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!