Hasta luego, Barcelona!

We are on our way to Italy! We pulled out of Barcelona around 9pm tonight, I can’t believe how fast these last 4 days have gone! As much as I enjoyed our SAS tours of the city, I am really looking forward to doing Rome independently and on our own time. The city tours were very rushed, and we will have three full days in Rome to do whatever we want! So although I’m sad to be leaving Barcelona without seeing everything I wanted to see, I am so excited for Italy!

After getting another 4 hours of sleep last night (ahhhhh!), Steve and I were up bright and early to grab breakfast and head to the metro station. La Sagrada Familia opened at 9am, and we wanted to be at the front of the line so we had time to do other things. While waiting in line, we read that the towers were closed today. Major bummer!!!! There is an elevator that goes up to the top of one of the spires, but for some reason or another, it wasn’t operating today. We were really upset, apparently we have really bad luck with this cathedral! Anyway, we got our tickets (hooray for student discounts!) and an audio tour and set off to finally see the inside of the cathedral. The entire interior is a major construction zone, and visitors are only able to walk around along the outer walls. I was so glad we got the audio tour because it pointed out many things we would have missed. The stained glass is gorgeous from the inside! Usually the stained glass in churches depict scenes from the Bible, but the stained glass there was just a beautiful rainbow of colors representing the sun, water, earth, and fire. There were large pillars in the area I’m assuming the mass will congregate, and the pillars are made from stone from all over Spain. The seats for the choir are carved into the wall over the back door. We went to the museum in the basement of the cathedral and got to see some of Gaudi’s original sketches (most of them were lost in a fire during the Spanish civil war). There was also a “Gaudi and Nature” exhibit where we could see models of some of his architecture alongside his influences from nature. Most of his structures are actually designed after plants and natural patterns. Everything looks amazing now, I can’t wait for all of the construction to finish and to see it in its completion! Sign me up for Semester at Sea Summer 2026!

Back to the metro to catch a train to (near) Park Guell. The metro station was so far away from the park, and the park was perched atop an extremely steep hill. We finally made it to the top, turned the corner and saw the buildings and mosaics I have always seen in pictures. I battled people in order to get a picture with the famous lizard fountain! We walked around on a trail and then came to the roof of the building with the mosaic benches. We could see the entire city from up there! There were so many different places to go, but we had to start heading back because I had to attend an FDP on the ship at 1600. Along the way back to the metro station, we stopped at a little restaurant (the ONLY one open that we could find) and got personal pizzas. About 98% of the shops and restaurants in the city are closed on Sundays, basically the only places open are the touristy shops. Anyway, we made it back to the ship, I took a much-needed shower, and I went to my FDP on Doctors Without Borders in Spain. It was very informative, but the woman who spoke was a psychologist and could really only speak on mental health.

While we were watching the ship pull out of port, we asked The Voice what the latest scoop was. He said he has heard of 66 people who got pick-pocketed, and he’s estimating that about 60 more got pick-pocketed and either didn’t tell him or didn’t realize it yet. One person was sent home due to “conduct issues” and 3 guys claimed they were roofied. Several people got dock time (one guy has 36 hours of dock time!) because they couldn’t manage to make it back on the ship by 6pm, even some faculty members! Tsk tsk!

Current Location: 41 degrees N latitude, 2 degrees E longitude, traveling at 13 knots! Tomorrow we’ll be sailing between the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, hopefully we see some land!

Barcelona, Days 2 and 3

(6/25-6/26)

Today, Steven and I split up for different trips! He left at 8am for his Medieval Templar Knights tour in Lleida while I had my paella tour starting at 10am. I need to start getting more sleep—in the last 48 hours, I have gotten 6 hours of sleep. Not good! Anyway, let me start off with a recap of yesterday! (June 25)

Yesterday morning, Steve and I went to Montserrat (“serrated mountain”) about 45 minutes outside of Barcelona.  Driving up the mountain was incredibly gorgeous. The bus careened around the tight turns, and I could just see the headlines “SAS bus tumbles down mountainside” but it was all okay. We got box lunches and were on our way once we reached the top! Our guide gave us an overview of the chapel and monastery, and we were able to go inside the chapel. Everything is perched so perfectly in this mountain, I swear I took 300 pictures! Then we had an hour of free time in which we could go up or down the mountain on a funicular. Down the mountain was the holy grotto. We chose to go up the mountain to St. John’s cave. Unfortunately, it took 15 minutes to get onto the funicular and we only had enough time to look around at the top of the peak, we never had time to go to the cave, which was disappointing. Still, the view from the top was incredible, and hopefully I can go back there someday to see everything.

