I'm On a Boat... San Diego,California; Ensenada, Mexico; Middle of the Ocean {Part 4}

Hello hello friends and family and maybe even strangers! Sorry it has been a while since my last post, it has been kind of crazy around here. The rough seas were absolutely gigantic waves- apparently, we are getting the back of the storm that hit the West Coast and the low pressure system that is causing them are the worst EVER recorded! But I am happy that it is over with and that we hopefully won’t have anythinglike that until later in the trip! Only a day until we get to HAWAII YESSS I cannot wait for land! So, during this journey around the world, I have been not only blogging but writing in a journal everyday so that when I haven’t written for a while (like now) I can remember everythingI want to tell you guys. So I guess I will go with just what each day has been like.

So, we have classes A days and B days (every other) and so far I have had a few of each. 3 of my 4 classes are TINY, AND you see the professors everywhere so you can’t exactly fake sick or slack off. It is definitely very different from my 300 person lectures that I have had at Wisconsin or even my 20 person classes there… It is interesting to compare to people from other schools because one of my friends who goes to an extremely small college was saying that the Global Studies class (big one) is such a weird thing for her because she is used to tiny classes all the time. These classes are definitely going to create a different studying habit for me-I haven’t had very rigorous classes the past year or so because the professors in my major are big on just learning not grading.. which is great for me! Also, at Wisconsin I am used to having just tests or just papers with mixes of small projects. All my classes here are BIG projects with tests and sometimes papers. So it will require me to spend a lot more time working… which happens to be fine, since as I have more time on my hands than I ever had it’s something to do more than anything.

The first day I woke up for class at 7:30 (AH) and made my way to Global Mental Health. The professor seems like he could be good, as he hasa really big passion for the field and definitely knows a lot. He said that he isn’t big on giving out bad grades which is awesome and that he will more than happy to get to know us and write us recommendations if we need them (AWESOMER). Following that I was able to stay in the same classroom, in which the collapsable walls were collapsed and ta daa, I was in the Union, where I had Global Studies, the class that everyone has to take. Global Studies has been my favorite class thus far- they bring in speakers including the professors and guests that areon the ship for one interport journey. The main professor is a character, he is so entertaining and awesome. The coolest part of this class in my opinion is that we have a big group project to work on. We get into groups of about 6 and work on creating a lesson plan for 12^th graders—the plans will go to the school of education at UVA and then they will choose the top 10 projects that will be the recipients of a grant (not the technical grant BUT we can put it on our resumes!). So I am hoping to get that cause it will be awesome.

One side note, there are 14 people from Wisconsin on the ship. Every day I feel like I meet someone new from there. It is pretty cool. We are one of the top college populations here, but Colorado, Chapman, Pitt, Bucknell and possibly a few others that I am forgetting have numbers in the 20s and 30s! And some of those schools are SMALL. But yeah definitely am better friends with some of the Wisconsin people now than I ever was at school.

My next class that first day was Contemporary Moral Issues. The class I guess has the potential to be interesting but it is a philosophy class and I am not very philosophical. However, the class is filled with people that I have met and liked so at least theres that. I just wish that the professor didn’t straight lecture so much, it is boring.

After dinner that night, we got big card games going- it is practically all we do here, I absolutely love it. The stars that night freaked me out—A) because they were super bright and there were so many of them. B) the first one I noticed I had thought was a plane because it was moving up in the sky.. a second later I saw it shooting down and gasped because I thought it was crashing. Turns out, WE were moving, not what happened to be Mars. After hanging out playing cards, we got involved in a GIANT game of catchphrase, and then charades. It was a lot of fun.

The second day of classes I had Global Studies and Small Group and Team Communication. The latter we get into groups to implement projects in a country (I chose India) and sounds like it will be really cool. That night I had a meeting for Vicarious Voyage, the program that I want to do where we are basically pen pals with an classroom in the US. The meeting was disorganized and a waste of time, but since I am writing this 3 days later, I now know that I am paired with a classroom in Amityville, NY and with some kid on the ship that I only know is funny and has a super Jewish last name. Afterwards, I had dinner and then got involved in a giant game of Taboo and Mafia—lots of fun!

Ok so this is a really long post so I will update more in a new one later! Miss you everyone!