Tuesday, January 18, 2005- Vancouver, Canada and Departing

10:15am- (1:15 pm EST.)-Woke up at the crack of dawn and took the trek down to Canada Place where I boarded the MV Explorer. The check in process was quite tedious with over 600 students checking in, but after things started the process became much smoother. My room is on the 4^th floor and is quite small with no portholes; however the bathroom is real nice and clean. My roommate’s name is Josh, from New Jersey and he goes to Bucknell.

9:35pm- (12:36 am EST.)- The ship cast off at 4:46pm local time, with the parents waving from the docks. The view of the port was the best since I had arrived due to the fog finally lifting up a bit, however there were still off and on rain showers. The evening pretty much consisted of everyone roaming around the ship and mingling with one and another. (I must have walked around the ship like 20 times). I along with most of the other people are starting to get sick of just mingling. It’s useless because most of the time you don’t even remember the person’s name.

We held a life jacket drill where we had to get our life jackets and proceed to our life boats. It was quite humorous to us when they were giving the instructions over the intercom and one of the instructions ended with “if you hear this it does not mean abandon ship!” (Like someone would do that?)

Right now we just finished going through the Straight of Juan de Fuca somewhere near Vancouver Island and will soon be hitting the Pacific Ocean, which supposedly will be much choppier with the water from two different waterways coming together. So far no sickness.

Other Random Stuff

- On the 7^th floor I found a beautiful spa which I will be treating myself to on my birthday next week.

- Met the RDs and got to know them a bit

Not too much exciting stuff going on because we haven’t really gone anywhere or done anything.