Blue Grotto, which was incredible!  It was glowed a beautiful blue that reminded me of my favorite crayon, Cerulean.  Don't even lie - that was your favorite crayon too.  Then we took a taxi up to Anacapri, a town at the top of a mountain.  The ride up reminded me of the winding roads on St. John - I miss you guys!  We went on a chair lift that takes you up into the clouds (literally); on the ride up there were incredible views of the whole island.  When we got down, we got lunch quickly and took the shuttle bus down to the city of Capri.  We walked around the shops a little bit, and then took the cable car back down to the port.  We had about an hour to kill, so we swam in the ocean a little bit and laid out on the rocky beach.  Somehow, the only part of me that god burned was my right knee.  I don't know how.  Then we got back on the ferry back to Naples and got back on the boat on time!  On to Dubrovnik!
TUESDAY
Taco day at lunch!! The meat was good, but they gave us parmesan cheese to put on them.  No one else seemed phased by this, and happily covered their tacos in parmesan, but I was not fooled by their lack of cultural authenticity.  I ambivalently ate my cheese-less tacos.  Then I proceeded to take a 4 hour nap, which was awesome.  Also, the global studies midterm was quite hard; this is probably because I didn't study until about 30 minutes beforehand, because of my nap.  Everyone agreed and thought it was really hard, though.  They asked the most obscure questions they possibly could, and even people who studied a lot said that it wasn't worth the time because the questions were so random.  We got an e-mail afterward saying that they are curving the grades way upward because everyone did pretty badly.

ITALIA DAY 1

I Went into Rome for the day with Karyn, Megan and Brett.  As we were leaving Civitavecchia (where the boat is ported - about an hour outside of Rome), we saw a huge city wall that the Romans built.  One thing has become increasingly clear to me on this trip - the Romans really enjoyed building walls.  We were all going to have a few days in Rome (them - the next couple days, and me - later this week with my excursion), so we decided to not rush into the really touristy things.  We basically walked around the entire day.  We wandered through Rome, mostly staying in the NE part of the city, and just had a great time looking at the buildings and wandering the windy little roads.  It was a great time.  After a little walking, we randomly happened upon the Spanish Steps. We stopped for a photo shoot and kept walking.We got lunch at a hole-in-the-wall pizza place and it was DELICIOUS!  There were huge sheets of pizza and all you had to do was point to which kind you wanted, and they would take a huge pair of kitchen shears and cut you out a square.  They were half-cooked on display, so they popped them in the oven, folded them in half, and wrapped it up halfway in paper as a little to-go pizza.  It was crunchy and delicious; I got the one that just had all the different kinds of bell peppers on it, and I'm going to go ahead and say it was one of the best pizzas I've ever eaten.  And it was only 5 euros for the enormous pizza and a water bottle.  Armed with our portable pizzas, we walked around more and accidentally (despite our conscious decision not to visit the tourist spots) found ourselves at the Trevi Fountain.  So cool!  It was beautiful and huge and the water was so clear and so cold.  We sat by the fountain and ate our pizzas.  After that, we kept walking.  We walked by a liquor store and we were ushered in by the owner to sample his limoncello - what were we to do? :) After our mini little shots, which I'm not too fond of, by the way - I had to buy another water bottle to get the taste out of my mouth, we kept wandering around.  It was blazing hot and we were pretty lost, so we got a taxi to take us to their hotel for the next couple nights.  They are staying in Rome until Friday.  It was about a 10 minute car ride, so we were all glad we splurged the 10 euros to avoid the heat of the day.  We took a break in the air conditioning and then went next-door to a little cafe and got a snack.  I got some sort of tart dessert thing, which was delicious, and Megan got gnocchi.  I. Love. Italy.
        After that I had to go back and meet the bus to go back to Civitavecchia, so I said goodbye to my friends and hopped on the bus.  On the way back, I got a look at some of the beautiful Italian countryside.  It's really gorgeous.  One familiar thing, too - wildflowers are the same everywhere in the world.
        Tomorrow I leave on my 5-day trip to Pisa, Florence, Assisi, Rome, and Pompeii.  Gotta go pack!

España!

        The first day in Barcelona, we went on a city tour from 1-5.  They took us around all the major spots in Barcelona, and it was a really good overview.  It helped to plan what we wanted to do on other days.  We went to Montjuic (spelling..?), which had gorgeous views of the city.  That day also happened to be a holiday in Spain, I believe St. John/St. Juan, so there was a party going on in the park, so that was fun to see!  It wasn't any official city party, it was just a big group of college-aged students happy to not have school, and it was neat to see what kind of music they listened to and stuff.  Next we went to this place called the Pueblo Español.  It's this fake walled-in city that is supposed to represent all the provinces of Spain, and theres different areas of the Pueblo that have different architecture and maybe a replica of a famous church or something.  A lot of people really liked it, but it wasn't really something I would ever do again.   It was made-for-tourists and pretty fake looking, but supposedly I saw what southern Spain looks like?  Next we went to the Gothic quarter, which was AWESOME.  They started out by showing us this area that was built by the Romans in the 3rd century! It was so incredible.  The architecture was awesome and it was the characteristic European streets that are really narrow and windy but randomly converge and open up into enormous plazas.  That was definitely one of my favorite spots in the city.  In the gothic quarter there was also a beautiful cathedral.  I took so many pictures that I'll have to show y'all, but it was unfathomably enormous and beautiful.  After that, we took a short drive around the city and saw a lot of Gaudí's buildings, which are nuts!  His architecture is like crazy messed up art that somehow manages to pass building safety codes.  They are so cool.  We visited the Sagrada Familia, which is a Gaudí-designed cathedral.  It's apparently been under construction for something around 150 years or so, and they say it's not even close to completion.  But what there is of it is insane - by far the coolest building I've ever seen in my life.   After that, we came back to the boat and changed clothes and went out to dinner (this is Megan, Karyn, and I)  We went to a place called Amaya, which was on Las Ramblas, the huge center street that runs through Barcelona.  I had Paella de verduras, which was delicious. Here, we also learned that it's best to buy an enormous water bottle everyday at the market for 1 euro, and take it with you everywhere.  At restaurants, they won't serve you tap water.  If you say you just want water, they show up with a teeny .5L bottle for 2 bucks.  Then we walked down a couple side streets off Las Ramblas and eventually found ourselves in the gothic quarter again, which was cool.  It doesn't get dark until around 9PM here, so we had a lot of time to walk around and explore after dinner.  We stopped at a little restaurant and shared bottle of wine and had dessert - Catalan Creme.  Dear goodness gracious it was so good.  It was a mix between flan and creme brulee and custard, and it was yummy!  Then we walked back towards Las Ramblas and found a happy Irish pub on Pg. Ferran.  It's really weird - Barcelona has two things to do at night - either crazy sketchy nightclubs with crazy sketchy people or irish pubs - there's no in-between or a more authentic Spanish bar scene that we could find.  Pretty much all Irish pubs.  They were really nice there, though!  We ordered chicken wings, which came with this really yummy tangy/spicy sauce.  Megan and Karyn also ordered white russians, which I'm not really that into because of the coffee taste.  I will say, however, that they taste mostly like chocolate milk.  It's like those Bushwhackers!  Then we went back to the ship pretty early, around midnight.
        The next day, I took a trip to Montserrat, a mountain about an hour away from the city that has a beautiful monastery built into the rocks.  The church was gothic-style and beautiful, and the view from the mountain was amazing.  You could see down into the farm villages and it was really cool!  The cathedral has a patron black madonna carved out of wood that has immense spiritual significance for the people here, but the line to get up to view it was about 2 hours long, and we didn't have the time on our tour, so i didn't get to see that up close.  I saw pictures, though.  After that trip, we went back to the boat for a little and then made our way into Barcelona again for another night out.  Darnit - I just realized I have a flip flop tan.  That stinks.   We went to a bar called the Obama Bar, which was either already a bar before Obama became president (and was just a coincidence) or a semi-offensive racial slap at Obama.  It was decorated with traditional African decor and had pictures of people in villages in Africa - we didn't really understand it.  