Friday February 9th
Okay everyone… I finally found a moment to put some stuff on the soon to be full blog. First off let me say the ship is amazing. It is so nice. The food is great, the service is great, and the people are the greatest! The ship is absolutely amazing. It is so nice and everything on it appears to be brand new weather it is or not. The service is almost 5 star. Each hall has a cabin steward who comes and cleans your bathroom and your room DAILY. So each day I get a new clean towel and a nice newly made, tucked in bed. IT IS AWESOME!! In addition to that the food service is great also. The guys are right there to take your plate when you are done, or refill your drink if it is empty. The food is pretty good… way better than what I cooked myself when I lived in my apartmentJ! It still feels unreal that I will be living like this for the next 94 days.
The people on the boat are so nice. I really, honestly have not met one person that was not super nice. My roommate is probably the coolest person on the boat which was a total relief. Not going to lie when I saw she her name tag on the door that said she was from Laguna Beach I was a little worried. But I really have tried to push aside all my preconceived ideas about people and it’s pretty amazing. I think that we are going to be friends for life. Since she lives in California when we get back there I’m going to stay with her for a couple days before heading back. So mom wait to make my plane ticket until we get all the final details worked out.
As for the sights, yet again amazing, actually it’s better than amazing they are unbelievable. The Bahamas was so pretty. The water color was unreal. It was so teal. I did not get to do much there besides scuba diving but it was great. I finished my certification and I am now an open water diver!! I got certified Friday morning and Friday afternoon I did the shark dive. It was so cool. I had at least 40 reef sharks swarming around me. Other than that mom and I did some shopping. The shops were cool and had really neat stuff. The straw market was cool but every booth pretty much had the same thing over and over. And instead of being really cheap, like it should be, the prices were rather expensive. Some lady wanted mom to pay $25 for a cover-up that we found in a store for $15. The exact some cover-up. While mom and I did not make it to Atlantis I went with the kids from Semester at Sea that were staying at my hotel. Since Atlantis was where most of the SAS kids were staying that was our meeting point. We walked around for a while when we first got there and looked not only at the amazing architecture, but there super cool fish tank with the biggest stingray I have ever seen. It seriously had to be at least 8 feet wide if not more like 10 or 12 feet. It was huge!!
Leaving the Bahamas was hard, actually leaving the hotel was hardest because mom was going to the airport and I was going to the ship. That meant it was actually happening. I was super upset about leaving my mommy and definitely cried way more than she did! The people at the check out counter told me I had to quit crying because I was going to make them cry.
Upon arriving at the dock I found myself in line with a zillion other student and all their thousand pounds of luggage as well. It was so hot, the sun was beating down on us and it felt like the line was moving so slowly! It took me at least an hour and a half to get my luggage checked in. But once I got checked in they took our luggage and delivered it to our rooms. We had a bunch of meeting and a life boat drill the first day. But after the drill they released the lines to the dock and little tug boats pushed/ pulled us away from the dock and got the ship pointed out to sea. There were so many parents on the dock. They started in the middle by the boat and as the boat left they all ran to the end to make sure they got one more good look at all of us. And of course we were all there waving. Again I was super sad to think that I was actually leaving, but excited for the journey that lied (and still lies) ahead of me.
We were at sea for only two days during those two days we had TONS of super boring rule meetings. Telling us they aren’t going to look over our shoulders to try and find rule violations, that they trust us. We only had global studies, the class everyone is taking that teaches us about the places we are visiting. It was so unorganized. The teacher is in the union which holds maybe about half of the 702 students on the boat. The rest of us have to watch a small TV which shows the class satellite. It really sucks because everyday you could be in a different room with a different teacher, just depending on where there is room to sit down. It really sucks from an educational perspective because as we all known you learn and retain information best when you are in the same room with the same teacher everyday. I’m kind of worried because I have heard it is probably the most difficult class. I’m going to TRY and get up early so that I can be in the union so I can have the personal interaction that I like.
Other than that we had an A class day and I only have Human Sexuality on A days. The teacher seems really cool and all the kids seem fun. I think it will be an interesting class. Tomorrow we have a B day so I will meet the rest of my teachers and go to my other 2 classes- Strategic Management and Macroeconomics.
I tried to get up and watch us roll into Puerto Rico but we got in at like 6:45 AM. And as you all know I really don’t like to be up that early, okay I absolutely hate getting up that early. BUT I did stand up out of bed look out the window and see land out of our port hole. Unfortunately I crawled immediately back into bed until 8. The governor of Puerto Rico came and welcomed our ship to the island. He got a degree from Harvard, weird. He seemed really nice but after talking to the locals he is not a very well liked man. He imposed a sales tax for the first time in history and has made many other unwelcome changes. The bus driver to bioluminescent bay said that his own party members have even asked him to step down because they don’t agree with the things he is doing. The bio bay tour guide said he is allowing a construction company to pretty much kill one of their 4 glowing bays. If any of you have never heard of bioluminescent bays
(I had not until this trip) I strongly urge you to research it…it is by far the coolest thing I have seen thus far. I have also done an 8 mile costal bike ride and tour of the city, both Old and New San Juan, and took a hike in the El Yunque rainforest. We swam in the La Mina Falls waterfall. Again all I can say is absolutely amazing. Everything is so beautiful! I did not get time to do any shopping but I am sure I will have plenty of time everywhere else we go! We will be leaving Puerto Rico shortly and will have 7 days at sea. But when we land again we will be in Salvador…in Carnival!!