As the dawn breaks...

A long night of homework and coffee and my first sunrise on the ship. So incredibly beautiful.

Also, I'm exotic.

One more thing I forgot to write about yesterday! When we went to the market all of the merchants loooved me. One guy came up to me and just started speaking to me in all of these different languages and I kind of just laughed and shrugged before I realized I should let him know I speak English, and I was like "I'm sorry, I can't understand you!" and he goes "Oh, where are you from?" And I said "United States" and he goes "Oh, you're American, I never would have guessed!" I asked where he thought I was from and he said "Italy." People abroad always think I'm Italian! Another guy thought I was from Germany. Pretty cool. I love looking exotic and not looking American pretty much always works in my favor.

sailin'

Hey y’all. We just left Mauritius and are on are way to India. Mauritius was GORGEOUS. Because of past SAS trips where people were a little more than disrespectful to the island, however, SAS isn’t allowed to stay overnight… yeah.  A day trip was nice, though. Sadly our one day was on a Sunday, which meant that most touristy things were closed.  My friends and I ended up spending the day on the beach swimming and relaxing which was a nice needed break because school is hectic right now.  I also bought one of those islandy dance outfits that I have wanted my ENTIRE LIFE and now I own one. I ended up wearing it around the boat last night half because I was excited and half because Paige made me but it was pretty fun.

I realize I haven’t updated on boat life in awhile.  It’s mostly just school, school and more school. We’re halfway through now which means everything is kind of peaking. Projects due, presentations, midterms, etc.  Everyone is also now comfortable and accustomed to travel so we basically just wait until the next port when we can get out and explore and then we sadly slump back to the boat for onship time.

One thing I just learned about SAS is that it takes YEARS to plan each voyage. It’s noe like there are deans and teachers and staff that continuously sail around the world. Each voyage is totally unique with it’s own dean, medical staff, professors, everything. These groups of people work together for years to make their voyage great and run smoothly and function as a legitimate university. I think that is the most awesome thing and that’s a big part of why the majority of the faculty/staff are so cool, because they’re so dedicated to us and to this program because they’ve spent such a long time preparing for it.  I’m really happy with all of the administration and professors on my trip but I’m sure for every trip they’re just as awesome.

We have a few days until we get to India on I think March 6. While there I will be doing an FDP for my religion class called “Ghandi’s Legacy in Non violence” and going to Agra and New Dheli to see the Taj Majal.  Apparently the first night we are in Chennai the Cricket World Cup is going and I am trying SO hard to convince someone to go with me. How epic would that be?! I’ll keep you updated on whether or not it pans out. Also after India apparently it will start to get colder so I’m trying to soak up as much sun as I can right now. I love my tan and do not want it to fade before I get home.

I’m sorry I don’t have too much other news. I’m going to try to start updating relatively consistently again so y’all know what I’m up to. For my religion class we had to do presentations on religious leaders and I picked someone kind of unconventional, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. For those of you don’t know he is a huge advocate for peace/human rights activist and liberal Christian who was extremely influential in the end of apartheid. In my research I discovered he is retiring and his last public appearance is in Tacoma, Washington on May 13… yeah, you better believe I’m going! Rollie was sweet enough to secure tickets since I have no internet and would love nothing more than to see Tutu speak, especially his last public appearance outside of South Africa maybe ever, and I think that will be a nice away to start integrating everything I’m learning here back into my home life. Tutu started his retirment process on his 79th birthday last year and celebrated by sailing on the Fall 2010 SAS Voyage. Im pretty jealous to have missed that but think his association with this program says a lot for it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to do some reading and enjoy this heat… it’s actually pretty cloudy but I’m hoping the sun will come out soon. Love.

Rio

Rio was about a month ago now so I’m just going to give a quick overview.  If y’all remember from my Amazon entry, right before we left I decided to go swimming. Badddd decision. I felt fine for about 24 hours but the next day I got SICK. Rio was still cool, but that definitely put a damper on everything.

We got there around 9am after flying all night and went right into tourism Israel-style.  We started by getting breakfast at a little café but I couldn’t keep anything down so that was kind of a fail, but the beach was gorgeous. After that we took jeep rides up to see the Christ the Redeemer status which was EPIC. If nothing else has ever been epic, the Jesus statue is.  The ride was pretty bumpy but we got to see a lot of Rio which was cool too. The view from the top of the mountain is amazing. Rio is such a beautiful city.

