Feb 10th—Back Onboard

Okay so I haven't written anything in a few days and I have a lot to catch up on. We just left Puerto Rico yesterday. I thought maybe the ship might rock so much cause we were supposed to go faster….not so much. We started out at 20 knots but this morning we're going 10 knots again. I just want to get used to the rocking. I don't feel nauseas really but I don't really feel that well. But maybe that's cause I'm extremely tired and still sick. I'm going to go to the doctors office after this.

Anyyywaay. So Monday we had our first day of classes. I was not excited. I had class from 9:30 till 2ish? With a 55 minute lunch break…but by the time I got to the cafeteria and waited in line I only had about 20 minutes to eat. So I'm thinking I am going to drop my music class and take an abnormal psyc class. That one is at 8 AM. :-O I've never taken a class that early. Hopefully I can get to bed soon enough to actually get any sleep.

Alright so I'm sure you want to hear about my stay in Puerto Rico. The first day I walked to San Juan and we saw the Capital and some historical buildings. After that we got to the middle of old San Juan which is very touristy. Lots of shops…some of them had clothes by Roxy that were like 50 bucks for some shorts. I only bought post cards from Puerto Rico (and I went to K-mart and Marshalls, and Wallgreens to pick up some things I forgot and a lot of food)

Later I went to the El Yunque rainforest. It was really pretty. We saw the big waterfall in the middle of our hike and I got a bunch of pictures. At night we went to the Welcome Reception. I went to the University of Puerto Rico where we had Michelle at our table, a student of the university. We talked with her for a while and she was extremely nice. She was a sophomore at the University and she said there's 20,000 students that go there. They gave us a DELICIOUS dinner. Ooh they also gave us some souvenirs (a cup with their name on it, a flag, a pencil, some candy…) Then they gave us salsa lessons….after about 30 seconds I sat down, it just wasn't working out. Haha. But it looked fun.

The next day I went to the Bioluminescent Bay and it was awesome. The Bio bay has phytoplankton that glow whenever they are agitated. So we kayaked through this little channel for about 20 minutes and as we got closer to the open area we could see our paddles kind of glowing. When we got to the open area the guide told us how it all works…but all I remember is that they only live 2-3 days and they reproduce like crazy. There are only a few of these bays left in the world and 3 of them are in PR. One of them this year got contaminated and no longer exists. We were able to swim in the water and it was so awesome. There were little tiny glowing dots all over our body if we moved it. If you move your arm real slow it's like you have glitter all over your arm. If you move it real fast it's real bright…it's very hard to describe and we were unable to take pictures b/c you just can't capture it. But I bet there's some on the internet…I'm not sure. Oh by the way…if you EVER go here…do NOT go to the bathroom…wow it was the most disgusting bathroom I have EVER seen. I'm going to spare you of the details

The last day I went to the Rio Camuy Caves. It was 1 ½ hour bus ride and then lots of waiting when we got there. We learned about the stalagtites in a video we watched before we went down the caves. It was really pretty…but was very hard to get pictures of b/c it was so dark and moist. The pictures turned out all blurry and even the good ones just didn't really capture how it really looked. Oh these stalagtites are so big…and they said that they only grow one inch in 100 years. They are formed by water that just drips down and turns into the stalagtite…They said you can't touch them or the water in there b/c it would kill them all….But there is a trail through it that they constructed…and I'm sure people touch it and kids bump into it….So I'm not too sure how that works.

When we got back I called everyone from home b/c it was the last time I was going to get to talk to them and it was sad. Everyone was walking around all sad after we left port. Maybe we should not bring our phones on the trip. Haha. It was nice to talk to everyone though. Very nice.

It's Saturday and I have class. I am going to take a nap in between my classes because I have 4 hours in between the classes. I'm sure there's other things I wanted to tell you but I forget. I will tell everyone later. For now it's back to stumbling around the hallways and feeling drunk once again. Hopefully we all get used to it soon.