Sleeping and Room

I sleep in a cabin on the second deck of the ship. The second deck is the lowest deck for passenger cabins. This is good in a couple of ways: 1) the lower one goes in the ship, the less rocky it is and, because my cabin has a window, the ocean looks so close that I feel like I could touch it. As I have said before, my cabin has a window, meaning I am on the outside of the ship. Unlike the other decks, windows on deck 2 are portholes. So I have a large round window at the back of the cabin (other decks have your average square shaped window).

I am fortunate enough to share my room with my roommate Elena. She is originally from Bulgaria and now lives with her family in Chicago while attending college to get an Art degree. We get along very well. And, from what I have seen of other rooms, are pretty clean people.

The room is set up as follows: You open a very heavy fire door from the hallway to enter the room. Upon entry you see a small hallway that opens into a long rectangular space. At the end of the rectangle there is our porthole window looking out into the ocean. On the sides of the porthole are window curtains, which have a sort of trough below them to keep them from hitting you when the ship rocks. Elena and I have taken to storing our textbooks and school supplies in the trough.

In the center of the end wall, beneath the window and the trough, are our two nightstands. They stand side-by-side making a nice table platform. Each of us gets three storage drawers from our stand. Between the side wall and our nightstands lay our single size beds. The beds have a sheet, a blanket (its thin), and a bedspread. Occasionally I find myself wishing for an extra blanket, but a pair of socks and a sweatshirt get me nice and cozy again.

At the end of our beds are either: a table and a chair, or a desk station and a chair. The desk has a drawer and the electrical outlets, but they have the same surface area. The desk drawer is divided, so we share that. At the end of my bed is the table. Behind the table is a built-in storage unit with a TV in the top shelf, our food (snacks and such) in the middle, a mini-refrigerator, and then three large drawers. Elena and I decided that the top drawer would be a dedicated snack drawer and then we each would get one of the other drawers.

Our hallway, which is behind the desk and the storage unit, consists of our bathroom on one side and a closet on the other side. The closet is fairly large. We have our life vests in the top shelf in case of an emergency. Twenty hangers were provided, but much more could fit in there. Two shoe racks are also in the closet. They can hold about four pairs of shoes each. There is another closet door that is divided into five shelves. I have the top two shelves and Elena has the bottom two. The middle shelve is for whoever needs it as well as the complimentary safe.

If I was to make a comparison of size, this cabin is almost as big (if you include the bathroom, even bigger) than my second dorm room.

Sleeping on the ship is important. We are in a state of constant stress from school, traveling, and being in a completely new environment. Rest is very important. However, either because of the new location, stress, excitement or many other possible reasons, most people I have met on the ship, including myself, have had many more dreams than we are used to (Elena is strange and has had less dreams than her norm). It is funny to wake up in the morning and have breakfast with people while we share our latest strange and vivid dreams.

P.S. For those of you who think we on the ship are being overly spoiled, I would have to agree. However, assumptions of television are incorrect. Yes, we have a TV in the room. However, there is no DVD player or VCR. We also only receive 6 channels. The first channel is a constant update of the ships course, speed, and location. The second, third, and fifth channels are movies requested by teachers for specific classes and usually are documentaries or dramas on historical events dealing with the countries we are visiting or the world as a whole. The fourth channel has a slide show of shipboard announcements. Finally our 6^th channel is kids movies for all the faculty's children (and us, because really, who can resist Disney?).