After teaching everyone how to lay on the ground and get the full statue in the picture I was feeling exhausted from the heat and being sick so I went to get some juice and ice cream from the snack bar there. I ended up sitting with a few people who didn’t speak English and we had a lot of fun signing back and forth and trying to figure out what the other person was saying.

Around 1pm we left and continued to drive around Rio seeing different things. A couple of pretty views, some monkeys and some waterfalls.  I ended up passing out in the jeep at one point so that was kind of it for me.  We eventually got back to the hotel and I spent the rest of the night in bed watching BBC World News as it was the only thing in English.

The next day I woke up feeling all right probably because I hadn’t eaten anything so there was nothing to upset my stomach.  We were supposed to go to a ropes course and I was anxious to participate so I took some pepto bismol and headed out with the group.

Here is the thing about ropes courses. They TERRIFY ME. For anyone who doesn’t know, a ropes course is a series of obstacles 30+ feet in the air that you do while attached to a caribener and a harness.  For someone afraid of heights it is terrifying. Google it.

They used to have these at camps I went to when I was younger and not only have I never completed one, but I have never even been on one where I didn’t cry at some point. I am happy and proud to say that I successfully completed the entire ropes course with a smile on my face! I was shaking for a while but as I got farther and farther into it my adrenaline picked up and I finished rather quickly.  It ended up with a zip line which was great as well.

After the ropes course I went with a girl from my group to Parque Loge which is basically a super epic Italian garden/castle type thing that this guy built for his Italian opera singer wife so she would feel more at home in Rio. They had turned it into a café/modern art museum and it was really interesting to see. My favorite exhibit were all of these paintings and cacti floating in the pool but there were some other cool ones too.

Sadly I couldn’t avoid eating any longer because I was getting closed to fainting so I had a grilled cheese.  I made it through the rest of the museum and about five minutes of shopping before I got sick again so I had to head back to the hotel for the rest of the day. 

The next morning we went to the airport around 5 am, flew back to Manaus and got back on the boat where I was able to recover in peace.

I liked Rio but being sick definitely put a damper on it and I would like to go back some day.

I love Cape Town.

Hey everyone. I know I have been slacking on the blog. The problem is that I want to make everything well written and I’m always so exhausted that I decide to not write instead of writing something that would tell y’all what I’ve been doing but wouldn’t be that pretty.  I’m going to try to ignore that and just get something down because I know everyone is anxious.

Cape Town was AMAZING. Seriously, AMAZING. Sadly, I only had about a day and a half there because of some technicalities which sucked and meant I didn’t really get to do the things I wanted to do and I didn’t get to do anything cultural and I am the queen of slamming people for not doing cultural things in port so I’m a little disappointed in myself as far as that goes but it’s an excuse to go back.

We were supposed to get to Cape Town on the 17th. Around 7:30 am everyone poured out onto the decks to watch us sail into port. Cape Town is the most beautiful port EVER. It is absolutely gorgeous. So imagine everyones surprise when we sail right past it.  Hmmm.  All of a sudden The Voice comes over the announcements and tells us that it’s too windy and we can’t pull up along side without damaging the boat so we will have to circle for awhile until the wind calms down.  I’ll spare you the gory details, but this continued for about 25 hours.  We sailed in circles around the coast of Cape Town hearing announcements about the wind every 2 hours for 25 hours.  On the 18th around 10am we finally docked and not a moment too soon, people were getting ready to revolt.

I had my safari so I didn’t leave the boat when we docked because once we cleared immigration it was too late.  We left for our safari around 3pm, took a two hour flight to Durban and then a three hour drive into the middle of freakin’ nowhere.  We stayed in a bed and breakfast type place, there were 8 little cabin type things in the middle of nowhere along a path lit by Christmas lights. 

The next morning we woke up  at 4:45 to leave at 5 for our SAFARI.  It was very cool. We were in a really big reserve which made it really realistic but kind of hard to find animals.  We also only had 12 hours to safari. We did see elephants, buffalo, zebras, warthogs, giraffes, baboons and a number of birds.