Once we got back to the ship, we headed out again to grab some lunch (the box lunches were nothing to write home about). We went to a mall area that was a short walk from the Colombus monument and got a pizza margherita to share. Delicioso! We had this bread before the pizza came out called pa amb tomaquet, which is literally “bread and tomato” in Catalan. It was so simple but quite tasty…excellent little appetizer. I’m pretty sure it was just toasted bread covered and soaked with crushed tomatoes and drizzled in olive oil. Yum! Will have to try to recreate that at home =) We still had some time, so we inquired about a dessert menu. Steven picked out a sundae consisting of a scoop of chocolate, a scoop of vanilla, and a scoop of praline ice cream for us to share. It was such a treat after spending the morning and early afternoon in the hot sun hiking on a mountain! After that, it was time for our Barcelona at Night tour. I guess I didn’t look at the time of the tour when we signed up for it—I thought it was going to be, you know, at night when it was dark out. Nope, it started at 6pm, and sunset wasn’t until after 9! Also, this tour was exactly the same as our orientation tour that we took on the first day. We even went back into the Pueblo Espanol. Since we had already done a guided tour, we were able to roam around on our own for 45 minutes. I bought a couple pieces of jewelry, a couple of prints, and lots of postcards to send and for the scrapbook! We also got free sangria samples!! Heheh….

After we toured around the city, we went to the base of Montjuic to see the Magic Fountains. This was the only part of the tour we hadn’t seen before, and it was amazing! The place was packed with people, I was amazed we didn’t get separated from the group! The show included music and the fountain had lights and different water formations. I took a video of part of the show, hopefully it turns out well! After we made a quick pitstop at the ship, we headed out on a quest for churros con chocolate. We walked up La Rambla, which was much more lively than the night before, and finally settled on a little restaurant after a server assured us that they had churros con chocolate. What a lie! The churros were freshly made, hot and delicious, no complaint there, but instead of the thick, creamy, syrupy chocolate that I was expecting, they just served us regular hot chocolate! So not the same! We returned to the ship for some much needed rest, although I decided to call home and write the blog post you see below this one.

So…today: the paella tour! (I know my sister is going to read this and salivate). It started at 10am with yes, yet another bus tour. I had the same British tour guide as with the tour on the first day (the really good, descriptive one) but near the end of the 3-hour tour, we just wanted our paella already! We were dropped off at La Boqueria, one of the best markets in the world! It was so crowded and Spanish people move soooo slowly that I almost immediately got separated from our group. I saw our tour guide’s hat, so I followed him, but he was apparently trying to help a student find a paella pan to buy. Since I saw no one else on our trip and I didn’t want to get lost, I followed them ALL around the area surrounding the market. We finally return to the market after 20 minutes of searching, and there is a stand right there in the market selling kitchen utensils and, of course, paella pans of every size. Great. Anyway, after the market we walk down some back alleys where there were a bunch of shops and restaurants. Finally, we started to walk down to the restaurant where we would be learning how to make paella. We actually went to the same restaurant that Steve and I ate at yesterday for lunch! We went upstairs and immediately downed glass upon glass of water, and then the tapas started. First, more pa amb tomaquet, then olives, ham, manchego cheese, and calamari. I had a sampling of everything, but I wanted to save room for the paella! We were then called back to watch the paella being made. In a back room there were three HUGE paella pans, each big enough to serve 15-20 people. We all gathered around a pan and watched as the chef first cooked the prawns and mussels, then took them out to cook the vegetables (onions, peppers, and peas). We learned that the sautéed vegetables was called “sofrito” and that you’re only supposed to put in vegetables that caramelize (mushrooms work well too). After the vegetables came what I thought was squid, but was actually cuttlefish (if Libby is reading this then she is probably horrified that I ate cuttlefish). So much better than squid! It doesn’t get rubbery at all and is much more tender than squid while still having the same texture and taste. Then the rice was added and toasted, and we were all given spoons and we took turns stirring the paella components. To that, they added a red “sopa de pescado” sauce was added to cook everything in. This cooked for about 10-15 minutes until all the water had boiled off. Then it was time to eat! This paella was SO much better than the one at the flamenco show, so much more flavor and the seafood was probably the best I’ve ever eaten (I did get jipped though, I got 2 mussels on my plate but only one had meat inside…bummer!) Mmmmm! The one downside of really good paella is that when you are opening up the prawns, the red sauce gets everywhere! Oh well, still good. So after tapas and a plate full of paella, we were stuffed, but there was dessert! Crema Catalan, a type of custard, in a little dish kind of like crème brulee except without the hard top. Very tasty. I also got some café con leche to enjoy with my crema Catalan, all in all a very good and satisfying Spanish meal!

