Day 33: Life at Sea Part 1
I started writing this and was doing great until I started to discuss it with Molly and Jessica. Then my list of things to talk about grew and grew and grew. So, I will be splitting this into two posts, the conclusion will be posted tomorrow. There is a lot to living at sea!
I got up this morning at 6:45. Well, my alarm went off at 6:45 and I hit snooze until 7:10. I live in an outside room and so have a large window on the far side of the room opposite the door. An inside room would have a huge mirror there instead. Our window is nice, but sleeping in an inside room would be magical: no light. Although maybe that would be a bad thing, I would never want to get up.
Our shower is larger then I expected it to be. The bathroom itself is a lot larger then I expected it to be. When my roommate and I get up before one another we generally leave the bathroom door open to give ourselves some light. That doesn't work so well on some days. This morning the door kept swinging shut as I was trying to get ready. The doors are really heavy. It takes some effort to get them open. We aren't allowed to prop open our cabin doors because they will swing shut as we rock and a lot of people have closed their hands in the doors.
Breakfast starts at 7 and goes until 8:30. That end time gets annoying when you don't have to meet for a field program or something until 9 or 9:15 but want breakfast. At breakfast there are always eggs, cut fruit like water melon or honeydew melon, bacon, bagels, pastries, some type of omelet, biscuits and gravy, bacon and either pancakes or french toast. There is also always oatmeal, although it does not impress me. The cereal are in those little boxes and the types rotate daily. There is always peanut butter and jelly available no matter what meal it is.
I usually eat fruit and an omelet for breakfast. I will also make tea. The tea provided on the ship is crazy strong, so I only drink the kind I brought with me. Bringing it to class is nice.
When it comes to classes we have A days and B days. Days of the week do not matter on the ship. We are either in port, when there is no class, or at sea which alternates between A and B. You built your schedule yourself when you registered for classes so some people have all of their classes on one day and others have them spread equally. I have one on A days and 3 on B days.
Classes start at 8am and I think the last one ends around 5ish. They are all only an hour and fifteen minutes long. The classrooms are spread out all over the ship. Some of them are even makeshift. During non class times they are public areas but then they put up temporary walls to turn them into class rooms. My International Management class and my Travel Writing class are both in temporary class rooms. The weirdest part about them is that there are no desks. My Travel Writing classroom is usually part of the piano lounge so the walls are lined with couches and then there are a few comfy chairs. The tiny tables that are in the room are bolted to the floor so you have to go to them or not write on a solid surface.
My International Management classroom has no desks at all, which makes it very hard to take notes, and is all completely comfy chairs because it is usually part of the Union.
I have my Marine Bio class in the Union. We are each required to take one Global Lens class, and there are only 8 of them so they are lecture style. We are allowed to sit in on the other Global Lens classes if we want to.
The Union is our main hall. It still doesn't even fit the entirety of the ships community so whenever we have an event in there they also stream it live to a few other classrooms.
Today is the day that I have three classes back to back with only ten minutes in between. That doesn't sound like very long but it only takes about two minutes to walk from one end of the ship to the other so ten minutes is plenty of time. I even have enough time to run to my room to get something. I went to my room twice today and I still had time to spare.
After my third class I will go to lunch. Lunch is from 11:30 until 1:30. My classroom is right outside the fifth deck dining hall. There are two dining halls. One on the fifth deck and one on the sixth. The fifth deck one is larger, at night it is used as a quiet study area. The sixth deck dining hall is called the Garden Lounge. It is significantly smaller but also has access to the outside where you can eat. The food is exactly the same on both decks although the evening snack is only on deck 6.
Lunch and dinner are pretty similar, just different varieties of the food. Dinner also always has a fish while lunch does not. Every meal is served buffet style. There is always a pasta and usually a potato. Then there is some kind of meat, it could be pork, chicken or beef and it could be just a hunk of meat or it could be cooked into some kind of casserole or stew. Then there is a mixed veggie and then some vegetarian concoction, also bread rolls. There is always a soup, which I have had a few times and is pretty good. They also always have salad, which isn't very elaborate and the dressings vary every meal so I usually go for oil and vinegar. They have a fruit, pears are really common as are apples. We have had nectarines, peaches, and plums a few times. Bananas are rare and disappear very quickly.
