Life at Sea! We left Puerto Rico on 28 January are are currently on our way to Salvador, Brazil. We sailed down through the Carribean and are now somewhere way off the coast of South America. We should be crossing the Equator anyday now as well, although our official Neptune Day ceremony won't be until after we leave Brazil.

Things have been pretty good on board and we're definately keeping busy. Right now, I'm sitting up in the Faculty/Staff Lounge on Deck 7 Foward and you can really feel the movement of the ship. The weather is quite yucky right now, its been raining and the foward outside decks are closed due to high winds. I think the ship is finally starting to settle in to a routine...but its funny becuase as soon as that happens, we are in Port for 6 days and have to start all over again! A typical day for me includes getting up (which is a struggle sometimes because as some might know, I don't do so well with alarm clocks - I'm a snooze button abuser and my cabin is like the batcave with no natural light so 3am and 5pm seem the same in there!), catching breakfast, filling up the coffee mug and heading to Global Studies. After Global Studies, I try to do my RD work such as planning community building activities, having judicial meetings if necessary, check in online and hope for messages from home, etc... then we've got lunch, Student Life Staff meeting, gym if a cardio machine is available, and just be available for whatever else needs doing. The past two days, I've been assisting with the Drop/Add process and that has turned in to a new collateral duty which I'm actually very excited about: working with students in academic difficulty and meeting with them to advise, motivate, strategize, etc... This voyage has overall been a great professioanl development opportunity becuase I'm working and gaining experience in areas that I don't usually work in, specifically Res Life, Judicial, and now Academics. I'm glad that in addition to sailing around the world, my resume will look better as well. :-)

Some days it seems like I have tons of free time and can sit out on deck and read/relax/listen to music (Thank you Andrew for filling up my new cool mp3 player with fun music) and some days I struggle to even make it outside.

Other than that, since we're on our way to Brazil, I'm trying to think about what I'm going to do there! Our first day there is the last day of Carneval, which is supposed to be crazy. I didn't sign up for one of the SAS Carneval viewings but I'm thinking that would have been a good idea. Today at GS, the interport lecturer from Brazil bascially said that was the best/safest way to do it and if you are a woman, especially one with blue eyes, be even more careful! I'll see if one of those tickets opens up. Also, I have Duty, that night so I need to back at th ship by 8:00pm. It will definately be interesting to see what stumbles up the gangway that night! I'll keep you guys posted on my plans for Brazil...

Let's see...I just found out that I will be leading a service visit to an orphanage in Mauritius and also going to Beijing between Hong Kong and Shanghai. It is a trip hosted by the Peking University and includes a visit to the Great Wall. I don't know yet if I'll be leading that one or not. I figure I might as well do it all while I'm here and deal with the rest later! Right ?

I think that's about it for now...I will try to post more often! There are a few new pics up as well. It's Zach, the video editor, and Carl from the Field Office, birthdays today so we're about to have cake! TTYL! Keep the messages from home coming. I love to hear from you guys.

P.S. Tony and Christine...if you read this, make sure you go to the Bacardi Factory when you are in Puerto Rico!