So this is when the fun begins. My tour was supposed to be over at 3, it actually ended at 3:45pm. According to our list of trips, Steve’s trip was also supposed to end at 3, so we said we would wait for each other at the terminal before boarding the ship. I was worried that he was worried that I wasn’t back yet, but there was nothing I could do. I get to the terminal, he’s not there. I go inside and he’s not in his room, so I go back outside to wait and read some stuff for my classes. 4:30 rolls around and I decide to go inside and ask the Purser if he was on the ship (we have to swipe in and out). He was not, and neither was his trip leader, so I was assuming that a bus broke down or something. Finally, at 5pm, a tour bus rolls in (not his) and I go to ask the driver if he knew anything about a late bus. He said that tour wasn’t supposed to be over until 5pm, our sheet had a typo, and that they were delayed another hour, so 6pm. Soooo then I sat for another hour, waiting for the bus to get in. Poor Steven comes in at 6pm and apparently the trip was horrible. People were complaining the whole time because they apparently didn’t read in the trip description that it was a 2-hour bus ride there and back. I guess they went to the first place in Lleida and had a tour there, but then they were supposed to go to another place half an hour away from there. Apparently SAS didn’t account for siesta, and the place was closed from 12-4:30. If they had waited to go at 4:30, they wouldn’t have returned to the ship until 9, so they just decided to head back. Poor Steven! We had a whole night planned, but since he got back 3 hours late we had to drastically change. Originally we were going to tour La Sagrada Familia and then head up to Parc Guell, but both were closing in a couple of hours. I decided I wanted to run up to the market again since I didn’t really get to see it. So we walked up Las Ramblas to the market, where I bought a paraguayo for a euro and a watermelon wedge for a euro. Steve and I went outside and enjoyed the watermelon (it had been pre-sliced and they provided a fork). Yum!

After the market, we just wandered around the Gothic quarter for a long time. We shopped around, I found a really cool-looking coffee mug that is very Gaudi-esque. We then found a place with churros and chocolate….REAL churros con chocolate, and the chocolate was SO good. Yum! To work off our snack, we wandered around for a couple more hours. Everything was closing, so we decided to grab some dinner. We searched EVERYWHERE in the Gothic quarter but the only things open were ice cream shops! We finally found a restaurant where I had a veal brochette (which is like a kabob) and Steve had a pork, bacon, and sausage brochette. Very tasty!

At this point, it was around 11:20pm, and we decided we wanted to see La Sagrada Familia at night since it is lit up. So we get the metro to the cathedral (which was an ordeal in itself since we had to change trains). I took a couple of pictures and then we went across the street to get a better view. As I’m getting ready to take a picture, the clock strikes midnight and the lights shut off. Just like that. Oh well. Back to the ship!

Plan for tomorrow: wake up early to get in as early as possible to La Sagrada Familia, then take the metro to Parc Guell, then if we have time, we’ll go on a tour of La Pedrera. Hopefully we can fit it all in! Hope you enjoyed this extremely long post! Tomorrow is our last day in Barcelona =( but we get to Italy on Tuesday!!

First day in Barcelona! Ole!

Note: The stuff in this post occurred on 6/24, was written on 6/25, and was submitted on 6/26. I have had no time to write, which is unfortunate as I really don’t want to forget all of the things we have done! Hopefully I can get better at writing faster or taking notes or something. But here you go!

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First day in Barcelona was a success!

Yesterday morning around 0730 we docked in Barcelona! Steven and I went to eat breakfast outside on the 6th deck and got to watch the ship dock. Our ship is so puny compared to the big cruise ships! There’s a ship here called “The World” and apparently people buy/rent condos on the ship and they just live on the ship and sail around the world. Sweet life! Even though our ship is small, it’s so pretty at night when the string of lights is lit up. Pictures will come at some point….eventually. I really wish I could be visually sharing these things instead of just talking about them!

