It still seems rather surreal. The dolphins, the islands, and the sunsets just seem as though they're not even there. Even the people seem like part of a dream that I'm living in. The first few days started out a little rough with the stress of classes and sea sickness and getting adjusted to everything going on, but finally it's really starting to feel like 'home'. There are many familiar faces and the routine of everything is finally starting to click with me. I am getting a rather steady group of friends and building the community that we were all told that we would. Right now, I'm sitting on the top deck with some other friends, gazing out at a 10:45PM sunset (which is still one of the weirdest things ever). We all came out with full intentions of doing work, but we should've known that it wouldn't happen. The excitement of everything is pretty much overwhelming and the fact that when we get done in Spain and have only three days to take midterms and write papers before we get to Italy really isn't important at this point in time.
Everyone is going stir crazy to get off this ship! We had our pre-port meeting tonight and now it's really had time to set in that tomorrow when we wake up pretty much, we'll finally be in SPAIN! I got a little nervous last night because Aeriale and I still had yet to figure out what we were going to do at all in this port other than our one pre-planned trip on the first night. When we get to Cadiz, we're going to scope out the city and try and find the train station so we can figure out how to get to the rest of the places we want to go. Tomorrow night we're going to a Flamenco dancing and 'bloodless' bull fight, which apparently is really lame, but I'm sure it will still be insanely exciting just because! The next day, we're planning to travel to Ronda which isn't very far away and is apparently one of the prettiest cities ever. Then on Friday we're planning on going to either Cordoba or Sevilla with a few other friends to check out the sights there and the final day we're planning on staying around Cadiz and maybe hitting up an Internet cafe and being back on the ship well before port time and possibly getting a start on the piles of homework that we have to do.
Random side note: I wrote about the Azores (?) islands the other day, but was writing about them when we were still really far away from them and ended up realizing once we got closer that they're inhabited by people! We could see the little houses and were really interested in what was actually there so we asked our Global Studies professor. He told us that they are part of Portugal and were probably settled in the 1400's before Christopher Columbus sailed. He told us that he really doesn't know anything about them now because obviously, he's a history professor! But possibly the most random thing that happened is the fact that a girl that Aeriale and I know from Behrend sent Aeriale a message and said that if we got past those islands, she's ON them! I knew she was going to Portugal, but I never really connected the dots and she was ON that island!!!! I think that's absolutely insane!
And in closing...9 HOURS UNTIL SPAIN!!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait to blog about the amazing things that go down in our first port! Adios amigos!
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