The Little Things

I have had the absolute worst luck with clocks and alarms on this trip. I bought a nifty little travel alarm clock in Greenville and started using it a couple of weeks before I left. I even put it in 24 hour military time to get a jump start on learning ship time. The night before I was to board the ship I set my alarm instead of using the hotel’s clock. It went off that morning but as soon as I hit snooze the display got all jumbled and it stopped working. I even tried pushing the reset button with my pen but to no avail. Later that evening I decided to try again so I used the post of my earring and it was small enough to push the reset button. I excitedly set my alarm for the next morning. This time, it went off, I hit snooze, and the display disappeared completely. No use hitting the reset button for a dead battery. And since it was a brand new clock, I had thought “Oh, no need to bring an extra battery. It’s just a few months.” And of course the ship’s store sells every kind of battery except the kind I need. Or assumed I would need. I didn’t bring a screwdriver either, so no way to take the cover off.

So without a working alarm clock, I thought I would just use my cell phone. This took careful planning and calculations to start with because when my phone doesn’t get great signal it jumps 3 hours behind for some reason. When I’m lucky. Sometimes it just picks a time that doesn’t make sense at all or even line up with the minutes. Anyway. I set my 4 AM alarm so I could get up at 7 only to wake up at 5:30 when my phone beeped loudly as the battery died and cut off. I spent the next hour and a half terrified to fall back asleep. This happened two different times. I even tried using my ipod as an alarm one morning but it wasn’t loud enough or didn’t go off. In any case, it didn’t work. I finally realized if I put my phone on airplane mode it doesn’t waste battery searching for signal. But apparently when it’s in airplane mode it doesn’t like to go off after I hit snooze. Or go off at all in some cases. So the past few days I’ve been relying on my internal clock and sunrise to wake up and sleeping with my watch on for good measure. Somehow I have yet to oversleep for anything. I should add that my roommate brought a regular alarm clock, but for some reason it gains a few minutes every day so it’s anywhere between the correct time and half an hour fast. You never know. I set that alarm one day too but got up before it went off.

This afternoon though, I was doing something in my cabin and heard some beeping sound and looked in my drawer where I’d thrown my alarm clock and sure enough, the numbers were showing up again. I couldn’t get the alarm to stop going off or set it or anything useful though so I just put it back. I heard it again tonight and realized I had to do something to get it to stop beeping at least. So I decided to improvise with tweezers as a screwdriver. They worked! And turns out the battery is fine, it just sits lopsided in the clock so once I had it securely back in place and the cover on and screwed/tweezed back down, I made it extra secure with a simple strip of duct tape. Contraband, might I add. Luckily they never actually confiscated it. Now I’m just a little disappointed that I have to retire my internal alarm clock after such a short time. I think my professors will be happier with me this way though.

Smooth

I got really worried last night because the ship’s captain made an announcement around 9:30 that in about an hour we would be entering the shallow waters of the Amazon entrance and would therefore have to bring in the stabilizers so we were likely to experience “significant rolling.” I figured that must be like barrel rolls or something because they didn’t find it necessary to warn us the night drawers were slamming open. To my surprise though, I woke up this morning and can hardly feel that we are moving. The river’s really brown but so calm compared to the ocean. It’s also cool to be able to see land.

A lot of people got sunburned yesterday. I think we crossed the equator last night, but I’m not positive. I spent the greater part of the afternoon silently making fun of everyone’s red skin but last night I looked in the mirror and realized the joke’s on me. Apparently I didn’t quite make it to my arms when I was putting on sunscreen so I got a farmers tan without even wearing a shirt. And I cheated a bit by mixing sunscreen and lotion for my legs. Apparently that wasn’t sufficient. So turns out I’m a bit red myself. Lesson learned. Again.

