Day 4

I lied the other day when I said that the hour time jump we had put us the the farthest ahead we would be. The night after that, we jumped ahead another hour and tonight we jump again. This puts us 8 hours ahead of the east coast of the U.S. I'm sorry for lying. 

Tonight we had our first cultural pre-port where we got a crash course on the history of Russia. We learned that Russians are very religious, not necessarily because they actually believe in God but because it is a tradition. They believe that only God knows how you live and watches over you. Attending to church is a tradition, especially going with family. They are very emotional and ask philosophical questions like, "Who am I." They discuss these types of questions frequently. 

There is a lot of censorship within Russia. News is mostly a propaganda tool as opposed to journalism. 

Peter the Great was trying to bring Europe to Russia and the result was very european fashions and a complete mish-mash of architecture. The buildings combine elements of French, Italian, and other European architecture. 

The session itself was very entertaining. A professor from Russia was on board to speak to us. Him, along with the architecture professor, and a student from Russia all took turns speaking to us. Their interactions were fluid and entertaining, as they joked with each other and corrected each other. They had all of us laughing.

The classes I had today were very interesting, but I have so much journaling to do for every class and they all have to be about different things. For travel writing we have to, obviously, write about the places we are going and our experiences there. For international business, we have to write specifically about what we observe at the ports and how the different ports are run. In that class we are focusing specifically on how ports are run and how the introduction of shipping containers changed international business. I never thought I would be learning about ports and shipping containers. Should be interesting. 

For our journals for Marine Bio we have focus on the marine life of each of the ports. But, he gave us some specific instruction like, in one port we have to go find someone who would be involved in something marine, like a professor or fisherman, and talk to them about sustainability in their country. Then, in three ports we have to go to a fish market and observe what we see there. And on 12 sea days we need to observe the ocean around us and write about that. 

So much writing. Keeping up with it will be difficult. 

I was really looking forward to my Stress: Work, Life, and Technology class but the professor isn't all the peppy compared to the other ones. Hopefully it will pick up. 

I finally got sweatpants but they are a little small and we can't exchange. What is my life. I also got the SAS blanket, it is so incredibly comfortable. Best purchase yet. 

I sat outside on the 6th deck this afternoon, my assumption was that it was going to be cold but it was, in fact, gloriously warm. I wore shorts and a tank top and had to run back to my room to get sunglasses. I did my reading for class and ate dinner surrounded by ocean, it was beautiful.