Almost There

We are only a few days away from our first port of Cadiz, Spain.  The cabin feaver is palpable.  People are itching to get off the ship and see what Spain has to offer.  This coupled with the 23 hour days, I think people are getting tired.  Going about 1 time zone every night is pretty brutal.  That and the fact that breakfast is only served from 0730 to 0830 and the first class isn't until 0920.  Getting up at 0745 every morning is tough for a kid who likes to sleep until 1400. 

 

Classes are going.  Physics is a pain, since the teacher tends to give a quiz every day.  It's hard to get mad about that as I'm on a ship about to arrive in Spain.  Global Studies has basically been a mix of Liberal propoganda and a little history about the Bahamas and Spain.  I say Liberal Propoganda, because we haven't had a single day in the class without hearing about the dangers of Global Warming or the historical events of Obama's inauguration.  It's like, comeon, just like the news shouldn't swing one way or the other, though it does, a class should not have an ideological tilt to it.  I'm not saying I don't agree with some of the stuff they are saying, I just don't care to hear about it in a class that my family has paid a lot of money for. 

 

Money and Banking is pretty standard, not much to report here.

 

MICE had its first performance yesterday.  I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I was in the show, and I didn't trust anyone in the crowd with my camera.  We played a peice called "Anemoi" in which we took the sounds of the wind, captured by a wind microphone and used them as ambient sounds in the peice.  As larger gusts were produced, it would play pack spoken phrases of philosophers that were prerecorded.  We then had a cello player, our teacher played the sax, I played a wacom board programed to manipulate the wind sounds into distinct notes, a mixing board to add beats to the song, and a guy to mix it all together and build the song up.  It was a lot of fun.  Hopefully I'll be able to post a video of it up on here soon.  The show went very well and we got a lot of possitive feedback.  Impromptu music is hard, and we pulled it off pretty well.

 

As for when I get to Spain, my roommate Graham, a bunch of our new friends, and I are going to travel around the southern part of Spain by train.  We will be visiting, if time permits, Cordoba, Sevilla, and Grenada.  Our goal is to hit all three, but time may cut us short.  We will also be staying in hostels along the way.  It is also very lucky that we have a few native Spanish speakers in our group.  That should make communicating and traveling much easier.

 

That should be it for now,

Steven at Sea(SAS)