Finally, there is always some kind of dessert. I usually don't eat the desserts because they aren't too amazing. Usually some kind of baked good cut into little portions. Chocolate cake is common, lemon bars appear a lot as well. I am a big fan of the chocolate pudding and one time they had a fruit crisp that was absolutely delicious.
Of course, there is peanut butter and jelly.
That’s the food every day. Just somedays it will be plain spaghetti and another it will be ziti with pesto. Or one day there will be scalloped potatoes and the next it will be mashed.
You would think that because they change it up a little we wouldn’t get tired of it but that's a lie, seeing pasta everyday is not that appetizing after a while.
I eat a lot of fruit and salad and fish.
Dinner isn't until 5:30 and goes until 7:30. Making it from lunch to dinner is difficult. I am always hungry in the afternoon and we aren't allowed to take food out of the dining room, which is upsetting. Sometimes I just want to get a sandwich and curl up in my room and be nonsocial. I think its a strange rule because you can buy things at the snack bars and while you aren't supposed to take them to your room, people do.
There are two snack bars where you can buy food. One of them is on deck six in the piano lounge and is open 24/7 even when we are in port. They mostly just have candy. Literally every kind of candy you could think of. They also have soda, bags of chips, fig newtons, some protein bars, and sandwiches. The most popular thing to get there are cups of noodles and coffee. Apparently they have the best coffee on the ship. When you sit in the piano lounge at night all you can smell are cups of noodles.
There is also the pool bar on deck 7 aft. Aft means the back of the ship. They have real food, like burgers and pizza and grilled cheese. They also have smoothies and froyo and cookies. I have eaten a grilled cheese from there, it was only 1.50.
There is also beverage service on select nights. You go to the pursers desk and buy a card that is good for 16 drinks. On beverage service nights you can have two drinks at dinner and then three at deck 7 evening service. The options are beer and wine and when you get a drink you get your card punched. You then have to turn your card back in to pay for the drinks that you had, I believe it is a little over three dollars a drink. I don't use beverage service. I think that drinking on the ship is a waste of money.
Generally I don't like to buy food. I have gotten apples from the snack bar a few times but they are wrapped in plastic and so taste funny. I am getting free food three and a half times a day so buying food seems silly.
The half is the evening snack. It is every night that we are at sea at 10 o'clock. They basically just put out the left over desserts and sandwiches from the day. And, of course, there is peanut butter and jelly. I wish they would take snack time and move it to the middle of the day. I could do without a snack late at night.
Every evening there is usually a seminar or pre-port in the Union. Tonight is the cultural pre-port for Portugal and Spain. The cultural pre-port is always two days before we get to port. At the cultural pre-port they give us a crash course on the history of where we are going. It is really interesting although sometimes I wish they would talk more about the modern culture and some things we should look out for while we are there. They didn't talk at all about how relaxed people are in France, and that would be a good thing to know and understand if you are there and your food is taking forever to come out.
The logistical pre-port is where we get our green sheet and where they talk about safety in the country and logistics for the field programs. The green sheet is a piece of paper that we carry with us in country. There are tons of useful things on it. It tells us where the ship is going to be docked. It lists the local hospitals, the port agent, andt even a local dentist we could go to. It tells us where the American consulate is. It gives us the emergency numbers for almost everyone on the ship: the dean, the assistant dean, the duty dean, the duty RD, the medical team, the reception desk, and the field office. It talks about the currency of that country, where to find a post office, whether we should tip or not, how to get around the country and safety in the country. It also lists all of the field programs, the time they are leaving, and where you have to meet.
On the very top of the sheet it tells you when we are arriving to the port, when we are leaving the port, when the gangway goes one way, and when on-ship time is. On ship time is the time your body needs to be back on the ship and your passport returned to the pursers desk. Usually it is two hours before departure time. For Ireland, departure time was 20:00 and on-ship time was 18:00. The gangway went one way at 16:00, which means that you can no longer get off the ship at that point.
One of our Deans, Dean Eddie, established Eddie time, which is an hour and a half before on-ship time. He gave us this tip because usually there is a huge line waiting to get onto the ship when we get close to on-ship time. We have to swipe in and go through security and be patted down every time we get on the ship so it can take a long time. At one point they will cut the line at the point where you would make it on the ship by on-ship time and if you are in the part of the line that they determine wouldn’t make it then you are considered late and will get dock time.
