Spain gives you cankles

It's a solid 6 SINGLE SPACED pages long. Best of luck getting through it!!

Oh my gosh, I love Spain. I never had any drive to visit and see the country, but after these few days… I never want to leave. It is super laidback and chill, but there is so much to do! Everyone is super nice and friendly, even randos on the street will take the time to ask you where you are from and give suggestions on where to go or eat. It’s been great, besides the fact that it gives you mad cankles!!!



Day one was long. We decided to wake up and get breakfast at 8 in the lounge to see the country, since we pulled in some time in the early morning. So immediately when I first got out of bed, I noticed that we weren’t rocking anymore, it was so weird. After 8 days at sea, that is the FIRST thing you notice! So we get up to the lounge and BAM! there is Spain. We are in the port so we were next to a few cruise ships, all of which COMPLETELY dwarf the little MV Explorer. Like for real. I’ll post pictures later, but it is insane. We all thought our 7 decks were plenty, but some of those other ones are 20 decks. It’s crazy.

Just past that you can see the city. It is super congregated into pretty small area, which is good for us since we don’t have to walk too much (LIES. Details later.). So we took pics and freaked a bit before going to get ready for the day. By 9:45, we had sat through a diplomatic meeting (basically just don’t get arrested for doing drugs), gotten our passports stamped, and sat around A LOT. People started leaving the ship at 10. We couldn’t, cause most of us had FDPs through SAS to go on, so since we leave with the FDP group there was no point to get off and then right back on. So Katie and I waited for the intercom to call for Montserrat.

Montserrat is a monastery on the hills of Barcelona just outside the city limits. When we finally got called, we grabbed a lunch box and got off the ship and went through security and such. First step on land was great. We got on the buses and headed over to the monastery. When we got there… wow. It is literally PERCHED on the top of this peak, it is crazy! We walked around the little city (?) and looked at the shops. For some reason, there were TONS of little huts selling cheeses and wines and chocolates… at the monastery. Super bizarre. But we went into the church and it was awesome. Huge domed ceilings, gold trim, beautiful frescos, but tons and tons of tourists. There were so many that the line to see the Black Madonna was like at least 2 hours. Since we only had 1.5 hours, we decided to hike to this cross that is right on the edge of a cliff. We couldn’t find the path, but we did get some awesome pics of the view and stuff! It was probably one of the best views ever, not only could you look straight down at the monastery, but you could see Barcelona and all the surrounding villages and stuff. Pretty sweet. 

We ate our boxed lunches and nearly died laughing. It contained a sandwich, hardboiled egg, oreos, apples, caprisun, cake, and a chicken drumstick. They literally threw in what they had leftover from yesterday’s dinner and voila! Lunch haha.

We headed back to Barcelona and got off the bus at Los Ramblas, the tourist street of the city. Katie and I walked around for a bit when we saw Matt and decided to wander with him. We looked for an internet café to sit in for literally 2 hours, and couldn’t find it. We finally stumbled upon it and it was no café. It was like 40 computers lined up along the walls in this sketch Indian street. Only a euro for 30 minutes though!  We skyped with family and friends for a bit and moved on. After that we headed back to the ship to meet up with people for dinner. It was quite the hike. You have to walk up and over this HUGE bridge to get to the ship, but then you are so high up, you have to walk ½ a mile past the ship to get to ground level. So it took like 45 minutes. So painful.

We met up with Jess, Brandon, Nikki, and Amanda for dinner at the ship and then went out to meet up with Mckenna , Savannah, and Craig at the Christopher Columbus statue that marks the start of Los Ramblas. Mckenna, Savannah, and Craig were EXHAUSTED. They had walked all day all around Barcelona and at one point Mckenna stop walking, looked at her foot, and said a blister popped. Soon enough, the pus started seeping through her shoe. Yucky, but such is Spain hahah.

We went to a restaurant in the square where Nikki and I decided to order a huge pitcher of sangria and tapas (snack food). It was our first Spanish food attempt, so we decided to follow the lead of a man who spoke with us about Spain and how to eat/act/be in Spain. David Gies is wonderful, a totally swell guy. He is like 60 and is knighted by the king of Spain (whoever that is) and super nice. So we ordered a spanish tortilla and queso manchego. The tortilla was awesome. It is like potatoes, egg, and cheese made in a massive pan and is sliced like a wedge of pie. It was absolutely delicious. The queso was not what we expected. We both love gooey, cheesy, queso with yummy chips, so we knew that would be the first thing we ordered. I wish someone could’ve videoed our faces when they brought the queso out…. It would’ve been hilarious. Turns out we are dumb and queso here is cheese (DURRRR). So we got like 10 strips of SOLID cheese. What a letdown!! We just cracked up, it was hilarious. Really great cheese though, it just wasn’t the queso we had been expecting haha.

After dinner, we went over a bar hoping to get drinks. Since it was only like 11, most places weren’t open yet. So we started talking to a club promoter, Jerry. He stood and talked to us for ever, and ended up saying that we could get a free drink at this one bar. So we all went there for a second. Nikki, Amanda, and I didn’t really want to sit around when it was only like 11 and there was still plenty of stuff going on. So we ended up walking up and down Los Ramblas to see what was happening. The city is bumping ALL THE TIME. Most spanards don’t eat until like 10-10:30 and then party till the sun goes up, so everyone was still wide awake. We literally were walking for 5 seconds when we saw Andrew and his group. We ended up talking and deciding we should all hang out tonight. We walked down some random alley for some reason and met Mike, another club promoter. He was from Cali, so Andrew and him hit it off. He ended up telling us where a 1 euro pub was and we all headed over there. Ryan’s Irish Pub, the greatest place ever. If I lived in Barcelona, I would be there every night (we ended up being regulars hahaha). It is awesome, a complete gem. We all were talking and met tons of people. Charlie and Jordan from England, Nick and Joe the gingers from Ireland, Swedes, Aussies, Russians; the pub was perfect. When we finally left, it was about 3 and we started the trek back home. We were walking down Los Ramblas almost to the end when Joe ran up to us.


