Life on a Ship: A Typical Day at Sea

Although I have created a routine for myself on sea days (a.k.a. class days), I have failed to share this routine with you. As creatures of habits, humans (myself in particular) tend to find comfort in regularity and a schedule. Usually I’ll skip breakfast in the morning to do some sort of work out. For example, today I ran around 4 miles. I’ll usually relax and shower afterwards, or maybe finish up homework, if I didn’t complete it the previous night. Lunch starts a 11:30, so I’m usually starving by then. This is the time for me to catch up with my shipboard friends before we return to our work or go to class. We’ll mix it up between the 5th indoor dining room and the 6th outdoor deck dining. This is usually the only time I’m outside on a sea day. I’ve been avoiding getting sunburn (although my farmer’s tan is looking good) and I don’t have much desire to hop in the tiny swimming pool…that’s how I get in the off season of swimming. I have class between 1:30 and 4pm. I’ll usually hang out in the computer lab or library till Seminar starts at 4:30. After seminar, I go to dinner, and then the rest of the night is free. I will usually attend either a[n optional] seminar or social event. There is snack time around 10pm, and after that I’ll either blog or do homework till the early morning in my cabin. Thus, I choose to sleep in and skip breakfast. This is my routine in a nutshell. Please keep in mind, I’m usually more active on the days we are in port, especially since our time on land is only a couple of days.

I wouldn’t consider today to be anything out of the “SAS” ordinary. I worked on a reflection notebook assignment that I need to have completed for the last day of class. My goal is to be done before I get to Honduras, so I don’t have to worry about it. Working on that when I got the chance started to make my hand cramp, so I couldn’t write anymore. In class today, we had a visitor, the Honduran interport lecturer and his daughter. Our professor translated because the lecturer did not speak English (but he can however speak French, Russian, and Spanish.) We learned about the difficulty that Honduras faces, and the near future seems rather grim for this poor country. (It is the poorest country that we will be visiting.) In comparison to Costa Rica, education in Honduras is really suffering. We also got our papers back (the one they sprang upon us at the last minute), and I was pleasantly surprised with my grade. Also on a brighter note, the Seminar was extremely engaging today. The lecturing professors put on a funny skit and their presentations were succinct, interesting, and fun! Afterwards, I had another SAS family dinner. The whole crew showed up and we were actually photographed by the ship photographer (not sure if she was the video grapher?...one or the other.) So I’m super glad to have been official photographed as a participant of Semester at Sea. 

Today concluded with a fun-filled talent show and dance. Many talented individuals performed skits, danced (one with hula hoops), read poetry, sang, and the main attraction was the sea chant competition. Instead of floors, the decks on the ships are called “seas”. So  I live on the Aegean Sea. Other seas include the Mediterranean Sea, Bering Sea, and Caribbean Sea, among others. The winners earned the privilege to be the first to get off the ship when we land in Nassau, which is apparently a big deal! We got 2nd place, so we will be the second sea that will be able to leave the ship. It is bittersweet to think about how quickly this voyage has been. We still have 3 more ports to visit, so I’m still looking forward to the upcoming experiences, but I’m also grateful to have this opportunity in the first place. A lot of these students have quite extensive and impressive résumés and I’m very honored to be apart of this community. I’m also starting to feel the pressure of finalizing all my work for class. My assignments include a course reflection as my final paper, a notebook that reflects on our readings and class discussion, and a project related to one of the Millenia Developmental Goals for the Engineering a New Tomorrow (ENT) Seminar. And I’ve also been reflecting on this whole experience with ya’ll in this blog. I think if I do any more reflection, I’ll start possessing a few mirror-like characteristics. Well I’ll be working on the ENT project tomorrow morning, so I’m going to bed soon.

¡Buenas noches!
Matt