Fwd: I Made It!!

Begin forwarded message:

Well everyone I made it to the ship! It has been a crazy past few days, but it has been very exciting.

I got into London on Sunday at 10am (London time). I got on the bus to my hotel and then quickly discovered I was on the wrong bus. So I got a nice tour of the hotels around Heathrow Airport. I rode the bus back to the airport and then got on the right bus. I made it to the hotel and met the three girls I was staying with. We dropped off our stuff and headed straight to the Tube (subway) station. We took the Tube to Westminster!! We saw Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and the London Eye. There was a ton of walking around and we had basically not slept for 24 hours so we crashed as soon as we got back to the hotel.

The next morning we boarded buses to go to the ship. We got there around 2:30pm. It was really awesome to meet all of the people aboard. My roommate is from Virginia and she is super cool. So the past few days have basically been meeting people and going through orientation meetings.

We found out yesterday that there is going to be a change in our itinerary. We are skipping Istanbul, Turkey because there have recently been a lot of violent protests there and Semester at Sea does not feel like it is a safe environment. So we will be going to Crete, Greece and Kusadasi, Turkey. So these new ports should be very exciting!!

Our first port of call is Morocco on June 23rd. I have a Field Lab (trip with my professor) on the first day and the next two days I will be traveling with a group of other students to Marrakech to ride a camel!!!! And then I will be doing a service visit on the last day! I will try to post some pictures soon!!!

Talk to you soon,
Kelly