 Mother, you may want to skip this part cause you will most deff freak haha, even though it was a wonderful experience.


Well anyways, he ran up to us and told us that we were being followed by a bunch of men. And sure enough, right behind us were 4 hulking skinheads, I think Russians, following us. They were MASSIVE. Since we only had dear little Andrew and 6 girls, we speed walked the heck outta there. We got home safe and fine, no worries haha, but that was interesting and quite the story.



Day two was…. Exhausting but absolutely amazing. We woke up at 10 (we had a phone chain to wake everyone up on the ship haha) and left by 11 to hit the city. We rode the bus into the city from the ship (saved like 45 minutes) for 2 euros and then just started walking up some side streets to find a place for breakfast. We ended up walking by Ryan’s and talked to the owner for a bit. He gave us a map and directions to a “local” place. We tried to head over there, but it took so long so we just ate in a little hole in the wall café. We got Coke Lights (diet cokes) and bocadillas (little torpedo sandwiches). The ham here is STELLAR.  Super amazing. Then we walked around some more to see the Santa Maria del Mar, an old roman church that was built in the 1300s. It was beautiful.  It had the huge curved arches (Romanesque arches, according to the Global Studies class we are taking! See, we are learning stuff!) and high ceilings. It had crazy awesome stained glass and these old hanging chandeliers. They even had a few of the wooden original pews! The strangest thing was it was smack dab in between the buildings in the city, so you can’t see it until you get out from an alley and then BOOM. Absolutely perfect. I would deff get married there.

Then we walked around the back alleys some more and decided to get on the metro to go to Sagrada Familia, the most famous cathedral in Barcelona. The building started in 1890s and isn’t scheduled to be done till around 2030. The pictures make it seem impressive, but it honestly has nothing on the real thing. We were walking up the stairs from the metro and BAM! there it was looming over us. It is wildly massive. Like oh my gosh. NO picture could EVER do it justice. EVER. I never noticed how much detail was put into it either… there are tiny birds with the texture of feathers carved out from stone and put on the church… only it’s about 300 feet up and no one will ever be able to see it. Gaudi, the designer, was an absolute nut case to think up all this stuff. There are saints and quotes and trees and numbers all thrown on to this crazy building. Originally, we had planned to wait until 7pm to go in because if you go to mass you get in for free. But after seeing the outside, we knew we would want to gawk and take pictures. So 10.5 euros later, we walked in. The texture of the outside is even MORE intense up close. After walking into the church, all of us were blown away. It is kind of like a mess of everything. Columns shooting this and that way, lopsided pillars, stained glass, crazy stairs… it was ridiculous. It was unbelievable. When I post some pictures, you will see.

We lost part of the group after that. So Nikki, Kellie, Andrew, and I decided to take a taxi to El Parc de Güell, a park by the same insane designer, while the rest went back to the ship to nap and stuff. The taxi driver was crazy. He accelerated so freaking fast all the time, like I don’t want to know how people are run over all the time! Even when you cross streets, if you are in the middle when the lights turn, you better be good at Frogger, cause they are gonna get you if you aren’t. The park was in the way top of the hills surrounding Barcelona, and it was so strange. The buildings remind me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, totally bizarre and weird. Really awesome and cool, but bizarre. So we hiked up and down, looking at his outrageous bridges and random columns. We found an awesome spot where you could look down at the ENTIRE city and hippie-d out for a few minutes. It is just not real that that day was day 10 of the voyage and we had known each other for so short of a time. It is wild when I think that I haven’t even known these people for 2 weeks, but I feel like I have for years, and know I’m closer to them than people I’ve known forever.

But after that short intercession, we got hungry and decided to walk to a tapas bar and then get the taxi back to Los Ramblas. Long story short, we didn’t get the taxi. We couldn’t find a tapas bar that was cheap until like an hour after we had left (3 miles of walking at least!) and then by that time we were too cheap to get a taxi. At the tapas bar, we tried out more stuff that David Gies told us to get- croquetas, papas bravas, brushetta, and chorizo… and more sangria. Croquetas are these deep fried balls of potatoes but there are absolutely AMAZING. It’s crunchy on the outside but gooey wet on the inside, with ham and onions and bacon. ZOMG amazing. The papas bravas are like breakfast fried potatoes chunks with this yummy spicy sauce on them- not spicy, but spices-ie. Brushetta and chorizo= duh. Before the server left, Kellie said what we thought was the server’s name- Bahno. Turns out she had a dad moment (Allah= hola anyone? Haha) and was trying to say baño haha. She is from South Carolina so she has a pretty thick accent too, but it was hilarious. We got her to ask for the check in Spanish and instead of saying el cheque por favor, she said el croquete por favor hahahaha. She is hilarious. After we finished eating and relaxing (our feet hurt sooooo bad at this point) we soldiered on.

We walked in residential Barcelona and saw no tourists, which made us super happy. We walked and walked and walked… all the way to Los Ramblas. Don’t quote me, but it was at least 8 miles… I don’t remember when we started walking (maybe 5 or 6ish) but we didn’t get to the END of Los Ramblas till 9pm. And then we still had to walk all the way down! It was great seeing Barcelona in that way, but my feet hurt and my legs are sore.

