Crossing the Atlantic Ocean

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven’t been able to update the blog since we departed from Halifax. We have very limited access to Internet (other than email) on the ship…it’s very expensive because it relies on satellites to reach the ship when it’s hundreds of miles from land! We are only given a small amount of “minutes” for free. So, for the most part, you can look forward to updates about ship life and about the ports we’re visiting when I am on land.

We’ve had a very busy first week! After leaving Halifax at 5pm on Friday, August 28, we finally arrived in Cadiz, Spain very early Saturday morning before sunrise. It took nearly the whole week to adjust to the gentle (and sometimes not-so-gentle) rocking of the ship. Classes began last Sunday after a daylong ship orientation. So far, classes are off to a great start…all of my professors are extremely knowledgeable and engaging, and have put a huge emphasis on the ports that we will be visiting. While the coursework is obviously very important, I can imagine that the port visits will add so much to the overall enrichment and knowledge gained from this voyage.

After going to school in the middle of a city for two years, being confined to a boat has taken some getting used to. You can only get breakfast between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning? However, I’ve kept myself busy meeting my 519 fellow voyagers, spending sunny afternoons by the pool (In case anyone wants in, I will put money on the fact that I’ll come home in December with a better tan than my dad has ever had!), and learning what life without the internet and text messages was all about. It’s so nice to sit at dinner on the 6th deck, or spend hours playing cards, and not have the interruptions of cell phones and blackberries beeping and buzzing.

Advice I wish I had been given: Without gripping the sides of the treadmill with BOTH hands, you’re guaranteed to fall off. Luckily I figured this out before it actually happened…

All in all, the Atlantic crossing was a great start to what I can already tell will be a fabulously life-changing experience. My Semester at Sea email address is: rarosenberg@semesteratsea.net. I forwarded my Penn and gmail accounts to this new email, so you can continue to reach me that way, too.