The coolest part of the day was when we pulled up to this river and saw maybe five or six elephants, one of them a baby, drinking water and washing themselves and playing. It was the cutest thing ever. We continued to watch them and all of a sudden more elephants started coming down the hill and doing the same thing… and more… and more… We watched for about a half hour and saw an 80 elephant deep breeding herd approach the river, drink and swim across together.  That made the safari all worth it.

We saw all of the other animals close up (except the baboons) so it was pretty cool although I would like to d o another safari someday. I picked the cheapest one because in my mind all of the safaris are the same but turns out that’s not true.  We spent two days traveling and one day safari’ing and my roommate spent just a few hours traveling and got 2.5 days of safari-ing in Kruger and she saw EVERYTHING. Lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, monkeys, turtles, etc. Her pictures are epic and I’m really happy for her but kind of jealous. Oh well.

Anyway, I got back from the Safari around 6pm on the 20th, came back to the boat, showered and found my friends. We went out to dinner in the Waterfront and it was my first time experiencing Cape Town… I freaked out. It’s GORGEOUS.  Table Mountain, the sky, sea lions swimming, a giant mall, restaurants, musicians outside, jazz bars, sports bars…it was awesome.  We had dinner and then most of my friends were tired from partying for a few days so I went out to an Irish bar with my friend Alice which was pretty cool. All of the music was straight out of 2003 but I haven’t really spent too much time with her so it was fun to hang out and gossip.

The next day I went to Boulders Beach with Hassan, Sam and Jeff. It was INCREDIBLE. It’s a beach about 45 minutes from Cape Town right past where the Indian Ocean begins and there are penguins everywhere. We spent the day looking at penguins, lying in the sand, swimming (the water was FREEZING) and just relaxing.  Hassan is 100% better. He got surgery in his foot to remove the spines and had to get a bunch of stiches (so he couldn’t swim) but he is feeling much better and is totally back to his normal self.  At one point we were laying in the sand and this really eccentric women came up and wanted to take a picture of us when Hassans shorts blew a certain way in the wind and she stood there for about 10 minutes waiting but got her shot, then she told us she is a famous South African photographer. So I’m totally expecting to be on the cover of a sweet South African magazine.

Our last night we went out with all of our friends to a place called Mitchell’s for dinner and drinks and they had fish bowls! Which is basically a giant fish bowl of a blue drink that tastes like sprite. I have wanted one my whole life and I told my friend Liz this. She goes hold on, walks up to the bar and literally before I can order she has flirted her way into a free one for me. It was epic.  Around midnight everyone else went to Long Street to party but Mia and I were tired so we went back to the boat.

The last day was tough because there were sooo may cultural and adventurous things I wanted to do but I had to make a decision: do those things, or do things I need to do? I ended up just getting stuff done that I had to… went on the internet, uploaded pictures, skype, bought some things I needed, went to the post office, just basically ran errands. I’m sad to have missed out but feel much better to have been productive.  Everyone fell head over heels in love with Cape Town and it sounds like it’s going to be the reunion spot, and even if it’s not I would love to go back there because there is so much I want to see/do that I didn’t get a chance to.

All right, since I finally have something on paper I’m going to post this and I’ll write about Ghana and Rio later today.

wwwooooaaahhhhhh

We're currently sailing into Cape Town and let me just say it is THE MOST EPIC THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. I have always thought flying into Seattle was epic, but this is BEYOND epic.  Skyline along the water, a highway of clouds passing over Table Mountain and otherwise clear blue skies, I can't even describe this to you.  Google Image it, people. It's more than epic. It's magic.

Things are looking up today. With a week full of midterms and only one pubnight everyone is desperate to get off the boat.  We're running a bit beyond schedule but we should be off within two hours. Cape Town is the first port where everyone has to go face to face with an immigration official so it will take a few minutes but I don't even care, I just need to set foot on solid land. I've been making fun of people in the last two ports about freaking out when getting off the ship but now I'm right on board, or off board I should say.  Ha. I am fall over twice (while keeping my valuables close by) the second I see a street.