At the end of the Ramblas is La Plaza de Catalunya- basically the main square. BUT, since there is tons of unemployment, there are protests and stuff going on. In the middle of the square were at least 200 or 300 people camping out. Some had tarp tents, some had real tents, some made these awesome treehouses in the trees (pictures later!). They tore up the poor square and planted vegetables in the ground and spray painted the statues. The government had to dry out the fountain cause the people were getting into it to bath and pee. And it STUNK like pee. Ew. So, thinking it should be illegal for people to do this, we went up to the nearest policia and asked them about it. Turns out it is illegal, but the mayor/president/king or whatever has his hands tied. If he were to do anything to push these people out, it would cause more issues. The policemen hated these hippie people, said they were disgusting people. He was really awesome and was visiting the US for the first time in August. So we walked on and on and on.

We told Miranda and Alexis we would meet them at the Columbus Square at 11 to go out with them, but since it was already 10 by the time we got to the end of Los Ramblas, we just decided to stay out and eat instead of going to the ship. We ended up finding Jerry the club promoter and he got us free cava (bubbly wine of Spain) at his friend’s restaurant. We felt special because NO ONE else had it hehehe. We know all the right people. So we ate for fairly cheap, 10 euros for the meal + the free cava (which was 6 euros on the menu haha YUSSS). After that he tried to get us to do a pub crawl, but we were so exhausted. Our feet hurt, I had a bruise on my collarbone from my purse and camera, and we were drained. So we decided to just go wait on at the Columbus.

On the way there, we walked by a liquor store and saw that wine was 1.5 euros!!! And the cava was like 3.45!!! It was insane, so we got one and decided to crack it open at the Columbus Square in the center of the city. It is like a huge roundabout with the statue BAM in the middle, so it was pretty epic. And it wasn’t illegal (note: on the last night, we learned it actually was semiillegal hahahah oops)! You can have open containers on the street, so we were classy (not.). It felt so wrong though, but it was fine. When Miranda and Alexis walked up to us, we decided to have a chill night and go back to Ryan’s Pub. On the way there, we saw Mike again and he gave us a coupon for a free bruskie, since he loved us. We saw some SASers and invited them to join us. Inside was the same 2 bartenders and Charlie and Jordan. So it was way fun!! We ended up just having a blast and staying late. Tons of fun, I think I love everyone in SAS.



This morning (day 3) has been a bust. I had a Paella tour through SAS that I couldn’t sell so I went on it. Oh my gosh, never again. Not only did I have to wake up at the crack of dawn, but we had to walk around La Boqueria, the market area with loads of seafood and veggies and fruit. I got a delish smoothie, but that was about the only good thing. The tour guide completely BLEW; he left without giving anyone a heads up, so by the time we noticed he was gone, he was a block away. I think we left like 8 people behind. We went to the restaurant where we were gonna make the paella and the burners wouldn’t work. Then when they did, the propane had leaked too much and the fire exploded everywhere. Cool, but I wasn’t enjoying it. Then, they only had seafood paella. I tried some of the squid, but yuck. I tried to eat the rice but it was just too seafoodie. We did get lovely tapas and crème brulle! That was good. But then we were done with it all at like 1:30. Hoping we could go back, they said we had to walk around some mall till 2:45. Oh my gosh. So here I was, trying to limp around with my sore and swollen legs with disgusting cankles (Nikki had them soooo much worse I later found out haha) in some mall for an hour. It was painful. But eh it was an experience I guess!

But then, I got back to the ship and took a nap after leaving a note on the door of Nikki and Kellie telling them to call me when they got back (supposed to be at 4!!!). They ended up not getting back till 9:30 (in their defense, they DID text me, I just didn’t have my phone on me!), so we ate on the ship for $3 (hamburgesas con queso!) and then headed out. There was a big dj concert going on that about 75% of SAS was going on, Kaskade (techno-ie), but since we didn’t want to spend 20 euros on a cover that we didn’t even know sounded like, we decided to just go to the bars on the pier and hang out for our last night in Spain. We walked the bridge (buses stop running at 10:30) and went to the pier. We got some Aussies to take our pic on the water (they were creeps and gross, but made us do funny poses) and then started to walk along the water looking for the strip.

We ended up walking up to this massive boat. I recognized this symbol of a skull with a trident and staff crossing over the front on the back of the ship, but couldn’t remember what it was from. Then it hit me. It was Whale Wars!!!! And just ahead was the flipping Steve Irwin!!! It was nuts. We ended up talking to the dude watching the boat, an intern from Cali, who said they had just gotten in from patrolling the waters of Libya watching for blue fish tuna poachers. It was crazy, Nick you best be jealous!! So yeah.

We kept walking and walking, but couldn’t find these bars and seaside restaurants that everyone was talking about! So we decided to just go back to Ryan’s Pub. Long story short, we thought that we could find it by going in a different alley, but ended up getting lost. So it was midnight and we were wandering down the streets of Barcelona, 4 girls and 0 guys. Brill. But it wasn’t scary at all! The streets were still WAYYY crowded, just the Spanish urchins were being obnoxious trying to sell us beers. We all got real good at saying “eh, ah no gracias” with a hand gesture. It works much better than a simple no gracias because you sound fluent, we experimented hahah.

We finally caught a glimpse of the Santa Maria del Mar cathedral and found out where we were. We walked in to Ryan’s at like 12:15 and TONS of SASers were already there!! We got that place sooooo much business. Andrew and his group, who were going to Kaskade, were already there, along with Joe and Nick from Ireland and Mike the promoter, (Charlie and Jordan left that day… sad ). We are regulars for sure. We hung out there for a while after Andrew and his group left to go to the show.