So at 1100 I had a poetry FDP on the ship. A Spanish poet came to talk about poetry along with a doctoral student in the local university. Unfortunately they came about 20 minutes late (apparently Spaniards are late to everything…like me) and I had a tour leaving at 1300 so I had to leave early to scarf down lunch and run off the ship with Steven for our city tour! This was a 4-hour motorcoach tour through all of the major sites of Barcelona. We got down four times, I believe, to look around at the different places. The first place was Montjuic, which is a mountain overlooking Barcelona. It is covered with palm trees, ferns, and other exotic plants. When we got to the top, we got out to take pictures of panoramic Barcelona (of course I utilized the awesome panoramic feature on my camera…captured all of Barcelona and the port in one amazing shot!). We saw our ship from the top, and there were a bunch of fountains and gardens (got a picture of a dog drinking out of a fountain, very cute). Up on Montjuic was also where some of the buildings were for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992…too bad I don’t remember that one! After the top of Montjuic, we headed down the hill to the Pueblo Espanol. To our surprise, the price of our tour included the (expensive) ticket to get into the village! We had 45 minutes to explore. Pueblo Espanol is basically all of Spain in one village. It was built for the World Fair when it came to Barcelona (unsure of the year) and it contains architecture from every major area in Spain. It’s set up like a village, with streets (just for pedestrians though), shops, restaurants…each sector represents a different area of the country. It was a little disappointing that the whole thing was fake, nothing was original, just replicas of existing buildings, but it was very cool to see all the different types of construction and architecture there is in one country. In the middle of the Pueblo, there is a big plaza with a concert stage set up. Apparently Bob Dylan was playing there last night, and people were FREAKING out. Seriously? I don’t get it. On our way out, we spotted a gelateria and of COURSE had to get a gelato! Strawberry cheesecake!! Soooo yummy. It was a good treat after walking around in the hot sun.

After Pueblo Espanol, we went to La Segrada Familia! Our tour guide was so great…he knew the story behind every single sculpture on the cathedral (and there are a lot!) and even pointed out hidden components of the sculptures. Hopefully I can remember most of them for when I make a scrapbook (I took a picture of every sculpture he talked about). The building is a work in progress and is supposed to be finished in 2027…I foresee a trip back to Barcelona when it is completed!! It is apparently supposed to get 10 more spires, and four of them will be twice as tall as the ones that are there now! That is really freaking tall! Definitely going back when (if) it gets finished! We didn’t get to go inside, but we’ll be going back on Saturday to do a tour of the interior. We went around the entire cathedral and looked at all of the sculptures. It’s such an amazing piece of architecture! Along the tour, we also got to see Casa Batllo and La Pedrera (two more Gaudi buildings) and hopefully we’ll get to go back to La Pedrera this weekend to tour it and go up on the roof. There are so many things to see and do, and we only have 3 more days!! Ugh! I guess that just means we have to come back…hehehe….

Our final stop was at the Barri Gothic Cathedral. We had 45 minutes to go around the Cathedral and look around. Again, our tour guide was amazing in explaining the meanings of the different altars and sculptures! After the cathedral, we went back to the ship. Unfortunately, our guide was so good at explaining things that we returned half an hour late, and we didn’t have time to go up to the ship and change for the trip to see a flamenco show. I was bummed that I couldn’t wear the dress I brought for the show, but it was better than being late for the trip! This trip was called “Flamenco at Night with Dinner.” It started off with a one-hour tour around Barcelona, and it went to pretty much the same places we went to earlier in the day. We had a different guide who was actually Catalonian (our first guide had a British accent) so she had some different things to say and we still learned a lot. When we got to “Palacio de Flamenco,” we got a seat near the front. It was sort of like a dinner theater where you eat first and then watch the show from your table. So…the food! Our first course was seafood paella with a side salad. Talk about delicious! Each paella had 2 shrimp (complete with head and eyes), a mussel, and squid. I also got Steve’s seafood =) The side salad had green olives, and I hate green olives, but I tried these and they were AMAZING. Dr. Gies had told us that if we didn’t like olives in the states to try them here and our idea of olives would definitely change. In the US, olives are soaked in brine. Here they are soaked in olive oil (makes sense?) and they are delicious! I am an olive-eating machine! Anyway, the paella was delicious! As soon as we finished the paella, the show started. While we were watching the show, our 2nd course of chicken and sautéed vegetables came out. Since Steven gave me all of his seafood, I gave him the majority of my chicken. Such a good girlfriend I am! =) The show, like the food, was amazing…there were many different acts including both women and men, young and old. There was a man probably in his 50s dancing and stomping extremely fast! We enjoyed the end of the show while eating chocolate flan, a perfect end! The music was really good, I tried to follow the words and I knew they were telling a story, but I guess my Spanish wasn’t good enough. =(

After we got back to the ship, we got ready to go to Las Ramblas for tapas (this was a couple of hours after we finished eating at the flamenco show). The day before was the summer solstice, which is apparently a HUGE celebration in Spain (for instance, the Picasso Museum is only closed December 25, January 1, and June 24…it’s a major holiday here!) and people were apparently hungover and not out. Las Ramblas was dead! Very few people were there. We sat down outside of a little restaurant and ordered our sangria and croquetas. After I got used to the taste of the sangria, I really liked it! I definitely approve. The croquetas were good too =) We just sat and sipped our sangrias and watched the drunk people stumble by. Quite an enjoyable life. I could get used to this. Too bad we only have 3 more days here.

