Day 4: At Sea

Today was what can likely be described as an "average" day on the ship.  It started early with Infectious Disease (still a bit on the basic side), continued with Global Studies (is the Mediterranean considered a unified body or a collection of numerous cultures?), and the academic part of my day was finished by noon with Abnormal Psych.  Classes move very fast since there are only about 20 meetings with some field components.  Getting up early is tough (especially with the time changing almost every night) but it's nice to be done early.  Signing up for a spot at the gym takes quite a a process since there's so little room and high demand.  I had a treadmill this afternoon for a half hour and it proved to be quite the balance exercise.  Many of you know my balance follies just standing on land, let alone the difficulties of a treadmill.  Today I got to experience running in place in a small room filled with mirrors while rocking back and forth.  When I wasn't flailing for the arm rail it was actually quite fun.

I had the opportunity to have breakfast today with one of the life-long learners who sailed on a previous voyage as a Physician Assistant.  He was a lot of fun to talk to and had some great stories from his time on board with the medical team during the infamous Spring 05 voyage.  If you're curious, google "semester at sea storm stories."  Or don't until I get back, it's understandable.  There was a really great seminar this evening on the food of Spain including the proper eating schedule, what to definitely get and what to avoid.  It looks like there should be some pretty great meals to look forward to. 

It's odd how we've only been here for 4 days, it seems like so much longer.  The Spanish food talk tonight really got me excited for the upcoming ports.  We also had to turn in our field program requests for the later ports today so hopefully I got some good trips.  They'll be confirmed in a few days.  The bookstore opened yesterday but I didn't bother going in because the line was out the door but stopped by today and rummaged through what was left.  I came up with a pretty neat shirt with the flags of all the countries we're visiting across the front.  Any SAS apparel requests?  That's all for now, I hope all is well on land.