Day 2
Well today was filled with LOTS of orientations. We had two, 3 hour orientations. UGH! The only thing I can really remember from those orientations is that for every 15 minutes that you are late after ‘on ship time’ you are penalized with three hours worth of dock time. YIKES! On the ship we are also broken up into seas by the decks we are on. My deck is the Baltic sea. In the beginning of February we have the Olympics and all the seas compete against one another, I think there are 8 of them. The sea that ends up winning the Olympics gets to get off the ship first when we disembark in San Diego, I hope I don’t win because by the experience so far, I don’t think that I am going to want to be getting off the ship. Our captain is very intimidating. I am not too sure why. His name is Jeremy and he is British, he is a nice guy but has a lot of power, I guess it’s because he is the one whose hands I am in. There are a lot of Lifelong learners on the ship. These are older people who didn’t have the opportunity to travel when they were younger. They can take classes if they want to but it isn’t mandatory. So I guess its pretty awesome for them, they are taking a three and a half month vacation! There are also a lot of the professors families on the ship, so there are always children running around and swimming in the pool.
Day 4
Today is the first day that we arrived in Dominica. It took a while for everyone to be able to get off the ship because we have to go in an orderly fashion and there is a whole procedure that has to take place. To begin our day we went on a tour that was called ‘Bumpiing Tour’. Levi was our tour guides name, he was the best. It began with taking a half hour bus ride to the Ti Tou Gorge. At the gorge we got to swim down this cave like canal area to a waterfall. Before reaching the waterfall it was a little hard to swim because there was a pretty strong current and there were so many of us, luckily we had life jackets on. When we got to the waterfall, we were able to jump from it if we wanted. Of course I wanted to, who wouldn’t, it wasn’t bad, you just had to jump out in front of you and everything was okay! After the gorge we all packed back into the bus and took a 15 minute ride to the Trafalgar Falls. At the falls we hiked to the hot springs, which was amazing! The hike wasn’t so fun, I was wearing flip flops and the rocks that we had to hike had moss all over them, but it was well worth it. At these springs we were able to go swimming, it was like swimming in a hot tub, I didn’t want to get out. We then traveled to the two waterfalls, but we weren’t able to go under them since our tour guide wasn’t really supposed to take us there. As we were all so hungry and coming back from the hike, Levi took us to where we were going to be snorkeling and we all got to eat some sandwiches. After waiting for a half hour for our food to digest we walked about a quarter of a mile to go snorkeling. It was so amazing; we swam over the Champagne reef and saw so many fish. On our way back home, Levi took us on a little detour; he brought us to a spot where we were able to see a bird’s eye view of Roseau. It looked like it was a picture hanging on the wall, it was so beautiful. Before leaving the spot we saw some local children playing soccer, we went over to try to talk/play with them but they weren’t interested in us Americans. Levi was our first goodbye of the voyage. That night we went out to a few bars around town, they were nothing like the ones back at home. One of them didn’t have a roof on it and the other was all lit up with neon lights and was huge. At the bar without the roof on it, I ordered a rum and coke, they must’ve only heard me say rum because it didn’t taste like there was any coke in those drinks. But I guess Dominica is known for their rum.
Day 5
Well, we just left Dominica, and boy does it seem like it’s going to be a bumpy ride for a little. I think we are in the middle of a storm. Dominica was a pretty interesting experience; I guess that it was good that it was our ‘practice port’. This morning we woke up early and got some breakfast at the cafeteria. We then ventured off the boat to begin our shopping at the markets just as they were opening. Not much bargaining went on; I think I am saving that for future ports, I did a little bit, but I guess it takes getting used to. There were some pretty interesting things. Walking around I noticed a lot of different things. It’s funny because when the people drive they one, drive on the opposite side of the road and the opposite side of the car and everywhere they go they are honking their horn. For lunch we walked around to a few different places but we couldn’t find anything that we were interested in. We then decided to just go into a local Chinese place, why we went to a Chinese restaurant in Dominica was beyond me. But it was horrible; I ordered sweet and sour chicken with some pork fried rice. The only thing good about my meal was the red bull that I ordered to drink. After buying lots of souvenirs and arguing with a lady over a camera that wanted to be returned because Alicia had a few problems with BOTH of her cameras and neither of them worked anymore, we found a little internet café that we got to go to before on ship time. Here we went on facebook, wrote some post cards and enjoyed a chat or two with other Semester at sea’ers. I had a great time but I am ready to begin the travels to our next port. As we learned at our pre departure meeting to Dominica the quote of the voyage while off the ship is “Don’t get bit, don’t get hit, don’t do it, don’t get lit, and don’t eat shit”!
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