January 15th

Hi Guys-
So I’ve decided to keep a word document journal of every day, because I went to write my blog post for the past two days and could not even remember what happened yesterday. So much goes on in a day, and it'’s already hard to keep track of everything, so I'’m going to “type” everything down from now on. I think the last day I have on the blog was Thursday, Jan 13. Sorry if these blogs aren'’t super interesting! We haven’t gotten into a port, so it’'s pretty much the every day routine stuff. I swear they'’ll be a little more exciting after we get off the ship, but until then I need to keep Grandma happy by posting “EVERYTHING.”☺

I had my first class, Global Studies, on Friday morning. Catherine and I are both in the same class, so we walked up together. This is the one really big class that everyone is required to take. Our professor spent the time talking about the syllabus, and then the geologist on the ship talked to us about where we are and where we will be going. It was all really interesting, and he gave us a heads up on passing Montserrat tomorrow. We were separated into random small groups of seven, and Catherine and I were randomly put into the same group out of 50 groups..crazy. We do research with our group on a certain subject in a country we are going to. We have chosen to research about poverty in Ghana. For my section, I will be researching how poverty affects education in Ghana. I’m also hoping to get onto an FDP that goes to a hospital focusing on women & childbirth, so that I can compare child-birthing methods in Ghana to that of the United States.
I was done with classes by 10:30, and had the rest of the day to lay out and relax.

Today was way busier. I had three classes pretty much in a row. My first class, Physical Oceanography, is pretty much a repeat of the Geology class last summer. Luckily I realized that before I left, and brought my all of my notes from it. I signed up for an FDP (kind of like a Field Trip that you do with a professor in a port) in Mauritius. We will be taking a glass bottom boat out to the coral reefs and studying the marine life. Afterwards we go snorkeling. We'’re required to do at least one per class, and I thought that was a fun one. My second class was Sociology: International Perspectives on Violence. This class seems pretty interesting. I’m not quite sure what FDPs I'’ll be doing for it yet. My third class is Abnormal Psychology. During our next class, we'’ll be given a group, a disorder and a country that we will research. No one else but our professor knows what we have, and we study it for the entire semester. On the last day, we present the case to the class without saying what it is, and they have to try and figure it out. I think it will be fun. It'’s really cool for us to be studying all of the places we'’ll be going to. The professors base their classes on the port that we will be arriving in next, so the information is relevant to our destinations. The classes are pre-requisites for nursing school, so it'’s nice to get them out of the way, while still learning a lot.

We arrive in Dominica in 8 hours! A group of us are going to wake up at 6:30 so we can get to breakfast and watch as we get to port. We’'ve never gotten up early enough to make breakfast… so I'’m really hoping we stick to our plan! We’'re going canyoning tomorrow morning. We’'ll be repelling down waterfalls, and jumping in crevasses filled with water. It looks pretty crazy, but really fun-

Hoping to have wi-fi while we’re there so I can upload some pics!