Tuesday, June 30, 2009

A day of rest and then it's off to Italia

We will be in Italy tomorrow!

Right now I’m sitting in my room between classes. Why am I not outside you ask? Because it’s really hot outside. As soon as you walk outside, you’re drenched in sweat. At least the sky is clear and the water is blue! I’m in the Mediterranean! I just can’t get over what I’m doing right now. I had a test this morning for Global Studies. So easy! 100 matching questions about people, putting places on a map, and terms that we needed to know. But all of the stuff that we studied was word for word basically what the test was, which was really nice. We had an hour and 15 minutes for it, but I used about 25 minutes. I just had 5 questions I was unsure about, but oh well! I submitted my paper at 9 this morning. Huge load off of my shoulders! I have another paper about Flamenco due the day between Italy and Croatia, but I’m going to definitely try and have it done before the end of the day so that I can enjoy myself! Though that last day I’m in Naples I don’t know what I’m going to be doing, so I wouldn’t mind working on that. Apparently 6+ people have dock time which SUCKS! There were some people that were really late, like after 8:00pm late. If we weren’t waiting for the Barcelona SAS trip to get back to leave, we would have left those kids behind.

You get dock time if you are late back to the boat after on-ship time, which is usually about 6:00. For every 15 minutes you are late you get 3 hours of dock time, So those kids that came back after 8pm and weren’t with an SAS trip have about 24 hours of dock time. That is the first day in Italy! So, I’m definitely going to make sure I’m back for the ship on time for everything. We’re coming back on the last day from Rome, so we’ll definitely have to get an early train back. Oh yeah, I’M GOING TO ROME!

Anyway, here are the plans for the next few days. Today we are sailing between Corsica and Sardinia some time this evening, which is going to be awesome! We are getting to port around 8am, but I plan on being up around 6:45 again to see the sun rise over Italy. We have to make it a point to witness this with all of the countries.. if possible… The last 2 sunsets have been unbelievable. I can’t wait to get pictures posted when I get back! My bus to Rome leaves around 9:30-10:00 am and we are getting dropped off outside of the center of the city since tour buses can’t go into that section of the city. From there I’m meeting Rachel and Tim at the train station and then we’re headed off on our adventures! We don’t know exactly what we want to do yet. All 3of us want to see the Vatican. We heard that it’s best to get a tour guide since it’s overwhelming and you get to skip ahead of the line, so that is probably what we’ll do. It will be a bit more expensive, but it’s better than standing in line all day and not having a chance to see the Vatican. Rachel’s dad studied abroad in Rome, so he gave us some good pointers on where to go and where to eat too. That will definitely come in handy.

Our biggest issue is going to be finding a hostel. There are some really cheap ones that don’t have that bad of reviews, so I think we should be OK. It is nice that we’re traveling with a guy too. We’re meeting our friend Nate in the city the first night too. That should be fun and interesting to organize since we don’t have cell phones! Maybe we’ll just have to meet in front of something big at a certain time. It should be an interesting and fun experience.
I was worried for a while about not being able to meet up with people for things since we don’t have phones, but it’s not really that hard on the boat. There really isn’t anywhere for people to go, which sometimes isn’t so great when you want to get away from people… or person… haha.
So Italy. I can’t wait for the food, gelato, and to experience first hand some of the greatest sites in the world. I am really excited about everything! I’m just planning on taking each port as it comes so that I don’t rush through anything and miss out on something fun! (Although, I’m VERY excited about Croatia and the Croatian student that will be joining us in Naples!)
Ok, off to class, gym, shower, and paper time. Then a meeting for the Ambassador’s ball and then a briefing for Italy!!!

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