LAND!

Whew…

The last few days have been… well… a little overwhelming. But as you know, I’m fairly easily overwhelmed.

I attribute most of this to the fact that I haven’t seen land in 6 days. It’s definitely an adjustment. But tomorrow morning we land in Hilo, Hawaii, and I plan on running, not walking, away from the ship in one straight shot until I either cannot breathe or run into some kind of physical impasse. I’ll say this much… you’ll never appreciate the ability to move further than 100 yards in one direction until you can’t.

That’s not the only adjusting going on. The lifestyle here is clearly different, but not in any way that you’d be able to discern without actually being present.

First of all, it’s not like college. No drinking. No bars. No time outside. No intramurals yet. Same people for every meal and basically every class. Don’t get me wrong, some incredible social dynamics are soon to come, especially when the pool is finally filled, but as for right now, we’re still killing time playing Catch Phrase or Pass the Pigs and getting to know each other’s hometowns.

As an aside, please do yourself a favor and Google “Pass the Pigs.” New favorite game.

It’s also strange to be so detached, even from those close by. Without our beloved cell phone service, people have reverted to leaving each other post it’s (gasp) or actually making plans ahead of time and sticking to them (another gasp). Something completely unheard of in, say, Manhattan.

As another aside, the app Snapchat happens to work on the ship. Thus, using the ship’s wifi, we’ve skirted both the internet and phone systems and are able to connect to the outside world for free. So download it and send me pics. Snapchat FTW!

The classes are also… umm… different. Only those who attended school with me will really understand this one, but I’ll just say that I was certainly luckier than I knew back in New Haven.

The shining star of the ship is most certainly my Global Sustainable Entrepreneurship class, so I’m soaking that one in as much as possible. The professor and the entrepreneurs have such captivating and inspiring passion that it’s hard not to feel as though we can all aspire to their level of influence and success. Maybe we can all do what Unreasonable hopes to do and CTFW.

Bonus points if you figure out CTFW without any hints.

However, not everything is confusing.

I know that for the first time in a long, long time, I did not dread Monday.

I know that that feels awesome.

I know that this time tomorrow I will be in a house in Hawaii celebrating with 30 of my fellow students.

I know that that will feel awesome too.

I know that there is no gold at the ends of rainbows.

I know this does not feel awesome, because I saw it today:

I know a couple of other things, but for now, because I don’t really have any other fun pictures, I’ll just leave you with that. Because, hey, it’s pretty.

As a bit of housekeeping and rumor control and clarification, my email is separate from the 2 hour allotment of internet on the boat, so do feel free to email me anytime. Please do not expect a normal US timed response, as email no longer functions like texting for me. Oh, the joys of being forced to unplug.

Next post to come during the 9 day stretch from Hawaii to Japan during which we will cross the international dateline and thus jump directly one day ahead.

So basically, the next post will be from the future.

Hope I just blew your mind.

Question of the day (mostly because I forgot one last time): How big of a bummer is it that there’s really no rainbow pot of gold?!