Another Great Day...

So the plan was to get up early this morning and workout on the deck before breakfast and class.  We did the workout and class part, but not the waking up early or breakfast part.  Turns out that we weren’t actually supposed to set our clocks back an hour last night like we thought so when we were up on the deck doing sit-ups we found out it was actually 9:20, not 8:20am and that we not only missed breakfast but also had class in 10 min.  Lucky for me, we only fit in about 5 min of working out before realizing this and running to get our computers.  Global studies was fascinating again today.  The first half of the class was about world population statistics and the second half was an introduction to Hawaii’s history and culture.  Did you know that last year Americans spent more money on landscaping than was spent on healthcare in India for 1 billion people?!?! Below are a few of my favorite stats that we learned… pretty amazing!
•       Zimbabwe life expectancy= 39  (lowest in world)
•       Swaziland: 26% females have HIV vs. 6% males
•       97% of Tanzanian ppl are living on less than $2 a day
•       20 mil children are orphaned in Africa b/c of AIDS
•       Qatar? only 1% of population is over 65 years
•       2 to 1 American women vs. men go abroad during college? women will have better sense of the world in future (business impact?)
•       Women outlive men in almost every country
•       Monaco= 35,000 ppl/km vs. Mongolia= 2ppl/ km
•       The US has 5% of the population but uses ¼ of world resources
•       Top 1% of world’s population consumes 86% of resources while lower 20% consume less than 1%. 
After class we came back to the deck and enjoyed our daily smoothie as people were just starting to lie out.  We didn’t have class again until late afternoon so we joined and read some homework while watching the ocean.  The waves continue to make us laugh as everyone on the deck in lounge chairs will slide one direction then another when a huge swell comes. We also marveled watching one bird follow us all day.  We are 1,400 miles from Mexico and over 1,000 from Hawaii, so we don’t quite know where this bird plans on resting.  After our strenuous day at the pool we went to our new class, Sociology of the Sea. I couldn’t have made a better choice switching from my serious class into this silly one!  We are currently examining the story of Titanic and must find evidence of how this romance could have occurred through documenting a specific aspect of life on our own ship before we get to Hawaii.  The teacher is hysterical and so happy to be on the ship.  She doesn’t like staying in the classroom so I think we are going to explore the ship for sociological evidence or learn outside every class.  Oh, and our final project is to learn how to say “I am happy to be here” in every country’s native language that we visit and record it.  I’ll be sure to let you all know how to say it too when I find out.  Off to dinner now, I hope everyone in San Diego is hanging in there with the crazy rain!!

Love,
~Hillary