[postlink]https://beenaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-on-ship-accommodations-amenities.html[/postlink]endofvid
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The accommodations are pretty nice and comfortable. Once again, I captured a video tour of my room but I won’t be able to upload it until I get to port or after trip is over because of bandwidth/limited internet minutes. I have a spacious double (bigger than Penn dorm doubles lol). Each room has its own bathroom. Each room has a steward that makes the beds and cleans the bathrooms daily. It’s a strange feeling having someone cleaning up after me, but it is a nice perk to come back to a clean room after a long day of classes/gym/activities (I know, poor me lol). Each room also has a painting with notes from previous SAS alums in the back. It’s Semester at Sea tradition for each class to leave notes/tips/advice for the following year’s class in the backs of the paintings. Once Leah and I read the notes on the back of our painting I’ll create a separate blog post of it—including the tips/notes we leave behind J.
I know you are all probably wondering what the heck we do on the ship all day, besides class. There are nightly activities/lectures. Last night we made origami. There are also different committees and clubs that you can sign up for—leadership, students of service, peer advising etc. Neha and I signed up for Sea TV, which is the on-ship news broadcast group…and…ready…we were selected to be the two anchors! Lol! We will air episodes the day before we reach each port. The name of the news production will be “Lost at Sea News”—the news trailer will be to the tune of Lost lol. We are also working on improving employee (crew) rights and a crew appreciation day. We were talking to a few of the crew members a couple days ago and upon conversation learned that they work 12 hour shifts, get paid about $600 per month, and barely have free time. We are going to help organize a day where students serve the crew dinner and hopefully start discussions about higher wages/better benefits. More on that as it develops…
For the most part, we eat and work out. There is a gym, weight room, and yoga mats for ab workouts. Neha and I have been pretty good about working out every day in between ports. We usually do 30-minute cardio on the elliptical and then ab workouts on the deck. I love working out at night and doing ab workouts on the deck under the stars, with the ocean breeze to cool me down.
It’s also a surreal feeling to be on the deck and look out into the ocean. Only then am I reminded that I’m on a little ship floating around in the middle of the freaking Pacific Ocean. No one else in the world has our time zone. That’s wild. We’ve set our clocks back about 4 times since we’ve been on the ship, which makes us 7 hours behind the east coast. It’s been glorious gaining an extra hour of sleep every few days. It’s pretty scary to think that we are in the middle of the ocean and if anything were to happen it would take rescue teams at least 8 hours to get to us. We experienced pretty bad turbulent water the first few days—people were popping meclizine (sea sickness pills) like candy. Apparently, of all the oceans, the Pacific has the roughest waters. The constant motion died down substantially since leaving Hawaii and will end altogether once we reach the Indian Ocean.
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[starttext]
The accommodations are pretty nice and comfortable. Once again, I captured a video tour of my room but I won’t be able to upload it until I get to port or after trip is over because of bandwidth/limited internet minutes. I have a spacious double (bigger than Penn dorm doubles lol). Each room has its own bathroom. Each room has a steward that makes the beds and cleans the bathrooms daily. It’s a strange feeling having someone cleaning up after me, but it is a nice perk to come back to a clean room after a long day of classes/gym/activities (I know, poor me lol). Each room also has a painting with notes from previous SAS alums in the back. It’s Semester at Sea tradition for each class to leave notes/tips/advice for the following year’s class in the backs of the paintings. Once Leah and I read the notes on the back of our painting I’ll create a separate blog post of it—including the tips/notes we leave behind J.
I know you are all probably wondering what the heck we do on the ship all day, besides class. There are nightly activities/lectures. Last night we made origami. There are also different committees and clubs that you can sign up for—leadership, students of service, peer advising etc. Neha and I signed up for Sea TV, which is the on-ship news broadcast group…and…ready…we were selected to be the two anchors! Lol! We will air episodes the day before we reach each port. The name of the news production will be “Lost at Sea News”—the news trailer will be to the tune of Lost lol. We are also working on improving employee (crew) rights and a crew appreciation day. We were talking to a few of the crew members a couple days ago and upon conversation learned that they work 12 hour shifts, get paid about $600 per month, and barely have free time. We are going to help organize a day where students serve the crew dinner and hopefully start discussions about higher wages/better benefits. More on that as it develops…
For the most part, we eat and work out. There is a gym, weight room, and yoga mats for ab workouts. Neha and I have been pretty good about working out every day in between ports. We usually do 30-minute cardio on the elliptical and then ab workouts on the deck. I love working out at night and doing ab workouts on the deck under the stars, with the ocean breeze to cool me down.
It’s also a surreal feeling to be on the deck and look out into the ocean. Only then am I reminded that I’m on a little ship floating around in the middle of the freaking Pacific Ocean. No one else in the world has our time zone. That’s wild. We’ve set our clocks back about 4 times since we’ve been on the ship, which makes us 7 hours behind the east coast. It’s been glorious gaining an extra hour of sleep every few days. It’s pretty scary to think that we are in the middle of the ocean and if anything were to happen it would take rescue teams at least 8 hours to get to us. We experienced pretty bad turbulent water the first few days—people were popping meclizine (sea sickness pills) like candy. Apparently, of all the oceans, the Pacific has the roughest waters. The constant motion died down substantially since leaving Hawaii and will end altogether once we reach the Indian Ocean.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the insights into your journey, Chi-Chi! (I'm glad Heather shared the link with a few of your former ConOps teammates.) Enjoyed your "surreal feeling" story. I used to feel something similar when I sat on the slopes of Haleakala, looked down at the relatively tiny island below, and then out at the enormous, seemingly endless ocean surrounding Maui. BTW, your research is still inspiring our work! Thanks again!
Chi-Chi abeg oh..don't start riot on the ship..before they toss you overboard! lol!
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