Dock time is when you are not allowed to get off the ship in port for certain period you time. You can get dock time for both disciplinary reasons and medical reasons. You will definitely get it for being late, or being drunk tanked. Excuse me, put in the observation room. We aren't supposed to call it drunk tanked.
We can't really figure out the system for how they decide whether or not you need to be held.No one was drunk tanked while we were in Ireland, which is really surprising. Going through security is quite rigorous. There is a guy standing at the bottom of the gangway checking IDs, he regulates how many people go up the gangway at one time.
The gang way can either be on deck two or deck five depending on the tide. The deck two gangway is lower down and is basically just a ramp going straight into the ship. The deck five gangway is a huge set of stainless steel stairs covered in a net that enters the ship in the outside of deck five. Once you go through security you have to walk all the way down the deck and enter the door at the end. The gangways can be on either side of the ship depending on what side the dock is on. When you get to the top of the gangway you have to swipe in with your ID. Once you are swiped in, if you are on deck two, you put your stuff through the X-ray machine. On deck five they just manually go through your bags. They look for open food and liquid, glass, alcohol and other prohibited items like candles. You have to pass under a metal detector and if you set it off you have to go back and remove whatever it was that set it off. My watch always sets it off.
You also get patted down, when or where it happens depends on whether or not there is a person of the same gender as you working. If the guy is at the bottom of the gangway then every guy will be patted down before they walk up, if the girl is down there then that will be when we get patted down. Now that I think about it, I don't think I have ever been patted down before getting on the ship, there is always a male checking ID. We usually get patted right after passing under the metal detectors. It is very thorough, and it is, but after doing it so many times I am used to it.
They sometimes will do random full searches or drug tests. To drug test they just swab your hand and then put it in a machine. I have seen neither of these things happen, but have heard about them. It is here that you would be taken to the drunk tank, but we don't know the criteria for getting yourself in there. If you are put in there it cost 100 dollars that will be charged to your shipboard account.
Our ship board account is how we buy things on the ship. We don't use cash, your account is tied to your ship ID, which you are supposed to carry with you at all times. It is how you get into your room so if you don't have it with you it is not a very good thing. You can get a temporary card for 1 dollar to get back in your room but it costs 25 dollars to get a new one. Whenever you want to buy something you just hand over your card and then sign for it. The things that I use it for the most are stamps and buying things from the ship store. If you sign up for additional field programs those are also charged to your shipboard account.
Field Programs are one of the things that you can do in port. They are just like the excursions you would take on a cruise except that some of them are overnight. If you have read my blogs then you know that I have done a lot of field programs, I prefer them to going off on my own.
When we are in port we are basically on our own. They don't particularly care what we do, although there is a list of prohibited activities that aren't covered by our insurance. This includes operating motorized vehicles and life threatening activities like sky diving and bungie jumping. We are also limited on where we can go, although the limit is generally just to the country we are in. There are some exception though. When we were in Belgium you were allowed to cross over into the Netherlands in order to go to Amsterdam. We are also allowed to travel overland between some ports.
I did this between Belgium and France. I left Belgium and got back on the ship in France. When you decide to travel overland you have to register it with the pursers desk. Once you make your decision you are not allowed to change it. I was traveling with the SAS overnight and if I had stayed with the program I would not have been able to get dock time. Even your program is late, you can't get in trouble if you are with a SAS sponsored trip. Now, Molly and I signed out of the program, which means that we chose to take responsibility for getting back to the ship on our own.
When you travel independently you are encouraged to register your plans with field office in case they need to get in touch with you, although it is not required. They really will only use the information if you are not back by ship time.
Portugal is also an overland port, you can choose to meet up with the ship in Spain if you want to. I have decided to not travel overland because I have a field program on both the last day in Portugal and the first day of Spain so I would basically only be able to travel to Cadiz and wouldn’t be able to stop anywhere. That doesn't seem worth it to me.
They don't try to keep track of us at all while we are in port. We are responsible for ourselves and for getting back to the ship on time. That is why they push safety and the buddy system on us so much. We have been lucky, the ports that we have been in have been relatively safe places. Our only real threats have been pick pockets and I know several people who have had their phones stolen.
We are given a lot of independence on the ship, it is exactly like being at a regular university… except also not.
Part 2 tomorrow!