There were TWO stupid questions yesterday! The second one was the best one of the trip thus far….

“Where is the terminal?”
“Can we get off both sides of the ship?” (The Voice responds “Yes, but I think you’ll find the starboard side to be a bit drier”)

So…that was the first day! Tomorrow is Montserrat and a night tour of Barcelona! Hopefully that post will be up soon……right now it is 3:45am and I am going to bed!

Land, Ho!

Last day of classes…for a while! Our next class day is after Italy, which is July 6. Unfortunately that is when most of our first papers and/or midterms are. But…tomorrow is Barcelona! We have a pre-port meeting tonight and a diplomatic briefing early tomorrow morning to inform us all about any problems going on in Spain or general tips on getting around. At 11am, I have an FDP (faculty-directed practica) for my poetry class: a Spanish poet will be coming on the ship and I believe we will be having lunch and hearing a talk from her. At 1pm, Steven and I are going on the Barcelona city tour, and then at 6pm we are going to a flamenco show with dinner! A very fun-filled day! We have the option of “signing off” a trip at the end instead of traveling back to the ship, and we will probably do that at the end of the flamenco trip so we can see Barcelona at night if it is not TOO late. I know “late” in Barcelona means 4am, but we’ll see. We have an inter-port student from Barcelona riding on the ship with us, and he said not to go clubbing (not that I would anyway) tomorrow night because no one goes out on Thursdays. But maybe that means the city isn’t as “happening” on Thursday night so we may not find much to do. That may be the time for churros con chocolate! Delicioso! We got a map of the dock and the area around the dock, and our ship won’t be too far from Las Ramblas! Yay!

Not very much has been going on the last few days, mainly just attending classes. All 738 of us took our Global Studies map quiz on Sunday, that was an event. Easy peasy though! Lots of class work, lots of reading, lots of giving up on reading and just going to bed (my favorite). Oh and we changed our clocks forward an hour again last night… last time until we go to Greece! Spain, Italy, and Croatia are in the same time zone, then Greece, Turkey, and Egypt are in the same time zone, then we just have to go back to Spain time for Morocco. I am really looking forward to 25-hour days on the way back home, even though we’ll be studying for finals.

We saw land yesterday! Africa (Morocco) and Europe (Spain) at the same time while crossing through the Strait of Gibraltar! I tried taking pictures, but it was really foggy and I don’t think that many came out. We were really close to the Africa side and got to see some towns and a fairly large mountain range! I think everyone is ready to get off of this ship and see Spain! We only have about 200 nautical miles until Barcelona, and I believe we will be docking there late tonight or in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Most likely tonight though, as we’ve been going 400-500 nautical miles a day.

So since my last blog post, I have met with my extended family.  For that, we get placed in a “family” headed by a lifelong learner or a grad student.  I now have a “cool uncle,” Greg! (he’s a grad student). Our family, minus one person, met last night for dinner, and we’re going to meet up after each port to talk about what we did there. He and one of the girls in the family are also going on the Cairo/Luxor trip that Steve and I are doing, so that should be fun too!

I also signed up to be a writing tutor to help people with the many papers we have to write on the trip. Yay!

On Monday, I went on a tour of the bridge (where the captain and officers “drive” the ship). I was surprised to find out that the captain is rarely there (what does he do with his time all day?) and the ship is run by an officer and other attendants. The ship is on complete autopilot, so I think they just sit there and make sure everything is looking okay? I got to get a picture sitting in the captain’s chair, wearing the captain’s hat, though! We learned some valuable information about the ship, like how one of the engines just randomly stopped over the weekend and they don’t know why. That’s comforting! It was also really rocky that day and after the tour I had to go back to my room to take Meclizine (similar to Dramamine, but it doesn’t knock you out). So far I haven’t been really seasick, I have just gotten dizzy twice (I guess that’s part of the seasickness) so I took the medicine just in case. Some people have it really bad! Meclizine makes you have bizarre dreams, too.  I can’t remember what mine was about 2 nights ago, but it was very odd! Who needs hallucinogenic drugs when you can take Meclizine? Juuuuuuuuust kidding!

