Travel Necessities: Water Bottle and Chapstick

The time changes have become ridiculous. All I want is one full 24 hour day…is that too much to ask? Haha. We’ve lost an hour every day we’ve been on the ship, and we still have 2 more time zones to go through. Everyone here has jetlag (or should I say boat-lag). It’s impossible to go to sleep at a decent hour because my body clock is all screwed up. I’ve been going to sleep at 2:00 or 3:00am and waking up around 8:00am – no fun. Naps are very popular on that boat…in the room, in class (especially Global Studies), on the deck, and even on some of the couches in lounge areas around the ship. I saw someone in one of the lounge areas catching a few Z’s while sitting straight up, book open, and pen still in the locked and loaded writing position in his hand .

 

Everyone was definitely in a brighter mood today because the sun had finally come out and you could hardly feel the waves at all. I felt weird not having to constantly grip the side railings or keep my balance while walking through the hallways. Since it was so nice out there was a rush to get the best tables out on the deck for studying and at mealtimes. When I was sitting out on the back deck reading for my Art History class someone started pointing out into the water and yelling “whale!” I didn’t get to see it, but they said it came up for air and that it looked pretty big. I should really keep an eye on the ocean more often because I’m sure you can see stuff like that all the time, if you pay attention.

 

Because the waves had gotten more under control, I felt like it was safe to take off my sea-sickness patch that I had been wearing since we left Halifax. It’s one of those little round Band-Aid looking things that you wear behind your ear that constantly releases medicine to control motion sickness. Now, here are a few random side effects of these patches that you might not be aware of. They really dry out your body. You feel dehydrated ALL the time because the medicine makes your throat and mouth really dry. I felt like I was getting a cold or something because I would wake up and not be able to talk because my voice sounded hoarse. My water bottle has become permanently attached to my palm because I never feel like I’m hydrated enough. I don’t know if it’s a combination of the cabin air, salt water, and the medicine, but I can put some water down like nobody’s business. I bought a SAS water bottle the first day on the boat. It holds 750 milliliters of water, and I drink around 5 of those a day (not including drinks at meals)…so that’s about 3750 mL a day. That just can NOT be normal! I feel like I may be drowning myself or something. If it’s possible to overdose on water, I must be dangerously close to the breaking point. Another random fact about the medicine-boatlife combo: it makes your lips soooo chapped! It’s crazy! I put chapstick on like every 20 minutes. I’m definitely going to run out before we make it to shore. Oh and there’s more- the patches make your pupils dilate too. So everyone just looks like these freaky people with big black eyes, chapped lips, and chugging water like there’s no tomorrow. Who knew boatlife was so random!

 

The amount of reading that the professors have given us is just impossible. There literally isn’t enough time in the day to do everything. I don’t think I’ve had to go to class for 7 days straight ever, and the classes don’t even alternate days. You have all three classes everyday, so there’s no option to put off homework to the next night because you’re just going to have that class again in the morning. I’m definitely way behind, but luckily the topics seem to overlap because all of my classes are about the Mediterranean. I just realized today that out of the 68 days that I’m on Semester at Sea, only 22 of those days are class days. The rest are spent in port. So that’s a semester’s worth of work in 22 days…ahhhh. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much to read for school in my life. Most of it is interesting, but it’s hard to stay focused when so much other stuff is going on. There’s information sessions, class time, meals, working out, meeting new people, student clubs, enjoying the deck, planning trips for Europe. It’s hard to sit in your room and stare at a book when you could be whale watching on the deck.

 

A group of my friends and I were enjoying dinner out on the deck when everyone started crowding around the starboard side of the boat (That would be the right side of the boat…aren’t you impressed with my nautical terms? :) Haha). We went over to see what everyone was looking at, and the first thing I saw was a big green blob sticking out of the now sapphire-blue ocean. We hadn’t seen anything like it for four days…it was LAND! One of the islands of the Azores to be exact. The Azores are a group of islands owned by Portugal located in the middle of the Atlantic. We could actually see two of the islands in the distance. I remember one was called Flores, but I forget the name of the other. But everyone was flipping out because they were so excited to see land. It was so funny, and people were snapping pictures like crazy. When we were all out on the deck a few pods of dolphins decided to swim along beside us too. There were about three different groups of them. One group was right by the side of the ship, and they were so close to the surface that you could actually see them while they were swimming underwater. I got a really cool picture of about six dolphins all halfway jumping out of the water in the distance. I heard some people saw sea turtles too, as well as another whale.  

 

Later that night I went to one of the featured information sessions about Spain. We learned about all of the false stereotypes of Spain, and the history of some of the cities. The professor even went through a list of the coolest things to see in each of the cities that we could get to. All of the regions seem so different, and each of the little towns has it’s own history and set of sights to see. I’m definitely looking forward to Spain, and next spring I’ll have even more time to explore the country when I’m living there to study abroad.

 

After the Spanish information session, I went to the library with one of my friends to check out some travel books on Spain so that we could research where to go and how to use the transportation and everything. The books weren’t too helpful because they weren’t very specific to Cádiz, but we found a couple good maps. As we were sitting at one of the tables, I looked up and instead of seeing the horizon out of the window like usual, I saw a huge mountain. One of the Azores was right outside. I didn’t realize we would be sailing right by the islands, or that they would be so close. I thought we would just see them from a distance. So I ran down to get my camera, and my roommate and I took a ton of pictures of both of the islands because there was one on each side of the boat. It was sunset so it was perfect. I was really surprised to see a bunch of houses and little towns on the islands. For some reason I figured no one lived there because they are literally out in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing but the Atlantic for thousands of miles each direction. I could not imagine living there; it’s so secluded from everything! They were really beautiful though. We could see the lights of the towns late into the night even though we had been sailing for hours after passing them, but I guess there really wasn’t anything on the horizon to obscure our view.