Day 4

Day 4 of the trip, en route to Hawaii. We’re 25 degrees N, 127 degrees W. The boat is sailing at 16.7 knots.

Boat life is quite the trip. I have spent the entire past 48 hours trying to keep my balance in up to 18 foot swells. I keep walking into walls, but I’ve been sleeping fabulously with the rocking back and forth like a baby.

World Odyssey is beautiful inside. She's a German ship so the names of rooms, signs, and artwork is all german. I feel like I’m in a hotel between the laundry service, gym, spas, and the rooms have personal bathrooms (with fantastic water pressure), TVs with movies playing all day. There are 9 decks with 3 dining halls, an outdoor grill/bar, an indoor bar, a pool, a library/tech office, etc.

It’s pretty wild being surrounded by water. I felt a little apprehensive about it, but that was before I experienced it. It’s peaceful. As Leilani put it, it’s just us against the elements out here. No phones, social media, Facebook friending, nothing. My anxiety about detachment from the outside world is easing up. I highly recommend turing technology off for a day, it’s pretty freeing. Plus, no one else on the ship is on their phones or anything. As it turns out, human interaction is pretty neat!

Everyone seems to be really different from each other and I'm enjoying talking with new people, who are from all over the world. The students are from all over the country as well as some international students taking gap years from Amsterdam and Russia. Out of the 549 of us, only 11 are from Michigan. There are faculty and staff both old and young, and some brought their families and little kids with them. The diversity is pretty refreshing, except for the 18:7 female to male ratio…

Between my extremely vivid dreams, indefinite exhaustion and sensory overload of a this whole experience, I’ll try to update this as often as I can afford to (wifi costs some $$$). BUT feel free to send me emails at alison.hahn.sp16@semesteratsea.org!

Everyday on the Dean’s memo is a quote about traveling. Here is yesterday’s:

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars. – Thomas Traherne, c. 1670