June 19- Land Ho!

My alarm woke me up this morning! Hurray!! I finally got to eat breakfast on the ship! Harrah!! I got up at 7:00 as planned and had a lovely breakfast of fruit, pancakes, and scrambled eggs with Courtney. She had class at 8:00, so I sat around and red the material due today for my religions class. At 9:00, I went to the campus store for my one hour of work study. The store closed at noon today because we're scheduled to reach Lisbon soon. I guess according to international customs laws, the ship isn't allowed to sell goods while in port.

My art history class was next. I liked it better today than yesterday (probably because I did the reading like I was supposed to). It was all very interesting. We learned about certain cities that were destroyed by catastrophic events, and how they were rebuilt after the disasters. The few case studies we looked at were Pompeii after Mt. Vesuvius blew in 79 AD, London after the Great Fire in 1666, and Lisbon after the earthquake in 1755. Cool stuff.

Next was lunch, then lit class. We discussed the first several chapter of Don Quixote, and I have to say I truly enjoy this book. We won't have time to read all of it, but I fully intend to finish it once I get home. Class was let our early so that we could all go out on the deck and watch as we sailed into port. Lisbon is so beautiful!! It was amazing to be able to look at all of the buildings on the coast as we cruised by. even though we reached Portugal earlier than scheduled, we still have to wait to go on land. Everyone has classes tomorrow that are mandatory to attend. I'm not sure if we'll be able to leave the ship once the last class is done or if we will still have to wait until Saturday morning (the day we were suppose to get to Lisbon).

Lisbon, Portugal

Crusin' into port

Finally docked

My religions class was good. My teacher lectured on the "Ten Waves of Religion" which broadly covers the earliest religious practices to today's time. We also started to learn about paganism which I'm really curious about. I know basically nothing about indigenous European religions, so I'm excited to find out more about them. Next was homework. Then dinner. Then more homework.

We had an optional meeting to go to that my art history teacher, Betsy Chunko, was putting on about Lisbon. She knows the area pretty well, and she just gave us some suggestions of what to see, what to eat, where to go, and what to do while in Portugal. A lot of it was information she had already give me in class, but there were several helpful tips that I picked up for this weekend.

That's basically it for today. I have a lot of reading to do before bed. Good night.