Day 22...What did you see today? Sicily and two VOLCANOS?

Day 22/C8, July 6th:

This morning was so weird because we had to go to class again!  After 4 days in Barcelona, Italy Day and 7 days in Italy, you kinda forget that you are even taking classes.  Anyways, I woke up around 07:00 for breakfast and headed off to my classes.  Today was my first test in Global Studies and I have an International Economics test tomorrow.  The Global Studies test material was comprised of all sorts of random facts throughout history of all of the countries we are visiting.  For instance, we had material about food, climate, geography, wind directions, emperors, who killed who, what this and that means in Greek, who created this and that, when so and so took some random column and moved it from Delphi to Istanbul, etc.  Sound like fun?  The material in that course is not in depth, but there are just a lot of random facts to memorize.  Of course, I (and everyone else on the ship) didn’t study while exploring Spain and Italy, so we all had a major cram session before the test.  I guess we will see how it comes out…  I know I will be fine!  I always do really well.  Enough with that stuff…

Today for lunch, we had the famous “TACO DAY!”   It was pretty exciting when “the voice” came on the intercom to give us our noon report and told everyone about the famous lunch event.  Elan told me to look forward to this and he was right!  It was so much fun!  The crew must really be excited about something after Italy.  We have two fun meals back to back!  We had all kinds of taco fixing’s plus some awesome spaghetti for those non-Mexican lovers.  Both were so good.  I love to see the crew when they are having a blast serving us at mealtime.  So much fun!!!  I can’t wait for the next theme day to come along.  I know we have Turkey Day at some point before, after or during Turkey.  I don’t know what to expect for that.  It would be hilarious if they just served us turkey…instead of the normal Turkish cuisine.  Can you eat turkey in Turkey?  Is that against the rules?  I guess I will have to wait and see. 

We also saw some pretty cool stuff today on the ship!  Around 10:30, we circumnativated around Stromboli Volcano located off the coast of Italy.  It was an active volcano and it was cool to see all sides of it.  On one side, we could see the steam coming up from a little river of molten lava that was spewing from the top.  It was pretty amazing!  The ship went pretty close to it.  I was very surprised.  Even more surprising was the number of people that live on the volcano.  There were two different villages on it.  Why in the world would anyone want to live in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea on an active volcano?  Then around 14:00, we went through the Straights of Messina.  This is the area between the Italian boot and Sicily.  The Straights are only 7 miles wide so we could see people on the beaches of Sicily, while looking at the huge coastal highways on the shore of the Italian boot.  It was pretty interesting!  We could see Mount Edna on the Sicilian shore too (another volcano).  Pretty neat!  I saw three volcanoes in less than 24 hours!  I forgot to write about Mt. Vesuvius near Naples.  As we were leaving the port, we could see the redness of the rocks at the top of the volcano and all of the steam coming out.  I wish I went on the SAS trip that went climbing up Mt. Vesuvius.  Everyone that went said it was pretty cool.  I am jealous! 

Well, I hope to make it to bed early tonight!  I have another busy day tomorrow and I want to get a few good nights of sleep before we pull into Dubrovnik.  I still haven’t decided what I want to do or see while I am there.  I guess I should figure that out pretty soon. 

Noon Report for July 6th:

157.8 NM since Naples, 419 NM to Dubrovnik, average of 10.12 knots since Naples, distance to nearest land is 7 NM from Stromboli (Italy), sea depth is 5,845 ft, sea swells are .3 ft, water and air temperature is 77 degrees, sunset 20:21, sunrise 05:29, currently +6 hrs from EST.