Joe and Nick were going to some other club down the street from Ryan’s so we decided to go for a second before going back to the ship. Down the street got seedier and seedier. Like all our creeper radars were going off and we keep giving each other the eye that it was creepy. When we finally got there, we stood outside kind of trying to make up an excuse why we had to go back, but the dumb bouncer dude kept shushing us. Kind of weirded out (why would the guy from a club be shushing us?), Joe and Nick convinced us to walk in for 2 seconds. We did and were out of there in less than a minute. The first thing I saw was a lounge-ish bed of pillows and about 40 old Spanish men. Like upper 30s-40s. YUCK. They all stared at us when we walked in and got completely silent. There were NO girls in there. Lindsey swears that she saw rooms with beds behind the bar. Basically, we are about 90% sure we went to a prostitute bar… hahahahahah. Looking back, we should’ve guessed it since the bar was called “Sugar” hahahhaha. Oh well. So we hightailed it outta there and went straight home. It was hilarious, we were all cracking up about it when we were on the way back. Who can even guess what type of stories we will get in Italy when we have 7 days of fun!!!!




Day four was very relaxed. We all wanted a chill day to just have the day acting like locals and not tourists. We left at 10:30 to get breakfast and hang out. We got churros con chocolat (basically churros you dip in melted chocolate) and café con Baileys. All of it was super good, but the churros were super duper sweet. I felt like I was at the fair or something. But it is what most of the locals eat! After that we just walked in the Barri Gotic (the gothic quarter) and looked in shops and stuff. The area is really old and still has pieces of the old wall of Barcelona. The arches were built centuries ago and some of the apartments are the same age. Pretty sweet. The shops are cute too- beads, cafés, clothes, ect.

After that we went back to the Boqueria cause one of the girls wanted orange juice, since the oranges here are apparently real good. I got strawberries, which were delicious, not as good as Swedish ones, but good regardless. After that we walked down Los Ramblas and browsed.  We saw a legit pig shop, since ham is a delicacy here, and asked if we could take a picture of the hanging legs since it was so bizarre (hoofs and all still attached and hung from the walls!!). He agreed and asked if we wanted a sample. We said sure and watched as he shaved a piece of meat off this leg. It had the hoof attached to it and was sitting in the sun. The meat was… absolutely revolting. It was warm and slimy and fatty and gross. It even stunk like dead pig hair in there. Me and Nikki almost puked right there in the store. Oh my gosh, so nasty.

After that, some of the girls went to the beach while Nikki and I went with our friend Randy (who we ran into on the streets), and got sangria. It was awesome and super chill. We decided to walk down to browse some of the stores with him and ended up on what we thought was La Plaza Catalunya. What was weird is that all the protesters were GONE. Like it did not even look like the same place! We got a tad confused and then noticed that the place was absolutely swarming with police. It was nuts! Turns out that the police stormed the place and the protesters scattered the night before. Mckenna and Katie said they were RIGHT THERE on the edge of the square and saw the police swoop in! I’m totally jealous of them getting to be in it. They said that there were a few hippies running with their pot plants, trying to get out haaha. Pretty sweet!

After that we bolted to the ship to make dock time at 6. If you are late, every minute= an hour you have to stay on the ship at the next port. We got on perfectly fine and are now working on our volcano documentary for Italy (WHICH IS IN 2 DAYS!!!!!). I can’t believe this trip. It is seriously the best thing I’ve ever done and I’ve made the greatest friends everrrrr. I wanted to cry leaving Spain cause I loved it so much, so I’m worried what’s gonna happen in Boston! Can’t I just live on this ship? Balls, 14 days down, 52 to go!! Pleaseeeee go by slowly. Ciao, see ya after the Italy adventure!!

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Perfect weather, perfect plan, perfect day. Can’t wait and I can’t sleep. AHHHHH

After losing 4 hours in 4 days (this has been fun!), I am exhausted. My 9:20am class just turned into a 5:20am class which is like still 2 or 3am in Texas. Woohooo. Sucks. The sea got a ton rougher the closer we got to the Med…. Everyone was getting sick, and even I had to take some meds and stay in my room a bit!! It was sick (literally) hahha.

Yesterday we got our first glimpse of land!! We were getting closer to the Strait of Gibraltar, so we could see both Africa on the port side and Europe on the starboard side!! It was so crazy; even though we could only see the outline cause it was foggy. The first and the only day it ever was. Ugh. So pictures were kind of terrible.

We had our first exam in Global Studies, which was quite straightforward and easy. I literally got out of all my classes at 2 (after not paying attention, but watching the land haha), went down to take a shower. By 3, we had stopped moving and were sitting in a harbor getting filled up. It was crazy to go from seeing NO ONE and NO LAND for a week to seeing this absolutely perfect city and like 40 tankers and cargo ships. It was awesome!! The water was perfectly calm so we had no waves and no more flying through the halls trying to not run into the walls. We were in a Spanish harbor for about 9 hours and left in the night.

On a side note, when it was rough a few days ago, I ran into the wall in the middle of the night. There is a pointy wall and a curved wall on either side of the room (sort of like a T shape room, so the corners are right where it opens up). When I got up to go to the restroom in the middle of the night, the toilet flush is outrageously loud (like airplane loud), so it scared me. I TRIED to run from the bathroom to my bed at like 2am with no lights on and ended up with the pointy wall in my forehead. That was fun hahah.

The rock of Gibraltar is different than what I expected. I guess I thought it would be a rock that people could swim up to and jump off or something, but it was definitely an island haha. It was really cute though, we saw the UK side of it (The UK Gibraltar is in Spain, which is the one we were at, and then on the opposite side is Spanish Gibraltar in Africa). So that was real cool. Filling up the boat with fuel took FOREVER. I think they said that a gallon is like $0.80, and we got about $500,000 worth of it, so that is a lot of gas! But now that I think about it…. That sounds a tad unrealistic.

But anyways, we are now traveling along the coast of Spain in the Med reeeeally reeeeally slow to reach Barcelona tomorrow morning. Then it is off to explore and wander around! We have no plans really, so we just going to see where the street takes us! Barcelona is a walking city so most of the places will be pretty close. I am going to Montserrat, a monastery in the mountains) the first afternoon through SAS, and then we are on our own! Last night we had a “cultural preport,” basically how to eat, when to eat, and how to act, and tonight we have a “logistical preport,” which is legal stuff- what to do if you’re mugged/ beat up/ passport is stolen. So this is just so EXCITING!! I think seeing Gibraltar last night made this trip hit me. I can almost believe that I will be in a foreign European city tomorrow at this time. So surreal.

