Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Day 1: Embarkation & Departure

The day began with Canadian Starbucks and ended with an crepes over choppy Atlantic waters. We're lucky we got a very early start. The walk from the hotel to the port wasn't very long but transporting three pieces of heavy luggage proved rather taxing. We arrived to the port and entered the seemingly endless check-in line. I surrendered my passport, got my SAS ID, had my luggage throughly searched, and was frisked before finally getting to board. As I said, we were lucky to start early and got on board by 10:00am. To give you an idea of how long this all took, the last people finally got on a few minutes before 4:00pm. The cabin is cozy but nice and my roommate is a pretty cool international student from Dubai. I think we'll get along well (except he's a Celtics fan...).

Following a lifeboat drill (which was handled by most with surprising maturity) we departed around 5:00pm. After the initial excitement of getting out to sea died down there was dinner followed by orientation meetings. Since I know the maternal side of my family will be wondering, the food is pretty good so far. There are four meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night) and all are buffet style. Each day of the week has a food theme so I'm guessing we'll see some repeats in the future. The orientation meetings included a lot of introductions of administration, faculty, and various staff members. Besides the intros, they stressed two distinctions: (1) We're on a ship, a boat and (2) this is not a cruise but a voyage. We start early tomorrow with more orientation info before the start of classes on Thursday.

With 738 students on board, there are all types here. It's going to definitely be an interesting and good experience learning to live in such close quarters on this unique "shipboard community." I't's neat meeting a lot of new people and funny how the other CLU students and I tend to relate much better with people from smaller universities. I'm currently in my cabin experiencing the gentle rolls of the somewhat choppy Atlantic. As expected, the seas are getting a little worse as the evening progresses and we get further out. Some people are already having problems but I'm doing fine so far. That's all for now...I'm ready to call it a night.

2 comments:

Stutelberg Family said...

We are thinking about you and glad you are doing well. Karl and I just finished reading this post and I said. "oh, I want to hear more." I feel like I'm reading a really good adventure novel but only allowed to read one page each day! We love you and and are thinking of you often! Let the giant water bed rock you to sleep! Good night. By the way, Lakers won tonight!

Fitch Family said...

Throughout the day I find myself looking at the clock and thinking," what time is it for CC and what is he doing?" I love reading your blog because I get those questions answered, even if it's just a snap shot of your experience! We love you!
Love, Jon, Weezie, and Luke