In other news, my hippie friend Coleman just said a chant and put oils on my foot to help it heal.  The chant wasn't really necessary but I requested it for authenticity.  At Hassan's grandmothers request I also drew a circle on the bottom of my foot because circles are very important.  If standard medicine and my lack of will power has failed me the last five years, it's time to try it the natural way and thus far it seems to be working. I'll keep you updated.

I'm going to go get dressed and sit outside and stare at Table Mountain until they let us off the boat.  I am SO. FREAKING. EXCITED. CAPE TOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rough waters

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't been around.  I can't recall how much I've written in the past about this but my friend Hassan is incredibly sick. In Ghana he had a run in with some sea urchins and got 107 spines in his feet. All but two are out but they are embedded deeply into his foot and he is having surgery in South Africa to remove them.  He has been running a high fever, all of his lymph nodes are swollen and the doctors on the boat aren't sure what is wrong with him.  The leading possibilities are sepsus (spelling?), malaria or hopefully just his body trying to reject the spines.  Regardless I am terrified.  Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers during the next few days and I hope more than anything that my next post has good news. I love you all.

Hey blog friends. On the ship it's the equivalent of midterm week and we only have six days (three now) in between Ghana and South Africa so it's been BUSY.  As soon as I have a moment I will finish my Ghana entry and write about Rio too because I realized I never did - that one will be relatively short.  Love you!

Initial Ghana Reaction

So I’ve got to admit, up until now I’ve kind of been writing into the dark. I assumed my readership rested somewhere around 4.5 (four regular readers, one sometimes reader) so to find out there are so many more of you out there is a bit of a shock. I am going to ensure that this knowledge doesn’t affect my voice and I don’t think it will although I may pay more attention to my grammar and vocabulary… I know I’ve been slacking on the adjectives a lot and using “awesome” and “amazing” all encompassingly which is the sign of a bad writer so I will work on that as well (but don’t judge me if I use those words too often… sometime they’re the only way to describe the world!). Really though, it’s weird to find out so many people read your writing. I may just pretend I’m still writing into the dark because censorship kills the truth.

Anyway, I’m back from my Ghanaian homestay. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced in my entire life. So many of our experiences we consider “unique” because they’re so exciting and intense and life changing and we don’t realize that so many before and after us have had and will have the same moments, revelations, even conversations. That being said I believe I have experienced something that over 99.9% of the people living in industrialized nations will never experience… and that is the way the rest of the world, the ones we only know from textbooks and natural disasters and the 6:00 news, live.

I am not sure if I’ll be able to do a full article on my time in Senase right now because I’m still trying to figure it out myself. In conditions dirtier, poorer and more rustic than most of us will ever experience in passing I witnessed more community, love and happiness than I have ever and probably will ever see in a group of people. After traveling over ten hours to get to the Senase village we pulled in around 8pm. Not ten seconds after the bus stopped children of all ages swarmed around it waving, jumping and screaming. As we began to unload the bus the screams, which I thought were at their maximum, became even louder. The majority of the kids were 2-15 but I’m confident no age was missing from our welcome party. The second our bags were down it started, the questions we would hear over and over again the next three days: “What is your name?” “How old are you?” “Flash me!” (take a picture).

Before I continue I want to make it clear just how rustic these conditions are. We were the first white people many of them had ever seen, and sometimes they thought we were celebrities because the only white people they had ever seen were on the tvs in town. There was no plumbing or running water; they showered out of a bucket and had different stages of bathrooms ranging from planks over large holes, small holes in the ground and, in some public places, small closers where people would urinate into drains in the corner. The village is sustainable, meaning they can support themselves from the food they grow, but they have no money coming in so it’s hard to make changes. They do all of their cooking in pots on top of coals outside. Everyone carries everything in baskets on their heads. All of the trash goes into a big pile on one of the edges of the village. During my time there I saw women disposing of trash on top of this huge (like 100 foot long 30 foot tall) mound in sandals, children playing on top of the trash and a dead dog unceremoniously laying in the middle of the hill, though it was later gone and my friend Matt graciously informed of the most likely situation: ones dead pet became some else’s dinner. The children were only fed one meal a day (I’m not sure how often the adults eat) and they not only no tvs, ipods or video games but they also have no toys at all. The only material item I saw any child with was a young girl who had a small plastic pink ring, which she took off and placed on my pinky. Most families have between 5 and 8 kids, which makes for over 2,000 youth in a village of 4,000. The lack of toys causes the children to find other ways to entertain themselves: a lot of soccer (or should I say futbal?), a lot of drumming and a lot of dancing…the six year olds put us to shame without second thought.

