Ship Life and Classes

I’m finally gone!!!! WWWOOOOO. We left the Bahamas on time (I think) and now we’re out in the ocean and arriving in Puerto Rico tomorrow! We have the largest amount of students in the history of SAS, there are 702 students!! And I can hardly remember anybody’s name, haha. The ship is pretty sweet, it’s extremely nice inside (and outside) and the crew is really friendly and nice. In a lot of places the floors are granite with those gold handrails. In the dining rooms we have buffet style meals, but some of the crew act as waiters and take our plates away when we’re done eating and that kind of stuff, which I definitely was not expecting at all. The ship and crew has definitely without a doubt surpassed my expectations of what I thought it would be. Before we left Nassau we got to do a lovely life-boat drill that lasted for at least 30 minutes cause a few people got placed in the wrong place for their life-boat so they weren’t around for the roll-call at their station so we got to stand around in our life-jackets and long sleeve shirts and pants until the crew figured out where they were. Oh and my dad lost his passport on the ship when my parents came to visit me on it in Nassau. WAY TO GO DAD, GEEZE. YOU MADE ME HAVE TO GO TO THE DEANS OFFICE AND WE HADN’T EVEN LEFT YET, GEEZE. I bet you didn’t even know it was missing until they delivered it back to the Atlantis, eh? Well hopefully they delivered it back, I have no idea, let me know on that one. But on the bright side the Archbishop talked to me because of that, haha. I’m putting that in here just for Chris, hehehehe. There’ll be more about him later.

I’m still trying to get used to the motions of the boat in the ocean, it’s not making me sick or anything, I actually enjoy it quite a bit. It makes it extremely easy to fall asleep especially during class, hehe. I keep stumbling into walls and into random people cause of the rocking of the boat. But I’m starting to get the hang of it. It’s actually making me eat a lot more than I usually do, which is kinda weird. My roommate is pretty cool he’s from Pennsylvania. Our room is extremely small it is half the size of a dorm room and there’s not a port hole in it so when you turn out the lights it’s literally pitch black. Which is perfect for falling asleep but it sucks for waking up, cause you don’t know what time it is or if the sun is even out until you go look out of one of the windows on the other decks.

Our orientation day wasn’t very fun, it was just meeting after meeting after meeting. But I’ve eaten almost every meal out on the outside part of one of the decks, which is extremely nice. It’s been 70 to 80 degrees (I laugh at those of you in Colorado, hahaha). They pretty much just told us what we can do and what we can’t do (mostly what we can’t do). Our captain is pretty cool, he has an English accent and has the dry British humor, which I find to be extremely funny because he really tries to be funny and most of the time no one laughs at his jokes so it’s just him standing their waiting for someone to laugh and I end up laughing from the silence and the corny dry joke. I just had my first classes today and they seem like they’re going to be kinda hard because there isn’t any room for us to put anything off. We already have very little time to sleep and I’m definitely not going to be doing a whole lot of work while we’re in port so that doesn’t leave me too much time to do assignments for all of my classes. I have to keep journals for all of them and everything. OH, I have the largest amount of students in one of my classes that I’ve ever had, we have an amazing 702 students in that class (the whole ship). It’s a big class.

For those of you wondering about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I’ve seen him twice and talked to him once. I saw him when we were leaving Nassau, I was behind/next to him on the 7th deck when we were leaving (that’s where he asked me about my dad’s passport). And I saw him today at breakfast, I had just finished eating breakfast and he came walking into the room. But he’s really nice. I don’t see him wandering around too much though, I don’t know if he just stays in his room or what he does. I’ve also heard that he’s only giving one lecture on the ship and that better not be the case. Hopefully that’s just a rumor.

I’m sick of writing now because I’ve written a boat load (get the pun?? Ha). And I really need to go sit out in the sun and star off into the seemingly endless ocean cause I have yet to do that today, and I hear a few people saying that they saw whales earlier. Oh and it rained yesterday but I was completely oblivious to that. But I’m having tons of fun and I’ll write again after Puerto Rico. But hopefully it won’t be this long cause I’ve been writing this for a ridiculous long time. If you have any questions about this stuff or anything e-mail me: jlissy1987@gmail.com


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