Days 1 and 2

              So I would’ve done this update last night but I was too exhausted from all the stuff we had to do on the first day. I woke up in The Westin Nova Scotian in Halifax around 6:30, ate breakfast, and boarded the ship at the port terminal which was right across the street. I win, because some people  got hotels by the Halifax airport and had to drive 40 minutes or so to get there.

                Anyway, after a bunch of security stuff I finally got on board and found my cabin in room 2030. It’s on the second-lowest level of the ship (below us is crew quarters and a bunch of ship type stuff that you as a passenger don’t need to worry about.) So throughout the day it was unstructured as everybody boarded at different times. I wandered around the ship with a few people I met along the way. At 4 we had a lifeboat safety drill, where everyone had to put on their life jackets and warm clothing to go stand in 3 ranks by the lifeboats while Svetlana the crewmember called roll for everybody assigned to that boat. It took about 40 minutes.

                The ship departed Halifax at 5 and everyone waved to their parents and it was all sad and whatever blah blah. One bunch of parents had gotten a custom made banner for their kid which everyone got a big kick out of. But after that the ship pulled out of the harbor slowly and then hit the gas once it was far enough away. The weather was great so I took a bunch of photos of the sun setting off the stern of the ship while I ate dinner with the people who were around me in line for food. The food is ok but I can see why it’ll get boring after a while.

                After dinner was an excruciatingly long “meet the faculty and staff” meeting in the student union. The student union is very close to the ship, so it goes up and down a lot in addition to rolling. Seasickness hasn’t bothered me too much. I feel dizzy and loopey, but not sick to my stomach. Apparently the Atlantic Ocean crossing is the worst, so its good we’re getting that over with first. By the way there’s also a category 2 hurricane south of us coming this direction. Oh well, what’s life without a little excitement right? Our venerable Croatian captain Roman Krstanovic, assures us there is no danger involved, but a big stack of barf bags has turned up at every trashcan in the public areas of the ship.

                The last organized thing yesterday was our deck meetings where they promised to keep it brief and then had all 60 of us say our name, home school, and cabin number. I could hardly keep my eyes open at this point.

                By the way, the ocean is big. Stupidly big. I bitched the whole way to Halifax about how big Canada was while I was driving through two of its smallest provinces, but while I’m writing this (about noon eastern time on Saturday) we’re already further from Halifax than I drove in Canada. We’re about one Newfoundland-length south of Newfoundland.

                Anyway, today is orientation day. We heard all about the UVA honor code for about the 18^th time this morning, followed by a small group discussion of the “summer reading” assignment. We were supposed to follow this discussion up with a 1-page reaction to the book, but then they said it isn’t due until next week, virtually guaranteeing I’ll forget to do it. Right now I’m about to have to go to the “faculty meet and greet” and the captain discussing safety, health, and behavior issues. Endless fun abounds on the high seas!

                Hopefully I’ll get more sleep tonight (and for the majority of the voyage).