And now for everyone’s favorite part of the blog: the stupid questions of the past four days:

-“Where is the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”
-“What’s in the Picasso museum?”
-“Are we going to cross the Atlantic on the way back?”
-“Do you change time zones when you cross the Equator?”

The Voice has also started a rumor debunker… the last couple rumors (which are false):

-“The ship is running out of fuel.” (He said that we have fuel-carrying submarines that run along side the ship)
-“We are not stopping in Turkey.” (He said we can stay on the ship when we get to Turkey if we don’t want to go, but the ship will be going to Turkey)

Someday I am going to record one of the announcements. The Voice says everything so seriously, but he’s hilarious!

And finally (I know…long blog post!) I want to share a poem we read in my poetry class. It is very relatable to the trip!



The Sea is Enormous (Aun cuando el mar es grande…) by Juan Ramon Jimenez

The sea is enormous,
just as everything is;
yet it seems to me I’m still with you…

Soon only water will separate us;
water, restlessy moving—
water…only water!



Current location – 37 degrees N latitude, 0 degrees W longitude, traveling at 14.4 knots!

Dolphins! Land! Clowns! Oh my!

Hello faithful blog readers! It is 7am here and I have been up for over an hour! Why, do you ask? Today was the first sight of land! Yesterday at our lunch announcements, the Voice (our assistant executive dean who comes over the loudspeaker at 1200 and 1730 to give us our daily updates) told us that at 0600 we would be passing by the Azores Islands!! So if you go look at a map right now, you will know approximately where we are. Still fairly far from Spain, but we’re getting there! We will be there on Thursday. So Shaara and I woke up at the obscenely early hour of 0545 (my sister would be proud) to see the islands and watch the sunrise. I took about 60 pictures of the sunrise, I wish I could upload them to Facebook so everyone could see them! I’m going to carry my pictures on a USB drive once we get to Spain so if I see an internet café I can jump in and upload pics.  I don’t think the pictures really capture how gorgeous a sunrise over open water is!

Backtracking to yesterday…after a long day of classes (and a much-needed nap) Steven and I went running on a treadmill. Let’s just say that running on a treadmill on a rocking ship is not an easy feat. I managed to get a 15-minute run in without injury, but as soon as I started the cool down, one of my feet left the tread and I started to fall. I can just imagine my mom reading this in terror and I know I’ll be receiving an email to never get on a treadmill on a moving ship again, but I am fine. I caught myself, and Steven was right there to help. All is good! But I think I’ll be staying away from the treadmill for now. =)

At dinner yesterday, someone saw dolphins and everyone immediately ran to the windows of the dining hall. They were too far away to see clearly, all we saw were fins coming out of the water. We also saw birds, so we knew land wasn’t far away! That was our first sighting of animals since we left Halifax, the first real thing we’ve seen other than water and sky for five days! I’m hoping we see a whale sometime soon…that would be excellent!

After dinner, we had a performance from our first inter-port lecturer, Barry Lubin.  Our academic dean, LaVahn Hoh, is a leading expert on the circus and the history of the circus, so he brought in Barry to perform for us and tell us about his life. Barry is a clown for the Big Apple Circus! His character is “Grandma the Clown” and his performance was hilarious! I took video of the entire thing (one of the reasons my first memory card is full) so hopefully it’s not too big to post. Barry is sailing with us until Naples, and then he is going up to Germany to perform there for a while. Very cool!

Speaking of lectures, every night we have what is called an Explorer Seminar where a faculty member or inter-port lecturer talks to us about something important to them or integral to a place we are visiting. Dr. David Gies spoke to us about Spanish food 2 days ago. Yum! I already knew most of the food, but he gave us tips about when to eat what. Breakfast 7-10am, “Almuerzo” 11:30-1, Tapas 1-2:30, Lunch 2:30-4, Dinner 9-whenever. I am quite looking forward to paella, croquetas, and especially churros con chocolate! Yum!!! He also gave us a list of food we should avoid, like crilladillos and pulpo. Look them up if you don’t know what they are =) Although I’ve had tiny pulpos before (pulpitos?) and they are tasty!

So every day during the 1730 announcements, the Voice tells us the “stupid question of the day.” These are actual questions that have been asked on Semester at Sea, and they are pretty special. Here are the questions from the past two days:

“Is lobster so expensive because it is extinct?”
“If I want to eat Italian food in Italy, do I just ask for food?”

