We are now on Day 5 and classes started the day before yesterday and we are officially out in deep ocean as of this morning when we left the Atlantic Shelf. With open seas comes the ever wonderful seasickness. I was so lucky has to have a slight case yesterday during my very first class of the semester. Apparently I didn’t look so good because my professor asked me how I was feeling and when I told her not so good she suggested I go to my cabin and lay down for a while so on my way down the seven billion stairs I stopped at the purser’s desk and got free seasickness meds and that stuff not only gets rid of the nausea but also makes you incredibly sleepy, also it was before 9am on our first morning post time change so I was already pretty tired regardless of going to bed fairly early. Fortunately I had enough brains to set my alarm for noon and was grateful for that 3 hour nap I got and when I woke up I felt perfectly fine and ate lunch and went to my second class. Another thing that worked out for me was both classes yesterday for me were taught by the same professor so I didn’t actually miss anything because she did the same introduction to herself and her expectations.
Now the way classes work here since we have so many port interruptions is that we have classes every day we are at sea. Even if it’s a weekend or a holiday (thus starting classes on Sunday) and it goes back and forth so we have “A Days” and “B Days” and we keep track by saying A1, B1, A2, B2, etc. So we have 6 days of classes before arriving in Morocco (so we get there the morning after B3). So my “A Classes are at 0800 I have Geography of International Development and at 1300 I have Cultural Geography. There are no classes from 1200 – 1300 so everyone can eat lunch and all classes end at 1600 and there is nothing really scheduled until 2000 so we have study time. My “B Classes” are at 0800 I have Japan’s Modern Story and at 0920 I have the required Global Studies which is more like a seminar type deal where we will have a bunch of other faculty come in and give mini-lectures based on their disciplines and their experiences in our upcoming ports.
Yesterday the campus store officially opened so I now have a voyage shirt with all the countries listed with their flags, a nice purple Semester at Sea sweatshirt and a really nice fleece SAS blanket! I also got sea bands after my slight attack of seasickness, so far they seem to work and if I can keep the seasickness at a bay by wearing bracelets that hit some pressure point instead of drugs that would make me so much happier. Tomorrow I have to start my malaria meds so hopefully I have no side effects with that (they include vivid dreams and imbalance….which could be interesting, maybe between the imbalance of a rocking ship and the imbalance from the meds I will be perfectly balanced).
My roommate and I have discovered that even though we are in the “dungeon” of the ship that there are perks. Such as our room doesn’t rock nearly as much as some of the upper decks, especially the rooms on the outside (we have an inside deck 2 room). We will also probably end up in great shape due to climbing the previously mentioned seven billion stairs to get to anything. But one drawback we have discovered is its very disorienting when we wake up in the morning because our clocks say 0700 but its pitch black still, so that is very weird.
Now the last bit of news I have is that today, at dinner, I saw a pod of dolphins!!! It was so cool to see them jumping out of the water! Apparently people saw both dolphins and whales yesterday although I really do not understand how since it felt like our visibility was about 20 feet. We spent the entire day surrounded by fog. But we have been lucky to not be affected with rough seas from the hurricane. In fact Captain Jeremy altered our course slightly to the north so we would stay at least 600 miles away from the storm.
By the way we are crossing our third time zone tonight so in the morning we will be 3 hours ahead of home (New Jersey). Also it kind of stinks having multiple 23 hour days in a row.
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