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