Oh yes, I am always looking forward to these announcements for the next sparking gem of stupidity.

Current location – Latitude: 38 degrees N, Longitude: 25 degrees W, traveling at 20 knots. Past the halfway point!

And HAPPY FATHER’S DAY from the middle of the ocean to my dad!! =)

Day 3 at sea!

Why hello there! I haven’t had much time to sit down and write a blog post, so here’s 2 days of fun in one tidy post!

Yesterday was a LONG day of orientation meetings. Lots of rules to know! Apparently if someone goes overboard, the ship goes 3-4 miles before they can turn around to pick up the person…that’s scary! We also found out that one person who was supposed to be on our voyage had a cancelled flight to Halifax on Monday night and missed the ship. Unfortunately he can’t join us in Barcelona because by that time he’ll have missed 7 days of classes. I can’t even imagine how the poor guy feels, I think I would be in fetal position and crying.

Also yesterday was our “Involvement Symposium” where we get to sign up for student groups. I signed up to be a writing tutor (hooray for correcting people’s papers!! I’m excited for that one!!), pre-med group, extended family (a bunch of students get assigned to a lifelong learner and they are our “grandparent” for the trip. We can have dinner with them and basically have a little family on the ship), yoga, and I signed up to help out with the kids. Some of the faculty members bring their spouses and kids, and there are kids ranging from 1 to 17 on the ship (and the oldest person is 92!). Basically a bunch of people signed up to help keep the kids occupied if the parents want to have dinner alone or something.

Anyway, last night was HORRIBLE. They warned us that we would be hitting some rougher waters, and they were NOT kidding. It wasn’t stormy or anything, but the waves are huge out here. For some reason I thought that the farther from land you get, the calmer the waters get, but apparently I have no idea about anything nautical in nature. I didn’t really get much sleep…our beds are situated so that when the boat rocks from side to side, we rock up and down like we’re laying on a see-saw. One minute, the blood is rushing to your head, the next minute you tilt to the foot of your bed. The first night was a gentle rocking and I soon got over it and fell asleep, but last night it was so bad that I was literally sliding up and down the bed! We had planned to wake up at 6:45 am so we could get to breakfast at 7:30 and class at 8. I woke up around 6 to very heavy rolling. The nighttable drawers in the room above us were slamming open and shut (how they stood that for half an hour is beyond me). I just laid there, waiting to either fall asleep or for my alarm to go off, but at exactly 6:43, one giant roll threw all of our stuff off the night stand. Talk about a wake-up call! Showering was fun this morning too, I was slammed against the wall during another big roll. Only 7 more days of this and we’re in Barcelona! I really do like the ship but I can’t wait until I can walk down a hallway without holding onto the railings!

I had all of my classes already today, but it didn’t help that I didn’t get sleep the night before. The classes seem good, I already have 30 pages to read in Anthro, 30 pages for Global Studies, and 6 poems to read for Poetry. I almost fell asleep during my poetry class because of the gentle rocking of the ship (and maybe the fact that I didn’t get any sleep last night.) I just got an email from Kevin, our LLC (kind of like an RA) about stargazing tonight at 2200 but Steve and I signed up for coveted ellipticals in the gym at 2200 so I guess no stargazing for me =(

Bought a phone card today. $20 for 13 minutes. Super.

Also spent quite a bit in the ship store. I got a few t-shirts, a sweatshirt, a blanket (super comfy!!), and sweatpants. I think I’m all set…for now =)

We are currently at 37 degrees latitude, 52 degrees longitude, traveling at 20.8 knots! Still very very far from Spain =(

My email here is ivnegrin@semesteratsea.net. PLEASE email me!!! Tell me what’s going on with the world! (It’s kind of ironic that I’m traveling the world and for 66 days I really have no clue what is going on in the world!) And apparently my forwarding from gmail isn’t working so if you’re sending me something important, don’t send it to gmail. I have to log on to the extremely slow internet to check that so I’ll probably only check it once a week.

The next time I set foot on land, I will be in Spain!

I am on the ship! It took us over an hour to get through the line, through security, and through all of the paperwork, then another hour to unpack. I am all settled in now though, and waiting for 15:00 for our first meeting thing. 16:00 is our lifeboat drill, then general body meetings and floor meetings and orientation meetings and meeting meetings galore! Classes start on Thursday!

This was the lunch menu:
Salad – iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots
Pasta primavera
Beef stew
Mashed potatoes
Bean stew
Some kind of pre-made sandwich
Assorted desserts

I had some salad and beef stew, I was expecting the worst but it tasted pretty good! The water here has a funky aftertaste, though.