No class for 2 weeks; between Italy and Spain there is only one day which will be spent doing preports and prepping for the countries! YUSSSS. It will be weird not seeing all these people for a while! It was so true when they said that some of your best friends in the world would be found on this ship. It seems like I’ve known all these guys for years, not just days. I don’t even want to think that once this is over we won’t be living in the same place anymore, or even the same state. It’s so sad :(

Last night we had a sleepover in one of the girl’s rooms. We literally ran through the halls carrying a mattress to bring into their room, trying not to get caught by the scary sailor lady, since transporting furniture is totally against the rules. She is this Philippino officer who is so, so, SO strict. She wears a nasty man’s white sailor outfit and is mean. We successfully avoided her by having a lookout and running through the halls, all while dragging this huge mattress behind us hahha. So we got to the room, rearranged the furniture, nearly passed out from nail polish fumes (and one of the guys almost died hahah) and then went to pub night on the 7th deck (basically you can get 3 drinks, but it’s really just a social thing). We snagged a few friends and went back to started "Talladega Nights." A neighbor got pissed at the noise and the strict lady was sent. I guess she liked us for some reason, cause even though she saw the mattress; she let us continue on with just a warning haha. So we all passed out and woke up at 7 to take the mattress back before the stewards could see. Was quite interesting and a good way to end the first part of the voyage.

I will try to post some pictures in Spain, but no promises! I don’t know how the internet or wifi deal will work out, so we’ll have to see!

Today was the Amazing Race, a competition in which the winner gets to leave the ship in Barcelona first.  So of course me and my group entered (Mckenna, Brandon, Jess, Savannah, Craig, Kristen, Katie, and I). We were the Nads (get it? Go nads! Heheh) and we were perfect. Over 400 people entered in groups of 8  and some had pretty wild names! Anyways, the competition was basically about 28 riddles in which you had to solve and then run to the corresponding area on the ship to get each question signed off on. We were amazing and whipped right through them all (some were way hard!!!). We had like 3 more to go when the announcer lady told us that the first team had finished. BUT, they were now taking 1st, 2nd, and 3rd! So we raced right through them and right when we were literally getting the last question signed up mere feet away from the finish line, the last lady meticulously checked every. Single. Signature. Like she took a minute, easily. By the time we got to the finish line, 3rd had JUST gotten there. So we were livid. We wanted to be official in our 4th place finish, but the head lady yelled at us to sit down. Turns out, 1st place was the girl who beat me in the Senor Frog’s drinking game. SHE BEAT ME AGAIN!! I’m gonna get her one of these days…. Hahaha but yeah. My roommate Jamie ended up getting third, but they got DQed for cheating (haha). So the team who got there AFTER us and checked in (why didn’t the woman yell at them!?!?) ended up getting 3rd. So bummer. I’m not too pissed about it only cause I get off for my FDP early anyways. Whatevsss.

But yeah, we lose yet ANOTHER hour tonight. So the total is like 5 hours I wanna say? Whatever, this blows. I don’t like going to class when it’s 4am at home. Yuckie. Barcelona in 4 days though! And Gibraltar in 3!! … and the first round of tests in 3. Yay.

Well, I’m tired. This sucks. I need more sleep.

Also, I love Andrew Allison (Mel’s friend). We were MEANT to be best friends.

Well, we lose ANOTHER hour tonight. After just losing one last night. Yay. This is so exciting (not.). Good thing is that losing sleep means were getting closer to Spain!! Exactly 6 days and we will be there!! Apparently we arrive in Spain around 5:40am, so plans are in the works to get up and watch us sail up/ the sunrise over Barcelona. Should be amazing.

But, that means our first exams are in less than a week. Yuck. Those can wait haha. I thought I liked all my classes, but the fact we don’t have weekends means we can’t procrastinate on reading/homework like normal. So yesterday I spent about 4 hours in my room reading. On a bright side, it would’ve taken me like 10 hours at home with distractions such as facebook, TV, texting, ect. So that’s slightly better!!

We had our first “Exploratory Seminar” tonight about Spain. A speaker who lived there for a while gave an optional speech about how to dine out in Spain. Apparently there are about 7 meals; breakfast, midmorning snack, tapas, lunch, tapas, dinner at 9:30-11pm, and then tapas again. So it looks like I shall be up late in Spain all night every night! Cool deal.

But not having Internet blows. I thought I prepared a lot for the countries, but now I need to rent hostels/ get trains/ research times and stuff. Yuck. I just sucked up like 30 minutes of time researching train timetables and price, not even booking them. Thank goodness Italy will be the only one that will really need us to do that! But, thanks to those sucked up minutes, we now have Italy planned. We couldn’t fit Cinque Terre in like I had hoped, but I’ll live there in a few years so it’s forgivable. The plan is to spend 2 days in Naples doing FDPs for our classes (mine are Pompeii/Herculaneum visits and hiking Mount Vesuvius) and exploring the city/ eating pizza in our free time. Then we will head up to Rome for 2 days and rush around frantically seeing things. Then we will go to Florence for two days and hang out. When we leave there, we will hit up Pisa for a quick picture and then go to the port city of Civitavecchia where our ship sails from. We will get to Civitavecchia a day before we leave to save money while sleeping on the ship/ see the baths and other touristy areas in the port. We have budgeted the trains to be about ~$100 and the hostels to be about the same. So it’s perfection! Italy is gonna rock, and if we get lost, where’s a better place to get lost at?!

