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