Adjusting, even though this is a weird place to adjust to

Guess what? I got up on time today! It was great – I got up, got a shower in our tiny little bathroom and went to breakfast.

The bathroom is as big as a good-sized closet. And because we’re in one of the refurbished crew cabins, the shower is only separated from the bathroom in one corner by a 3-inch high piece of metal meant to stop the water and the shower curtain is attached to the wall on one side. The first day I didn’t realize it wasn’t that good at keeping the water in the shower corner and my shirt sitting on the floor of the bathroom got soaked. But, I hung it on the bunk bed ladder and it did eventually dry.

Anyway, it was nice, because the sun was just rising as I was sitting down for breakfast. I might forget that I’m on a ship every once and a while, mostly while I’m immersed in some reading or something like that, but every time I look out and see the churning water and endless horizon, I honestly can’t believe this ship even exists. How can we be eating breakfast sausage and eggs in the middle of the ocean? They have a frozen yogurt machine on the seventh deck. And a computer lab on the sixth deck. And treadmills on the seventh deck. How is that even possible! We’re in the middle of the ocean! It just really makes me appreciate the crew and the staff and everybody running this 24 ton ship. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that food just magically appears for every meal, yet there’s no land visible for days in any direction. It’s crazy and amazing. And I can’t believe I’m a part of it.

There was an open mic night tonight. A bunch of people played guitars, a couple sang, one kid who I met at dinner a few nights ago played a melodica, which is like a flute-like harmonica thing with a keyboard on it, and he was hilarious. One girl rapped and one of the kids on the ship sang a Dean Martin song, which earned him a standing ovation from the nearly full Union – it was really cute. The thing that impressed me – and echoed the Executive Dean’s words on the first night – was that everybody was really positive about the people performing. Even when a couple of the kids screwed up or forgot the words to the song, everybody clapped and cheered. It was great. This whole environment as been positive and outgoing and friendly, I love it.

I turned in my final paper to register for trip in the ports for the first half of the trip. I signed up for a few things. I figured if I decided to change my plans, they have a system to buy/sell day trips, so I wanted to err on the side of signing up for too many, rather than signing up for too few.
I’m sure I’ll tell you all about them when I do the trips, so I don’t want to give anything away!

We are now three hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, for those of you keeping track at home. Strangely we didn’t have to set the clocks forward tonight, but I should still get to bed so I can get my breakfast record to two days in a row!

P.S. Let me remind all of you to EMAIL ME! Emails are slowly weaning me from checking the internet constantly because it costs money, so I check my email religiously. I prefer medium to long messages, but a short email will do just fine – and I promise to email you back as soon as I can. :o)