Almost to Brazil!

Tuesday Feb 5th 00:12 (9:12cst)

So some things I’ve been meaning to mention about the ship and keep on forgetting. At night, if you can't see any light from land, then you can't see anything farther than about 50 feet away from the boat. Just pitch black. If the moon is out you may be able to see a bit further, but not much. If it's a clear night while at sea and you look up, you will see more stars than you've ever seen in your life, even more than when you're in the country and looking up. It's a pretty awesome sight.

Also, there are kids on the ship. And by kids I mean from ages 5-18, and quite a few of them. They are the children of either the "life-long learners" or faculty. I just didn't expect that when I first got on the ship.

Tonight we had our pre-port briefing with tips about safety and traveling. They've been talking about how bad Brazil is all week then I think that they realized that everyone was freaking out, so they admitted that it's not that bad of a place. Carnivale will be the worst and there are definitely areas to stay away from, but for the majority people are very nice and we shouldn't be worried. Just aware of our surroundings. Our academic dean referred to this as "Like a midget in a bathroom urinal, you need to stay on your toes"

Apparently there are like 6 other cruise ships arriving tomorrow morning, so the captain of our ship has sped things up a bit and we'll actually arrive in the port about an hour early to get in before the others.

When we left Puerto Rico there was this rumor that pirates were chasing us. Yes, pirates in the Caribbean. I'm pretty sure it was a rumor but we supposedly sped up and turned off our outside lights for one night to get away from them. I never really believed it, but whatever. But this afternoon some of us were talking with one of the bartenders and they actually had some pirates chasing them a few years back. Since pirates ships are slow and we have "the fastest" cruise ship in the world we got away from them though. He also mentioned that pirates typically only target cargo ships, because it would be more valuable to them and more worth their trouble, so I don't think we'll have to worry about that tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm off to bed. I'm going to try to get up around 6 for the sunrise and watch as we come into Salvador. (Try is the keyword there)