Our best guess is that Obama is a town in Africa somewhere - can someone clarify?  Either way, they had a statue of Obama sitting in one of the booths, kind of like the ones of Ronald Mcdonald.  I sat on his lap for a photo, just like Ronald too.  We ate a variety of bar-type snacks for dinner and watched Spain play in the world cup, which was pretty cool.  The bar was packed and everyone was going nuts.  Europeans love them some fútbol.  Then we decided to try our hand at one of the clubs.  We walked a good 6 miles or so past the beach to get to this one club area that was supposed to be the best, and we didn't end up going to one because they all wouldn't let Brett in because he was wearing an España soccer jersey; apparently thats a no-no in clubs because of possible drunken brawls.  So we went to a kebab place and got "kebabs," which were not, in fact, on a stick.  Blew my mind.  It was just meat and lettuce and stuff wrapped in a pita shell.  By this point, it's like 2 or 3 in the morning, and everyone still wants to go out somewhere, so we walk down and find this row of bars.  I repeat - bars!  Not Irish pubs!  Eureka.   We went from place to place and most people got shots and mixed drinks, but I'm civilized and got only a white wine at the first place.  I didn't feel like drinking much.  Nor do I ever really feel like drinking much, for that matter.  Everyone makes fun of me and calls me a mom because I always sit there and sip my glass of wine while other people down shots of nasty alcohol.  They laugh at me… :-/  Karyn has actually started calling me Mommy as a joke.  Same with Megan - she stubbed her toe real bad one of the days and it was bleeding and I cleaned it and put a bandaid on it; she promptly started calling me Mom too.  Anyway.  The barhopping lasted until around 4:30 or so and then we came back to the boat.  I was so sleepy from my little glass of wine, so I took a shower to get the nasty smoke out of my hair and fell into bed.
        Next day - we had lunch at a restaurant called Ambos Mundos, in La Plaça Reial off of Las Ramblas.   Continuing my paella tour of spain, I had Paella de Pollo (paella de polloneta in Catalan, the language they speak in Catalunya, the Province where Barcelona is).  All three of us girls wanted the chicken paella, too, so they ended up cooking one huge dish of it and bringing it out to us in the pan (which is the traditional way to serve it, supposedly - you get to scrape the crunchiness at the bottom of the frying pan, which is awesome)  It was delicious.  By far the best paella I had during my stay in Barcelona.  There were also some street performers that were doing acrobatics right next to our little outdoor seating area; they were insane.  They would hoist each other up and balance in the craziest positions.  Their arms and cores must have been inhumanly strong.  I can't remember where we went to lunch, but we spent the majority of the daytime at the Parque Guell.  It's a park that was designed by Gaudí, and is therefore one of the coolest parks I've ever seen in my life.  It's huge too.  We roamed around for hours and hours and took a lot of pictures.  It's set on up on the hill overlooking the city (Barcelona is between the mountains and the ocean), and we climbed all the way to the top and got an awesome view of the whole city.  Side note - I'm currently on the boat and they have Aladdin playing on the TVs in our rooms; I love the crew's choice for movies.   Anyways.  After Guell we went to the shopping center that is right next to the port.  We walked around for a while and went into a lot of the stores.  Most everything was the same as the US, so I resisted buying anything.  In the center of the mall, the had a Caboiera troupe showing off their skills, which were pretty impressive.   I still have the Caboiera song stuck in my head three days later.  After that we went back to the boat to change for dinner and went out to watch the US soccer game.  We ended up going to our happy Irish pub again, which was our favorite place so far.  We ordered burgers for dinner, and they were so enormous and delicious!  The game ended up being disappointing, but it was a fun night anyway.  We hung out with some other friends from the boat for a little and went back to the boat around midnight.
        The last day, Sunday, we didn't have much time on shore.  Lunch, we went to a pretty touristy place called Top Tapas.  I had Paella de Carne (finishing out my paella tour) and it was not very good.  Ambos Mundos was wayyyyyy better the day before.  We walked around for a little bit and visited the big outdoor market that Barcelona is famous for.  It was really neat!  Alas, it was time to board the ship again, and we said goodbye to Spain.  It was a great four days!  As Jasmin says in my awesome closed-circuit TV showing of Aladdin, it was a dazzling place I never knew :)  Next stop - Italy!

