Exploring the MV Explorer

You might be wondering to yourself, did Myndi ever make it on the ship? Well, I am finally here to give you the much anticipated answer: yes.
End of Blog

Just kidding! I finally have to some time to write. Popularity is such a time consuming religion, and I apologize for that in retrospect and in advance, since I’m sure the nature of the popularity will not decrease, in fact it is like to continue at an exponential rate of growth starting at 2am tonight. Unfortunately, since we have to continually lose an hour of sleep every couple nights, 2am will never come for me. This is a very long and convoluted joke in case my sarcastic tone hasn’t jumped off your screen and into your ears the way I trained it to. Like my dog Duke, maybe you can’t teach and old dog new tricks, but you definitely can’t teach a stupid dog new tricks. So in continuing with this winded joke and now extended metaphor, you also can’t get a computer on one end to relay tone in text to another computer simply because that kind of technology doesn’t exist…
Whew, glad I got out of that one while I was already down. What you might have learned from all that is that I am busy with meeting people, going to lectures, unpacking etc. You may also have picked up on the frustration I feel for the habitual loss of sleep that I will have to just accept and deal with. However, for any of you that have spent significant amounts of time with me should know that a) sleep is like a dear friend to me, and b) complaining is what I do, even when I’m actually having an amazing time. So even though I keep losing 2am, I am staying up late getting to know some truly amazing people.
I’ve just had two full days of class (and by full I mean all my classes once across two days, and thus only two and a half hours of class each of those days) and I loved them. I’m taking Cognitive Psychology, Comedic Styles of Performance (a class on figuring out what makes something funny, more on that another time), World Art History (and by world they mean the 10 countries we are visiting) and Global Studies (the required lecture class for everyone on board so that we aren’t dropped in these countries as culturally insensitive American pricks). Great professors, great students, manageable course load, you get the idea. I probably won’t be talking much more about those classes but I’ll mention things here and there. 
So my social life. Try to remember back to freshman year at college, the first couple days. Now I want you to have that image in your mind, but strip away a few things. First subtract parents. So now you can’t meet people because your parents and some other scared little freshman’s parents awkwardly introduced you to each other because they met in line at the book store and both were holding a set of T’s that read “Proud Stanford Parent” and they just found it hilarious, and they started listing out what their respective kids accomplishments were and guess what!? It was revealed that you both played the trumpet for two years in middle school, or dressed up as Strom for Halloween 15 years ago, or whatever the strange connection that your “helpful” parents discovered and thought would just be the beginning of a bright friendship. So yes, strip that away from your image. Next, take away the comfort in knowing that everyone is starting over—that no one really came with anyone else. What do you keep then? The overt friendliness. The first meal that is a free pass to sit ANYWHERE and not be rejected or looked at oddly by the current occupants of that table. So how does this all play out? Well, luckily for you I took Social Psychology last spring. Before people start finding friends, the people who know each other group up, they aren’t exclusive yet, but they are definitely finding solace in the ability to always have a table to sit at, just in case. So the first real clues people use with where to sit or who to talk to is proximity. Who you’re next to in line, etc. Next is physical appearance. It’s not necessarily the case that people that look the same hang out, however people feel more comfortable around people they feel look similar to themselves. Thus it is a subjective process and you end up getting people confident in their looks (regardless of their actual appearance, though there is an obvious correlation) mentally picking through the crowd for attractive people to sit with. And the cliques begin. The point of this all is basically that I somehow missed it. But I am fairly certain that a lot of people felt that way, even if they were standing near other people. Anyway, I liked my roommate a lot. So I would always be standing with her. Then I became one of those people that found comfort in knowing a couple of Stanford kids. One of them in particular became a fast (fast) friend. We still question whether or not we were friends at Stanford because the mood and the ease of conversation is one that takes more than 2 days to develop, yet Brian and I have mastered it. Everyone assumes we were besties at Stanford. Which is great for me, he’s fun, outgoing, and I like to think that I am to, so we make a great team when venturing out into the dinner world and penetrating groups that look fun to hang out with. Along the way we have met some…interesting…people, and some that I’m sure will become our closer friends. It’s all working out perfectly in all honestly. My roommate and I get along really well but don’t have that similar of personalities, thus we won’t get sick of each other because I’m sure we will find separate (but overlapping) groups of friends, but still get our dorm time together. I’m sure my mom is ecstatic by this point in the blog because it’s so nice knowing that everything is going smoothly for your child.

