Bon Voyage

What follows is the first of many entries detailing my adventures at sea and overseas during my Semester at Sea.

The MV Explorer left Halifax three days ago with 516 students (43, including myself are from University of San Diego). We waved goodbye from an outdoor portion of the fifth deck to the parents who were waiting in a nearby park as we pulled out of Pier 23. Land was soon out of sight, and since then there has been nothing to see, with the exception of one cargo ship and reported sightings of dolphins. The next landmass we will see will be Spain. We port in Cadiz, Spain on the Atlantic coast.

The boat is around 600 feet long and has seven decks. The first deck is crew rooms. The second, third and fourth deck are student rooms. However this year, due to low enrollment in the program, all students were moved to the third and fourth decks. The second deck is now serving as a, currently, unused quarantine area should anyone come down with Swine Flu. Each deck has inner and outer rooms. My roommate Casey and I are living in a outside room with a good sized window on the third deck. The other inhabitants of the ship, including staff and faculty, live on the fifth, sixth, or seventh decks. In addition to rooms, these floors house the majority of the common areas of the ships. The fifth deck has the pursers desks, the offices for field studies, a dining hall and classrooms. The sixth floor also has classrooms, a bookstore/SAS Campus store, the computer lab, library and the second of the two dining halls, AND outdoor dining. The seventh deck has a variety of outdoor areas including the pool, covered cafe/snack bar, outdoor exercise areas and plenty of lounge chairs! The gym ("complete" with four ellipticals, two treadmills, five stationary bikes and two stair climbers) probably totals around 250 square feet. The outdoor exercise area does include around ten weight machines and a spread of free weights. I still don't know my way around the ship just yet, constantly second guessing which direction to walk, and which floor things are really on.

The ship is nowhere near as steady as I had expected. For as big of a vessle as it is, there is a lot of rocking going on. I estimate there's a 15 degree dip in each direction. Think about that on the treadmill! The seas are reportedly getting even rougher tonight; we have been advised to place anything heavy on the floor of our cabin.

Speaking of, our cabin has two beds, two tiny nightstands, a desk nearly too shallow to use a laptop on (so we are using it as a vanity), a small glass table and two chairs. The bathroom is small, but like everything onboard is very clean and nice. We have a steward named Reynaldo who cleans our room and makes our beds daily! There is a good amount of built in storage including a tv tower which holds our 13inch dinosaur television. It also has a mini fridge and an open area we are using for our text and travel books, and three good sized but shallow drawers. Our closet has three doors, each around 15 inches. The first two open to our closet, the third to a stack of drawers. (I will post pictures eventually, but internet is very limited and costly from the boat. The tech guy said the ship's internet costs $20,000/month!) Even though I brought four duffles aboard, all of my stuff is put nicely away. In some ways I am wishing I brought more. I had anticipated the clothes I would want for excursions and adventures off the boat, but not for what I would need or want on the boat: VARIETY!

Today was our second day of classes. I am taking Global Studies (which everyone on the boat takes), a class about globalization and moving along the lines of Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat"; Operations Management, a decision science course taught by a professor who is very into sustainable business, etc.; Business, Government and Society; and Multicultural Detective Fiction. Tomorrow I am adding a fifth class, History of Jazz. During orientation our first and second days on the boat, all of the teachers introduced themselves and their classes. Sadly, all of the really interesting ones I would have loved to take (Alternative Energy, Sustainable Business in Emerging Nations, etc.) weren't accepted back by University of San Diego as courses. Class on a moving and rocking ship is certainly interesting. The classrooms, and class sizes for that matter, are small. With the exception of the room I have my Operations Management class in, none of the rooms have conventional desks. Most have couches, bench seats, chairs and small stationary glass tables much too small to write on. The common complaint is the constant rocking motion makes it very hard to stay awake, let alone focus. Another complaint along those lines, the constant time change. Each night thus far has been shortened by an hour. Again tonight we will lose an hour. I think we are +7 hours from Portland/San Diego time! Casey and I felt the effects of long busy days and changing time zones and accidentally slept through breakfast this morning!

The food on the boat is decent. Once again, lacking in variety. I am not terribly challenged by my restrictions as a vegetarian, but there is a lot more pasta and not enough protein in my diet. Tonight I attended a Vegetarian/Vegan/Raw Food group meeting that I signed up for during the involvement seminar held on the second orientation day. Hopefully this will help me know what to expect and how to plan for eating in each country, and maybe even improve things on the boat. If all else fails I have about 30 pounds of granola bars and fruit leathers under my bed!

I am really enjoying the voyage so far. I am lucky to know so many people from USD, and to call so many of them friends. We are enjoying each other's company while meeting people from all over the world. I am certain I will soon form close friendships with some of these now-strangers. I will leave now, thinking of how happy and lucky I am to have this opportunity. I will know so much more and have seen so many things upon my return. But for now, I am in no rush to do so!

Stephanie@Sea