Bunkering in Gibraltar

I could not get to sleep last night. At around 4:30am I decided to wander around the ship and go out on the deck to get some fresh air. My roommates and I woke up at 7:45am because we were told that we'd be in Gibraltar at 8am, but that was not the case, so I woke up entirely too early for nothing. We got to Gibraltar around 3pm. It was really neat being able to see Spain and Africa on both sides of us. I got a bunch of pictures. We stopped to bunker, and the interesting thing is that we didn't go up to a dock or a port. We just stopped further out in the water, and then a boat came out to us to deliver the fuel. I didn't know that's how they did that. We are actually still in Gibraltar right now, but I think they are getting the engines roared up and the propellers going because the who ship is shaking. For the next 32 hours we will be sailing up and around Spain to reach Barcelona! It is so soon!!

 

I survived my Global Studies exam! It wasn't bad. There were 25 questions. I felt iffy on 6 of them, but after talking to other people it seems that I got some of those 6 right. There's only one question I know I got wrong for sure. I'm feeling good about it. I think I got at least a B. Hopefully we'll get it back tomorrow since it was a scantron. I have my Adolescence exam tomorrow, which I need to shift my focus to now. Tomorrow will have been our 8th day of classes in a row, but it will be the last day of class until July 9th because we will be in Spain and Italy (no class during port). There's only one day at sea between Spain and Italy, and I think we're having the Sea Olympics that day, so no class.

 

Tonight I went to the Social Activists at Sea meeting. It was great. We talked a lot about microaggressions, gender-biased language, common terms with offensive origins, etc. Words and phrases like..."hey guys"...or..."chairman"...or..."retarded"...or..."that's so gay"...or..."the rule of thumb"...did you know that the phrase "the rule of thumb" originates from back in the day when men were allowed to beat their wives with a stick as long as it wasn't wider than their thumb? I had no idea. Very interesting stuff. We're going to do a project similar to the "Spread the Word to End the Word" campaign against the word "retarded," but we're going to use a lot of words and phrases. I'm going to be making posters to hang around the ship. I'm excited.

 

After the meeting my friends and I got together to start planning our adventures in Spain. I can't wait.

 

I'm officially in the Mediterranean. It's beautiful. 32 hours until Barcelona. Life is good.

 

ps Daddy--they served Indian food for dinner tonight! It made me think of you. I miss you very much!