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!! =)