one week down...

Well, it's officially been a week since I've been aboard the MV Explorer. And what a week it's been! I feel like there's so much to say and share with all of you and it's really hard for me to know where to go begin. So I guess I'll start with ship life.

I have a cabin on the third floor (3105), on the starboard side, that I share with a girl named Rachael. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better roommate. Rachael's from Wyoming originally but she goes to the University of San Diego, where she studies International Relations. She's so sweet and so funny and we get along smashingly. The cabin is small, but it's pretty much what I expected. We have two single beds with a cabinet in between them. Over our beds is a window through which we have a fantastic view of...(you guessed it!) water. Across from our beds we have a small desk and mirror, as well as a little table/sitting area. Against one wall is a set of cabinets; the top two are false cabinets and are actually a tiny refrigerator. Above the refrigerator is a small TV where we get all our boat updates (where on the map we are, our latitude and longitude, the temperature outside, and the current time). The TV also has a couple stations, which usually have movies looping on them. Our bathroom is pretty small but not so bad.

There are two dining rooms on the ship, one of which has a patio connected to it so you can eat outside. There's also a grill/bar on the seventh deck, where the pool is. We have a fully functioning spa, which is attached to the fitness center; I'm tempted to try it out (they have massages and facials!) but fear for my wallet.

My classes are going pretty well so far. The one class I have every day is called Global Studies, which is a lecture class that everyone on the ship takes at 9 am. The lectures revolve around the ports we're going to, for the most part. Every day that we're at sea, we have class, and we run on a schedule that has "A" day and "B" day. On A day, I have Global Studies from 9:20 – 10:35 and then I get a break until my Genders and Sexualities in Cinema class, which is from 2:55 – 4:10. I usually spend the break up on the pool deck, laying out and doing my reading. On B day, I have Languages of the World: The Global Impact of English from 8:00 – 9:15, then Global Studies, then break again until my Hollywood and the World class at 2:55. All in all, I really have zero complaints about my schedule.

I'm sleeping so well on the ship! I think it has something to do with the fact that the ship pretty much rocks me to sleep every night. Because I've been getting up at 6:30 or 7 almost every day, I'm usually sleepy and ready for bed around midnight, which is a completely new thing for me (before, I couldn't fall asleep before 2 am most nights!) Also, I'm eating more healthily then usual, because there's salad at lunch and dinner every day and I always eat it. The ship water isn't amazing—it's purified from salt water—so it tastes better some days than others. However, they sell bottled water at the pool deck and also in the piano bar.

One thing that really amuses me about ship life is the drinking situation. On "pub nights" (every night we're at sea, aside from the day before we get into port), people are allowed to have 2 drinks with dinner and 4 drinks at the pool bar from the hours of 9 pm – 11 pm. The choice of drinks consists of American beers with low alcohol by volume percentages or 4 oz glasses of wine, and they cost $3.50/drink. We have drinking cards that they stamp when we purchase a beverage—it feels like rationing during wartime. Every night, when the pool bar starts serving, there's a line that looks something akin to the lines in front of liquor stores when the prohibition was lifted. It's actually pretty depressing to see how desperate the majority of my fellow students are for our allowance of bad and overpriced alcohol.

That seems to be all there really is to say about ship life—I'm really enjoying it and I'm meeting some nice people from all over the place (such as countries like Mauritius and Peru!) It took me a couple days to get used to the rocking of the ship, but I haven't been seasick yet. However, we'll see how I fare in the next couple of days...apparently, on this trip from Hawaii to Japan, the waves are going to be 10 times more violent than they were on the trip to Hawaii.