We watched the movie “Inception” yesterday in the Union. It’s basically like a movie that’s super cool (it’s about dreams and alternate reality-esque stuff) that ends with you saying “wait, what?” so it’s pretty good. But anyways, there is this scene where the main guys are fighting the bad guys in like a zero gravity/walls move sorta scene (you should watch it if you haven’t, cause I’m completely butchering it) and the boat started rocking way hard and it was awesome. It made you feel like you were actually in the movie!! So cool.

Everyone is starting to get seasick again. Since we are about 2/5 of the way out, I guess the waves get larger? Anyways it’s rocking like mad. People who have never gotten seasick yet are starting to spew and I’m not gonna lie, when you try to take notes while the boat is literally opening and closing the curtains with it’s force, I tend to get a tad queasy myself. But I will be fine!

We just got word that we have to fuel up in a couple of days (apparently it’s like >$500,000!!!). Normally I wouldn’t care, but the location is amazing. We will be docking literally FEET AWAY from the Rock of Gibraltar!!! Okay, maybe not feet, but close enough to see the apes (Did you know there were apes?! I didn’t, that’s wicked!). So that is gonna be so cool. Play hookie and be “sick” that day? Heck yes.

But yeah. Pretty sick, can’t wait!

Day one of classes! Was interesting cause we lost an hour last night… or gained it? I don’t get it. We woke up earlier whichever one that is. Haha but yeah. I had a class at 9:20, which would normally be perfect, but breakfast ends at 8:30 and the gym is closed from 7-8 for the faculty. So we have to wake up extra early to eat and NOT workout. My poor roommate has her first class at noon but she still has to wake up way early.

Global studies is the common course everyone has to take. It has the coolest book, full of happy pictures of stuff we will see, but the class is apparently hard (according to past SASers). It’s supposed to be about history in the Mediterranean and their cultures, but today’s class was pretty dry.

I can tell my Geohazards class will be uber fun. The prof is from the UK (I have the best luck getting foreign geology profs!!) and she seems super cool! I already love it and can’t wait for the FDPs (faculty directed practica: basically field trips we have to go on for each class in the countries) I have in Italy hiking Mt Vesuvius and visiting Pompeii/Herculeum.

I just got out of Anthropology and I think I hate it already. The prof is real annoying and assigns about 60 pages of reading A DAY. That’s right, a day. It’s completely ridiculous. And then we have to do 3 FDPs (normally it’s only 2) in addition to have 6 “case studies” where we have to sit in the same spot for 2-3 hours in a county and observe people and then write a 4 page paper on it. The real kicker is that we have 1-2 days between each country where we have to write these papers WHILE reading 60+ pages for her class and doing all the papers/readings for every other class! Stupid. It’s completely lame, but I think it’ll be real easy to BS and make up. Oh well, she can’t really expect us to sit still while we are in a foreign place. Idiot.

The sun here ROCKS. After tanning at a bed for 2 weeks and I got no tanner. But being here for 2 days and sitting outside for only a bit, I already have a mini watch tan. AND RING TAN!!! YUSSS.

This evening I met about 17,000 people from San Antonio after I had thought I was 1 or 8 Texas people, so that was nice. We tried to plan out our other trips and independent travels in all the countries and this is stressful. Because we have a total of like 1 hour of internet, it’s gonna be hard. I wayyyyy under prepared for this haha. Oh well, I guess were winging it!

Though, I think I have the greatest plan set for Italy. If I can convince Katie to ditch her roommate (who is being clingy anyways for trips in the countries) it’s gonna be golden. First two days in Naples for Pompeii/Herculeum and Mt Vesuvius hike FDPs, then a night train to Cinque Terre and spend the day there. Hike the towns from sunrise till about 4 then train to Pisa for a fast picture (since Pisa apparently blows!) and then a quick train to Florence. Spend a day there and then go to Rome for the final 2 days before we leave Italy. Then I’ll come back to Italy within the next few years… for a few months/years… and hit everything I missed. Perfection? Yes.

Day 2: was an entire day spent sitting and dozing. We had “orientation” from 9am-9pm, which could basically be boiled down to 4 main points.
1.      Don’t smuggle stuff aboard or you’ll get kicked off.
2.      Don’t get wasted and roofied.
3.      Go to class.
4.      It’s a ship, not a boat. A deck, not a floor. A voyage, not a cruise.

Boom, there, we are done. Could’ve saved an entire 12 hours of boredom and nodding heads to lay out in the sun or something. Lame. Jamie and I definitely slept through our alarms though, we set it for 7:45 so we could get breakfast, but ended up waking up at 8:45 when the intercom came on to remind us about orientation hahah. Whatever. We did have breaks though! Which consisted of us sitting on the deck trying to catch a glimpse of the illusive dolphins jumping (probably was just a joke haha) and tanning/sleeping. I dunno if it’s the Dramamine still trying to wear off after yesterday, since I didn’t take any today, or it was really THAT boring of a day. But oh well. Did hear some good gossip: apparently after we left Senor Frogs, a girl got alcohol poisoning and fell over the railing into the ocean or something and had to go to the hospital. She is supposeably in the sick bay “resting” or whatever haha. Sucks.

Classes start tomorrow, which I am actually kind of excited for. A schedule sounds sooo nice… at least for the whole 8 days until Spain. Hahah we have a total of 23 class days and like 40 or so country/ activity days. Totally the best study abroad EVERRR. Apparently we have midterms on the day before Spain though… I have 8 days to study and learn material we haven’t even heard of. Yay haha. But yeah, it’s all good. Met tons of cool people again; a guy named Gunther who reminds me of the dude in Beauty in the Beast, a guy who looks like Robert Pattinson, and a girl who I’ve been talking to on facebook for the whole year! Its been good, but everyone still comments on the “y’all.” UGH.

Welp, time goes forward an hour tonight, so my 8:15 breakfast will be at 7:15. Yay.