The "Sea" Part

I’m beginning to reevaluate my love of the Atlantic Ocean. Sometime last night we left the Caribbean and entered the Atlantic. I woke up around 2 this morning to the sound of drawers being slammed open and shut and things falling off our tables. I tried to pull my covers back up to go back to sleep but my hand slipped so I pretty much punched myself in the mouth and my tooth went through my lip a good ways. Not too fun. I’m grateful for the tightly tucked sheets though because I think there’s a real chance I could fall out of my bed otherwise. Getting ready this morning was more work than usual. I definitely felt like those kids on the commercials with the huge bookbags that fall over. It’s really entertaining to watch people walk around the ship. Even most of the crew members are walking in zig zags. One class this morning got dismissed about ten minutes after it started because the professor got seasick. In my first class, the girl beside me threw up. If I’d noticed sooner, I probably would have lost my breakfast too. They didn’t open the pool today, I’m guessing because of the rocking. There were signs on a lot of the doors to the outside decks saying “Do Not Exit Due to High Wind.” Not too comforting. Now we can just look forward to the Cape of Good Hope which is supposed to make this look serene.

The Nature Island

Dominica was wonderful. Sunday morning I joined a group of about 10 other students and we made our way through town. Every few feet we were stopped by a taxi driver trying to take us to the beach or some other site because “it’s Sunday! Everything is closed!” The vast majority of the island’s 70,000 person population is Catholic. Once we got off the main street, we saw the cricket stadium and a variety of stores and other buildings. The island has a lot of French influence in its architecture. The four languages of the island are English, Creole, French, and Spanish. We eventually found ourselves in the botanical gardens (Mama would be happy) but we just walked through them up to Jack’s Walk, a fairly short but very steep path up one of Dominica’s many mountains. The path wound around and around through jungle-like plants. Suddenly, though, we were met with the breathtaking site of the city from above. Definitely worth the climb. We stayed at the top for a long time taking pictures of the plants and the monuments and the view. A little way away were a few tables with some women selling trinkets and such. The son of one of them was probably almost 2 years old and some of the people in our group had fun playing peek a boo with him. Some government official had a house up there too, with his own uniformed guard and everything. After looking around for a while, we made our way back down by the road this time which was pointed out by the women to us. It was a less strenuous walk. We stopped halfway down at the Mountainview Café for refreshments and more pictures. I tried a Vita Malt—non-alcoholic malt beverage high in B vitamins. It was certainly…interesting. I couldn’t drink the whole thing though. After lunch aboard the ship, I joined another group for a trip to Trafalgra Falls. We took a taxi up (and down) the winding island roads to the trail entrance in a park. There were times when I worried that we weren’t actually on a road at all, but Dominican traffic was a lot less terrifying overall than Bahamian. We got to the park and bought our entrance tickets and were met by a guide (of course, any way to get more money from us) who led us to the falls. She proved to be very helpful though, so it was worth the extra couple dollars. The falls were at least as pretty as the ones I’ve seen in South Carolina. The trail was definitely more jungle-like. It was really cool to see crabs in the mountains. That part was new. The island is home to 365 rivers, a huge number that I can’t remember of waterfalls, 9 active volcanoes on land, and 3 active volcanoes in the water. Even on our short hike, we saw many different freshwater and sulphur springs. Dominica also utilizes its resources so a large percentage of its energy comes from hydroelectricity. I was very impressed. We hiked to the observation deck for the falls and then decided to venture closer to them over rocks and the river. After that trek, we went back to the parking lot and shopped around at the tables with souvenirs there. On our way back to the ship, the taxi driver took us on a few detours and stopped the van in prime photo spots. The guy riding in the front passenger seat engaged him in some intense political conversations too ranging from crime rates and the death penalty to all sorts of other things. It was very educational. Monday morning I went on my Semester at Sea sponsored snorkeling trip to Soufrie Marine Reserve and Champagne Reef. It was really cool. My first time snorkeling. We saw a lot of different corals and fish and other stuff. (This is why I’m not a science major.) There’s a hole in Champagne Reef that emits water so hot it can poach an egg in “less than no time.” Our guides went down and brought up some of the water in their snorkels and let us feel it after it had cooled down some. It was still surprisingly hot. That afternoon I just walked through the market and went to the post office and an internet café. Dominica doesn’t have a big enough airport to support big flights so it’s very difficult to access, which is sad because their main source of national income now is tourism because the British stopped importing their bananas. I fear that if too many people could get to Dominica though, it would be spoiled. Double-edged sword of their semi-isolation.

To be continued...

I'm leaving Dominica in a few hours. I've decided to use my very limited free internet minutes that I get on the ship for updating this so I'll do that soon with better posts so soon I'll write all about this country.

