This morning we passed Santa Maria which is part of the nine islands that make up the Azores. Yesterday, we passed Pico and several other islands but they were so far away that we could barely see their outline on the horizon. The official language of the Azores is Portuguese and their currency is the Euro. The island chain has a population of about 245,000.

It was so nice to see some land after traveling for 5 days and seeing nothing but ocean. The water near these islands was the deepest most beautiful color. It looked like water you would see at a theme park attraction that they had colored to look so beautiful.

Our classes are going well, we have a few more before we reach Spain and then we will not have classes for 12 days. I am sure that is hard on the students, but this program really wants to afford them the opportunity to go explore more than just the tourist areas in each port. Some of the students do independent travel in the countries; they just book flights with a few friends and away they go. They are so brave aren't they?

Fun Facts:

-Most of the students on the ship are in their 3rd and 4th year of college, although we do have some second and first year students.

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu is traveling with us because he a huge fan of the Semester at Sea program. He is a member of the Semester at Sea Board of Trustees and has traveled with the program several times

-We keep pushing our clocks forward an hour... it really stinks. We will do this a total of 24 times. So far we have lost 4 hours if you count the time from Norfolk, and tonight we lose another one