ship life (day 2)

Day 2: Jan 24 11:30pm (10:30 cst)
So day two things continued to get better. Starting to get used to the constant movement of the ship, and starting to hang out and play games with different groups of people to get to know them better. Knowing only one person on the entire ship really makes you go out there and meet people. If at times I find myself just sitting there without anyone to talk to I’ll move and go talk to whoever is near me. So far this has worked well when meeting people. When we start going on trips I’m sure I’ll start to meet a whole different bunch of people as well.
A tid bit of sea terminology that is a must around here
It’s a ship and not a boat
It’s a cabin and not a room
It’s a deck and not a floor
We’re currently on a voyage, not a cruise
Bow/stern port/starboard are how you always refer to a specific area of the boat.
He’s the captain of the ship, not “the dude that’s driving”
The voyage is the largest ever, consisting of 730+ students and a total of 850+ people, 70% of which are female. [but no worries Kat ;) ]
My room (4032) is located at the front portion of the inside doubles. I’m pretty happy that I went with an inside double – saved over $1000 and when the door’s shut, it’s dark as night which makes for a great sleep coupled with the rocking of the boat. Along with that, I’m barely ever in my room unless I’m changing or coming to pick up something.
Some major benefits of the voyage: they clean our rooms! (make our beds, take out the trash, change our complementary towels and soaps, vacume/clean the floor) and they do this every day. They do our laundry (but not whenever we want, specific laundry days are assigned to different groups), and it does cost $5 per load. They make our food and take our plates from the table when done for cleaning. So actually, they take really good care of us :)
Today was just full of orientation stuff, which ended up not being as bad as expected. During some of our down time I went up to deck 7 to lift some weights. Man was that interesting with the rocking boat and change of motion. Our last speaker for the night was the health director who was really funny.. just a couple of the things he mentioned:
“unlike love, these are free”
“unlike the drinks on the boat, you’re not limited to just 4 a night”
And there was another one but I can’t remember right now…
First day of classes tomorrow. Should be interesting, then the next day (Saturday) we’re in Puerto Rico. So far I’ve got the bioluminescent bay and scuba diving planned… not sure about day 3 yet though.