Not very informative update

January 15, 2011

Greetings from the Caribbean! I’ve spent the past 4 days on a ship! Everything’s pretty exciting. You even have to relearn how to walk! I thought I was getting used to the ship’s rocking last night but then I realized we had stopped for fuel. We were in San Juan but not allowed to leave the ship. I’m staying in a deck four cabin near the back (aft) of the ship on the starboard side (I think). It’s pretty small but since I couldn’t pack much to start with there is plenty of storage space. The view is gorgeous.

I’ve learned to use sunscreen for sure. Got a little pink the first day I tried to lay out by the pool. There are a few lobsters walking around. Kinda funny.

We’ve had two class days so far. One A day and one B day. They alternate every day while we’re at sea so we have classes even on weekends but no class at all while we’re in port. I’m taking Global Studies, Travel Writing, Global Ethics, Human Impacts on Coastal Systems, and Foreign Approaches. Global studies is required by everyone on the ship. It’s going to be a lot of work sadly but probably useful in preparing us for all of the countries we’re going to. Travel writing shouldn’t be terribly hard but I think it will definitely help to improve my writing (as you can see I need). Global Ethics is going to be really fun. The Coastal systems class covers a lot of topics I’m already familiar with from my previous environmental studies and marine science classes but the new perspectives and field experiences should be really useful. In foreign approaches we get to read a lot of novels set in the countries we’re visiting or written by natives of the country or sometimes visitors. PF Kluge is my professor for both English classes. He’s the writer in residence at Kenyon College and quite a character.

Tomorrow morning we arrive in Dominica, our first port of call. Very excited, even though I have no plans for the first day there.

First Country/First Blog

So this is the first time I've ever blogged; hopefully it all works out and I can do a decent job. I'll be taking a travel writing course this semester so hopefully the quality improves over time ;) Most entries probably won't have pictures unfortunately because I'll only have limited internet access other than e-mail while I'm on the ship.

Saturday evening had, as Ginny accurately stated, a "state of emergency" feel to it. Weather reports for our intended departure date from Atlanta to Nassau got increasingly worse. We realized we shouldn't wait until Monday to drive to Atlanta, so we planned to stay the night there Sunday. Soon, though, we found out that our Monday flight had been cancelled and we were re-booked to the 3:10 flight on Sunday afternoon. So to sum it all up, the next 15 or so hours were ridiculously stressful and included only about 3 hours of sleep. Ginny, Cory, and Henry came over for a rearranged going-away dinner and after that I decided it would probably be a good time to begin packing. (Ever wonder who puts the PRO in procrastination?) Once everything was successfully packed and well under the airline imposed weight limit, Mama, Daddy, and I were on the road to ATL. The drive was uneventful as I sat in the back seat, still feeling totally surreal about Semester at Sea. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time and made it through check in and security with reasonably few mishaps.

There were a good many other SASers waiting for the same flight so there was a lot of excitement and whatnot. I missed some of the socializing though when I left to take care of credit card business that I'd put off until the LAST last minute. I was also too emotionally sleep-deprived to feel very sociable, so it's probably for the best.

The flight was delayed just a little bit, but there was a "good tail wind" so it lasted only an hour and a half instead of the original two hours. We feared that the young child a few rows in front of us would scream the whole time, but luckily he cheered up after takeoff. The Nassau airport is completely opposite of ATL -- tiny, quiet, and nearly empty. Customs and immigration was even a lot less intimidating than security in America. We took a taxi to our hotel; left-lane driving is TERRIFYING! Everyone seems to speed like crazy here too and there is no space between the sidewalks and roads.

We spent today exploring the pool and beach area except for the...interesting two hours spent in a sales presentation for vacation plans or something like that. Had lunch and dinner at the Seaside Buffet here in the hotel. I've also been taking advantage of the free internet so there are pictures on Facebook. (The signal isn't strong enough to post them on here though. That or I'm too impatient.)

Tomorrow evening Mama and Daddy are attending a parents' reception on board the MV Explorer. Then Wednesday I board the ship at 8:40 a.m. and we depart at 5:00. I won't believe this is all happening until I set foot on the boat. I'm so thankful that everything has worked out for me to have this opportunity and that everyone is so supportive.