At Sea.. cruising back home

So I've only got a few days left on the Golden Bear. I finished my finals yesterday, and am feeling a lot better now. I slept in this morning, seeing as I was averaging fours hours of sleep a night for about a week before that, mostly studying for my tests. I don't know about my other two classes yet, but I do know that I got an A in physics. On a much more interesting note, I had my bridge watch and engine watch this week too. As Cal Poly students we're also required to complete one "watch" rotation up on the bridge and down in the engine room, mostly for our own

benefit but also because the CMA cadets have to do it every day. Both the bridge and engine were very, very interesting. It was really cool to watch them navigate the ship up on the bridge, especially since it was the last night for the CMA seniors that were on watch, and so they turned off all their GPS systems and navigated by the stars!! They let us steer at the helm for a few minutes each also. I did allright, but the other Cal Poly girl that was with me turned it way too far, and the next minute guages start beeping and a light starts flashing that says "off course", and then they'd had enough of us trying to steer. The engine room was impressive too. At first we went in to the control room and saw where all the controls and guages are for pressure and heat, and where the huge generators that power everything in the ship are. Then, one of the engineer seniors took us on a tour of the engine room and even though I honestly don't know what I was looking at half of the time, I do know that everything was huge!! The pistons looked like tree trunks. Today we're actually by Catalina Island, although we're spending the whole day driving around in circles as the deck cadets have to practice "rubber docking" the ship. Basically, they put a floating bouy out in the water and they have to try and drive a one-mile circle and bring the ship back parked exactly next to the bouy.

They turned off all their GPS systems and navigated by the stars