First off can I just say that I’m in a good mood? Why you ask? Well first off, understand that internet on the ship cost 40 cents a minute…yeah, pretty ridiculous. And for the next three days it’s free!! Such a big deal. I’m usually too cheap to check my email so the fact that I might even get to chat online is pretty exciting.
And my iTunes suddenly started working again yesterday. It’s been down for the last month and a half and in turn I haven’t had access to my favorite music. All 5000 songs are accessible once again!
And Sea Olympics was yesterday and out of the eight competing “seas” of people, my sea, the Aegean Sea won!! But more on that in a minute…
And my Japan midterm is finished. Haven’t yet received the grade on it, but regardless, it’s over with.
And last but definitely not least, I’ll be in India on Wednesday. I’ve wanted to go to India for so long and it’s such a big deal to me that it hasn’t hit me yet. I’ve been too caught with papers, exams, and readings, but trust me, in the next couple days I’ll find more time to think, hopefully, and then it will really hit me. After India we’re on the ship for one day and then we hit Burma. So cool.
Okay, so yeah. Sea Olympics were yesterday. The ship is split up into “seas,” and in my case, because my floor has so few people, our sea is the entire 2nd floor student community. I should break down who is on the second floor but that would take too long. But know that the people to sign up for Semester at Sea and pay their deposit last our on the bottom floor of the ship, aka our floor. So there is a higher ratio of boys on our floor than on any other ship and in general we joke that we’re an irresponsible, poor floor. Oh and our floor is made up of a bunch of “ballers.” No joke.
Our sea color was white and we called ourselves the “Tightie Whities” although we never referred to our team name and I’m pretty sure everyone thought we were the “White Tees.” I’m trying to figure out how to best describe our sea in comparison with the rest of the ship. Okay so at the opening ceremonies/talent show the night before the Olympics, all the seas sat in sections in the Union, cheering and chanting and what not. Our cheer? It consisted of one of our guys walking around with speakers in his hands that were attached to an iPod. The rap song “Slang in my white tee” blasted out of it as he danced around our section, attempting to pump us up. We basically cheered “Yep in my white tee!” a million times over the music as the guys danced around and bobbed their heads like they were thugs. There was more to our cheer like, “Portholed in my white tee, Bold in my white tee, Whole Aegean Sea getting gold in my white tee,” but everyone kept getting lost with how many “Yeps” we had said so it fell apart. Oh and our other cheer was “Who let the dogs out? A-G-AN Sea!” So yeah, we were the ballers of the ship. There were two groups on our sea, there were the guys who were our captains and all their friends on the floor, and the rest of us who obviously had not picked out the chant or helped plan our skit which apparently was too racey according to one of our deans. But the talent show and the Olympics were fun regardless. And our team did end up winning so I can’t complain too much.
Oh, but the talent show. It was awesome. Each sea had to do two skits or talents and there was such a variety of things performed. There were a million hilarious Dr. Murphy impersonations (he’s our global studies professor). All the faculty and staff on the ship plus the adult passengers and kids of teachers were part of a competing sea. They made a short film for their talent about “The Truth Behind Semester at Sea”. It was about how all the teachers and faculty were acting and how they had all auditioned for roles before the voyage began. It was pretty funny. One boy was a stand-up comedian. Some girl sang a song on her guitar about finding a condom in her rice and a tampon in the pool. The chorus to the song was “Let this me a message to you kids on this ship. You’re can’t flush anything down that isn’t…” There were team dances and skits too. One of the girls from our floor, Arian, sang opera as that is what she studies at her home school and then a group of people redid the music video for “Call on Me” and did sexual aerobic moves.
The actual Olympics lasted all day yesterday. There were so many competitions. There was a mashed potato sculpture contest, limbo, checkers, tug of war, twister, monopoly, texas hold em, a relay race, pictionary, a scavenger hunt, ping pong, lemonade beer pong, etc. There was even a synchronized swimming competition. Weather was bad, however, so it ended up being held in the Union instead of the swimming pool. But it was still awesome. Some seas really put a lot of effort into their acts. Kathryn was supposed to represent our sea for women’s basketball but it was postponed due to rain.
I signed up for Pictionary, one of the few competitions that our sea did poorly in. I think we got like 6th our of 8 teams and the only reason we didn’t get last is because two seas forfeited at the end because they didn’t want to go through another round.
At the end of the day everyone gathered in the Union to watch the synchronized swimmers and find out the results for the day. They started with 8th place, then 7th, and so on. Each time they didn’t say our teams name I got excited. “Woah, so we at least got fifth place!” I would say each time we weren’t called. It was down to our sea and the Bering Sea at the end and when they announced our name so much cheering and screaming commenced. Soon enough the intro to “Slang in my white tee” was playing and we were rapping our chant again. The guys on our team had been so rowdy the entire time, almost embarrassingly so, so I was happy for them when we won…and, of course, I was happy for myself because by winning that means our sea gets to get off the ship first when we arrive to San Diego in December. Disembarking everyone will take like 8 hours so to get off right away is a big deal.
So now it’s back to classes.
The ships been pretty rocky lately because of long swells. The other day during lunch I was watching my pear roll back and forth on the table as our ship rocked back and forth and about twenty feet away from me I watched as this cart full of pitchers of ice cold water began rolling across the carpet. “Oh my god,” I said quietly, “Oh my god!” I shouted to my friends at the table as the cart hit the back of a boy’s chair and numerous water pitchers poured all down his back. He didn’t even see it coming. “You have got to be kidding me!” he said as he got up quickly. I was laughing so hard I was crying.
We set our clocks ahead 30 minutes last night. Crazy, huh? So now I’m 10 and a half hours ahead of Chicago time…I think. Something like that. On the 24th I will be exactly on the other side of the world.
So yeah, everything is going great here. I’m living one day at a time but still looking forward to India and the countries that follow. Hope all is well back home.
Much love.
Oh and P.S. the whole internet thing? Turns out it’s ridiculously slow. Painfully slow. It’s not even worth the being free.
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