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The beginning of the end

Hey dude! What's going on here? We've only just begun, to sail. We're not
going home in one week are we?
In that case I'd like to thank Gunilla for 2 amazing first months with
you. Now it's going to be one and a half year until we will be on board
again. I will miss it. I will miss the sunrise. I Will miss the time when
we're setting sails, I will even miss the night watches, even if it's not
the funniest thing you can do on a boat – get up 3.30 in the morning and
have lessons. But crazy things like that reminds you of what you're
actually doing. You are on a boat in the Mediterranean, with all the
awesome persons from school, you're learning things night and day, you
will get a great experience of it. And last... It's our school. Mum is
reminding me all the time of how lucky I am. And that other students would
be flying to do what I'm doing. So I'm will enjoy every single second of
this boat, even if I miss things and people at home. Because I know that I
will miss Gunilla from the day I'm leaving her until I'm going on board
again. These 2 months has been very good for me. I've learned to believe
in myself and trust other persons, which I have had a hard time with
before. "What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger!" That's a perfect
sentence to think of when you are scared, tired or just want to go home to
your mum and dad. I admit that I have felt so so so homesick, both home
to Grebbestad and home to the islands, to the wonderful people who told me
I could do this and they was right about that, I could do it and I AM
doing it right now..

It's Sunday today, and also "första advent". Some of us spend the hole day
talking of christmas traditions and christmas food. I haven't realized
that small things in life could be so important to you, like special food,
your family (that's not a small thing though), your room and your friends.
I never thought I would miss my room and my bed as much as I have. And I
didn't think I was going to get tears in my eyes when I heard
christmas-music. Or get nostalic when someone was eating a clementine, or
change the recipe of scones to "christmas scones". In our case we put in
cinnamon, sugar and cardamom in and GOD, it tasted great!

So, what happened today? Not very much, in my case, I was ill, It felt
like my head was going to explode any minute. Sadly enough it was the last
time we left port for one and a half year. We were suppose to leave
yesterday, but a storm was coming from wrong direction so we stayed in
Cartagena one night more. The weather was sunny, quite windy and nice.
They didn't do very much on the watch, except climbing in the masts for a
while.

The most used sentence today was "this is the last time we....". Everyone
got panic when Tommy told us that we only could have 19 kg + 5 kg in the
hand luggage when we're flying home, and no computerbag. When we flew here
we were aloud to have 20 kg + 5 kg in hand luggage + computerbag. And the
most of us were buying quite much stuff in Barcelona. This we'll be
exciting. Like everything else here on Gunilla.

Alicia Kellett. Starboard.