Semester at Sea

This semester I will be on a ship taking classes and traveling to different countries. I will visit Cadiz, SPAIN ~ Casablanca, MOROCCO ~ Takoradi, GHANA ~ Cape Town, SOUTH AFRICA ~ Port Louis, MAURITIUS ~ Chennai, INDIA ~ SINGAPORE ~ Ho Chi Minh City, VIET NAM ~ Hong Kong/Shanghai, CHINA ~ Kobe/Yokohama, JAPAN ~ Honolulu/Hilo, HAWAII ~ San Diego, USA.

Email me at lawilson@semesteratsea.net :)

Thursday, September 2, 2010

The past two days have been awesome. Yesterday after breakfast we went outside and watched as we passed the Azores islands. We came so close to them! I didn’t even know these islands existed, so I thought it was pretty cool. It reminded me of Lost or something because they seemed very ancient and not built up like most places.

I took an intense nap both yesterday and today because these time changes are killing me; we’ve lost an hour each night for the past four nights in a row. For some reason the fact that the clocks would change so much never occurred to me, so I wasn’t really prepared. But apparently when we cross the international dateline and gain a day, it is on Thanksgiving, so I guess we get two Thanksgivings! Haha

We will get to Spain on Saturday and I’m soo excited. Ariel and I planned out the whole week and it will be awesome. We are going to spend the first day in Cadiz at the beach, market, churches, etc. and then we are going to take the first bus out the next day and go to Sevilla. Two nights ago we went to a seminar about Spanish food and it all sounded SO good. I can’t wait to have some good, authentic meals and tapas!

We originally had one day on the ship between Spain and Morocco, but since it actually only takes about two hours to get to Morocco, they moved up our arrival time to 2pm the day after we leave Spain. I’m excited to have an extra day in Morocco, but I was freaking out yesterday because I didn’t have a single thing planned for the entire week. Then, Ariel told me that the camel trek she is going on (there are about 20 people going and they organized it on facebook) had some open spaces, so I joined that group! I’m so relieved but also really looking forward to it. We are going to spend the first day around Casablanca (I signed up to go to an orphanage, but those trips are really popular so we’ll see if I get it). Then we’re going to take a train the next day to Marrakech. We will spend two days there hanging out and hopefully the big, traditional market will be open. On the 13th, we will get up early and ride camels for a few hours out to the desert. We should pass some Berber villages along the way! We will camp in the desert that night, ride the camels back in the morning, and then take the train back to Casablanca that night.
We finished the day yesterday with a photo scavenger hunt and a little stargazing (they turned the lights off at the front of the ship so we could see the stars but we got there kinda late so there wasn’t any room to sit down).

This morning we went to breakfast and then I had an awesome workout – first I saw a whale! It was really far away but I saw it nonetheless. Then Desmond Tutu and his wife were walking outside and he definitely waved to me. Haha. It was awesome.
I’m going to bed soon…I have a lot of reading for class that I should do but I want to catch up on sleep before I don’t get ANY in Espana!! :)

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