…..a few hours later….

So the lifeboat drills took FOREVER, standing and staring at our lifeboat for half an hour. Finally the time came for the ship to leave (17:00, or 5:00pm), and my roommate Shaara and I went up to the observation deck to watch.  Well, we were extremely close to the ship’s horn (there’s probably a more technical term for that but whatever) and it sounded about 5 times, practically bursting our eardrums. We slowly but surely made our way away from the pier and we were soon on our way! We then met up with Steve and his roommate and went to dinner. It was then that we started to really feel the swaying of the boat. I’m sitting on my bed writing this post and I am swaying back and forth, the water in my glass is shaking…I definitely didn’t expect this much motion! It’s really bad up on the 7th deck, where the treadmills and ellipticals are.  The clinic has free motion sickness pills, so I just took one and hopefully I won’t get sick.

Current location: Latitude 44 degrees, Longitude 63 degrees, moving at 15.3 knots

Next stop, Barcelona!

Note: I tried to get pictures to work in this post but the blog website is being dumb, so go to my facebook and see ALL of the pictures from Halifax!


So tonight is our last night in Halifax!! Tomorrow morning we will be heading down to the pier to wait in a super long line to get on the MV Explorer. Yay!

Yesterday was the search for a watch. Both Steven and I rely on our cell phones to tell time, and we both forgot to bring watches, so we headed up to the shopping district to find some. While up there, we found the Halifax Citadel and the public gardens, so we hung out there for a bit =) We also found a grocery store, where we bought some delicious apples for later and I even found diet Cherry Coke...which tastes like old-fashioned cherry coke with the cherry syrup...yummmm! Steven found raisin (grape)-flavored Fanta...very interesting. Also found many interesting flavors of potato chips. Like prawn cocktail and roast chicken. Interesting. We ate dinner at this really good Greek restaurant. It was decorated with pictures of Santorini and we decided we absolutely have to go there!

This morning, we went on a Harbour Hopper tour. It's like a Ducky tour (Pittsburgh, Baltimore) but with a frog theme. We were the only ones there until approximately 70 elementary school students came around the corner like a stampede. Thankfully, the guide let us get on the boat first and had the majority of the kids get on the other boat so there were only about 20 on ours. We learned a lot about the history of the city, like how the big pond in the public gardens is named after the last man to be hanged in Halifax. She also proceeded to talk about Sidney Crosby scoring the game winning goal to beat the US for the gold medal in hockey...fully knowing that we were American =P We should have told her that we go to school in Pittsburgh (there is Pittsburgh Penguins stuff everywhere just because Halifax is Sidney Crosby's hometown).

This just in...Steven is watching the Colbert Report, and he's making fun of the Canadian military. Apparently Canada is covered in ancient caribou dung. Hmmmm.

Anyway, tonight was the "meet and greet" at a bar in Halifax. I got to meet up with my roommate and met a few other people, but unfortunately the event wasn't really conducive to mingling (I couldn't even hear Steven talking across the table from me!) I'm sure meeting people once we're on the ship will be much easier.

All right, I have to go pack up my bags so we can head off to the ship early tomorrow. My next post will be from the ship!! There will most likely not be any more pictures until we get to Italy (June 29) because there is free internet at our hostel. Also, no facebook! You can either comment on here and I will get it via email or you can email me directly (I will post my SAS email address once I get it tomorrow).

Adios! Ciao! Zbogom! Antio! Elveda!

Halifax!!

So we have safely arrived in Halifax! The plane was super teeny tiny (held 50 people...talk about claustrophobic!!) and there was quite a bit of turbulence. Nova Scotia was so pretty from the plane--there are lakes and forests with the occasional development. The city is right on the water, our hotel is literally 2 blocks from the water's edge! We are going to walk down to Pier 20 tomorrow, which is where the MV Explorer will be docked. So excited!!

After checking into the hotel, we decided we were starving and needed some grub. About 3 blocks from the hotel was an Irish pub called Durty Nelly's (you think that's a bad restaurant name? There's another called Your Father's Moustache...no joke!!). After a stressful night of packing and a day at the airport, pub food was calling. =) Below is Steve enjoying his chicken pot pie and me enjoying my delicious burger with Guinness cheese. YUMMM!
All of the condiments were Heinz =) Halifax loves Pittsburgh! After dinner, we walked down to the water to check out the docks. There were lots of people walking their dogs, which made me miss my puppy =(
Quite pretty! Anyway, that's about it for tonight. It's an hour later here than it is in York and it's been a long day!