In Which We Find Our Sea Legs

We left England 3 days ago which means we all had to get used to the constant rocking of the ship. All of us walk as if we have been drinking a fair amount. None of us can walk in straight lines and often we run into walls, poles, and other people on our way to other parts of the ship. I’m curious to see if this will happen up until the end of the trip—I hope not. We also had our first drill. An alarm goes off and then we all have to grab our life jackets, put on long sleeves, long pants, close toed shoes, and a cap if you have one. I had a cap in my backpack at some point but I think it got lost either in my England hotel room or when I unpacked? I’m not sure. But hey, it gives me an excuse to buy a Semester at Sea hat. The hat I borrowed actually belonged to my sister, Anya. So, sorry about that Anya. But if no one tells her I lost it, she’ll never know. She won’t miss it. Anyway, the campus store opened today and I went a little bit crazy. Just a little. I bought two shirts: one dark blue, short-sleeved shirt; and one gray, long-sleeved shirt with flags for each of the countries we will visit across the chest. The other section of the store has school supplies and other miscellaneous items and from this section I bought a thermos (because otherwise all the hot chocolate packets I brought would have been totally useless) and I bought a reusable water container. Altogether this adds up—sorry Mom! But if you email me I’ll get you something as well…

Today was also the first day of classes and I have to say that I think they will certainly be interesting if nothing else. Since I’ve only met my teachers once, I can’t really pass sound judgment on whether or not I like them and their classes. So far all the assignments listed on the syllabi seem pretty reasonable, but it is hard to say how long each assignment will take to finish since we have to take port activities into account. Well, enough about classes since I’m sure you’d all rather hear about something else.

We all watched the sunset last night and it was beautiful. Since there is no land nearby and there were no clouds in the sky, nothing was stopping us from seeing the sun go down and disappear. We took bets on what time the sun would drop beyond our eyesight and I’ll have you know that I was very close, but didn’t win (my roommate did). I also met another girl who goes to NAU—which was a complete surprise to me—and she seems pretty nice. I’m glad there is someone else here to represent my school and someone I may actually see after the summer is over.

I’m going to end this before it turns into a novel.

Until next time,

-Alexis

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