TWO DAYS TO EMBARKATION

Today, we walked down to the port and I SAW MY SHIP!!!! The awesome news is that since I'm a grad student, I get to board a day early so tomorrow around 2pm, I will get to see where I'm living for the next two months :)

When I went on SAS last time, it was on a different ship. Actually, my voyage in Spring '04 was the last voyage on the SS Universe Explorer :( The new ship's name is the MV Explorer.

On the walk to the bus stop today I got to speak with a bunch of middle school students who were celebrating their graduation. They were so eager to tell me about their school and very interested to learn the similarities and differences between middle schools in the US and in the Bahamas.

I also got advice (from the students and a few other people I met and talk to throughout the day) to move to the Bahamas to become a teacher here. Because tourism is so lucrative, there is no income tax and the education budget is not effected by the recession. Apparently, the Ministry of Education is trying to attract foreign teachers to move to the Bahamas and they also pay for housing. I'm kind of interested....but, my goal is to work in a Spanish speaking country so I can become fluent. English is the primary and very dominant language in the Bahamas due to British colonization. Either way, I plan to go to the prime minister's office tomorrow morning to get some more information on the job opportunities here for teachers.

We went to a Pirate Museum today in downtown Nassau. Pirate Fun Fact: Blackbeard died at age 38 which was considered "old age" for pirates...since the average life expectancy was 25. Laura...I may have picked up a surprise for you at the pirate museum :)