I realize I just set up the scene and this is not the time to leave you hanging but I have to go meet my friend Tatiana. We are going to try and find an internet café so I can finally get pictures up for y’all! I promise I’ll finish my writings on Ghana soon because I am anxious to share everything I saw, but I would rather post this now cause it might be a day or two. xoxo

Chocolate: Not as sweet as you think

This post is a little bit less happy than the last one. I was recently shocked to discover that Hershey's Chocolate, one of the leading candy companies in the United States, has TERRIBLE business practices. A large percentage of their cocoa comes from West Africa in factories filled with child labor, forced labor and human trafficking. While other companies have been looking more closely at where their chocolate comes from, Hershey's refuses to do so and has no third party verification about the conditions of their work places.

Two girls on my ship have started a campaign for everyone on the ship to write a valentine to David West, the CEO of Hershey's, urging him to take a closer look at where our sweet chocolate snacks come from. As a ship of 700 college students all sending cards within a week, we hold a lot of power. But just think if each of us on the ship had their support systems at home send cards too. This is my plea to all of you readers to write letters to David West and your congressmen and to stop buying Hershey's chocolate; fair trade and locally produced chocolate are better options.

For more information, you can google this (its right there on the internet) or watch Chocolate: The Bitter Truth.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

GHANA!!!

Am I excited? You bet! This morning I tackled each and every one of my friends with a running, jumping "GHANA!!!!" I scolded people for not wearing sunscreen and got in line to get off the ship 20 minutes before it even cleared customs.

Unfortunately by first steps on African soil were not as epic as I had hoped. Immediately upon stepping onto the pier I was ushered onto the bus that will take us to the drum&dance workshop location and now I'm sitting on a big air conditioned bus alone because everyone else is probably still waking up. We're set to leave here in 15 minutes so hopefully Mia (and the other 50 students coming) will show up by then.

For the next 15 minutes ill just sit here, tapping my foot getting ready for culture shock #3. OH! MIA IS HERE! WE'RE GOING TO DANCE!!!

Oh, but one piece of bad news. New boat rule: no drums. Yeah, I'm devastated. Sorry Matthew, I was going to bring you a real African drum but not anymore. Ill just play my heart out in your honor while I'm here.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

casual lunch

Hello!  It’s been a good day so far. I woke up absolutely exhausted from staying up late last night blogging/studying so I’m laying in bed now, but it’s been an interesting enough day so far that I figured I would swing through and write a little bit before I forget. 

Meal time on the ship is pretty consistent… everyone is usually so hungry by the time a meal starts that we all eat right at the beginning (with the exception of breakfast – most people skip it but I wake up around 7:30 every morning to have coffee and a croissant).  We have a crew of about 15 so no one is ever sitting alone and we always have either three tables or multiple seating’s.  On occasion, however, there will be breaks in the routine that make it more interesting.

One of my favorite memories here that I have previously forgotten to write about was a week or two ago when Aidan, D and I were sitting by ourselves for some reason.  A life-long learning couple, Betty and Boyd, came to sit with us.  Betty and Boyd are arguably the oldest people on the ship.  I’m not sure of their exact ages but during an assembly when someone described the ages of shipboard participants as “5-80” Boyd yelled out “some of us are older than that!”  They are the sweetest couple, always sitting in on classes, going to the front row during assemblies and talking to participants.

On this particular day that my friends and I were sitting alone they hobbled over to our table and asked “Do you mind if a few old people sit with you?”  We quickly made room for them and started with the typical introductions.  After talking for about 15 minutes, Boyd took off his glasses and started tearing up.  He looks at us and says “What is the process this ship goes through to get you specific young people here?  This is the most open, intelligent, socially conscious group of young people and we feel so lucky to be here.  I just…  I can’t believe it.” He didn’t finish what he was saying because Betty told him to “dry it up” or something to that effect but it was incredibly sweet and I definitely left lunch that day crying as well.  What is also interesting to me is that there aren’t very many “normal” students on the trip on paper… I am absolutely one of the most normal ones in terms of no disciplinary problems, get good grades, went right into college, etc.  There are many unconventional students who have been on Wilderness or who have transferred schools or are on probation (from school) and so many other things, yet everything Boyd said is true about a large part of the student body.  It isn’t always the people who are great on paper that end up making a difference, it’s the people with the intelligence and the motivation to question things whether or not authority deems that acceptable.

