Good morning, everyone, it is Shauna, correspondent for Without Bags, and I am here live today actually from the MS Herald Cong, which is a postal ship that travels up the coast of Norway, delivering postage from all … you know going in and out of all the little different cities around the fjords of Norway. So first, I want to say I am so, so happy that I have signals, even live chat with guys, yesterday when they were doing the orientation for the ship, they were talking about the signal being absolutely zilch the entire trip for a week, and you know, I’m so connected to you guys, and I would feel so sad if I couldn’t share with you guys what’s going on, so this morning I woke up and I have three whole bars, I’m so, so happy, so we get to share, which is so exciting.

So, first thing I wanted to share with you guys was the fact that I am actually in a cabin, well, of course I’m in a cabin, but I will be in this cabin for a week. I have never been on a cruise before. Ever. And I’m not quite so sure that I can call this a cruise, you know, many, many people think about a cruise as the huge ships with pools and bars and restaurants. This is a working postal ship. There are only 200 people on board this ship, and so in a way, it’s very private from that standpoint. But of course the other side of that is that it’s very small, compared to you know, normally, when I’m out traveling for Without Bags, I am roaming around land, and there’s buildings, and space and you know, I’m originally from Arizona, which means I live in a desert, where there’s lots of space. So this is very new for me and yesterday, when I first got on the boat, I actually think I had a little bit of claustrophobia. I have never experienced that before.

So very long story short, you know got into my cabin, and literally, actually kind of felt a little bit short of breath, and I was starting to panic just a little bit. So you know, traveling is all about new experiences, right? So this was certainly a new experience for me.

After I had some water, walked around on some of the outside patio decks and stuff … there’s three decks that have external patios … so I walked around on some of those patios and felt better, couldn’t fall asleep, till about 1:45 in the morning, and of course, woke up due to the waves and the motion of the boat this morning at about 6:45. So I’m sure that means I will crash tonight, but maybe that’s good. You know, this is all about new experiences. And anybody who has never been on a cruise before, I maybe would recommend doing like a two or three day, cruise. This is a five or six days on the boat. But I am feeling much better this morning, so no concerns anybody, everything is just fine.

Anyway, so I’m very excited about this trip. I’m going in and out of these tiny cities, so basically there are cities along the way that we’re going to stop at, so for example, today, the city we’re going to stop at, and of course, I’m going to butcher all of the names, so I will have the Without Bags administrative team post a full list of everywhere that I’m stopping, and I’ll try to check in at the cities with pictures and stuff, so you guys can check the Facebook feed and check the blog, you know Without Bags, anyway, so we get to stop in all these little cities and we get to do activities in the cities, so one of the things I was so, so excited about was at the end of the trip I was supposed to go on an ATV through the snow, up to the Russian border, but apparently there has been so much snow, yay climate change, there has been so much snow that that has been canceled. And one of the other options was to go dog sledding, and that has also been canceled.

So, you know, we will find lots of other awesome things to do, so today one of the things I’m doing instead of my original trips there, was to go to, there’s an aquarium and a famous mountain range or something, All Staff I think it’s called.