¡Barcelona Mañana!

It's almost midnight on Wednesday, June 23, and we're going to be in Barcelona tomorrow!!!!!  I am so excited!

The ship is supposed to start docking around 7, and they told us to expect lots of announcements over the ship's speakers.  We have a pilot pull up next to us in a little boat, board our ship, and then help direct the captain into the port.  Then we have all sorts of diplomats and customs people come aboard.  They said it would probably be until around 11 or so until we can actually get off the ship, and my friends and I are going on a trip at 1, so we are just going to eat lunch on the ship and avoid the crazy mad rush to get off the boat at 11.  One sad thing though - they said our passports aren't going to get stamped!  They said with big groups like this, the port patrol and customs agents do a big mass check-in without going through individual passports.  So thats a bummer, but I'll still have all the pictures to prove I was there! :)

The trip we are going to go on tomorrow is a city orientation trip - they take us in a bus to all the major tourist sites, show us around, let us get out and take pictures, etc. That lasts from 1-5, and then we are on our own for the night!  We're planning on going back to the boat, changing, and going out to dinner. apparently the nightlife gets going around midnight - so much for sleep this summer!   my trip to Montserrat the next day, though, doesn't start until 10, so i'll be able to sleep in then :)

the water has been beautiful and calm ever since we went through the Strait of Gibraltar into the mediterranean. no more crazy atlantic waves!  i don't even have on the seasickness patch anymore, and i'm fine.  i've heard that reverse seasickness exists, though - people get nauseous when they go back on land :-/  I hope that doesn't happen!

when we went through the Strait, it was a particularly foggy day, so we couldn't see details clearly (all my pictures look like big blue/gray blobs), but it was really neat anyways!  look to one side, and see Europe. look to the other side, and see Africa.  it was pretty awesome.

We don't have class again on the boat until after Italy, so that's really nice!  It will give me time to catch up on the readings for class (maybe…)  We had our pre-port briefing session this evening at 8, and we had people from lots of different areas of expertise talk to us about food, travel, medical care, money, excursions, etc.  I'm really hoping I don't get pick-pocketed!  Enter: non-stylish travel belt from target :)

Alright. It's officially midnight, and I need to get some rest for the big day tomorrow.  I love you all! 


PS - email me sometime!  cnensley@semesteratsea.net   if you happen to send pictures or anything of the like, they put up a 50KB limit on attachments for the sake of not overloading the ship's server.

So much for Sunday as a day of rest!

We're on the boat so little that they have class everyday, including weekends...

But my classes are over for the day, and it's beautiful outside!!  Last night was the only night, so far, that we haven't had set our clocks ahead an hour, so we actually experienced a 24-hour-long day!  Yay for a marginally better nights sleep!  (we still stayed up until 2 anyway..)  We watched the Hangover last night - i had forgotten how incredibly hilarious that movie is!  Classes are going well - i think the last time I updated this was after the first day.

My religion class is turning out to be a TON of work.  We read so much!! and she has us complete these workbook pages to go along with the readings - we all feel like a 2nd graders.  so far we've read Genesis, Exodus, about half of one book, and we're expected to have completed a whole other different book by tuesday.  Reading is not my strong suit.  But right now, we're on the Judaism unit of the class, and it's admittedly really interesting.  

Spanish is really good too!  The professor speaks ONLY in spanish, which is pretty hard to follow some of the time.  He insists that we speak only spanish too, but if we don't know how to say a certain word, he's really helpful: tells us the word, and lets us go back and put that word into what we were saying.  The only really difficult part is that I'm pretty rusty on all the vocab - i haven't taken spanish in about 4 and a half years...  And this class is a "grammar based course," so he expects us to know all the vocab already, and I just don't.  I need to work on it.  Mom - good call on the spanish/english dictionary.   It's a lifesaver.

Tonight we have a map quiz of the mediterranean.  It has a lot of obscure cities that we're not visiting, so they are hard to remember, but it's multiple choice so I think we'll be fine.  And i'm also trying to remind myself that Stanford is only going to accept the Spanish credit, so I don't need to bust my butt stressing about the work for Religion and Global Studies.  If anything, they'll take the credit as pass/fail, and I dont think theres physically a way to fail a semester at sea course.

Hm.... what else?

Ah! we had mac and cheese (shell-shaped, everything in my life these days is nautically themed) for lunch today.   Oh yeah! and we saw a pod of dolphins yesterday.  And an island far in the distance today at lunchtime.  I'm not sure what island it was, though.  I purchased some mandatory SAS clothing items yesterday.  Pretty much everything was crazyyyyy overpriced, but there was this one pack of 3 tshirts that, total, cost something around 35 dollars, which was way cheaper than buying them individually.  And signups for the field trips in greece, turkey, egypt and morocco happened yesterday.  Hopefully I get into some good ones!  There were some that I wanted to sign up for that were faculty-led, but I'm not in their classes so I couldn't sign up for them.  There's apparently a waitlist period tomorrow morning that I'm hoping to get to and sign up.

So i'm going to go sit on the deck in the shade and study for the map quiz


PS - HAPPY FATHER'S DAY DADDY!!!  I LOVE YOU!

1st Day of Classes is over!