Today, I had a different experience at lunch. D, Andrew and I walked in to the dining room and began getting food and within a minute two “waiters” (the people who clear dishes, hand out juice, etc.) appeared on either side of me, once asking if I wanted to sit with the captain and the other already carrying my plate to his table. I’m not sure if it was because I was wearing a dress, have a happy disposition or just timing, but five minutes later D and I were sitting on either side of Captain Jeremy at a 16 person table having water poured for us, warm rolls set in baskets in front of us and napkins placed across our laps.  The table began to fill out and we started talking to Captain Jeremy.  I have never spoken to him before because he’s the captain…duh. I always assumed we shouldn’t waste his time with small talk and that he had serious matters he had to deal with. Turns out he just wanted to hang out!  Apparently he comes down to the dining room sometimes to sit with students and get to know them.  We ended up sitting for about an hour, talking about travel, soccer, school, the boat, and various other things that came up.  We had him clear up some rumors that we’ve heard as he’s been sailing the MV Explorer for six years (no one ever snuck a monkey on but monkeys have climbed on in India and someone did try to touch the water by tying bed sheets together and climbing down them) and filled him in on the new rumors that were going around the boat.  The meal went on through coffee and dessert until all of the students had to leave for various reasons. Andrew, D and I were the last ones left.  Captain Jeremy stood up, shook our hands and said “Now that you know me, feel free to come talk to me anytime.  Don’t be shy!  Well… I guess I’ll go do some paperwork now, or something…”

While nothing mind blowing happened, it was awesome getting to hang out with the Captain of the ship who has spent his entire life at sea.  He’s been a master Captain since the 80’s and has traveled the entire world.  The fact that he made an effort to come down to the student dining room and eat with students for the sole purpose of getting to know them I found incredible.  One of my favorite things about the ship is that the majority of the people highest in command go out of their way to shatter the illusion that they are powerful and out to get students, and instead make it clear that they are here for the purpose of enriching our experience and that they respect us.

That being said, there are a few lower level people on power trips that have been going out of their way to get people in trouble over stupid matters but I won’t get into that because I don’t like them and they are not even worth writing two more words about in my blog.   I had my first test this morning in World Religions and I think it went really well! Going over my notes afterwards I think I only missed 2 questions (out of 30) and both of my answers were extremely close so I still feel confident that I learned the information. The test today was about Indiginous religions, “new” religious like Rastafarianism and Voodoo and Judaism.  Surprisingly, Judaism gave me the most trouble! Probably because I didn’t focus quite as much on it and it was the only religion with specific dates and that threw me off (one of the questions I got wrong was “What happened in 586 BCE?” I put “destruction of the second temple,” and it was “destruction of the first temple. Silly me!).  Not too much else is going on. Just kind of kicking it until class at 4:15 and I’m going to try to ACTUALLY get a full night of sleep tonight.  I need to wake up early tomorrow to go to Clinic hours to interview some of the medical staff for a beat I’m writing because sadly I have class during the afternoon clinic hours. Oh well, as I said earlier I like getting up early.

That’s all! Hope everyone is having a great day!
J

GO BALTIC OR GO HOME

Rereading this I have noticed so many grammatical and “good writing” errors but I am way too tired to deal with them and want to post this, so this is the usual “I’m tired, don’t judge me” precursor.

Hey everyone, sorry I’ve been slacking on the blog.  I write emails daily and kind of forget that everyone doesn’t know everything that’s going on. I actually didn’t realize I haven’t been updating until my dad pointed it out to me today, so here you go dad!

We’ve officially been on the boat for a week! Crazy, huh. It is amazing how much it feels like real, regular life. The waters have been unusually calm… or maybe this is usual and our first week was just ridiculously rough.  Also, everyone was terrified that this week would drag on but it’s actually been great. The first few nights we were a bit stir crazy but we’ve been so busy that it’s died down.

