Panama Canal/Miami

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Our remaining three days on the ship were mostly spent swapping pictures and just hanging out, but there was also the Ambassadors Ball. Everybody dressed up real nice (I wore my suit that I bought in Vietnam) and we were served a real nice three course dinner along with a crazy dessert buffet. In addition to this, we also transitted through the Panama Canal which was a cool experience. We went through several locks to get out of the Pacific Ocean and up to the big man made lake, and then we went down through a couple more locks to get back to the Atlantic Ocean. It took the full day to get through because it was a slow process going up and down the locks, and we also had to go very slow in the lake due to traffic of other boats and ships. We also were going through the canal at the same time as a Russian Warship (apparently the first to go through since World War II), so that was pretty interesting to see.
Everybody woke up at like 5:30 in the morning to watch the sunrise and the ship get into our final port, Miami, Florida. It was kind of sad saying goodbye to all of the people that I had just traveled the world with, but I was also kind of excited to be home for the first time in three and a half months.

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