Thursday January 15^th

It's finally THE day! The cruise starts today! I woke up at 4 in the morning, not tired at all, super exited to start this day! With tessje, we got ready and then we left to the airport. There Teri mom left, and once we checked in our luggage, we went to the gate B2, ready to start our trip! It was a super feeling, traveling with one of my best friend, just the 2 of us!

Our flight to Fort Lauderdale!

There weren't reserved seats, so we found the last 2 seats next to each other on the last rank of the plane, next to an old man and behind a woman and her crying baby...

But it didn't matter, even that wouldn't ruin our excitement!

First view of Fort Lauderdale

The flight was about 3 hours, I slept a big part, worked on my homework or played with the baby in front of me. It's crazy to think that in America, it takes 3 hours to go from the North of the country to the South...it takes about the same time to go from the North of Europe to the South! A country almost as big as a continent! When we arrived at Fort Lauderdale, we couldn't go out of the airport, because the closest interesting things (fastfoods) were 2 hours by foot! And we also had to wait for Elizabeth and the rest of the exchange students. When they finally arrived 3 hours later, we took the bus to Miami. In the bus, Elizabeth explained to us all the rules on the boat, what was free, what was not...We were 26 I think, 12 exchange students. After 20 minutes, we arrived in Miami..super hot! It was around 25 Celcius I guess, it's where it really started to feel like vacation! We also discovered the boat...H.U.G.E!

Our ship: you can see the size compared to a palm tree...

Seriously! This thing has 12 floors, and can contain 8000 people! We had to check in before, and it took forever because none of us was in the cabin he was supposed to be so we had to switch and explain..finally after 1 hour we got on the ship. There, we were starving because we hadn't eaten anything since 4 in the morning, so we didn't even go to the cabin, we took our bags with us and we went on the deck to eat something. All the food on the boat was free! So there was a buffet, you could eat as much as you want, salty, sweet, ice cream, drinks... We had an amazing view on all Miami, it was gorgeous!

MIAMI!!!

After that, we walked a bit around the ship: 1 water slide, 4 hot tubs, 3 swimming pools, a spa, a jogging track, a fitness center, a mini golf, a casino, 2 night clubs, 3 big dinning rooms, tens of restaurants, an art gallery... looked more like a hotel than a boat!

Tess and I next went to our cabin that we are sharing with Quynh (an exchange student from Vietnam) and her host mom. They came first so they took the bed and Tess and I had to share the only small bed and the mattress on the floor...

Then we went back on the deck, it was still warm, (we were on shorts and tin tops), but very windy so not hot enough to just lay down and tan. We had a meeting, where the crew explained to us how to react in an emergency. After that, we tried to find our cabin, but the boat is big that we got lost and we needed 15 minutes to get there. We looked at the excursions offered by the boat while we are in mexico and key west (we have to pay more, it's not free). We decided to do catamaran and snorkeling in key west, and cavern and swimming with sea turtles in mexico. After be booked them, we dressed up and went to dinner. There we had 3 tables for all 25 of us. It was a really fancy restaurant, we had our own waitress, Yulia, from Belarus, super nice! On the menu, we could order as many main entrances, main courses and desserts as we wanted, all free. We could have ordered the whole menu if we wanted! I got 1 entrance, 2main courses, and 2 desserts! The food was amazing! All the waiters even stood on the tables at the end of the dinner and danced!

Fancy restaurant

Some of our exchange students... On the left: Me, Aline(Belgium) and Anna(Germany). On the right: Ingrid(Norway), Tessje(Germany), and Quynh (Vietnam)

After that we went to bed because it was an exhausting day..exhausting but amazing!