This is going to be brief - its 1AM here and I have class at 8AM :-/

Today was the first day of classes.  At 8AM I have Spanish with Professor Larrea Rubio.  He seems really nice so far, and we are learning new vocab about sailing and traveling and touristing while we learn all of the grammatical concepts.  He has warned us that today was the only day he would speak English, however, which makes me a little nervous!

At 9:20 we all have Global Studies with Professor Bowler.  It seems like a very broad class, but I really liked all of the examples he used today, even if they were a little all-over-the-place.  Maybe today was simply a cultural overview?  I should look at the syllabus.

Then I had a break for lunch and, you guessed it, another nap.  1030 - 1130 is officially my nap slot everyday.

I then went up and grabbed lunch really quickly before heading over to Peoples of the Book with Dr. MacMillan at 1215.  It is a religion course about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which should be cool once we get to the ports and see the cultural influences of all the different belief systems.  She seemed like a nice teacher - we have A LOT of books to read, though.  I hope I can keep up with that!

Oh and the captain was right about the crazy waves today!  This morning at 5 or so, the entire boat was woken up by stuff falling off of shelves and drawers opening/slamming shut.  The waves were crazy!

Alrighty - bed time!

Orientations and Such

1st full day at sea was great!   We had rounds of orientation meetings that were about safety, activities, rules, classes, and everything else.  They each lasted about an hour or so, and they went pretty much all day.   During our 1&1/2 hour break around lunchtime, I went back to my cabin and took a nap :)  Then I went up to lunch, where I met and sat with a couple of girls that go to Clemson? Clemmenson?  Something that starts with "clem."  We also had what they called an "involvement symposium" where we signed up on email lists for fun activities on the boat.  I signed up for yoga/pilates, internship/research workshops, a pre-engineers club, and (mom, you will be happy) a Catholic mass group.   Apparently one of the lifelong learners is a retired Catholic priest and has offered to say mass, so that works out nicely.  Oh and one of my friends Brett and I are starting a makeshift choir; we'll see how that goes!

Karyn, the girl from Stanford, and her roommate Megan are both really nice.  We (Karyn, Megan, Brett, and I) hung out in their room between the orientations and dinner and watched The Matrix on the TV system.  The two girls next-door to me (Lee and Caitlin) are really nice too!  After hall meeting tonight, we wandered around and found some people playing cards and joined in on their game.  We played apples-to-apples and then spoons, but instead of spoons we had to use the small red-striped coffee stirrers/straws.  The crew doesn't trust us with utensils outside the dining room...

Dinner was real delicious.  We had yummy citrus-y fish, a broccoli side dish and BOSTON CREME PIE!!  I love me some boston creme pie; anyone who has seen me on boston creme pie day at the stanford dining halls can vouch for this fact.  They also served it at late night snack - so much for having a hot bod this summer.  I can already tell I'm going to be obese before we see land again.  They throw food at us constantly.  OH! and they ALWAYS have cheese cubes. Every meal.  I think this is what it would be like in the dining halls in heaven - boston creme pie and neverending cheese cubes.

Tonight we have to push our clocks up one hour as we cross into another time zone, so there goes an hour of sleep!  So much for being rested on the first day of classes :-/  And the captain sent out a message saying that tomorrow should be one of the roughest of the trip; something to do with tides and winds in this part of the atlantic.

I hope y'all are having a wonderful summer!  I'm excited to come back home and trade stories and pictures!

Correction!

Whoops! We've been at sea for 5 hours and 30 minutes. Not just 30 minutes...   I should start reading these things over before i send them out :)

Never Fear! My Bag Is Here!

We are beginning our Atlantic crossing, and my bag is with me!  This afternoon, while we were still in port, we had a safety drill to make sure we knew which life boats to go to in an emergency.  Hopefully that won't ever be necessary...

I can already tell this trip is going to be amazing!  Both sets of neighbors on either side of me are really nice, and everyone I've met so far has been awesome.  My roommate got here pretty late this afternoon.  Her name is Kristin; she's from Virginia and goes to UVA.  She's really sweet!  Oh and she's also in my religions class, so that will be nice to know someone.    Tonight we had meetings with the entire ship and a smaller one with our hall.  I'm in the "Adriatic Sea" hallway - room 4051.

