Day 23: Croatia Pre-Port

Today was the second day of class in a two day "week."  I had an Infectious Disease test today and it went went well as I expected.  I was pretty pleased with the results of my Abnormal exam we took before Spain that was handed back today and we got word that the Global Studies midterm was "reviewed by a student-faculty advisory group" and it was decided that the grades will be significantly curved up.  Good news.

Other than that today was pretty relaxed.  At the beginning of the voyage it was recommended that everybody try to fit in a nap every afternoon at sea to better adjust to some of the strange schedules and weird time issues that are typically dealt with on a voyage like this.  I'm not complaining too much; it's nice to have an hour or so set every afternoon for nap-time.  I've been pretty successful at accomplishing this so far.

We're set to arrive in Croatia a bit early.  We should actually be porting within a few hours (by midnight this time).  I went to a talk by our Croatian inter-port student this evening which was really helpful.  We had our usual logistical pre-port as well.  Despite the occasional land mine leftover from the 90's (a pretty rough time for this part of the world) Dubrovnik looks to be a pretty safe and neat city.  We have a diplomatic briefing from the US Embassy in Zagreb tomorrow morning and after the ship clears I'll probably head off to check out the town for a few hours.  In the afternoon I'm signed up for a city orientation including a bunch of churches and museums.  In the evening I'll hopefully meet up with a few people to do the walk around the famous city walls.  On Friday the plan is to check out some of the local islands and explore the old harbor district of  Dubrovnik a little more.  On Saturday we're going to try to do a little day trip to Mostar, the capitol of Bosnia, to check that out.  Under normal circumstances we're not allowed to leave the country we're currently ported in.  Croatia is the one exception where we can travel to Bosnia and Montenegro so it makes sense to take advantage of that.  Saturday I'm signed up for an all day excursion to the Island of Korcula before departing in the evening.

Global Studies this morning focused on recent Croatian history which is a really interesting topic.  I think I say the same thing for every port but I'm really looking forward to our next few days here.  That's all for now, I'm off to watch us come into port.