The Voyage Across the Atlantic

NOTE: This was written awhile ago (around the 5th or so, but started even earlier than that), but I didn’t post it because of logistical reasons, one of which was that I wanted to post it with my entry on Spain. Unfortunately, the entry on Spain is taking longer than expected (mostly because I’ve already spent too long on it and have therefore grown tired of it, but I’ll finish it eventually), so this is all you get for now. I just thought I’d give the head’s up so I wouldn’t have to edit it to make the dates and such make sense with today’s date. But without further ado, please read on!



Hello, everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates, but honestly not too much of anything happened up until my arrival in Spain. Honestly, after leaving Halifax, all I did was start classes and saw nothing but the Atlantic for 7 days solid. Oh, and I may have played some PSP somewhere in there, too (P3P is epic. I’d say some really nerdy things about it, but only my little sister would get them, so I won’t). That being said, there are a few things worth mentioning that occurred during the journey across the Atlantic, which I will try to summarize for you. Unfortunately, summary is not my forte, so this entry is incredibly long.

Firstly, I made friends. This is a very good thing, because I was honestly a bit worried I would have nobody to hang out with and that most everyone would be the sort of people I’d rather not talk to (i.e. stuck-up, stupid people who do nothing but party). Luckily, that is not the case. I spend most of my time hanging out with Michaella (my awesome roommate who giggles with me over who-knows-what until the wee hours of the morning), Jacob (who I knew a little bit before the voyage because he came to visit my friend David at UCLA during my freshman year), and Johnny, who lives in the same town in Pennsylvania where I spent the first 7 years of my life and was also born in the same hospital. There are also people that I have class with and join the 4 of us to play Mafia or who hang out with me on occasion, but I mostly hang out with the aforementioned 3 people. I’m also spending my entire time in Spain with my RA, Lorelei, but I’ll get to that later.

Anyway, back to crossing the Atlantic. The first day was pretty cool even though I had to get up kind of early and didn’t get much sleep the night before. I split a cab with one of my roomies from the hostel in Halifax to the port because we had too much luggage to carry by ourselves, and then we spent forever getting on the ship. After that I sort of just hung around for awhile before the ship finally set sail some 5ish hours later. Well, I did do a bit of exploring around the ship with Jacob and met Michaella, but I don’t even remember what I did besides that. I probably played PSP or something. Oh, and I think we started our very long and lame orientation. My schedule reminds me that we also had a lifeboat drill, of which I was not fond. But the cool part was when we left port at 5. Jacob and I watched as we slowly passed through Halifax, and I took pictures every few minutes to document our departure. It was really windy, but it was worth it.

What’s kind of funny, though, was that I didn’t even really notice the ship rocking until I went back inside the ship. It definitely took awhile to get used to the motion, and on the second day the motion was at least 10 times worse because we were booking it out of the East Coast so we’d miss Hurricane…Earl, I believe it was, and we were also trying to cut south of some other storm that was starting to form or something on the other side of the Atlantic. I actually have no idea what the deal was with the other storm because a) I have no news to refer to and b) the crew wasn’t really clear on it when I asked about it, so if someone knows what was going on hurricane-wise in the Atlantic between August 27th and August 29th or so, please enlighten me.

Anyway, this increased motion resulted in much unpleasantness, and I was on seasickness meds all day, which led to lots of sleeping. During the third day, I got really seasick during Global Studies and I started to wonder if I’d be miserable for the next 4 months, but luckily things got better the next day, and I haven’t touched the meds since. And even though I was miserable that day, something good happened, too – I saw a dolphin out of my window during Global Studies! I don’t know about you, but I don’t many people who can see dolphins from their classroom windows. Then again, I rarely see anything besides ocean out of the windows, so the dolphin was actually a nice change of scenery. To be frank, other than the cool sunsets, there really wasn’t anything to see besides the ocean for 7 days solid (and the Azores for a few hours a few days ago, but I slept through seeing them). I don’t have anything against the ocean and I like doing my class readings (when I do them) out on the open decks where I can admire the view and enjoy some fresh air, but seeing nothing but The Big Blue Wet Thing (Muppet Treasure Island, anyone?) gets a bit old. Makes you wonder how all those sailors who crossed the same ocean (without meds) in months, rather than days, felt.

I’d like to move on to more interesting things, like Spain, but I suppose I should dedicate a few words to my classes first. After all, the whole reason I’m here is to learn, and the deans are always stressing that we’re on a voyage, not a cruise, because I guess in their minds you can only learn when you’re voyaging. It’s sort of funny, because even though they’re trying to differentiate our cruise from others, it seems pretty darn similar to me in a lot of ways. But I digress, so let’s get back to my classes!

So, I’m taking The Anthropology of Tourism, Aging and Culture, Women in Royal Courts, and Global Studies. I get credit for my major for the first two, I really like the third, and the 4th is stupid because I already took Global Studies at UCLA but they require you to take it here because the entire voyage is themed around the topic of that class: globalization. I’d talk about them all, but my history class on court women is by far the most interesting, so I’ll talk about it instead. This class is super cool because not only does it mean I get to go to Kyoto for the class, but it also means that our readings are actually interesting. Before next class (which isn’t until after we leave Morocco), I’m supposed to have at least started The Treasure of the City of Ladies, which is apparently an advice book by a woman who lived in the middle ages about how to live as a woman in the middle ages. We’re also reading the book written by the same Anna that Anna & The King/The King and I is about and an abridged version of The Tale of Genji. It should be pretty epic.

Hmm. Somehow my intended one or two paragraphs on the last week ended up being quite a bit longer. I think I’ll just write an entirely separate entry on Spain, so you have the option to skip this (probably very boring) one, if you so choose.