Day 4:

Hey everyone,
well we are about to finish our fourth day on the ship. Things have been going pretty smoothly except its hard sometimes to find something to do. But nonetheless we are still having fun. We have have gone to all of our classes so far, so no more surprises there, and we really like our teacher for our immigration class. The boat still moves alot, but our sea legs are starting to kick in..sort of. The weather has been pretty mild in fact it has gotten warmer and more humid. Just the other night we decided to make sandwiches after dinner and take them back to our rooms for later, but there are signs all over the place that say you cant take ANYTHING out of the dining room. well i thought we would still be fine cuz its like that at my school and they never say anything when you leave with food, so we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wrapped them up in napkins and tried to leave but the dude in the doorway was like, "uh what is that?" and rachael was like "a sandwich" and he was goes "well you cant take that out of here, thats why we have the signs everywhere" and we were like "oh, well, are you sure? bc its just a sandwich ykno?" and he was like "no"... so then we go "well what should with them?" and he was like "sit down and eat them" and kiah was like "well i mean we just finished dinner, soooo maybe we can take them just this one time?" and he was like "no, sit down and eat them.... or go throw them in the garbage over there"... so we had to throw our midnight snack away, but we have a plan to bring our purses to dinner next time and hide them in there.. we're pretty confident we can get away with it. but we stumbled upon a cafe/bar were you can buy cheeseburgers, hot dogs, fried, ice cream, and much more! and it is open until 11:00pm most night so we wont have to try and smuggle food out again.
well thats all we got for now folks,
check-in soon!
much love,
rachael and kiah

Day 1:

Hey ya’ll,
Day 1: So we finally made it aboard the MV Explorer (a SHIP, not a BOAT). Hope you enjoyed our last installment. We have received our new email addresses, kiah at kcshapiro@semesteratsea.net and Rachael at rlmorkunas@semesteratsea.net. Feel free to email at anytime, we’d love to hear from you! The boarding process went as smoothly as possible expect Kiah decided to try and bring a knife on board and naturally, it was confiscated. Other than that, everyone who greeted us were friendly and helpful and we were lucky enough not to be caught in super long check-in lines. Once we got to our room, our bags had already been delivered which was nice that we didn’t have to try and lug 200 lbs collectively down a narrow corridor. The first task we undertook was unpacking and decorating our room. We successfully completed within two hours. We were effective in changing our room from a drab, beige box into a home-y scarf/picture filled sanctuary (we will post pictures as soon as we can). We then decided take our sea sick medicine so we both have funny looking beige patches behind our ears and are wearing grey wristbands. After that, we explored the ship a little, trying to orientate ourselves as best we could (we are still working on that). Then we went to the top decks to watch as the boat pulled out of harbor as bag pipers and drummers bid us adieu. Then we ate our first meal which was not too bad. Then we had to attended a few general meetings where faculty, staff and captain were introduced. We turned in early, watched a movie and were rocked to sleep by the sea.
Day 2: Today was orientation day. There were meetings from 9am continuing through 9:30pm tonight, yet such extensive meetings didn’t answer all the questions we still have. We got the chance to meet our teachers and talk to them a little about what there classes are going to be like, etc. Between the sea sickness patches which make us drowsy, the sway of the ocean and us not having sea legs yet, we tend to walk like we are intoxicated. It is quite humorous to watch 700 other people stumbling around the halls looking drunk. Standing outside is nuts! The water looks computer generated due to the unimaginable vastness of the ocean. We are something like 350 miles from the nearest shore line and our average speed is 19 knots (not too sure what that is in miles per hour, but it seems slow). Tonight they will be moving the clocks forward 1 hour in order to adjust to the changing time zones. Well we are off to another meeting to learn about what extra curriculars the ship offers and another one for our halls. That’s about it for now, but be sure to check in again to hear about our first day of classes.
Love you all and miss you,
Rachael and Kiah

Journey to Halifax

Hello faithful fam and friends, we are currently sitting in our hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We had one hell of a day getting up here! Both of us awoke early after a nearly sleepless night, and arrived at the airport to say our tearful goodbyes. The first leg of our journey was a flight to Montreal; smooth flyin'! However, upon arrival in Montreal, chaos ensued! We proceeded through customs to be confronted by confused customs agents. They had a bit of a difficult time understanding the reasons for our trip here (to get on a boat...). Rachael was selected to go through the extra immigration, but we failed to realize this until after we picked up our luggage (weighing a total of 200 pounds), which we dragged all the way to the end of a long hallway only to discover we had to turn around and go back. So we made our way, against the flow of human traffic to the immigration line, where Kiah waited with a pile of luggage while Rachael went through the line. By this point we had only 30 minutes till our plane boarded and the line was exceedingly long, with a bank of agents sitting around, while only one called "next!" As Kiah waited, Paul Giamatti walked past, muttering to himself and fiddling around with papers (he also waited in line with Rachael for immigration). When this fiasco ended, we again made our way down the hallway and proceeded out to go through security. We were directed to lane 7, which had only one other person in line. We soon realized that this was the "training" line, and it took us another 30 minutes to wait for our bags to come out of the x-ray and to have all of our purses, backpacks, computers, shoes, jackets, etc "strip searched", if you will. We finally escaped that line with only 5 minutes to spare, ran down the terminal, and reached the gate to be confronted by a gate agent shreiking at us, "Morkunas? Shapiro? Where have you been!!??" In any case, we got on the plane in the nick of time and arrived safely in Halifax. We spent the remainder of this afternoon checking in and exploring the area, finding a delicous italian pizza place for dinner. We are going to spend the rest of the evening lounging about and watching movies, anxiously awaiting our 10am arrival at the port. Come back soon to read about life on the boat! 

Lots of love to everyone!

Kiah and Rachael 

Hey all, here is a link to the Semester at Sea website with an interactive map following our trip. It'll probably keep you fairly updated about where we are, so check it out!

http://www.semesteratsea.org/current-voyage/overview/current-voyage.php

Picture Test

Test Post!

Woohoo, we set up our blog! Check back soon to hear the adventure to Nova Scotia and the boarding of the boat!