August 27th-30th

GREAT NEWS!!!
I have a FREE email account that I can use whenever I am at sea! My new email is jlallyne@semesteratsea.net. The only restriction is that I can only send and receive text.
I have a lot to catch up on since I just got this internet working today on the ship. It takes minutes to post a blog so I might not post as often as I would like. So here are the updates on what happened since the second day in the Bahamas to the second day on the ship.


August 27th, 2008
SAS Social Outcasts

After sleeping in for a while, Sara finally opened the curtains to shine the light into our room. We can see the ocean from our window! Unfortunately the first part of the day was spent trying to get ahold of Semester at Sea and Sara’s mom because she didn’t know to bring a certain document that we needed to get on the ship. After doing everything we could, we headed to the beach to relax. The water was sooo warm and absolutely crystal clear. Men were coming around the beach advertising for parasailing, boat rides, selling toy turtles, and coconut drinks. The man selling the drinks used this line “I’m the doctor. The feel-good doctor” haha. We decided to go check out the pool area after that and first went on this tubing “rapid river.” It was really cool and a great tour around the gigantic pool area.

The beach by our hotel…with the Feel Good Doctor

Since everything is ridiculously expensive at the Atlantis, we decided that the most economical option was to split a pizza. A medium pizza was $22! Anyway, there were three guys working at the pizza place started talking to us and LOVED Sara! They were all locals and wanted us to go out with them! We chatted about fun places to go and what a typical night for them is. Let me tell you…Bahamians love to party. They call any kind of alcohol “rum.” And it is not uncommon to stay up all night and go to work the next day on no sleep. We asked them about the local food which is typically conch salad and grouper fish. It was fun to get a feel for what the culture is like there. Later that night two girls in the hall asked if we were on Semester at Sea and invited us to the lobby where apparently everyone met each night at 10:30. Well we went down at 10:30pm and no one was there. It was like we had just been invited to a “costume party” but no one else was wearing costumes…a bit humiliating and discouraging. We were the outcasts.

August 28th, 2008
Day before departure

The first thing we did was go to the straw market. It is this huge covered market with a bunch of vendors all lined up in rows selling mostly purses and things made of straw. I think that’s our warm up for bargaining. People are really aggressive there and everything was probably more expensive than it normally would be because of the cost of getting the goods to the island. It was really fun to wander around but difficult to keep walking past people as they were trying so hard to get you to stop and look at their shops. One woman told Danika that she would never be good in business because Danika only wanted to pay $10 for a fake purse!


Danika in front of the Straw Market

We had to split lunch because everything is so expensive, but at least we ate at a place right on the water so that was beautiful. We went back to the hotel to go on the water slides and other rides. We went on a slide that was soooo tall and it went through a shark tank! But as we were waiting at the top of the tower, Sara and I looked out to the ocean and we could see storm clouds coming. You could see the line in the water as the storm moved closer and finally it hit us while we were about to go down the slide. It was sooo wild! For five minutes it felt like we were in a tropical storm. And then everything was back to normal.

At the pool at the Atlantis

We decided that we needed to be social and meet other people from Semester at Sea because the whole time we had been in the Bahamas, we felt like the outcasts. My friend Todd called our hotel and told us that people were meeting up at this bar, so we hesitantly went. We felt really awkward and were afraid to start conversations with people. But we ended up having fun and meeting people. The best part was that we could see the top of the ship lit up from the bar! It looked sooo huge! I did feel a little old because we realized that a lot of the people on the ship aren’t 21 yet so this is kind like being in Mexico on spring break for them.

August 29th, 2008
ON THE SHIP

This morning we got up and headed right to the ship! There was a huge line of people already at 8:00am. It was really hot already so everyone was lugging their bags around and so sweaty. It was well organized but there were a lot of different stations to go to and security checkpoints. We got our ID cards and our room numbers and got on the ship! The ship is beautiful! Its not as big as the other cruise ships we were docked next to, but it is definitely a well-thought out ship. I got to my room before my roommate and didn’t even know what to do. I looked around the tiny room for a while and tried to figure out which bed was more comfortable. I couldn’t decide, they were both tiny and pretty uncomfortable. There’s a TV with one channel that plays music and shows us the location and speed of the ship. I unpacked for a while before my roommate got there. Her name is Carla and she’s from Colorado. She is soooo awesome! I was so relieved after I met her because I knew we would get along really well. She’s a senior too and her boyfriend is on the ship!

My roommate Carla and our tiny room!!!

This whole day has felt like a week long! So much has happened! After we checked in and unpacked, we just explored the ship a bit while people were still checking into the ship. (Sara got on and they figured out the yellow fever thing so she’s good to go!) We had a lifeboat drill today before we could leave the port. But once we left it was really exciting and scary to leave on the ship. That’s about when people started to talk about the reality of the ship. “I can’t believe this is really happening right now…” is what we’re all saying. The image of the open sea is really exciting and I know it we’ll get used to it and it will get old. The meals have been pretty good so far…but I think they’re trying to impress us right away.

Getting prepared for the lifeboat drill

I’m not sure if you knew but there are two hurricanes in the area right now: Gustav and Hannah. Tonight I found out that we’re taking a slightly different route to try to get around the hurricane. But the seas are still pretty stormy. I’m doing ok with the sea sickness thing so far and I’ve only had the sea band on….so I’m hoping I’ll be fine. Right as I wrote that the ship rocked really hard! Haha! Tonight Carla, Sara, and I watched the electrical storm that’s going on outside right now. It’s crazy to see how the lightning can light up the sea. And there was definitely a lot of it! We have a big day of orientation tomorrow so it should be a fun day. It’s been easier to meet people on the ship and I’m definitely making some more friends. I hang out with Sara, Carla, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s roommate all the time (aka just today which has felt like forever).

Carla, Me, and Sara as we were about to leave the Bahamas

A FEW INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE SOCIAL SCENE:
- the student body is made up of 75% women.
- 25% of students are from California
- University of San Diego and University of Colorado are the most highly represented schools
- there are girls here who look like they spend more than an hour fixing their hair and make up every morning…I’m very thankful I don’t have to share a bathroom with any of them
- there are people that have made their main focus to party: one time I heard a guy say “Dude, that’s like a legit bar” (imagine that in a California surfer voice)


August 30, 2008
I hate circle rolls.

“Circle Rolls” are what my roommate and I decided to call the really bad waves that we feel. They don’t move in one direction, it’s more like a circle effect. Hard to explain. Anyway, at the moment the circle rolls have forced both Carla and I to be on bed rest on a Saturday night on the ship. We were both fine with sea sickness last night but tonight it was particularly rough and to make matters worse we were in the front of the boat on the top level aka the least stable part of the ship so we were swaying all over the place. But even in our cabins its still pretty bad.

Today was orientation so I expected ice breakers and fun games. But instead we got meeting after meeting about policies and procedures. It was all important information but just a lot to take in all in one day. Breaks for meals were the highlights. At dinner we watched the sun set from the back of the ship.

The living quarters are divided up into “Seas” so I am in the Arabian Sea and we have an LLC who acts as a resident assistant for our “Sea.” She’s super nice and we have had a couple meetings with our sea already. I guess one thing that people really look forward to is something called “Sea Olympics” which is where we compete in events. So my team is the rest of the Arabian Sea and if we win, we get to get off the ship first when we port in Miami. And that is a big deal! There are lots of other activities on the ship, too. They’re having an activities fair tomorrow to feature all of the clubs and opportunities.