The room is pretty well-sized I think.  Two twin beds, a small desk, a little table and chair, a mini TV, a closet and a couple drawers, and a bathroom.  The bathroom is actually awesome.  The shower is nice and big, and there's tons of storage space for toiletries.  I'm pretty much unpacked, and surprisingly everything fit into my wee closet.   Everything is on the closet shelves stacked in their perfect little rolls that Lolo folded.  It makes it easy to see what's where.

So far so good on the seasickness.  It's been 30 minutes at sea and I'm not hovering over my teeny tiny toilet YET.  One of the nice crew members handed out ginger candies that are supposed to help seasickness. delicious.  I put on the seasickness patch, but I definitely haven't gotten my sea legs yet!  It's a mixture of nausea, vertigo, and general uneasiness.  But hopefully i'll get used to it and it will be over in a couple days!   Pretty much everyone on the ship has taken to holding the handrails everywhere, because the Atlantic is really rough tonight...  Even the captain, at the ship meeting, said he was sorry about how rough it was :-/  Right now i'm laying on my bed, and it feels like someone is rocking me to sleep!  Its only 10:30, and I'm going to pass out soon!

...and by soon, I mean now.   Goodnight from the Atlantic!

Boarding Ship Soon!!!

Hey guys! It's embarkation day today, and I am still one bag short... The airline has basically informed me that the earliest it could get to the airport would be on a flight arriving at 12:05, at which time it would have to clear customs, which would take "3-5 hours" after that (by which time I will already be on the boat). So Continental has pretty much told me they are giving up, and they're going to send it to the port in Spain.

I've called Semester At Sea and let them know whats going on, and that I'm not the only one dealing with this, so hopefully they can get it all straightened out and maybe leave port 2 hours late or so (?). I don't know if they will bend the schedule for anyone, though. I would rather just leave and deal with it than risking coming in late to the port in Barcelona next week. The guy I talked to on the phone was really nice, though, and he said he would make a couple calls and find out whats going on with the boat this afternoon, and if there's any chance my bags could make it to me.

On a wholly different note - the hotel is SO nice here. We are staying at the Westin Nova Scotian, and the entire staff has been amazing. The busboys and concierges let me use their phone a couple times last night, and ever since - every time any of the staff sees me in the hallway - they all say "I hope your bag gets here on time!" or "Have a good trip!" They are all so personable and they have a crazy memory. One guy even remembered that I ordered dinner on that phone last night, and he asked me how our pizza was!

Safe in Halifax

Hey everybody! This officially begins my Semester At Sea experience! This morning Mom and I woke up at 4 and made it to the airport with time to spare :) I had a bagel, of course, and got on the plane. The flights were great - I slept a lot. Continental served cereal on the first leg (austin to newark) and a small turkey sandwich on the second leg (newark to halifax). All was well until (imminent duh duh duh) they lost one of my bags :-/ In fact, they lost about 20 people's bags on my flight from Newark. I'm hoping they find it by the time I sail off tomorrow - otherwise I'm going to be without half my clothes, without all my cliff bars, without all the meds Uncle Ed prescribed me, without ALL of my shoes, and without goodness knows what else mom and I put in there at midnight last night!

Everyone I've met so far is suuuuuuper nice! 5 of us shared a cab from the airport and it ended up only being $15 a person - pretty cheap for a 45 minute cab ride! When we got to the hotel we went to the grocery store across the street to get snacks for the ship, and we just ordered pizza to deliver at the hotel - Papa Marios! At the hotel I actually got a pretty big surprise - a girl from my freshman dorm is on the trip!! Her name is Karyn and she's really nice; I'm excited to have someone I know on the ship.

Canada is pretty cool so far. I'm not going to be here very long, but the architecture seemed cool from the window on our cab ride. A lot of the buildings are very old brick and really antique-y looking. All in all, it's pretty much exactly like the US :) They even take USD everywhere here because of the almost 1:1 exchange rate.

As of right now, Continental really has no idea where my bag is. They think it got lost on the connection in Newark, but they're not certain. They said they don't do scans when transferring bags, so they don't really know where it went wrong. Another plane just got in from Newark around 30 minutes ago, and they said IF the crew put it on that plane, it should be delivered to the hotel by midnight or so. I'm crossing my fingers for that situation! The concierges have been really nice about letting me use their phone to call the airport for status reports.

I'm probably not going to stay up long enough to see my bag come (if it does) - I'm pretty exhausted! And so are my roommates here at the hotel (Elaina and Kim) - we are probably going to turn in pretty early.

I'll check in tomorrow morning before I leave the hotel - I'm soaking up the last little bits of free and unlimited internet!