Today was the Sea Olympics! I know that I mentioned in previous blogs that I wasn’t really excited about it and wasn’t sure if I was going to participate.  I was WRONG! I wish that I would have had a better grasp on the deal before hand because I would have gotten a lot more involved. 

Last night the Opening Ceremonies started at 9 and I wasn’t even sure I was going to go, but seeing everyone put on their team t-shirts got me excited so I threw on some light blue and headed into the hallway.  Realizing it was an excuse to dress up, I ran back into my room and put some blue stripes under my eyes,  then back into the hallway. This is when I ran into my friend Alan and saw that he had a drum. What a good idea! Third trip to the room and I got my maraca from Brazil.  We were ready.

SAS has a tendency to make all meetings way too long, so even though they do their best to make them fun and entertaining everyone is restless by the end.  The Opening Ceremonies, although two hours long, went surprisingly quickly and were hilarious!  First all of the teams marched through the ship to the Union while cheering, doing chants, etc.  Once everyone was settled each sea presented a banner they made.  Some were better than others and my sea’s (Baltic) was OBVIOUSLY the best. We ended up tying for first with the Yellow Sea which many of my friends were on.

Following the banners we had a speech from Dean Dan who is GREAT! I know I’ve mentioned him briefly before but I just want to say again how much I love him.  He is the Executive Dean and is just the sweetest most sincere guy. He is always wandering around the boat making small talk and smiling and making conversation and it is so obvious that he is here because he loves and believes in the program and the participants. As a general rule I avoid anyone who can get me into trouble but I always jump at the chance to talk to him or listen to him speak because he is just so sweet and inspiring.

After Dean Dan’s speech Dr. Bill gave his speech.  Dr. Bill is HILARIOUS. He always gives the funniest, most elaborate speeches and everybody loves him.  The main messages of his speech were good sportsmanship, teamwork and having fun but he articulated this by talking about setting the bar low so you you’ll meet our expectations, how two “L’s” with your fingers make a “W” for “win,” how the losers are actually the best because they allow the winners to win, etc.  He had everyone howling with laughter by the end and cheering way louder than they had been for their seas. 

Next was the team cheers. I’m going to be honest, ours kind of sucked.  We sang it to the tune of two popular songs but I didn’t know either of them so I couldn’t participate and they went really fast so everyone got lost. Some of the other teams had funny ones though. There is a boy on the ship, Obai, who sounds EXACTLY like Barack Obama so he made an epic speech and had a “body guard,” I wish I had a video. I may try to find one because I’m sure many people got it. 

When the opening ceremonies closed my friends and I convened on our deck to hang out and get ice cream and the mood quickly got competitive so we made it a neutral zone which was a good idea because I was afraid Mia would throw someone off of the boat! Kidding… but not really.

Eventually I got to bed.  I woke up bright and early to score some face paint and regretted it deeply before I got two cups of coffee in and felt better.  The paint started to melt after an hour or so of running around studying, filling out immigration forms, etc and I realized I could cover it with blue eyeshadow.  While doing this I realized I could also paint my lips blue, and my day of epic spirit began.

At noon when everyone was rolling out of bed in their pajamas I was fully decked out in light blue, chanting through the hallways with my maraca and had already accomplished half of my work for the day.  I LOVE being a morning person and waking up early. I will have to remember this.  The events started and as the day went on I got more and more into it, running around yelling and cheering and making noise. I actually have two blisters from shaking my maraca so much!

Around two Whitney decided she wanted to do her face too, so we went to my room to get it and both of our eyes went directly to my Brazilian headdress sitting on my shelf.  Yep, it was time to break it out and get serious. I put on sports bra, the headdress, re-painted my face, and had her write “GO BALTIC OR GO HOME” on my stomach and “I BLEED BLUE” on my back. 

The rest of the afternoon was AWESOME.  I cheered my ass off, random people were asking to take pictures of me, and I was told multiple times that I was “the most spirited person.” The more positive feedback I got the more energy I got and I just ran around to all of the different events trying to pump people up. It was awesome to see a group of my team just sitting around and as soon as I would come in everyone’s energy levels would sore and people would get excited.

