Paperwork, Paperwork and more Paperwork...and 6 MONTHS!

I have never had so much paperwork to do in my life. I think I have been to just about every academic office at my school so far. Study abroad, academic services, student life, registrar, dean's office, 2 advisers, the receptionist at the Business School has begun to recognize me! I still have lots of signatures to obtain.

At this time, since being accepted and getting put into the system for that, I have put in my leave of absence from Gonzaga, which is mandatory. The school requires me to "leave" for the semester I am gone since I will technically be enrolled in another university.

I have completed a change of advisor as well. That is not required at all. I don't think you technically even need to meet with your advisor, nope never mind, that course approval form says you must see your advisor. I changed my advisor because she is more experienced with what I am truly interested in. She is also my consumer behavior professor, graduated from Gonzaga, studied abroad with Gonzaga in Florence and Volunteered with the Jesuit Volunteer Corp. The other guy had been her advisor when she was a student, shows his age a bit.

Finally as you all know I have been getting course approval. The dean's office never called to let me know that he signed the forms, but luckily after my consumer behavior class this morning I went to their office and he had just finished signing them! Great timing oh yeah!

After the course approval I had to go drop everything off at the registrars office. The people there are so nice and knowledgeable. If you have a question they probably know the answer and if they don't know the answer they will tell you exactly where to go to get the answer.

I've been able to get a lot of paperwork done, but of course it won't end till I am on that ship waving goodbye to whoever goes to Nova Scotia with me, if any one.

SPEAKING OF EMBARKATION DAY! It is EXACTLY 6 months till we embark on this amazing journey! Are you excited? I'm excited. Of course I'm excited I'm the one going, but aren't you EXCITED!? Of course you are!  =D

Well it's Friday and I am going to play black light mini-golf with some friends tonight. Should be mountain loads of fun! Have a happy Friday!

Port of Halifax Nova Scotia. According to my friend Adam a really terrible explosion happened here. Maybe I'll find out more when I go there in 6 months!

What a crazy 5 days!

Oh my goodness! I honestly don't know if I could be more busy right now! Let me update since Saturday. Note: A lot of this won't directly relate to SAS, but I will get to SAS stuff. Monday was Presidents day and we didn't have class. WOOHOO! I was at a conference for the Pacific North West district of Circle K International.

For those of you who don't know what Circle K is, it's the college level of Key club and Kiwanis.  This organization does a lot all over the world through volunteering and service. Right now the long term project we have going is called eliMiNaTe check it out at http://sites.kiwanis.org/kiwanis/en/theELIMINATEproject/home.aspx

Anyways, I'm at a conference Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and as a result Monday is really my only day off all week to sit back and relax. So that's exactly what I did. I was actually kind of forced to because my car's battery was dead and no one was available to give me a jump until I caved in and called campus security and got a jump. After getting my car jumped I went for an hour drive to get the battery juiced back up. I went North to colville and from what I can tell from my evening drive is that the drive up to and through Canada in May will be very pretty. The rest of the night is spent watching TV and catching up with people I hadn't talked to in awhile.

Tuesday I had class. However in my relaxed state of bliss on Monday I completely forgot about my homework for Tuesday. GENIUS! Fortunately in my ethics class we had a quick 5 page introduction to Immanuel Kant's grounding in metaphysics so I was able to read that before class. An hour after my ethics class I had Psychology Research methods, I have this class every day, I was supposed to make up a quiz I missed in that class today however, I also forgot to study. Normally I study during class for his quizzes since they're at the end, AND the recency effect says that I will remember what I just learned better than what I learned a day or so ago. So while he talks about the same thing he talked about the day before I study. NOT TODAY THOUGH! we had lab and therefore no time to study during class. I convinced him to let me take the quiz today. Still haven't studied....
Tuesday nights are always INSANELY busy because I have Circle K club meetings. Im the Vice President of service. Since we're a service club I tend to be busy with that. Our meetings are at 9pm and this one went longer than usual. Also Tuesday night I had to study for my Advertising exam that was this morning at 7:30AM!!!! I know right?! what an ungodly hour! Needless to say, Im a little tired today.

So here we are at today, Wednesday. I had that evil advertising exam this morning and I think it went ok. After advertising I had consumer behavior <3, got my exam back in that class and I did alright, I expected to do better but going over it, she gave me the right grade. Immediately after CB, I got started on SAS stuff. HA I told you I'd get there!

