Adios Mexico, Aloha Hawaii! {side note: i wrote this whole long post about embarkation day and then my computer restarted on its own before I could save it, so that sucked} Anyways, on d-day (or I guess e-day), I woke up at 6:30, packed up, ate breakfast, checked out of the hotel and checked in with the SAS staff. I got my room number (4035), but, as I suspected, they never told you the name of your roommate. So we said bye to San Diego, and started on our way to Ensenada, Mexico on my bus of 99% NYers since the buses were organized by zip code. If anyones ever traveled from California to Mexico, they will be aware, as I now am, that there are 1500 check-points and toll booths, and it is not as relaxed as Weeds might make some expect. The first, big border crossing a man came on the bus with a list of names that he needed to see. Only one of the people was on the bus, her name is Rachel, she is from Mount Kisco and goes to Wisconsin. She was off for a WHILE and no one knew what was going on. While we were waiting, though, a man came on the bus with a guitar and started singing for us, no one was really sure whether he was hired by SAS or just some random man. When he finished he pulls out a plastic bag and asks "ok, tips now?" and walks up and down the aisle shoving it in peoples faces. This is the first time that it really hit me that I am embarking on this voyage where I am going to interact with people in all different cultures that have different customs and lifestyles, etc. Thats not to say that this kind of thing wouldn't happen in the US, I am sure it does all the time, but it definitely made me realize what was about to do for the next 109 days. Eventually, Rachel got back on the bus (her picture was too light and they thought she was a terrorist), and we went on our way again. About an hour later, we had to stop at another check-point and everyone looks out the window and the guitar guy had followed us and was sitting outside the bus. It was crazy and hilarious. He wasn'[t allowed back on the bus...
About 2 and a half hours later, we finally arrived at the ship. Everyone sees the port in the distance and this gigantic ship and some were like WOW that ship is huge I wasn't expecting that! Little did they know our ship was the little one hidden behind it, that was a Carnival Cruise Ship. We had to go through a bunch of security screenings and check-in points to finally be left to explore the ship on our own. It was really exciting to walk around. Even though I had seen hundreds of pictures, and even taken a tour of the ship over the summer, I had a completely different perspective this time. However, all my friends were making fun of me for knowing all these random things about the ship and where and what everything was due to my extensive research. Ater lunch (which were delicious tacos that people have written actual blog posts about when they have them in the middle of the semester after weeks of nasty food), I went back to my room to unpack my stuff. I met my roommate, her name is Mackenzie (I think thats how you spell it), she is from Seattle and goes to school in San Jose.
At 4:00 that day we had a muster drill where I met my new best friend for the trip. His name is Andrew and he is 8. He told me that at the last life boat drill that they had his tooth became loose! He is absolutely adorable and I have already deemed him my replacement Brian. The muster drill took a while because they couldn't find someone or something so that was annoying, but oh well.
At 5:00, I headed up to the pool area with a bunch of people to watch the boat leave the port. I ran into one of my Wisconsin friends and we ended up going to play dodgeball with some people since the boat was delayed a while due to some immigration issues. {Side Note: We played dodgeball with 8 year olds, not only a bunch of 20/21 year olds by ourselves.} After some dinner, the boat finally started to depart Ensenada and we started our rocky, nauseating journey to Hawaii!
At 8:00, we had a community meeting (with everyone on the ship) that is broadcasted to classrooms and loungesbecause not everyone can fit in the Union. I really enjoyed the academic deans speech, he was a funny guy. He spoke a lot about felxibility ad how it is the most important thing to be on this ship and throughout the semester because of the kind of trip it is and the places that we are going. Anyways, during this meeting, the ship started to rock even more, and people were getting sick and running out left and right. I heard about a lot of people getting sick that night. Luckily, both my roommate and I have not had anythingmore than a little stomach discomfort. All I keep thinking is thank god Lorrie didn't do this trip, she wouldn't have left her bed yet at this point with her motion sickness issues.
After the community meeting we had "sea meetings." The entire ship is separated into seas based on where our room is. For instance, my sea is the Adriatic Sea and we are all the rooms on one side of the ship (either Port or Starboard, couldn't tell you yet) that are on the 4th deck. So that was cool.. Every sea has an LLC, which stands for Living Learing Coordinator and is basically an RA. Mines name is Jenny and her son is Andrew,my little 8 year old friend, so that is fun. Each LLC is in charge of some sort of activity category (for instance mine is religion and spirituality and at the involvement symposium that I will discuss later she was in charge of getting people to sign up for bible studies and such). Before bed I took dramamine and wasn't feeling too great and passed out around 10:00, already excited to be on land.
So, that was the first day! Full of stuff already! More to come as soon as I can... it has been a lot harder to post these than I have expected, but now that classes started I have much more time on my hands to spend not doing work... ta ta!
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