Day 3 and 4: Extra curricular and first day of class.

Day 3-

Went to try to find Sam for dinner, but I wound up running to Alex (the guy from San Francisco who goes to Chapam). We went up to deck seven to hang out but it was freezing. I went back to my cabin to grab myself a sweatshirt, which is when I wound up running into Sam. We went for dinner on deck six and Nate joined us. I had met Nate in person and we had been corresponding via facebook, but we hadn’t really hung out yet. It was fun, he’s the perfect amount of sassy and witty, and I thoroughly enjoy his banter. We had dinner with the anthropology teacher, Professor Frolander-Ulf. She was awesome, she said she thinks teachers should have a “rate my student” website which I thought was super cute, and she told us a lot of great stories. We hung around for a bit and enjoyed the beautiful sunset, which had the sky mixing shades of blues, greens, and purples as well as oranges, reds, and yellows closer to the sun. After that, we went to the involvement fair. The involvement fair was basically all non-academic activities that are going on while we’re on the ship, and you signed up for what you’d like to participate in. I signed up for an absurd amount of things, including a big brother/big sister type of organization which I’m excited about, as well as an extended family thing which is where you and a few other students get paired with a life-long learner and you have dinner together every so often. I’m really excited about both of those. I also started my own improv club as well as a film making club, which both got a lot of sign ups. There’s a crew member on the ship who trained at second city, and he’s going to be the staff member to help run it which is absolutely amazing. After that we had sea meetings, which mostly annoyed me because I couldn’t hear anything and it was all stuff we had already gone over and I just wanted to go to bed! We were crossing our first time zone and I knew day 4 would be super busy, so I wanted to get some rest. Also fun fact: Evan has an awesome room with a window but no alarm clock, so I call him in the morning to wake him up and he gives me a weather report. I absolutely love it.

Day 4-

Woke up around 7:15 and called Evan to say good morning/get the weather report, and then I called Luke because he asked me to make sure he was awake. I got ready as quietly as possible so I didn’t bother Farrah, and I headed up to breakfast at 8 AM. I wasn’t that hungry, but I grabbed a croissant and went outside even though it was foggy and kind of gross out. I sat with Robin and some guy who’s name I don’t know. We talked about school and the classes we had today, and then they both had to jet off to class, so I went inside and found Ali and Ionna. I had to leave at 8:15 to report to the campus store, where I pretty much just awkwardly stood around for an hour, but it was fun! One of my supervisors name is Chatty, and she’s really sweet.

At 9:20 I had my first Global Studies class. It was really weird for me because it’s a lecture style class, and so far my biggest college class has been like 20 people, and this one had about 200 or more, so it was really strange. We talked with the people around us about what we’re excited about on the voyage, and I wound up talking to mostly some faculty and life-long learners which was a nice change of pace. After that, our dean of students taught us that all maps lie, which I thought was an interesting topic. As he went into detail, it made SO much sense. They distort distance and land mass and shape, because you’re trying to squish this 3D object into a 2D object, which doesn’t really make sense. For example, look at a map. You see how Greenland looks like it’s bigger than Africa? Africa is roughly 11.8 million square miles. Greenland is roughly .8 million square miles. Crazy, right?! I thought it was kind of insane, because the way I’ve seen the world already changed and we haven’t even docked in any of our ports yet.

After Global Studies I had History of Musical Theatre. This was amazing. There’s five students, including me, and one adult who are taking the class, as well as our teacher. my teacher, Michael Williams, is fantastic. He has worked all around the world creating musicals, operas, and plays, and he runs the Cape Town Opera House. He’s also published several books. We have to present two musicals from a list he generated, and I’m presenting Spring Awakening and The Lion King which I’m excited about. This class is awesome, because there’s so few of us it’s very discussion based which I like a lot.

After that I went to lunch with two of the girls from my musical theater class, Francesca and CJ. I knew I had a really short break, so after lunch I went down to my room to grab my FDP sign up sheet because I wanted to turn mine in early. Turns out the sheet doesn’t explain any of the FDPs or list the dates, so I need to look it up anyways. At 1300 I went back to the campus store to work and wound up folding a lot of shirts with Julie pretty much the entire time.

I went to my Global Music class, which was moved from deck five to deck six. It was relatively interesting, but the rocking of the boat mixed with the lack of discussion made me really tired and I think I fell asleep, but I’m honestly not even sure.

Then I had my World Theater and performance class with Williams again, which was also amazing. We talked about all the different kinds of theater in the world and we got into a discussion about wether or not theater is accessible to everyone. I disagreed with some of what people were saying, but we ran out of time so I didn’t really get the chance to voice my opinions.

I’m meeting up with Sam in about half an hour to get dinner, so until then I’m going to do a bit of homework and look into the FDPs that are offered!

PS- Does anyone actually read this? If so send me an email, nrsouza@semesteratsea.net , I’m feeling super disconnected from the world! Well, from the outside world. Obviously I’m more connected to the world then I’ve ever been before.