On Tuesday I was able to get 2 permission to transfer credit forms 98% completed. All I needed after Tuesday was 2 signatures. I got the first signature from my new advisor, my CB professor, and I am now waiting for the Dean of the Business school to sign off on my change of advisor and the classes. It all took a lot of running around and I am nowhere near done running around.
I wasn't able to get a religion course approved. At Gonzaga we have to take 3 religion courses, and I was hoping I could take one at SAS. Right now that's looking like it won't happen. If that's the case....I haven't thought about that yet...I'll get there when I need to. Here's the list of what I was able to get approved:
International Marketing
The Science of Love- Psychology of intimacy at Gonzaga
Comedy Workshop- Transferring as a general elective
I still need to get Global Studies approved, hopefully. If I can't get that class approved it will be incredibly painful to attend and put any effort into. I need to get a few other classes approved still. Just slowly working on crossing all those bridges.

The craziness will continue for the next few days, but I have no SAS plans for the rest of the week. I need to go study for the Research quiz and then I need to go get a new car battery.

Busy Busy Busy!

Pacific Northwest District of Circle K: Alaska, Yukon and BC, Washington, Oregon, North Idaho and Northern California.

My Voyage

I joined the Semester at Sea Fall 2012 group on facebook and it's awesome. I found out that my voyage is going to be the first route that Semester at Sea has taken so here's our itinerary:
Halifax Nova Scotia - August 23rd- Embark
Galway Ireland - August 31st
Dublin Ireland - September 2nd - September 3rd
London England- September 5th - September 8th
Antwerp Belgium - September 10th - September 15st
Lisbon Portugal - September 19th- September 21st (We'll be at sea for my 22nd Birthday)
Cadiz Spain - September 23rd - September 26th
Casablanca Morocco - September 28th- October 1st
Tema Ghana - October 8th - October 11th
Cape Town South Africa - October 18th - October 22nd
Buenos Aires Argentina - November 2nd - November 5th (we'll be at sea for Halloween)
Montevideo Uruguay - November 6th- November 8th
Rio de Janerio Brazil - November 11th- November 13th (Previously Rio was only available through an excursion)
Manaus Brazil - November 22nd - November 24th (Thanksgiving and Black Friday here)
Roseau Dominica- December 1st- December 2nd (Happy Birthday Mom!)
Ft. Lauderdale Florida- December 7th- Debark

I have begun the process of getting my classes approved for transfer. I have to do this because Gonzaga doesn't sponsor or work with Semester at Sea at all so I have to get all my classes approved and make sure my financial aid will transfer. So far I have 2 classes approved and I have hopefully 8 more to get approved. I'm getting more than what I will actually be taking approved because I might not get to take my first choice classes.
At this point I am just getting all the paperwork done that I need to do at my school. This summer I will be signing up for classes and "excursions" known to SAS as international field programs. I will also be getting all my travel documents in order. You will absolutely hear about that process as well.

I am getting more and more excited every day. I found a new blog to read :
http://www.imonaboat.net/ImOnABoat.net/Welcome.html
Check it out if you're so inclined.
I should probably start looking into flights to Nova Scotia from Anchorage....

Our voyage Map

The lost raindow trout

Hello all! This is my blog journal of my experience with semester at sea from beginning to end. I've already been accepted (WOO!) and I can't believe where I will be in 6 months and what I will be doing.
There are tons of blogs out there and they are great! I love camels and chocolates' blog. I really just want to be another source for any one who wants to know more about semester at sea, or entertainment for my fellow SASers (I don't know if I like that).
A little about me for some perspective. I am a student at Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington (Love my Zags!) and a junior. I'm a transfer student from the University of San Francisco. I only spent a year there and I learned so much about myself.
I'm from Anchorage, Alaska and I love fishing! You might be wondering about the web address since its kind of a funky name. I am a fishermen (Girls Fish Too!) and my favorite fish to catch is the rainbow trout. They are gorgeous and simply fun to catch. They are a migratory fish and I thought it would be funny if a fish got lost and went on all these amazing adventures. I am the lost rainbow trout, and these are my adventures on the Fall 2012 Atlantic exploration with Semester at Sea.