Almost to Venezuela...

So, I’ve just finished my second full day of classes, and am getting more comfortable around the boat. Classes are eh. Global Studies, the class that we all have to take, is somewhat boring, but will be really easy. It does give some good relevant background on the countries we are visiting, but the professor is long-winded and every topic is the most important thing that has ever been lectured on. Oceanography has a TON of work—6 papers, 5 pages apiece, in addition to journal entries and a midterm and a final. The professor is on a high horse in this class also—the first class he was asking us “What is science. Can you prove science?” Seriously, come on. This is not a philosophy class. Anyway, I’m thinking of switching out of that one—I am not really that interested in the topic to warrant that much work on the boat. Modern Japan is fine, not great, but not terrible. And finally, Religious Traditions is the only class that actually held my interest the entire time. This will be my first official religion class, and I think it will be interesting to see how different religious practices are played out in different countries. Anyway, so yeah, that’s all I have to say about classes, I guess they will keep me busy while I’m on the boat. Still gotta kick my brain in gear though, the summer has been long and I have killed a lot of brain cells, as usual.

I’m finally getting to the point where I am seeing familiar faces and having more conversations rather than just introducing myself over and over again. The social scene is still pretty fluid, which is cool because I don’t really think that people are getting pigeon-holed into cliques yet. We had the first Pub Night on board last night, which was quite the experience. First of all, you have to stand in line for, in my case, 30 minutes, and possibly longer to get your 4 drink tickets for the evening. Seriously, you would think they were rationing bread or something. 4 drinks is also just barely enough to work up a social buzz, gotta get better at sneaking booze on board during our port visits. Despite that though, it was fun to see a big social gathering on board, met even more new people, someone brought a boom box down and was rocking the 80’s music, which was awesome. Definitely better than playing board games, which was the activity of choice the night before. Oh, by the way, my computer monitor crapped out yesterday, which is FANTASTIC. Seriously, what fucking unbelievable timing. So, my ability to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force and all of these movies I brought on my hard drive has been all but eliminated. Oh well.

Tomorrow we get to Venezuela, and I am fucking PUMPED. We dock at 8 AM, at which point I am going on a 4 day trip called La Gran Sabana. It is an outdoorsy trip, with hiking and visits to waterfalls and sleeping in huts. I’ll tell you more about it afterwards, because I really don’t know exactly what to expect right now.

Good talk, see ya out there.