Last point before I sign off, not a bit of sea sickness! I’m loving that the ground moves. I don’t want to walk on land. And at night is just fascinating. The first night I lay down to go to bed and closed my eyes I started connecting the feelings I was having to other experiences that I know. For example, laying on a trampoline while someone walks in a circle around you. When they do that, the trampoline moves underneath you in certain areas relieving pressure in some areas and adding a feeling of weight to others. That is kind of how it feels when the ship is rocking back and forth and side to side. Then you get the rollercoaster feeling sometimes, that lift in your stomach that’s always surprising and always cool. And then visually (even though my eyes are closed) it’s like and airplane moving walk way that you aren’t on. Instead you are looking at people moving and you start to think they are the ones staying still and you’re the one gliding. Even with my eyes shut, my mind tries to explain the movement and visualizes this type of scene where you can’t really tell what is moving, the rest of the world or just you. Very cool stuff, and I am enjoying it thoroughly. Hopefully my next update will be before docking in SPAIN!

KIT and SIT

Remember signing your middle school "friends" yearbooks? And by "friends" in quotes I mean those kids that want a signature from as many people as possible so they run up and ask you to sign their yearbook and you're thinking to yourself, did we have a class together? what do I know about this person? Was she the one who picked her nose in band? Any nothing comes to mind so you decide to write "HAGS" or "KIT" or "SIT". (have a great summer, keep in touch, stay in touch) And then you feel bad so you add like a million exclamation marks to emphasize that even though these acronyms are written all over their yearbook, you really mean it. Anyway, I'm about to embark (WHAWHOOO) and if you want to KIT of SIT with me, then you can email me at memcdonald@semesteratsea.net!!!!! We have a very limited amount of free internet time, but so long as you write to me at THIS email, then we are able to trick the SAS peeps to thinking its school related and its free! So, yay.

Au revoir (Canada, french, get it?)

Mom Boards the Ship Before I Do, Awesome

In Canada, at the hotel and the time reads 12:04 so technically I leave today! There were a lot of SAS goers on my plane to Halifax, which actually made a lot of sense in retrospect, but I was still surprised. I was also jet lagged from my red eye and decided not to socialize. Yep, too cool for school still. I'm sure cranky Myndi will wash away with sleep though, so my self proclaimed loner status shouldn't last too long.

How I'm going to manage lugging my 70 lb luggage (alliteration anyone? Haha) to the ship you may ask? Good thing I didn't forget to pack my rippling muscles, can't just buy those at a Quicky Mart.

Okay so my humor is lacking, I can admit this. Which means bed time.

Hail Canada!

Countdown til Bon Voyage: 3 days; countdown til Canada (and I have to be done packing): 10 hours! This is probably the time that I should get out of bed and finish packing. But so long as I'm not out of bed, the day hasn't begun. Alas, my current predicament. So what better to do with my time than write a blog post. I'm glad we agree.

I'm not looking forward to the moment I get in the car headed towards the airport and I get that feeling that I'm forgetting something. Oh yes, we all know it very well, and it is not pleasant. In fact its nerve racking, and frustrating, and annoying, and there's no avoiding it. And sometimes it was an honest warning, and sometimes not. BUT what happens in the latter case is that we get to our destination and find something that would have been nice to have, but wasn't on our packing list, but we can then say with relief, "Oh! That's what I forgot, good thing I (FILL IN ENCOURAGING WORDS HERE--ex. really don't need that; I can buy it easily and it'll be good to have two of them; etc)" Anyway, I guess I'll just have to suck it up. Like my mom used to always ask: toothbrush? Yes. Underwear? Yes. Okay you're set. Thanks mom.

Time to get off my lazy butt, get pumped for the experience of a lifetime, get another shot, declare my major, print out a million and one documents, and PACK.

Til next time.

Days before embarking

Up at 2:39 am trying to sort out everything I'll be packing and everything I need to get done before leaving. Turns out I need to have read a book. Which book you might ask? Well I'm asking that too. Oh well! Time for bed. I hope I'm able to keep up a blog. Lets cross our fingers that its not like all those journals I have safely hidden around the house...with 99% blank pages :D