All aboard

Since I still have a lot of stuff to do around the ship and continue to struggle with nausea and my so-called “sea legs”, I’ll be succinct.

About the ship…
It’s the fastest passenger ship in the world, but most of the time we’ll go much slower than it can so that we can actually take some classes.
It’s about half the size of a cruise, but still pretty big.
It has seven floors, each named after a Greek god, mine is Dionysus, which is the third floor.
The internet has pre-Jurassic speed its horrible.

About the ship’s population…
There are 581 students, although there is space for about 640, so some of us got lucky and received two pillows instead of just one. Hurray!
There are 25 professors, 6 women and 19 men.
The captain is from Croatia, trained by the Croatian army and a bit intimidating… he is called The Master, which reminds me of LOTR.

About my room…
It’s windowless and pretty close to the motor engines… that kinda happens when you get the cheapest option.
My roommate’s name is Julia and she’s from Colorodo, we are not going to be best friends, but she’s nice and mature, so I don’t expect much trouble from her.

Las maracas are a-coming

Bush had warned me, the news had warned me, even my mom had warned me… we are in dark and terrorist filled times, you most arrive early to the airport. So early I arrived and the so feared lines of thorough checking finished in less than 20 minutes… it seems orange code has a different meaning in Puerto Rico. Not that I’m complaining about not experiencing the pride of having my baggage open up before everyone so that they can look with envying eyes at my luxurious kmart panties, but you know, waiting 2 hours at the gate is not so much fun neither. Nevermind, I survived and American Airlines rewarded me by not assigning anybody next to me so I had three whole seats to myself. Woopee!!! … but then came American Eagle. I was ushed into a window seat in this teenie tiny plane where I found myself compressed between my neighbor’s big legs, my 2 bags (which didn’t fit in the floor) and the airplane engines, so that all the way I went jumping up and down, more or less contained in my seatbeltless seat by the masses surrounding me, tch tch tchooing my way to San Diego by the inconspicuous maracas I intend to give as a gift to an Indian family I’ll be visiting.

World Antology

So this is my itinerary for the next couple of months. I'll be leaving Puerto Rico 08/25/06 and returning somewhere around 12/10/06. In the meantime these are the countries that I'll be visiting during the program. As you can see in most of them I have a couple of days to spend so I'm still deciding what places I want to visit. Once I've figured it out I'll let you know. Okie dokie??

Destination Arrive Depart

Mexico ---- 08/27 - 08/27
Hawai ----- 09/02 - 09/02
Japan ------ 09/12 - 09/16
China ------ 09/19 - 09/24
Vietnam --- 09/27 - 10/02
Myanmar - 10/07 - 10/12
India ------ 10/15 - 10/19
Egypt ----- 10/29 - 11/04
Turkey ---- 11/07 - 11/11
Croatia ---- 11/14 - 11/18
Spain ------ 11/23 - 11/27
Florida ---- 12/07 - 12/07

Its alive!!!

Slowly its tiny antennae start quivering in excitement. The goal isn't far away and only the barrier of time stops it from reaching it. Patience my friend. Patience. For thou voyage awaits.

Heck, I have waited for two years already, what more is it 13 days? Allow me to explain. About two years ago I found out about this exchange program where basically you go to study in a university that is based in a ship (boats are the small ones people) so that you can visit about 10 countries during the course of a semester. Contrary to what one may expect, this is not Greek Cruise, the purpose is not to make it the biggest sorority and fraternity event ever, but actually study and promote intercultural relations, ever heard about those? Bet Bush hasn't. However let's leave the peculiar old man for the moment and concentrate on what its suposed to be the introduction to the type of journaling that I'll be doing for the next couple of months.

It took me about two years to get everything right for the trip: convince my mom that I wasn't going on a party vacation for three months, convincing half of my university's burocracy that yes, indeed, I will be taking classes, and of course, they are from an acredited institution (University of Virginia), and right, that little detail of money. I won't lie about to you, it's not exactly cheap, this ordeal, but i definetely think its worth it. All the classes take its subject and relate it to cultural diversity and actually, 20% of your grade depends of field work in the countries you visit, so as corny as it sounds it really is about having the world as your classroom. Not bad, huh?

During the next couple of months I'l be busy as hell playing discovery kids poster girl and I'll probably also realise how minuscule I really am in such a complex world (ah), but as long as I stay receptive to the tremendous wave of information that will come my way I don't mind the work, the 'humbling' experiences that inevitable happen in extended travel... or the money. My antennae are polished, let the world come, talk and play.


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For more info regarding the program, either because you are a student, teacher or adventurous adult check out www.semesteratsea.com. - God, they should have payed me because of that.