AHOY EVERYONE!
The voyage has officially begun. We sailed out of Ensenada, Mexico late on Sunday night (got to love Mexican time) and are headed for Hilo, Hawaii. Life on a ship is an adjustment but also a lot of fun. Everyone on the ship is so friendly. (Notice how I called it a ship and not a boat, the MV explorer takes their nautical language very seriously, “Ships carry boats, boats can’t carry ships” is a favorite phrase of the staff’s. In fact, when you ask for directions around the ship, they only give it to you in appropriate terms like starboard, port, bow, and stern. It took some getting use to).
Our first day was all orientation and boat drills. Our captain is from Croatia and we can barely understand his accent, which made our first boat drill in our lifejackets quite interesting. However, I learned two important rules, #1 it must be silent at all times during a drill EVEN when your friend looks hilarious in her bright orange life vest and is making fish faces at you, and #2 when they say head to your mustard station they do not mean the condiment bar in the lunch room but rather the platform by the lifeboats (the crew member told me not to feel bad it was a common mistake).
THE SHIP: When we arrived in Ensenada via shuttles everyone was looking out the windows trying to spot our boat. In the port there was a glorious beast of a boat with almost 15 decks and a beautiful bow with a huge pool. We got all excited until someone pointed out the Carnival cruise line logo on the top of it. Darn, turns out the tiny little tugboat looking ship next to that one was actually ours. But once aboard, it was clear that little old MV Explorer was once a glamorous cruise line. In fact the library has the appeal of an old casino, the lecture hall reminds one of a show theater, and the cafeteria probably once was home to a five star restauraNT. The food on the boat is good; it’s very American and always seems to consist of chicken, potatoes, bread and some kind of pasta. Not the healthiest but I figure if I over eat on the boat it will be balanced out by the starvation I plan to endure in the ports. Also, we are quite spoiled, as there is an amazing kitchen staff that clears your plates and refills your drinks at all the meals. But eating was the last thing on my mind the first few days because anything I ate ended up, as JMart likes to say, “fish bait” off the back of the boat. Nothing could have prepared me for the seasickness I felt the first night out to sea. I swayed from wall to wall on my way to the doctor’s clinic where he gave me patches, pills, and even a dorky little wristband to wear. I felt kind of pathetic until I noticed all the other green-faced students in line behind me. In fact, at our orientation on the morning of day 2, everyone was doing the “Mari Ann,” (head rolled back, eyes closed, and mouth open) because the rolling of the ocean made us all so drowsy. But I am proud to say now at day three I have finally gotten my sea legs and am able to move about the ship without clinging to the railings.
MY CABIN: yes mom, my cabin is tiny! BUT all my stuff did fit and there is even room for my roommate to have one whole drawer to herself, jk. The storage in our room is actually great and I find that I am almost never in my cabin anyways . The hardest part is actually taking a shower. The boat rolls so much and with the slippery ground, you can imagine how difficult it is to remain upright. We also have an old fashion cord phone in our room where we can call all the other cabins. It was so hard getting use to using that instead of just texting someone “where r u?” but the worst is when they are not in their cabin, which is often the case, and you have to circle all the decks looking for them.
ROOMMATE:The first day on the ship I was walking along the narrow hallways to find my cabin and meet my new roommate. I began to notice there were name tags placed on all the doors. When I got to mine it read 4131 Nicole Hemstad & Martha Peddleton. MARTHA!? Needless to say I was a bit nervous when I opened the door, but to my dismay she was not there. So I went upstairs and joined some of my Boulder friends for lunch. We sat at a big round table and I introduced myself to the two new people sitting with them, Katie and Lee. We all began discussing our new roommates. So I chimed in “Ya you guys will never believe this, my roommate’s name is MARTHA! She is going to be so weird huh?” Everyone got really quiet at the table and looked down at their plates. Then “Katie” the new blonde girl at the table began laughing and extended her hand, “ I’m sorry I guess I should have fully introduced myself, I’m Martha Katie Peddleton. Martha is a family name, I usually just go by Katie.” I thought seriously about jumping off the side of the boat, but I just began apologizing over and over instead. Katie was so nice about it, she said she gets that all the time. But oddly enough that was not the most ironic part of all of it, turns out Katie goes to the University of Colorado too and is an Alpha Chi Omega with my other high school friends on the boat (hence why she was at the lunch table with all of them in the first place). She is really nice and we get along great. Now we laugh about our awkward first meeting and tell everyone our story.
So far it has been a lot to get use to boat wise, but I have met so many fun new people from schools from all over. CU has the most students on the boat, but I didn’t know a lot of them so it’s fun meeting new CU people as well. Everyone is so friendly and we have a lot fun just sitting out on the stern of the ship enjoying our beautiful ocean view. So sorry Dad and Nancy, not homesick yet : )
Hope all is well back on land and I hope to post more later.
Love, Nicole
p.s. we calculated that a typical flight from Denver to Hawaii takes about 5 hours so in the in the 180 hours it is going to take us to get to Hawaii by boat, we could have flown there and back 18 times!! Hope that gives you an idea of how slow a boat moves. But as our dean likes to say “IT’S ALL PART OF THE EXPIERENCE!”