Today was the day. So after none of us sleeping even an hour due to excitement, Mckenna and I left the hotel at 7:40am to board. We got a very friendly taxi driver who kept talking… though we didn’t understand a word he said. We just nodded and agreed with everything haha.

It took forever to board our amazing new home. We stood in line for about 45 minutes even though we were the first group to board… lame. So we FINALLY got to walk up the gangplank and it was amazing. The inside is HUGE. We got lost walking to our rooms and to the orientation place. After getting our IDs (my photo is HORRIBLE, again), we were walking up and down level 3 looking for my room (3087). But when we finally found 3086 and 3088, it was totally gone. We thought I got a trick room that was along some corner real far away or something, but after looking confused, one of the stewards happily let us know that we were on the evens side, not the odds. We found both our rooms pretty easily after that. Turns out I am right next door to Lindsey, one of the girls we stayed at the hotel with, and Marselle, a fellow aggie.

After talking a bit, Mckenna and I headed up the orientation room where we got our insurance cards and made sure we had filled out all the info and paperwork. Right in line behind me was Andrew Allison, a guy who is besties with Melissa Lewis at Azuza in Cali. So that was pretty epic to finally meet him! He is pretty cool; happy and giggly…. Reminds me of Cameron. Then, right behind him was another Andrew who, after hearing Andrew A say his name, commented on the coincidence. After talking to him for a bit, turns out he is the other aggie who Leslie was telling me about, the one who is in CARPOOL. So that was pretty exciting! He brought his boots, 12th man towel, and a lovely Texas A&M flag that looks so awesome. I’m totally jealous and wish I‘d gotten one :(

After touring the ship, which is magnificent, we headed to the top deck and see the sights. It’s really awesome; I will need to take more pics of it for sure. We ended up heading down and all splitting up to meet the roommates, whom neither of us have met. I was unpacking with Jamie walked in. She is short and from San Francisco and talks A LOT. It’s actually quite impressive how much she can talk… though I’m sure it’ll get annoying after a bit. I am already starting to zone out when she talks… and its day 1 of 68. Yay. But she is pretty cool. She has a lot of feathers in her hair and has the tool that puts stuff in, so I’m mad I didn’t bring Kelly’s old feather piece. Sad day. But we are gonna put weird stuff in our hair that we find in the countries. It sounds weird but it’ll probably be pretty cool looking! We finally unpacked our suitcases (sorta) and it all fits in our rooms, but barely. The rooms are bigger than I thought, but smaller than I had hoped.

We took down the picture that is hanging in the room to read what people wrote. It’s a tradition for past SASers to write down hints of what to do or how to do “prohibited” things on the back of the picture. Ours has a few gems. “Always eat what the directors tell you not to, but take Pepto,” “Drink enough to have fun, but not to die,” “Sneak alcohol in.” Words of wisdom haha. There are also specific places written down to visit, like bars in Vietnam and shops in Cambodia, but most of them aren’t summer voyages. Sad day. 

We had our lifeboat drill today and boy did that BLOW. It was about 95 degrees outside and we had to wear long sleeves, long pants, closed toe shoes, a hat, and a huge life vest. We had to stand out there for like 30 minutes in the sun while they checked off names and made people redress. Yuck. After that it was only a matter of time before we disembarked. We heard the call for nonessential personnel to leave the ship so there was literally a stampede to the top deck. We got our cameras and headed up, but since we were one of the later packs of people, we ended up having to go down to the 3rd deck to get a view. We saw the *few* parents waving and it really wasn’t that big of a deal. The people we could see were about a ¼ of the size of an ant. The tugboat attached itself to us, the men untied us (huge, thick ropes!), and we were off at about… 3 mph. Twas quite slow. And not exciting. It wasn’t until we flipped around (since we were backwards in the port) that we started to pick up speed. We startled a poor stingray that jumped outta the water when we started going faster! The wind from the speed felt great after burning in the scorching sun for hours. After that got boring, we went in for dinner. I am gonna eat potatoes every day this summer I am pretty sure. Yuck. Everyone says you just stop eating after a few weeks at sea cause the food gets so redundant and tiring. Something to look forward to I guess!

We met our “sea” today, which is basically our hall. We are the Caribbean Sea, so hopefully at the “Sea Olympics” in about 3 weeks we will kick the other seas bootays. We compete against them in tug of war, volleyball, basketball, ect for the win. Should prove to be interesting!

We went to see the ocean tonight when it was completely dark and it’s crazy. It’s weird when it’s so dark that you can’t see the horizon even! But we headed to the front of the ship and it was crazy windy! It was hard enough to stand with the waves, but when the wind was blowing at you so hard that it gets difficult to stand, it’s pretty awesome. It was fun, but they kicked us off to close it since it was too windy. Sweet.

So now I am in the room and the walls are vibrating. It’s pretty bizarre to be walking down the hallway and suddenly losing your footing… I mean I am inside! It’s just weird. I can feel myself fluctuating up and down with the swells, but no seasickness yet! Hopefully not ever, though I took meds just in case. Apparently we are in the Bermuda Triangle and there are thunderstorms and lightning coming within the next few days (how exciting!). In 2005 there were 3 hurricanes that apparently surrounded the ship and broke an engine off or something. They had to call the coast guard and were supposeably 5 minutes from bailing the ship, but who really knows. There is a lovely video of the ship on youtube, so mom go look it up hahaha. I haven’t seen it but its apparently pretty epic with waves crashing over the bow and such.

But yeah I’m off to bed! Hopefully the ship rocks me to sleep!


