No Land, No Land

Hello from the MV Explorer.
Below is my update on Japan, but with a total of nine days on the ship, there are things that happen in our small community between the countries! We crossed the international dateline, so we had Easter twice!! I have never repeated a day before, but nothing happened the first time that I wanted to change the second time it came around. The Christians were happy to celebrate twice. Otherwise it was just a day of class and studying. Today there wasn’t class for a photo day to get everyone (yeah waking up at 8 am for good sunlight) and their university pictures taken! So Boulder was right after the entire campus photo, because with 81 students we are the largest university represented on the ship. We all sang the fight song after the photo and it really made me miss Boulder and totally pumped me up for football season in the fall! We had a HUGE student auction open to the entire shipboard community last night too. There was a raffle, as well as a live and silent auction. Some of the things for raffle included first person and last person off the ship, milk and cookie party, sodas and pizza party with a movie, raising the flag on arrival into Fort Lauderdale, reserved rail space on the day we arrive, and a bunch of other things.
Some of the live auction items were donated by the Life Long Learners on the ship as well as professors. These included a week condo in Molokai, Hawaii, a timeshare for a week in the Cayman Islands, a cabin in Yellowstone National Park, sailing with the Academic Dean off of Cape Cod and a signed map with our coordinates by the captain.  It was a lot of fun and we raised over $7,000!! This would go straight back to the students for scholarships, events, special things on the ship as well like work out equipment and other things. I ended up putting one ticket in a bucket for these really cool pair of pants. These were not just any pair of pants, the Life Long Learners divided up the countries and bought patches in every place and sewed them onto the pants, so they were literally a pair similar to “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”. I did not think much about it until they called my ticket number at the auction! They are really cool and fit okay actually! So for a dollar, I received a sweet pair of jeans. I just can not believe I actually won them!
Other stuff happening on the ship included planning trivial pursuit with my “ship family” and watching Confessions of a Shopaholic that I bought as a bootleg in Vietnam. There’s always things happening on the ship, we had a career fair tonight where people of different careers came out and talked to the students about the things they have done and what you need to do to prepare for medical, law, nursing or graduate school. We had people talking about working as an assistant to Archbishop Desmund Tutu and a man who worked at the World Bank. It was really interesting. I was able to hang out with my professor today at the pool deck and she treated me to popcorn while we went over a paper I had questions on. Tomorrow I have a planned tea time to sample some of the teas another professor bought in China and Japan. These kinds of things I could do never do at Boulder. I think from this experience I will definitely put even more of an effort to get to know my professors at school. But, the environment here is special and part of me wishes I went to a smaller school.
We still have awhile before Hawaii and I have lot of studying and class to get through ahead of me. But, I am looking forward to it. We are doing a donation drive on the ship of clothes, shoes, and basically anything you do not want to take home with you. I am sure my closet will be more spacious after that drive is over. I definitely plan on cleaning out my closet at home when I get back; there are so many things I just don’t need.
I will arrive in Hawaii on April 19 and we will only be there for a night but if you would like to just say hello, feel free to call or text me! I will be able to talk for two days without being charged $2.50 a minute!
Hope everything is going well back home.