Dominica!

Technically, this is my third new country, but the first actual port that we have visited.  We left from Nassau, The Bahamas (#1) on Wednesday.  On Friday evening, we stopped in the port of San Juan, Porto Rico to refuel at an outer fuel bunker.  Although we were technically in US territorial waters since Porto Rico is a US protectorate, its my second new country for this trip.  Also, it was a reduced price for cell phone calls, so that will be my last call home for the foreseeable future.  This morning, we docked at Rosseu, Dominica.

Rosseu is a wonderfully small town, with some great historic structures and a beautiful 19th century catholic church.  The island is not really a hot-spot for American tourism, so the locals didn't really know what to make of this ship full of students docking in their town, but I hope we made a good impression.  It was also nice to arrive in a small port on a Sunday.  This meant that many of the shops were closed, and the students and staff weren't bombarded with people and pulls on their time and money right off the ship.  It has been great to have a kind of buffer day for everyone to explore safety a new city and country.  It has also been wonderful to have a low key day for all the students and staff to become used to the process for entering and exiting the ship while in port.  I definitely got a little sun today, but hopefully I staved off the major sunburn.  I may even come out of this trip with a decent tan.

Yesterday, Add/Drop seemed to go well.  Hopefully there will not be any major problems on A2 (Tuesday).  Also, just for your information, days of the week, including weekends, don't really mean much aboard ship.  I have stopped trying to remember what day it is other than what day we are in the class and port schedule.  Days at sea alternate between A and B class days, while port days are non-class days.

Tomorrow, my plan is to get a little personal time in - including some sketching in town and on ship.  The voyage has been surreal so far, I can't believe that I was just in Dominica, sipping a fruit smoothy  under a palm tree.  How cool is that?