THE JOURNEY BEGINS...

WOW, this is going to be an amazing semester! I’ll try to relay my experiences in order so let’s start from the beginning…Yesterday I met the bus in San Diego with an excessive amount of luggage and said farewell to my mom and brother before the 2.5 hour bus ride down to Ensenada. We had a few stops at border checks along the way, but overall everything went as planned. One funny side note was that a soldier came on the bus to do a routine check and some people were taking pictures with him ahead of us so Tammy, my lifelong best friend, and I decided we could join in as well since the guard was acting like a movie star and loved the attention. So, I pull out my blackberry and have someone take a picture of the three of us. The guard then says in his broken English that he wanted me to send him the picture. A bit flustered, I had him tell me his phone number in Spanish and wrote his name down in my phone. The entire bus thought I was getting this guy’s phone number so I had to explain to all 30 people after the soldier left that I didn’t know what to do when he asked me to send the picture so I pretended to save his number. It took almost a full day but Tammy and I are finally moved in to our room. Neither of our families thought we would be able to fit everything we brought, but somehow we did it! Once all checked in and registered we had time yesterday to grab a quick lunch before our first boat drill. The food really isn’t great, actually it’s pretty bad, but we’ll easily survive off of the decadent freshly made cookies and smoothies made in the snack bar. In the afternoon we had our first boat drill and had to grab our life vests from our closet, dress in closed toe shoes with long sleeve warm clothes and head to our assigned spot on deck for roll to be taken. I think we will have to go through the drill frequently. Later on we had dinner with our friends we met before the trip began, Mychaela, Courtney, and Margaret. It is really nice knowing a few people already but it also makes it harder to meet new friends. We finished the night with a series of meetings and introductions from the important people on board the ship. The Executive Dean (who was a professor on my mom’s voyage in 1980) commented, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and he further defined our goal to understand the emerging world. I found this quote interesting because we truly can’t contribute to any meaningful progress without examining life as a whole, which includes those different from our own. The Academic Dean spoke to us about humility and humanity and said, “This is a voyage of discovery, you have the world in your hands,” as he held up an inflated world beach ball. He also had us do an interesting activity about our perspective changing. We held our index finger up above our eye level and rotated it clockwise spiraling down to below our eyelevel. We noticed that looking down at the rotation from above it was actually turning counterclockwise but we had not changed the rotation of our finger. Perspective is everything and we must see the world from all angles. The coolest part of the night was that they broadcasted the presentation all over the ship so we were able to watch it from a classroom with couches instead of going into the crowded Union with 500 sea sick people. Luckily neither Tammy nor I have had any seasickness yet. The rocking motion of the boat is really weird, but I am not nauseous. I’d compare it to walking down an airplane with turbulence or a bus going around a mountain. Today we woke up and had orientation meetings all morning then sat out on the deck and ordered smoothies and breakfast burritos while staring at the ocean without land in sight. It really is surreal being on the ship and thinking about what we will experience this semester. I can’t wait for more interesting stories to report, but for now that is all I have. Loving life and thankful I’m not seasick!!! Bye, Hillary