Chaos 92 days

So as the title says we are now 92 days away from embarking from Montreal. The last couple days have been insane for me from frantically filling out the last of the scholarship applications to finishing the visa applications and finally this morning registering for classes.
The registration was supposed to start at 8 am so like a good college student on summer break i set 2 alarms; one for 7:50 and the other for 7:55, I actually woke up with the first one! Anyway I was just a few clicks away from being ready to register right at 8 am. I had facebook up and was chatting with fellow early birds (I was up rather late compared to anyone living in a time zone west of me) and 8:00 came and went and we couldn't register. Well as you can imagine facebook lit up with frustrated sleep deprived fellow college students. And then the Semester At Sea website kicked us off. We got an email asking us to log off and to not log back in until they told us so I spent an hour of refreshing my email and hoping that I could register soon and being thankful that I don't have to go to work until 6:30 tonight. We were finally able to register at 9:15 (I would have appriciated more sleep since I worked last night) and I got all the classes that I wanted.
The only thing that I am not too thrilled about is the fact that I will have to be up for an 8am class every day; The way the schedule works is we have A days and B days becuase of going back and forth from being at sea to being on land and we don't have classes when we are in port. So my schedule is on A day I have Geography of International Development at 0800 and Cultural Geography at 1300. On B day I have Japan's Modern Story at 0800 and Global Studies (required course for everyone) at 0920. Hopefully I will get the work study job I applied for because I can easily work 2 hours every day with that schedule and then earn some money towards tuition!
So in the midst of all this chaos for SAS I am actually trying to get summer started around here. For my family that means putting the boat in the water at our cottage. It has been raining alot so I haven't been able to clean out the boat for quite a while but I finally got things going on monday.....yeah I still have no idea how I had time to do anything other then paper work. But I did it I got the boat cleaned, ordered a new hitch for our car and got the boat in to the boat place down the street to get the bottom painted (short side note here I painted it last year and I was literally blue for weeks after, the doctor thought I was really sick because I had a blue tinge to my skin so mom voted we get it professionally painted this year). So right now it looks like we are all on track to get the boat back and the hitch on friday. All I will have to do after that is hook up the gas lines, unwinterize the moter, and install the front seats. There actually seems like there is a chance that I will have the boat ready to go to the cottage this weekend!
So thats all I have to say for now, thanks for checking in! And until the next development (finacial aid award notice on June 3rd) have an awesome beginning of summer!

Semster at Sea is 100 days away

Ok so here we are 100 days away from debarking on what will undoubtedly be the best 4 months of my life (ok maybe getting married and having kids will change this but for now I am sticking with the best of my life) I guess I will start with a little background, last fall I transferred to Rowan University for Elementary Education/Liberal Studies: History/Geography, and Special Ed certification. One reason I chose Rowan was because they had study abroad opportunities, for as long as I can remember I have wanted to study abroad. So after I was accepted to Rowan I scoured their study abroad website and found the best study abroad program there could possibly be. I was so excited for the prospects of going around the world that I filled out the applications in the summer and on the first day of school went to the study abroad office and was promptly told that I was way to early for their office but to go send the SAS application in.

In October I found out I was accepted to SAS and pretty much screamed for a long time, I called my mom and I still to this day don't know if I said anything coherent to her on the phone that day, or to anyone else for that matter. All I could think about was my semester abroad and how far away it seemed. As soon as I found out I was accepted I sent in my $500 deposit and got myself confirmed for a deck 2 inside room. Now started months of monotenous school while Semester at Sea floated there, always in sight, always willing to drag me away from my school work. I spent many a day search SAS videos on youtube, meeting people who will be going with me on facebook, and I have looked at every page of the Semester at Sea website.

I think now I will get into where I will be going on this incredible journey.

• EMBARK: Montreal, Quebec, Canada






• Casablanca, Morocco






• Takoradi, Ghana






• Cape Town, South Africa






• Port Louis, Mauritius






• Chennai, India






• Penang, Malaysia






• Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam






• Hong Kong/Shanghai, China






• Kobe/Yokohama, Japan






• Hilo, Hawaii, USA






• Puntarenas, Costa Rica






• Traverse Panama Canal






• Havana, Cuba






• DEBARK: Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA

So now my every thought seems to be consumed by Semester at Sea and I am up to my eyeballs in scholarship applications, finacial aid matters, visa applications and figuring out what FDPs (Faculty Directed Practicum's) I want to do in each country and for countries that I am not doing FDPs what independent travel and service projects that I want to do. Right now if anybody talks to me they can be sure that SAS will come up whether I am telling them about something I want to do in a certain country or just telling them how many days are left till I leave. I found a countdown thing on my computer in January so I have been counting down since then. I decided to hold off on the blog until now because I wasn't really doing anything other then just getting through each day of school and trying so hard to remain focused. Now that school is done and I am starting summer jobs (yes thats plural, I currently have 2 and tomorrow I go for an interview with a third). This summer will consist of going to the doctor and getting my yellow fever vaccination and malaria medicine, figuring out how to pack for 4 months of every type of weather imaginable into 2 suitcases, picking and signing up for classes and FDPs, and earning as much money as possible.