Which leads me to the next subject...Hawaii!! Ok, so as many of you maybe have heard me say, I'd been planning for a long time to go skydiving in Hawaii. I signed up to go (a girl on the ship organized a huge trip for us, and about 100 Semester at Sea students went) and have spent the past couple of months in unrelenting terror. I convinced Rachael to do it with in the morning group, and our friends Erica and Annie signed up to come too. As Hawaii got closer, Rachael and I got more and more frightened; she even tried to talk me into backing out of it and going snorkeling instead on the morning of. I, however, was adamant about going—I figured that Semester at Sea is all about confronting my fears and doing things that I have never done and would never do. So around 10 am yesterday morning, we boarded a van and headed to the north shore of Hawaii to skydive.

Reading the contract that Skydive Hawaii made me sign had me thinking that perhaps I shouldn't go. It said over and over again that skydiving is dangerous and that you can die or be seriously injured skydiving. Of course, they have to say that in order not to be held liable for anything that could happen. So I signed my contract and tried to push all thoughts of falling to my death out of my head. When we arrived at Skydive Hawaii, we were able to see people landing from jumping, and it helped alleviate some of my fears; it actually looked quite fun.

Rachael, Erica, Annie, and I made sure we were all in the same plane and then we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, around 1 pm, it was our turn. I met my instructor, whose name was Ed, and who had been a skydiving instructor for 17 years. He was very amusing and nice and teased me a bit about my fears. He showed me what positions I would need to know and then helped me into my harness. We all headed to the plane, which was a tiny little nothing of a plane (Mom, you would've hated it.) There was a large plastic door that opened and closed and we were to jump out of. The flight up was horrifying and beautiful; we could see all of Hawaii, all the mountains, the entire stunning blue ocean, but there was the looming knowledge that we were about to jump into the open air. Annie went first and watching her fall out of the plane with her instructor made my heart come up to my throat. However, I didn't get much time to be scared because Ed and I were next. And then we weren't in the plane anymore.

Skydiving was genuinely the coolest thing I've ever felt. I imagined I would've had a stomach drop, but I didn't. The first second is really jolting because you're freefalling and it's a completely new feeling, but after that it's really not a big deal. They dropped us over the ocean and the first 60 seconds is just a freefall. It was the windiest feeling I've ever had. Then, Ed pulled the parachute and we spent the next 6 minutes or so gliding, which feels like nothing. We spun around a lot, so my view went from the ocean to the mountains to the ocean to the mountains. Hawaii is so unbelievably gorgeous. Then, we navigated toward a field, where we came to our landing. I wanted to go back up again immediately! Well, I suppose there will always be next time. Jumping made me feel so at peace with the earth and the world, plus it was a major adrenaline rush. After jumping out of a plane, I don't think I will ever be scared to do anything ever again.

Once skydiving was done, they shuttled us back to the port our ship was in. We were all starving, so we found the first place we could to eat, which was a relatively sketchy Chinese food restaurant. When we finished lunch, the four of us got in a cab and headed to Waikiki beach, where we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the hot Hawaiian weather and the (perfectly warm!) Pacific. I have to apologize because I wrote a bunch of letters and postcards but didn't have any time to go get stamps before we had to get back on the ship, so they're all going to be sent out from Japan. My bad!

The line to get on the ship last night was absolutely ridiculous. We were told we had to be back on the ship before 9 pm or we'd get dock time in Yokohama. In order to avoid that, the four of us got back to the port around 7:30. It took until after 9 to get back in the boat. I accidentally split up from my friends when I stepped out of line to go to the bathroom and got back in line with a different friend, so I thankfully got on a few minutes before 9. However, all my friends were "late" and now may face dock time, which really stinks because we were there so early! Anyway, we'll see what happens.

We don't dock in Yokohama until September 12th, so it's going to be a long week and and a half on the ship. I'm getting more accustomed to being away from land all the time, though, so hopefully it won't be too tedious. And we lose a day when we cross the international date line!

Well, I should get back to all the reading I have to do for tomorrow, but I'll try and post another blog before we dock in Japan. I'm not making any promises, though, because I don't think anything really interesting will have happened before then. I tried to upload some pictures but the server on the ship is too slow, so hopefully I'll get some sent out soon to you all!

Lots of love!