Ps. I never knew how much I say “y’all.” Every person I meet has to comment on it and immediately guess I’m from Texas. It’s funny, but for real, it shouldn’t be THAT big of a deal! hahahah

After literally JUST posting the last blog update, we were sitting on the lobby couches about to head upstairs when two SASers came up to us and introduced themselves. Jess and Brandon are THE coolest people we have met thus far. They are both super seniors and are childhood buddies. I KNOW we will get along cause they both are nerdos: Harry Potter, Avatar (the cartoon, durr), Halo, ect. So we hung out forever and met some more people. Katie, (someone EVERYONE knows from the facebook group), Kytara (another famous facebooker), and two girls. We ended up going for a midnight swim and just hanging out till 2am. ‘twas great fun and makes me happy that people are so friendly and happy. Most people on SAS seem to be very down to earth and just jolly, if that makes sense. Very easy going. So we headed to bed at 2-2:45ish and then ended up sleeping in AGAIN…. Which is alright since it’s literally the last time we will sleep in till the end of August. UGH.

We decided to stay on the resort today and meet up with Brandon later since Jess was work-study and had to board early/train. So we swam, almost got hit by lightning, and TRIED to drink the grapefruit-rum mix Mckenna created. It was nasty. We saw the stupid high schoolers act ridick, this time they were trying to throw a chair off their room’s balcony on to some old man…. Thank god they are not SASers like we first feared… We later ended up going to Senor Frogs and having a blast. Somehow I got conned into some competition with about 6 or 7 other girls (who were all SASers, weird!). We had to blow up a balloon, put it between our legs, and run all the way from the back of the restaurant to the front and then back… all while drinking a beer. I, being uber competitive, kept in the first place the entire time till about 10 feet from the finish line when my balloon fell out from between my legs. Balls. So I lost the free drink :( but it was still fun, I will remember those girls forever haha. We went back to the hotel early and went for another late night swim in the ocean and got eaten by sea lice (?) or something equally white and nasty. So we braved the pool for the first time (apparently Brandon heard the high school annoying kids “bragging” about peeing in the pool, ew.). It was warm and gross and salty, but it was fun talking and hanging. We ended up going the room early and reading the last bit of the common reading (of course Mckenna hasn’t even started haha).

It’s been a fun and exciting day, but it won’t even hold the cake to tomorrow when we board the ship. ZOMG we are all trying to contain our excitement, but it is hard. Jess was telling us all about it, since she got the first peek at it this afternoon, and it seems awesome! And there IS a salad bar so I will NOT get fat this year. I also decided that since I will not be sleeping this summer, might as well make it legit. So I made a pact with myself that I will workout every single day we are at sea, so strange swelling treadmill here I come! For realz.

Welp, see ya on the other side I suppose! 

Adios, ciao, zbogom, αντίο, довиждане, güle güle, and وداعا world! 

Well, after leaving San Antonio on a 5:30 flight to Atlanta and then nearly missing my connection to the Bahamas, I arrived in Nassau. It took about 13,059 minutes to get through customs and I thought for sure the girl I was meeting would have left. I was supposed to see a girl I was staying with at the Wyndham at the baggage claim,  but when I got there I didn’t see anyone that looked moderately familiar. I forgot to look at her facebook profile pic before I left so I was really just looking for a girl to recognize me hahah. So I didn’t see her, so I sat down and waited. I ended up waiting with a girl that I recognized on facebook and talking for like 45 minutes. Finally McKenna showed up and we got into the taxi to go to the hotel. He drove on the opposite site of the road and had a backwards car! It was so cool. And he had a Jamaicanish voice! Pretty sweet. So then we tried to check into the hotel, but since the girl who booked it wasn’t with us, we couldn’t. So we swam in the ocean, got burnt, got hit on by high school kiddos, and had our first legal drink. It was a margarita and it was DELICIOUS. Since neither of us had eaten all day (I think I had a protein bar and 2 bags of airline pretzels) we decided to walk to this “cheap, good food” according to the hotel lady. It ended up being a 45min walk away and the food was averaging about $23. Yuck. So we went over to this British Pub restaurant across the street and had a burger and corona, served to us by an Asian lady. Hahah sweet. We later tried to act pitiful and beg the concierge person to let us in our room, but no avail. After napping on the lobby couches and watching episodes of lost, we finally managed to tug on the heartstrings of a new lady and she let us in the room. This is what we saw…

Then 15 minutes later the other two girls walked in. Ugh. We ended up sleeping in and getting woken up by some people playing bingo. It was realll confusing haha. We went into town and walked forever and got hooted at by taxi drivers, which was fun. More beach time, and creeper stalked a guy McKenna knew from facebook, which was hilarious. He was totally bewildered haha. We saw the ship downtown and got super duper stoked, but it’s a good 75-100ft shorter than the other ships. It makes this trip seem a bit more real!!

Stuff I learned in the past few days:

1.     There are no stop signs or traffic lights in Nassau, only roundabouts.

2.     I will be in the greatest shape ever and have killer calves with the amount of walking I’ll do.

3.     It's really strange when you see people on facebook in real life.

4.     I tan better in the Bahamas in 2 hours than 2 weeks in a tanning bed.

Welp, it's almost 5am...

And I've been up since 7am yesterday, with an hour nap at 2am of course! Erg. I'm exhausted but real excited, which shows why I got next to no sleep. After a couple of set backs, I am finally on the way to Atlanta and then Nassau! It took about 17,000 hours to pack my bags (a solid 49 and 50lbs each hahah) but thankfully it is over. I just hope I don't mess up my bags too much in Nassau before we get on the boat!

I leave on the MV Explorer from Nassau on the 17th at 8am. Until then I will be playing around with people I meet and just relaxing before the onslaught of papers, exams, and traveling. Not that I am complaining hahah. But yeah, I am staying with 3 other girls that I met on facebook (totally strange) at the Wyndham, so it should be pretty fun! I just hope I meet tons of people; I'm gonna be that girl that goes up to random kids my age with multiple bags and assumes they are with SAS. Oh well! I hope I won't get too sunburnt.. hahah