ESPANA manana!

So, I’m all packed and ready for our first port – ESPANA! Or, Spain, for those of you still in the Eastern Standard time zone. We should be arriving at the port at around 8 a.m., receiving our passports at 8:30 a.m., then we have to wait for the ship to be “clear” after everyone has them. So, I should be in ESPANA around 9 a.m. tomorrow and all of you guys – except for maybe Katie – will still be asleep. My group’s plan is to meet outside the ship off the gangway and walk to the train or bus station (which, we were told only takes a couple minutes) in Cadiz. There will be five of us, four girls and one guy – two girls who are roommates, a couple and me. From there we will hop on some sort of transportation to Seville. We plan to stay there for one or two days, depending on if we feel we’ve seen enough things there, if not we were thinking of going to Cordoba. Then, the last two days, we were going to save some money and just come back to Cadiz so we can sleep on the ship Friday night, go back out to Cadiz on Saturday and be prepared for the ship to leave Saturday evening. I’m so excited! I don’t know if I’m as excited as first getting on the ship, but I can’t wait to finally see land again! I packed tonight so I could get up in the morning and go get breakfast in order to hopefully catch sight of the sunrise or land when it comes in to view. We’ll see if that works.

In the last few days, I’ve just had some normal (if you can call it that – we’re on a ship! How’s that for normal!) happenings. Going to class, eating with friends, studying and continuously still meeting new people. There was a meeting last night about starting an a capella group. I went and really enjoyed it. We set up two groups, one that is all women (since there were more women interested) and one that is co-ed, which has three men and about eight women. I decided to go with the co-ed group, which christened itself the “Sound Waves.” Clever, eh? We just introduced ourselves and sang the Star Spangled Banner together, but the ship has some sheet music in the library and one girl is a music major, so she might arrange some songs for us to sing. It should be fun!

We also had mandatory meetings, which are pre-port cultural and logistical meetings about Spain, tonight and last night. The speaker talked a lot about food, some of the festivals (but we won’t be there for any of them) and the night life. On the logistical end, the water and food are safe to eat and drink, because we’re in Western Europe. We were told that there are some pickpockets and petty thieves that target tourists, especially around ATMs, so we have to watch out for that. Otherwise, Spain should be lots of fun. I have to remember to work on some of my projects for class – all three of my classes want us to observe and find out about certain things in each port to apply to papers and such in the subject matter. For example, in English as a Global Language, we’re supposed to take notes and talk to someone about the use of English in Spain (granted that they speak English at all, I guess! Haha). I also need to remember to pick up a few things – maybe some free maps, postcards, menus, etc. – for the Vicarious Voyage program.

Visitamos Espana manana! Hooray! Buenos noches!