First day at Sea: Day 1/19/09

Today was a LONG day! I woke up at 6 AM and took a shower at the hotel in the Bahamas. The water was cold, so I didn't even get a proper shower. I lugged my bags down the stairs and saw a group of SAS students who also had to arrive at the dock at 8 AM. I joined their group, quickly gulped down some breakfast, and we headed off toward the dock. What seemed like a short walk the day before turned into a 20 minute drag-your-suitcases-while-sweating-profusely walk instead. We finally arrived at the dock to see a long line of people already there. After waiting for about 45 minutes, and going through the check-in process, I walked onto the ship. And I was amazed. The ship was beautiful...everything was clean, and looked brand new. I went through another round of check-in on the ship and made my way down to my room. I was surprised at how nice the room was. It was a little small, but there were lots of drawers and closet space. The bathroom was tiny but was in excellent shape. Basically, the room looked like it was brand new, and I found out we got room service every day. So it was nice, to say the least. I walked around the ship for a minute and then checked out and went to find Achal waiting in line. By now, the line was HUGE! I stayed in line with Achal and met several more people. We finally got on the ship, and walked around. At 1700, our ship left Nassau and we went to the top deck to join all the other passengers in waving goodbye to land for a while. Then we ate dinner, which was pretty good, and there were lots of vegetarian options. After dinner, the ship really started to rock, and I started to feel queasy. It was time for our orientation meeting, so we made our way to the union, a large theater/lecture hall at the fore of deck 6 (yep, gotta start getting used to the nautical terms). After about an hour, i started to feel very sick, and left the meeting to go to my room. I hit the bed, and passed out. That was the end of my first day at sea. END OF DAY 1 of 108