Spain Tomorrow...

Today is Tuesday, January 27, our last day at sea before we dock in Cadiz, Spain tomorrow.  The past few days on the ship have been great.  Everyone is getting used to life on the ship and getting very excited to get to Spain tomorrow.  Classes have been going very well, with the exception of the mandatory Global Studies class.  Its topics are all over the place.  One day we learned about the suns energy and how weather changes around the equator.  Another, we talked about ancient civilizations in Spain/Europe.  Today and yesterday they talked about current, relevant, Spain-related stuff.  There is one head teacher who essentially delegates lessons to others, so the class has no real overall focus.  But all my other classes are great.  The work load for all of them is nothing unbearable and all three teachers are very nice, understanding, and FLEXIBLE. (The word FLEXIBLE has been burned into our brains since getting on the ship, making us understand that with everything that goes on this semester, we need to be flexible…) 

The food on the ship has not gotten any better/worse.  All of my meals consist of a salad, some kind of pasta and/or potatoes, vegetables, maybe some kind of meat/protein, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dessert (there’s pbj only at dinner for some odd reason).  Today, for lunch, however, we had mac and cheese and terrific French fries, probably the best meal yet.  To help curb the poor choices at meals, I’ve learned that the snack bar I talked about before has great chicken sandwiches and burgers for ONLY $2.25 and $2.50.  Such a deal!

The weather and seas have changed significantly the past couple days.  While I haven’t had any real problems with waves and the ship being too rocky, it has significantly picked up since Sunday night.  Probably comparable to the worst cruise choppy-ness I’ve encountered. We are hearing that this is typical when getting closer to Spain.  Also, the weather has gotten significantly cooler, also due to the fact that we are getting nearer to Spain and farther from the equator.  We’ve also had 6 one-hour time changes now, which has made it more and more difficult to get up for class in the mornings.  All of these things, however, are problems with minor significance that I am having no problems dealing with.

When we get to Spain tomorrow, we will be docking in Cadiz, which is in the very South-Western part of the country.  From there, me and several people are going to take the train to Sevilla (about an hour and a half).  We’ll stay in Sevilla for two nights (Wed and Thurs).  Several of us have a bunch of friends studying abroad there, so it will be nice to see them for a couple days.  We are hoping/planning on going to a F.C. Sevilla soccer match Thursday night.  I think this would be a very cool thing to experience.  After Sevilla, we’ll go to Cordoba (only a half hour train ride) for the day on Friday.  We’re planning on coming back to Cadiz for Friday night and then spending our time touring on Saturday before we get back on the ship in the afternoon.  Note, however, that all these plans are tentative, and that for the most part, our “group” is going to be playing things by ear.

We are about to have our first “Pre-Port” for Spain.  This is the mandatory information session given to all students before arriving in each country. 

I’m hoping to have an update to what we did in Spain on Feb. 1^st, our day at sea in-between Spain and Morocco.