day 4

So nothing too exciting going on today.. just another day of class.

Decided to have just a granola bar for breakfast instead of attempting the one they serve today.  My throat is still really hurting me and I’ve gained a pretty good cough from it.  Heather this better not be from you..  I officially finished all the halls I had brought with me today =(  so I had some tea with my granola bar and that has been feeling pretty good too. I think I’m on my 4th bottle of tea today now..

Anyways, Spanish was much better today. Not as intimidating as it was yesterday.  My teacher still talks extremely fast though and its quite annoying.. I felt like the whole time was rushed. He gave a cultural lesson and had a powerpoint and told us to take notes on it.. I couldn’t even write down each slide before he was moving on let alone try to understand what he was saying because of course it was all in Spanish and yeah I just didn’t understand it at all. I participated though, had done the homework correctly and there for there is some of my points to my grade to me! All I have to do is pass right?! =)
After Spanish was over I raced over to the union to get in line to go in the doors and managed to get a seat in the second row! Woohoo I could totally see the screen and he had “all the texts a healthy dose of steroids” as he put it so that we could all see it! So my notes look a bunch better for today than they did yesterday.  We have a map quiz on Sunday so that’s the biggest deal right now is studying that up, I’ve got about half of it pretty much memorized so far.

Keeping right on going with the classes next was global music again we talked about how to classify different instruments from around the world.  we talked about how china has a classification system for instruments but it only really works for those made in their country and we talked about the western orchestral classification system but how that still doenst work for classifying the instruments from all around the world.  so ethnomusicologists came up with a new system to be able to classify any instrument that could be found and tomorrow in class we get to test it out and im super excited because we get to start looking at the 100+ instruments he says are on the ship!

Yay done with classes for the day I really like this whole being done by noon thing.. too bad it like never works out like this for me in BG!  So lunch and then I started doing my Spanish homework. I attempted to do it out on the deck again but there is too much wind to read in the book look at the practica sections and then do the problems in my notebook so I resorted to sitting in the piano lounge to finish it. Then I went back to my room to start reading global studies and lacey (my 3rd roommate) was here too doing some reading.  After a little while we both thought a nap sounded like a wonderful idea so I took yet another nap.  Losing an hour every night really sucks!  I feel so behind on sleep so naps feel amazing!
After I woke up I attempted to finish the reading and then it was time for dinner.  Now back to the room to finish reading and study the map. 

Every night they have Explorer Seminars where people but on a presentation about different topics and this is where pre-port lecturers talk to us too.  We have a guy on board as a pre-port lecturer for Spain. Meaning he rides with us till spain and then he gets off. But he gives lots of presentations about it while he is onboard.  So tonight he did a presentation on Spanish food!!! It sounds so yummy I can’t wait. He gave lots of food suggestions and descriptions and so it should be really exciting.  Food on the ship is better than expected but just not fantastic by any means. Every lunch and dinner without fail so far has been salad, a pasta with a new sauce, some type of meat (that isn’t really appetizing), really yummy rolls (I eat at least 2 every meal, they’re small), a new soup, peanut butter and jelly if you aren’t feeling adventurous and a desert.  Much better than the food at BG so far but the trend has formed that it is going to vary much at all.. I thought they said we would get sick of potatoes and eat all sort of potatoes, that was a lie.  We’ve had them like twice and they were cooked the same way.. if anything I really see myself getting sick of noodles..  I didn’t think that could happen!  Needless to say Sean you would starve on this ship =) haha

So its shower time, more map studying and SLEEP!! Yet another hour lost tonight.. =( =(  putting us now 4 hours ahead of ohio and 5 ahead of texas (sean)