The last few days at sea seem to be a blure at this point. The students had there first 2 days of classes, and let me tell you they are going to be over worked! I am scared for some of these guys, the amount of reading is grad level in most classes…and lets not forget that all in all we only have 28 days at sea! So needless to say students are truly freaking out. The last couple of nights we had our first “pre-ports” which are were we have different people from the community brief us on the country and city we are about to port in. two nights before a port is a “cultural pre-port” and the night before a port is the “logistical pre-port.” The cultural pre-port was fun, a long time semester at sea professor had the whole community singing Mexican Mariachi music while our IT lady (who is from Vera Cruz, Mexico) told us all about things we should try and eat in Mexico. The logistical preport was on the other hand a little dry and ran WAY past the hour allotted for it to be complete. I am hoping that we can convince the deans that run these that we need to add a little energy to the presentation!
We also had our first “AFTer hours” which is basically the alcohol service night on the ship where student can drink from 2100-2300 hours. On some of these nights we get to semi-police them and make sure they are not breaking any policies! This first night was pretty much a success I would say. No students got into trouble and all went fairly well. If you are curious, the name AFTer hours comes from the aft of the ship, which is the back. Since our pool deck and alcohol service occurs there, we call it afterhours…genius…
Like I think I mentioned I was in charge of the Sea Olympics on the ship, and so we had our first meeting. I thought the meeting was going to be a bust because of how late the logistical preport had run…but alas I had about 25 students come and seem to be interested in making the sea Olympics an awesome and amazing day! Nothing planned as of yet…but if you have any ideas for competitions we can play on a ship? Let me know! The RDs got me a cake to celebrate my birthday a little early, so we had some wine and got to hang out. We then headed upstairs to deck 7 were the stafulty lounge is located were we found a good number of the other younger professionals on the ship. We then gave them some cake, turned up the music, and started a little birthday dance party! So much fun.
Acapulco Day 1
So we arrived in Acapulco and Doug and I made sure we were up to watch the ship arrive in port. We woke up about 30 minutes to EARLY at 6am (trust me I would have preferred the sleep!) But we did get to see an amazing sun rise as we sailed very slowly into the Acapulco bay. I will try and load some pictures of this. The ship was cleared by customs around 10AM and Doug, Anne and Rasa went off to explore the city on foot. The first thing I should note is that while I did not get the least bit sea sick, I could NOT believe how hard it was to walk on land. I honestly almost got sick from land sickness after 3 days of sailing! What I am going to do after 6 full days before Chile is beyond me! We mad our way to an ATM to get some Pesos and then found a sign pointing to the Mercado Central. After about 10 minutes of walking we found the central market which was jam packed with people an booths selling every and anything you can imagine from Queso Fresco (mmmmmm) to dead hanging chickens to piñatas and herbal medicine. My favorite part had to be the flower section were they were selling fresh flowers and arrangements. The interesting thing was to see how symmetrical the Mexican flower arrangements were…it wasn’t pretty…but interesting non the less. We found a place for lunch, a little taco stand and had 5 tacos for 15 pesos…so if you are doing the math in your head, we had lunch for $1.50…Barbacoa tacos, cilantro, hot sauce, lime, and onions…I hope your mouth is watering!
The heat in Acapulco is crazy! After walking around the city for a while we were able to sweat enough to fully drench everything we were wearing. After lunch, a beer on the beach, and a visit to the grocery store we made it back to the ship to shower, rest and change for dinner. We spent dinner with Aaron (the video guy), Nicole (the field office person), and a couple of ISE folks that were just on the trip through Acapulco. Dinner was everything I could want…a full fish, head and all, cooked a la plancha with a garlic and chili crust…amazing…I only hope the rest of the meals on this trip can be this delicious.
Tomorrow we are heading to an island…and I hope to buy a phone card to give everyone a call!
Love ya!
We also had our first “AFTer hours” which is basically the alcohol service night on the ship where student can drink from 2100-2300 hours. On some of these nights we get to semi-police them and make sure they are not breaking any policies! This first night was pretty much a success I would say. No students got into trouble and all went fairly well. If you are curious, the name AFTer hours comes from the aft of the ship, which is the back. Since our pool deck and alcohol service occurs there, we call it afterhours…genius…
Like I think I mentioned I was in charge of the Sea Olympics on the ship, and so we had our first meeting. I thought the meeting was going to be a bust because of how late the logistical preport had run…but alas I had about 25 students come and seem to be interested in making the sea Olympics an awesome and amazing day! Nothing planned as of yet…but if you have any ideas for competitions we can play on a ship? Let me know! The RDs got me a cake to celebrate my birthday a little early, so we had some wine and got to hang out. We then headed upstairs to deck 7 were the stafulty lounge is located were we found a good number of the other younger professionals on the ship. We then gave them some cake, turned up the music, and started a little birthday dance party! So much fun.
Acapulco Day 1
So we arrived in Acapulco and Doug and I made sure we were up to watch the ship arrive in port. We woke up about 30 minutes to EARLY at 6am (trust me I would have preferred the sleep!) But we did get to see an amazing sun rise as we sailed very slowly into the Acapulco bay. I will try and load some pictures of this. The ship was cleared by customs around 10AM and Doug, Anne and Rasa went off to explore the city on foot. The first thing I should note is that while I did not get the least bit sea sick, I could NOT believe how hard it was to walk on land. I honestly almost got sick from land sickness after 3 days of sailing! What I am going to do after 6 full days before Chile is beyond me! We mad our way to an ATM to get some Pesos and then found a sign pointing to the Mercado Central. After about 10 minutes of walking we found the central market which was jam packed with people an booths selling every and anything you can imagine from Queso Fresco (mmmmmm) to dead hanging chickens to piñatas and herbal medicine. My favorite part had to be the flower section were they were selling fresh flowers and arrangements. The interesting thing was to see how symmetrical the Mexican flower arrangements were…it wasn’t pretty…but interesting non the less. We found a place for lunch, a little taco stand and had 5 tacos for 15 pesos…so if you are doing the math in your head, we had lunch for $1.50…Barbacoa tacos, cilantro, hot sauce, lime, and onions…I hope your mouth is watering!
The heat in Acapulco is crazy! After walking around the city for a while we were able to sweat enough to fully drench everything we were wearing. After lunch, a beer on the beach, and a visit to the grocery store we made it back to the ship to shower, rest and change for dinner. We spent dinner with Aaron (the video guy), Nicole (the field office person), and a couple of ISE folks that were just on the trip through Acapulco. Dinner was everything I could want…a full fish, head and all, cooked a la plancha with a garlic and chili crust…amazing…I only hope the rest of the meals on this trip can be this delicious.
Tomorrow we are heading to an island…and I hope to buy a phone card to give everyone a call!
Love ya!
1 comment:
Hi mario! What a great adventure! I'd wanna go! i'll be reading your blog now along with the other bajillion blogs that i read to procrastinate...
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