Format: Note

We learned that all the rocking was from the hurricane, they dont like to tell us much and the little news we get is international. We’re about halfway to spain and have been traveling at about 21 knots. Today the speed lowered to 13 knots and the boats rocking is barely noticable. All of my things stopped rolling around, but i left everything on the ground just in case. I tried to take my patch off and see what happens, but that didnt work out too well. Now I have half a patch on. It turns out that some of the people with the patch touched their eyes and had some vision impairment from the extreme dilation of their pupuls. I moved the two twin beds in my room together to make a queen bed. It’s perfect. Except not having a window is a little weird. Yesterday the food for lunch and dinner was horrible. I bought a hamburger at the pool bar. It was also not good, pizza next time. I also bought a coke from the pool bar, it was from south africa. The aluminum can was really thick and heavy, it also didnt have any calories. It had “energy” measured in kilo joules. Max and I spoke with one of the deans yesterday, we want to setup a semester at sea radio station just like at chapman. He seemed excited at first, then seemed to have some hesitation. We’ll see if we can get something started today. at night we are allowed to have 5 drinks. Either a can of beer or a small amount of wine. The “secret service agent” makes sure that no one is drunk. It was very odd. I should have bought that binocular flask. In about 20 hours we will be passing by the azores. and changing the time once again. right now we’re 6 hours ahead of california time. This is really fun.

On the ship we dont use days of the week, it’s very odd and confusing. Today is B1 tomorrow will be A2. The ships clocks will advance another hour and we’ll be 6 hours ahead of california time tonight. The formatting from my emails arent transferring over to the blog, it’s not supposed to be one huge paragraph. I also have no way of telling if my spot messenger is working. The first day of class we already have homework, but on the bright side the sea is much calmer and today i didnt have to run out of class and take a nap. One of the deans said that the. Boat has never rocked that much in all his voyages. The captain said we have travelled between the two hurricane, but we have no way of confirming this. I cant get weather reports or even the news! A bunch of us are using two way radios to communicate. Today i figured out how to setup iphones to get the ships email, improvised texting! It’s nice and warm outside, hopefully i can finish this english paper shortly. We think peanut butter my be the sweetest thing on the boat, it’s very popular.

Halifax was kinda boring, and other than this place called the liquor dome it wasn’t too much fun. The Canadians are kinda rude, but their lobster sandwiches were delicious. The tax rate there is 15 percent, and alcohol is on average about twice the price. It was rainy and hot at night and cloudy and cold during the day. They have many microbrewed beer there, and many of them are absolutely delicious. We’re definitely not using an elevator until we get back to the states though. Today is the beginning of the third day on the ship, the rocking is a getting more intense. Our captain said that we’re going to attempt to travel between two hurricanes. Yesterday, it was extremely rainy for most of the day, but then at dinner time there was a nice break in the weather. I haven’t been able to update my location with my spot messenger, but I’ll try that soon. The internet is absolutely horrible. The connection is not on all the time and when it is only 50 students can use it at once. At 33 cents per minute, I’m hoping most people will use their time up quickly, and then not purchase more. So no facebook, no news (other than this horrible site called wikinews), no checking my bank accounts, and certainly no youtube (sorry GG). A lot of the information I had read from other blogs was simply incorrect, the showers have extremely hot water all the time and are very roomy. The water in the rooms tastes better than that at home, and the food so far has been pretty good. The view from the dining halls is simply amazing, vast stretches of deep ocean blue further than you can see. Almost every member of the ship staff is filipino, and many have worked here for a long time. The man at the coffee bar told me he’s been with semester at sea for 15 years. My cabin steward’s name is Edwin, and somehow he already knows my name. Chapman is the number 3 school represented on the ship, behind USD and University of Colorado. We’ve met Chapman students that we’ve never seen before. Class starts tomorrow and I’m kinda looking forward to it. The ship is 63% women, but I’m sorry to say they all aren’t all quite California girls. There are some extremely odd people on this ship, in reference to some scars on this arm one student said “I got them a couple of weeks ago, you know that game were you hold a cigarette to your arm as long as you can, yeah I’m undefeated” I’ll hold my judgement of my professors a couple more days, I have a feeling at least one of them will be a huge disappointment. We moved forward another hour tonight so now we are 5 hours ahead of California. I’ll update this more when I get a chance, but between figuring out where everything is and falling asleep from this patch I’m just a little busy. Everyone has extremely dilated pupils from all the medication, it’s really creepy looking. I just had to leave class in the union because the rocking is just too intense. Also peanut butter seems to be a theme, we still can’t figure it out. CANT WAIT TO GET TO SPAIN! Email me! (no attachments, plain text only) mfbenner@semesteratsea.net