By 5pm we were burnt out so we went to lay by the pool and discovered something magical… they were setting up a BBQ! I haven’t been eating very much here because the food isn’t that good and it’s all the same but tonights meal was EPIC! There were hamburgers, hotdogs, a bunch of different kinds of macaroni salad, ribs and ice cream!!! Basically, all of the things they usually charge us for.  We watched the sunset and took silly pictures while waiting to eat and eventually the rest of our crew filtered up and we had an awesome meal while catching up on the gossip from the day and guessing who would win. 

After dinner I went to check my email, and when I came back a half hour later Hassan and Whitney were swimming.  They beckoned me into the pool and, referencing my face paint and headdress I said “no way!” That lasted about three seconds… seeing how much fun they were having I threw off my shorts and jumped in.  Eventually we convinced Coleman and D to join us and we spent the next half hour splashing, wrestling and just being so happy to be where we were. I definitely have the coolest, most fun friends on the ship. People all around the deck were watching us, some laughing at how much fun we were having and others glaring because they were probably jealous of how awesome we were but no one was having nearly as much fun.  At seven they closed the pool so we got out, got Rocky Road ice cream and ran to take showers before the closing ceremonies.

Synchronized swimming is the big event for Sea Olympics. Everyone wants to do it and it is always HILARIOUS!  My group had six big frat guys wearing ridiculous 80s gear dancing to a mash-up of famous songs throughout pop-culture history and another group had four guys doing the Titanic theme.  We were hands down the best and had the winning score… except we got disqualified for going overtime.  Once I found this out I lost my hope of winning but it turned out to be a good thing because it killed my competitive spirit and allowed me to have fun and not worry about the results. I did however get a video of the full performance and will definitely post it when I can!

The reason I mention this is because our whole team assumed we were way out.  We had been in the lead the entire time but losing 30 points can set you far behind. So imagine our surprise when they announced that in third place… was the Baltic Sea!!!! We FREAKED out.  Everyone was so exhausted and burnt out from cheering and playing all day that we had been sitting basically dead in the Union but we had new life when we found out we placed.  Placing is sweet, but it was even more exciting because it means that when we dock in San Diego we get off the boat third, which means in about three hours.  it’s apparently an all day 12 hour process.

After the closing ceremonies I tried to go to bed several times but kept getting caught up hanging out with people.  I ended up doing some emailing, playing guitar and emailing with Hassan and hanging out with Ashley.  I finally got back to my room to study and… you guessed it, I wrote this blog.  But this was long overdue! There are probably many more relevant things I should tell you about sea life but right now Sea Olympics is all that’s on my mind.

Today was so awesome because I’ve never taken an outgoing leadership role in an activity like this before. Usually I’m strictly a background participant, but being at the center of everything today made me feel really good and I got great reactions from everyone.  People who I’ve never spoken to have been talking to me all night and I know I will definitely always be recognized now.  Every time I run into my roommate around the ship and I’m doing some ridiculous thing she always introduces me to whomever she’s with and sounds really proud which makes me happy. 

Tomorrow it’s back to normal life. Two days of class and then on Sunday… GHANA!  GHANA! GHANA!!!!!!! I have no clue what to expect but I am beyond excited. I’ll try to blog again in the next couple days at sea, but if I don’t then you may be hearing from a changed woman next week!  The weirdest thing of all is that we’ll get back on the ship after Ghana, and then two days later we will have been here a month.  I can not believe how fast time is going and I know it will only get faster.  I can’t even process the amount I will see and learn and do in the next month but I can’t wait.  I’m already dreading the day I have to return to the “normal world”… it’s amazing how quickly and seamlessly this has become our existence.  We have our own words, our own culture, our own lifestyle here that is so different from anything anywhere else yet it all seems so normal, so “as if it always was.”  I guess that’s the good part of going with the flow, everything is always just as it is. 

Ah, it’s past midnight and I need sleep!  I’ll be back soon! One last thing – to all you random readers out there (I know you exist) who are thinking about doing this program… do it. Don’t even think about it, apply right now and do it. Get on this ship as fast as you can. It will be the best decision you could ever make.