Subject: I made it to Nassau & on the ship
E-mail sent: October 2, 2005 5:27 PM from Cape Town, South Africa

I have gotten a few e-mails from people asking if I made it safely out of Florida and onto the ship in Nassau. Yes, it was a bit of an adventure, but I'm happy to say that I made it and have now been on the ship for more than a month. I apologize that it has taken me this long to send out my first update, but my new job as IT Coordinator for Semester at Sea started off with a bang and hasn't slowed down since.

I had intended to send out daily updates so all my friends could follow my journey closely, but I've decided not to overwhelm you. My journal tends to be way too detailed. I'm not sure even my parents have been able to read it all, so I'm hoping to provide the highlights through photos and e-mail.

This e-mail would be way too long if I told you about everything I've done so far, so I will be sending out frequent updates over the next several days to bring you up to speed. Hopefully I'll get a chance to work on my website and get some photos posted, but it probably won't look polished for a while.

This was my first time to The Bahamas, so when I finally made it to Nassau, I tried to get out and explore a bit. I only made it out for dinner my first night, but it didn't take me more than 10 minutes to meet another Semester at Sea person. A professor had picked up a local man and they were eating at the same restaurant I was at. When the local guy saw me eating alone he turned around and struck up a conversation and we quickly figured out that both this professor and me were here for SAS and I joined their table. This was a very nice working out because it turned out he was staying at my hotel which meant that I didn't have to walk back alone in the dark and I had someone to share a cab with the next day to get to the ship.

I won't bore you too much with all of the details of what I did every day, but I'm going to try to share a few of my key observations from each country.

A few of the things that I found interesting about The Bahamas:

• They drive on the left side of the road, so when crossing the street you need to remember to look left then right instead of right then left. It's interesting that even though they drive on the left, most of the steering wheels are on the left, although I have seen a few cars and busses with steering wheels on the right.
• Everyone thinks I'm pretty. While walking through the market everyone called me pretty lady or pretty girl to get my attention. I expect this from the men, but it was unexpected from the women.
• Food is expensive. It's probably because this is a very touristy area, but I haven't been able to find anywhere inexpensive to eat. One egg was $3.95. I also wonder if it has to do with being on an island and certain food products are hard to get.
• A 15% tip is already included in the final bill for practically everything. Meals is one you plan for, but I was also slapped with an 18% tip for the hotel maids.
• Bahamian and US currency are interchangeable. Most of the ATMs just give out Bahamian money, but there are ones that also give out US currency. Since the Bahamian dollar is valued at the same value as the US dollar, you can pay for anything with either. I never changed money, I just used US currency and occasionally I'd get back Bahamian currency. Sometimes when I'd use that Bahamian currency to pay for something, I'd get US currency back.

I flew in on Thursday (Aug. 25), and on Friday afternoon I went to meet the ship. I was a little nervous about having to meet a completely new group of people that I knew nothing about. It's often been challenging for me to make new friends, and if I didn't make good friends, I might not have as many travel opportunities since it isn't really a good idea to travel to remote areas on your own. Well, my fears were very quickly staunched. I started making friends before I'd even found my room. It turns out that since this voyage has the most students ever, they ran out of cabins, so several of the staff ended up in crew cabins that they're slowly trying to make a little nicer for the staff. I checked in right before Rico, the AV Coordinator and we saw that our room numbers were very close, so we headed off together to find our rooms. It took us quite a bit of time because the crew cabins aren't on any of the ship maps, but we were finally directed far forward and found our rooms right across from each other. I actually have an outside room, but it's in front of all the portholes, so it's like I live in a very small cave. My cabin actually has 3 beds, but it's just me in there. My 4 boxes I shipped ahead were waiting for me in my cabin and not much else fit in there. I really wish I had paired down. At first I thought that we got a raw deal, but we've come to really like our little area. The administration isn't too fond of the term, but we affectionately call our area "The Pit." We even have had some pit parties, but those have had to come to an end because we got in trouble for being too loud. This staff is so much fun, but we usually get in more trouble than the students. Those stories might have to come later -- if you're interested ask me about flying sometime. Rico, Jason (the book seller), and I got the front deck closed for everyone (in high wind) because on one of the first nights we discovered how to fly. We used big shirts to turn ourselves into kites and flew across the deck. That was a blast and TOTALLY worth getting the deck closed. My friend Beth (the admin assistant to the dean and probably my best friend on the ship) got scolded by the crew security guard for being a bad influence on the students when she came out to fly with us. I love that she was the adult and we are the students.

Anyway, we had about 5 days of training where I had to figure out how the internet accounts work, meet my work study students, come up with a plan for running the lab, and set up and train all of the faculty on our ship's intranet. Fortunately, the 700 students aren't any more demanding and time consuming than the 30 faculty. In fact, to this day, the faculty are the most demanding part of my job. Some of them are really great, but many are inconsiderate and think that they are more important than anyone else, so when they have any kind of question, I need to give my full attention to them. This has been a great learning experience.

I was able to sneak off the ship a few times during our orientation period to explore Nassau. Probably the night that was the most fun was our second night when I decided to head off with Chris the photographer. He also shoots Canons, so I went off with my new 10D to try to pick up some pointers. We stumbled upon some amazing local color and I interacted with the locals more than I've ever done before, anywhere. It's really neat traveling with a photographer who has worked for a newspaper for many years and knows how to interact to get the best shots. I would never have the courage to go up to some of these people on my own, but it opens up whole new worlds. Check out my first update on my website for more photos and commentary on that night and all of my adventures before arriving in our first official port of Venezuela.

Well, I'll leave it at that for now, stay tuned for more updates. If you're really interested in what I've been up to, please read my friend Beth's blog. She's much better at updating it as we go and her writing is much more entertaining. http://bhanggeli.blogspot.com/

Feel free to check out my site too, I'm slowly getting more updates up there: http://atsea.amyandrews.com/

Or for some nice photos of the voyage, check out my friend Chris, the voyage photographer's site: http://www.37thframe.ca/sas/

Lots of love,
Amy