Rio de Janeiro – semester two!

January 18, 2013 – January 21, 2013

Semester break is over now, though it certainly felt to short! It was only ten days, but I went home and had an great time with family, and resting up for the exciting semester to come!

I returned to the ship on the 18^th, to a very HOT ship; the AC is broken so it’s over 30°C in the banjer! We cleaned, settled into the ship again, and got our new watches. I’m in watch two and we have an amazing watch! It’s going to be great!

I have a hammock this semester too, rather than a bunk like last time. I think it’ll be good when we’re at sea, as the rocking of the hammock will counteract the rocking of the ship, so hopefully I’ll sleep well even when the seas get rough! I’ve heard that we could have some very rough seas on this next sail; a month-long sail across the Atlantic to Cape Town, South Africa!

On the 20^th, we had the day to go ashore with our new watches. We had an awesome day, taking the cable car up Sugarloaf Mountain. We had a little picnic up there, and saw some cute little monkeys as well. Best of all, the mountain offered an amazing view over the city of Rio. It’s a pretty impressive city, but it’s too bad that we didn’t have a little more time to explore. We left the following day, January 21^st, for 28 days at sea!

Sail to Rio de Janeiro – a new year and a new semester to come!

December 26, 2012 – January 7, 2013

Happy New Year!! To all of you in Saskatchewan, I rang in the New Year with you at 4am ship time while I was on watch! We had left Natal behind 6 days before, on Boxing Day, bound for another Brazilian port: Rio de Janeiro. Being the last sail of the semester, classes were coming to an end which meant…finals! They started on January 2^nd; welcome to the New Year! Exams lasted only three days, but it was a long three days. It was hard to find the time I needed to study in between watch and classes, and if night watch wasn’t already difficult, staying up late studying beforehand definitely made it so!

Once finals ended though, everything as so nice and relaxed; we had no more school to worry about so we could just enjoy the last few days of the semester. What a great semester it’s been! We ended it off with another BBQ, lots of debriefing, then a crew night where we simply spent time together on our last night as a crew. It was tough to say goodbye to friends who won’t be coming back next semester; our semester one crew has had some amazing times together and I can hardly believe that four months have already gone by!

I look forward to the adventures that semester two will hold, but in the meantime, we will have a much needed break! I can’t wait to see my family again! ♥

Natal, Brazil – Christmas in Christmas!

December 20, 2012 – December 26, 2012

December 20^th was departure day from Fernando and we sailed off of anchor, which is something pretty special. The sail to Natal was a quick one and we arrived on the 22^nd. Our first full day in Natal was port program day; dune buggying!

We took the bus out to the sand dunes that surround the city of Natal where we hopped into dune buggies, four people per buggy plus the driver. We ripped through the white sand that stretched out in all directions, looking around to see nothing but our convoy of dune buggies (there were so many of us) flying over the dunes. We stopped at a few beautiful view points on the way. We speeded down a couple of steep hills, laughing the entire way, until we arrived at a nice lake to swim. At the lake they had an activity called aerobunda; it’s basically a zip line into the lake. Some of us did it, and it was great fun! You harness into the line and jump off a platform, soaring over the lake and eventually splashing into the water.

After stopping at the lake we continued on the dune buggies, this time headed for a beach. Once we reached the beach the buggy cruised along through the shallow water, waves splashing around us, before stopping for us to get off and swim. We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the sun, cooling off in the water and eating refreshing popsicles from the cart that goes along the beach. What an amazing day!

Dune buggying!

Taking a raft across a river

Our buggy :)

The following day was Christmas Eve! Everyone got dressed up (a rarity on the ship!) for a nice Christmas dinner with a holiday coffee house afterwards. At the end of the coffee house the teachers made an announcement: a sleep in day!!!! We hadn’t been able to sleep past 7:30 since we went on the overnight trip in Morocco, but on Christmas morning we were allowed to sleep in until 11!

I was on gangway Christmas morning, so after watch and wishing everyone else who was up a merry Christmas in the middle of the night, I went down to the banjer to go to bed and saw the teachers hurrying around with bags of candy. We had all left out socks (clean ones, hopefully!) as stockings, and they put some candies next to everyone’s socks!

In the morning, I thought I would have forgotten how to sleep in, but none of us had any problems; we were all so tired! We got up at 11 to the nice surprise of candy in our socks. What’s Christmas without eating chocolate before breakfast? Breakfast, or rather brunch, was absolutely amazing! We had crepes with real maple syrup! What a treat!

After a day of shore leave and talking with our families, we all returned to the ship where we listened to the Vinyl Café Dave cooks the turkey, a Class Afloat tradition. Then it was time for supper; a barbeque! I love BBQs on the ship; everyone eats out on the main deck and up on the boat deck, and it’s so much fun! When supper was over, one of the other students’ dad came aboard, dressed as Santa, and handed out the secret Santa gifts we had made for each other. Each person had drawn a name and had to make a gift for that person. The only rule is that the gift must be homemade! It was a great time, and some of the things that people made were incredible! Then, he brought out packages that had been mailed from home, which was an amazing end to the day, our last day before departing on the final sail of the semester! Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays!