The first day. A new start, always exciting. Except maybe not when you’re seasick because the waves are so big that they go past your porthole.
Picture this, you fall out of your bathroom while brushing your teeth because there’s so much movement. Then the nausea sets in right before your first class. You have to apologize to two different professors for your horrible first impression of seeming uninterested and uninvolved. “I promise I’m usually more engaged.” “I swear I was listening the whole time, my eyes were only closed to keep myself from getting sick.” So on and so forth.
But then the final class of the day comes around and it’s getting better, you’re realizing that nearly everyone is feeling this way, some much worse than you. Professors aren’t somehow immune to the rocking of the ship and they can’t balance any easier than anyone else when the floor seems to slide from beneath them.
Everyone is in the same boat, quite literally. It’ll get better and you’ll get used to it.
Then you’re told that this was a 3-4 out of 10 and in a month or two it’ll get to be around a 6 in terms of how rough the waters are. You cannot imagine what a storm must feel like to register as an 8, let alone a 10.
But this is only a small part of the experience, such a small piece in the whole of the voyage. That won’t happen during the home stay that is planned for Ghana or on the Great Wall of China. The waves will be calmer the closer the ship gets to Spain. Even if the water is rough on Neptune day, it probably won’t even register because of everyone kissing fish or shaving their heads. The people and the places make those small patches of rough seas more than worth it.
All in all, my first day of class was not bad. I’ll definitely start taking ginger pills every morning (whole foods for the win) and wear those (ridiculously cool) seasickness bracelets and focus on other things. My classes are all amazing and they’ll only get better as they go on.
I’m in a cultural anthropology course and I can already tell that it is going to be, by far, the best class I have ever taken. I could go on about it for so long, so I might talk about that more later.
When your room is big, and the best place for everyone to hang out, there’s not always much time for yourself but it’s okay because meeting so many people and being able to think of them as genuine friends after two days is so rewarding.
**I wrote this on my first day as I was incredibly seasick, but still so excited for what was to come. It’s been about two weeks and I can honestly say this is the most amazing decision I’ve ever made. Those friends have only gotten ten times closer, and I have met a ton more amazing people since then. The waters are calmer and there is always something to do, I can’t seem to remember the last time I felt bored.
I attended a sunset meditation session the other night that my Religions of the East professor was leading, and the experience is indescribable. Picture sitting on the top of a ship, surrounded by nothing but ocean, facing the sun with the nearly-full moon directly behind you. But even better than that, there’s something so peaceful about being surrounded by nothingness-yet knowing that you’re really surrounded by the whole world. It’s like everything is at your fingertips. Day, night. The sky, the ocean. An abyss below you but the entire world around you.
The first day was such a learning experience and turned out well, but I could never have pictured how many amazing moments I would have experienced in the two weeks following. It’ll only get better.
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