Acclimating

1/21
21:00*

*We do military time on the ship

So it is day three….I think. I have completely lost sense of what day it is, the actual date, and time in general. I really need to get a watch. There are hardly any clocks on board. Perhaps I will buy a dinky one in Espagne (Spain for those that are not tri-lingual comme moi.)

I am in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There is no land in sight. It still amazes me that I’m actually doing this.

The first day on the boat everyone waved their goodbyes to friends and families and the ship sailed off into the sunset. We all leaned over the railings (not too far) and watched the waves crash and ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ over flying fish. Those funny fish still haven’t lost their novelty, at least not to me. Give it a few more days.

I definitely felt the rocking of the boat on day one. Since then, however, I have acclimated. I do sometimes get nauseous when I am on the compute for too long, so forgive me if my posts start to dwindle.

Day two consisted of meetings, constant “mandatory” meetings. Apparently I was the only one that didn’t realize it was quote-on-quote mandatory, thus I showed up to every one. Unnecessary. They were informative, I suppose, but rather self-explanatory for the most part, like, “Don’t fall off the ship” and “The library has lots of books.” All of these meetings took place in the Union, which is this huge classroom/stage on Deck 6 forward. I am picking up ship lingo yahoo! Translation: it is a big room in the front of the boat that is almost the top level. This means that you feel most of the rocking in this area. A funny thing about the swaying motion of the ship is that it either makes you seasick or it puts you to sleep. Everyone was struggling to stay awake during these presentations. One kid in particular. He sat in front of me and he kept nodding off. His head would fall forward, then he would jolt awake and within seconds his head would fall backward. I was hysterical, obviously. It was a difficult task to stifle my laughter and eventually I had to put my hand in front of his head so I couldn’t watch anymore. I have dubbed him “Sleep boy.”

While on the topic of men, let me inform everyone that the female to male ratio on the ship is 3 to 1. There is 73% women and 27% men. So basically all the hetero men and homosexual women are in heaven. Given that I am neither, I was a little peeved to say the least. Fortunately, I am taking a business class where the Y chromosomes flock. SCORE!

I tried out the ship gym today. You have to sign up for times, because there is limited equipment and everyone wants to keep up their stunning physiques while aboard this vessel. I ran on the treadmill and let me just say, you will never appreciate running on the ground more once you have run on a ship. I had to hold on to the treadmill for dear life the entire time, lest I become mangled in the contraption.

This whole experience reminds me of freshman year a bit. Meeting so many people at once, trying to keep track of names, being overly nice to everyone. It’s hard to be so outgoing ALL the time. I have met some interesting folks though and hopefully that will continue.

Peace, love, salt water.
H