My Life At Sea!!

Today is my third full day at sea. In the past couple days, I have been to all of my classes, and as I expected, I think I’m going to like all of them except the one I’m required to take. At the moment the ships alarms are beeping SUPER loudly (just as a practice exercise – don’t worry Mom and Dad!!!) we’ve been practicing lots of safety drills the past couple days. I now know how to put on a lifejacket and how to stand in a straight line while waiting to board a lifeboat. I’ve also learned lots of nautical terms: the difference between port and starboard, fore and aft, and bow and stern. The captain corrects us any time we accidentally call the ship a boat.

Life on board the ship at the moment is a lot like being at camp. We have scheduled meals and snacktimes. Nobody really knows each other so we all still spend lots on time introducing ourselves and trying to remember names. Since nobody really has any classwork yet, and we’re completely surrounded by water we spend lots of time hanging out and playing card games and board games. Last night, I learned two new card games that we played outside on the lower deck of the ship, under the moon and the stars (it is soooooo pretty out here!!) Unlike camp, I haven’t met anyone who is homesick yet, though I do know lots of people who have been seasick. Luckily, by now we’ve all pretty much gotten our sea legs and are walking around just fine – it’ll be weird to be on land again this weekend!

We also all spend lots of time trying to figure out what we’re going to do when we actually reach land again; we have the option of going on all sorts of amazing trips that are set up by SAS (but they all cost extra money) and planning our own adventures. We are also required to do some things in each country for our classes (like interviewing people or going places of great cultural importance). I already signed up for some program-trips but I’m currently trying to plan my own hiking trip in Hawaii, a 2-day train-trip to the Great Wall of China (staying in a cheap little hostel along the way) and other things like that. It is still so absolutely crazy to think that I’m actually going to these places!!!! I won’t believe this is actually happening until it does. I mean, for all I know at the moment, we could just be sailing in circles (though I suppose we are really sailing in one really big circle…also known as THE WORLD!!!)