4 Days 'Til Spain!

Well, I'm on my 3rd day of class today. We go by A days and B days, so today is day A2. Yeah, we started school on a Sunday...that has thrown all of us off. We all basically gave up on trying to figure out what day it is until with hit land in Spain. Classes are going well though. It is taking me awhile to get use to not having desks or tables, and also rocking while trying to pay attention to the professors. I don't think any of my classes are going to be too hard, but they require a lot of reading. Everyone knows I'm not a fan of reading as it is...try reading while the ship is rocking back and forth.
Tomorrow morning is the first time we will be able to see land since we left Canada on Friday. We are going to be passing the Azores Islands. We are passing them between 5-7am tomorrow morning. I’m not sure I can get myself out of bed before then, but I have to be at work by 8, so maybe.
8am has never felt so awful. We are all in the stages of getting to know everyone, so everyone wants to stay up, play games, and hang out. It’s all fun until my alarm clock goes off at 6:40am. It wouldn’t be so bad, but I have already lost 5 hours since I left home.
I have met so many people already. It is kind of hard to not meet them considering we have crammed 700+ students into a fairly small ship. My floor is all really cool. Many of the people I met before coming live close to me. I have also started going to get-togethers for all the independent trips I will be doing in the ports coming up. Tonight we are planning out the details for our Spain trip, and also getting to know everyone who will be camel trekking through the Sahara Desert.
One of the most popular icebreakers so far has been to talk about what trips we will all be taking. I set up most of mine on Facebook, so a lot of the people I have met haven’t even heard of the trips I am doing. I have already had countless numbers of people ready to join me shark diving, sleeping on the great wall, etc. I’m a bad influence, but I love it. It’s a once in a lifetime trip; no one wants to miss out.
So…we were looking at our academic calendar yesterday. We have 4 more days of class, including today, until September 15th. We all love our lives right now. We only have to go to each class 22 times, so only 44 days of class all semester. We aren’t quite sure how that works out academically, but none of us are complaining.
Work-study is going well. My schedule sucks, but it is only 2 hours a day. I learned how to run the computers yesterday so I can check people out now. All I do is make sure the supplies store is stocked and clean, fold clothes, and check people out. I say that’s a pretty good deal for what they paid me. But speaking of the campus store, I need to head to work.
Take care! Also, my phone doesn’t work well on the ship, so I have shut it off. I will be turning it on once I hit each port. If you need to contact me, use my SAS email. Gmnagaki@semesteratsea.net.