I'm sorry but the ocean's BLUE!!

The Sea Olympics were scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. after we returned to the ship from Mauritius. I think I mentioned this before, but all of the students are divided by cabin into “seas”that all have a “living-learning coordinator,”or LLC, which would be equivalent to floors in the dorms being supervised by a resident assistant. Each of the seas have the name of a real sea –since I’m on the port side of the third deck, I belong to the Mediterranean Sea. Our color is blue. Other seas include the Caribbean, Yellow, Red, Aegean, Baltic, Bering and Adriatic as well as a few others. Each of them has a corresponding color as well. So, after I showered I put on my blue Semester at Sea t-shirt and bandana, then went over to where most of our sea congregates, a large empty space in front of our LLC’s cabin –lovingly dubbed our “lounge.”Everyone was told to meet there before the opening ceremony to get some blue face paint and then we all marched up to the Union and waited until they let us. That got a little crazy, since all the seas were hyped up and chanting, wanting to get into the Union.

Each sea was judged during the opening ceremony on their chant, mascot and flag. Since we were blue, all we came up with for a mascot was a Smurf, so one of the guys in our sea had red shorts and a tossle cap on. He was painted blue and even painted his beard white. He looked pretty good. Haha. Then, our flag also had a big Smurf on it blowing a huge wave labeled “Mediterranean”onto these little boats with all the other seas’names on them. It turned out really well. (I helped plan it a little with a group of people, then another girl drew and colored it in.) Our chant went something like this: “Pink, yellow, purple, white –I could keep this up all night –black, green, brown, BOO! I’m sorry but the ocean’s BLUE!!”Haha. Then we had a little dance with some stomping and clapping. It was pretty fun. We got some of the words jumbled when we did it, though. But throughout the whole ceremony everybody was cheering and excited for their sea, which was really fun –it reminded me of a little of a Penn State football game! We didn’t win any of those medals, though (as I learned at the closing ceremonies).

There were a number of events that were available to participate in throughout the day. Everyone signed up ahead of time and was given a schedule, since each thing was at a different time in different locations around the ship. I had signed up for the orange pass and fireman’s line (when you try and pass water from one end of a line to the other and fill up a pitcher). Both of those were a part of the Olympic Relay, which was in the morning. I was only upset that I didn’t get to sleep in any more than I did because we didn’t have class yesterday. Otherwise, both of the events were really fun! I was on the end of both of the lines –I got to take the orange from our line and tag the people doing the three-legged race and then was on the end pouring water from our line into the pitcher. It was really fun!! The only problem was everyone was jumbled in the same area on the seventh deck and those who weren’t finished with the orange pass were horizontal across the deck while the fireman’s line was trying to go vertically. Then, people were walking between me and the pitcher. So, we ended up…winning our heat!! Yay!! There were two heats, though, and the judges were basing their scores on time. So, we still got the bronze medal!!

After that we just did OK –three bronze medals and two silver medals –coming in second to last place. I think we did really well for the small number of people we had involved from our sea. Some of the other seas had more people that were really into it. I don’t know what was the matter with us anti-social Med. Sea kids.

The best event of the day was in the late afternoon: Synchronized swimming. Oh, yeah. It was great! Each sea did like a five minute routine. I thought they were all going to be kind of lame because of our crazy schedules and time in port and everything like that, but all the seas pulled it together and did great. Some of them were themed –one sea made fun of our executive dean (he likes to work out, so they had a guy with fake muscles), another used Thriller to start off, another did one themed to each country we’ve visited already (for South Africa they used Lion King music and had a kid pretend to be Simba –it was hilarious). Our sea did a mish-mash of songs and Yash was in it. All the guys did this really funny N*Sync thing –he was much more coordinated than I thought he would be! They also did part of the routine swaying and spinning umbrellas. It was great! And I had a really good spot to watch, right in front of the pool deck –I just wish I would have had my camera with me.

During the closing ceremonies last night, all the final medals were announced –synchronized swimming, mashed potato sculpting and the mascot, etc. as I mentioned. I don’t know what the winners actually will get, if anything, but the rumor is that they get to be first off the ship in Florida, which would be pretty sweet.

Ok, so now we’re finally all caught up to the present! I have a paper to write for one of my classes, so I should get to that. I’ve been trying to make plans with some girls for India and Japan. They’re coming together, but we had some snags trying to book a flight. It’s so hard to communicate with the outside world on this ship!

Speaking of communication, you should all write a comment or e-mail me –thanks for your reminder to everyone, Mom! And thank you to all those people who have commented and written. Even if you haven’t talked to me since January, feel free to e-mail! You might think your life is boring, but since mine is so crazy it’s nice to hear about the regular stuff that everyone is doing. Otherwise, all I have to think about is schoolwork and worrying about trips and such. And, I will definitely reply to all e-mails as soon as I get a chance. I love getting e-mails and check them all the time, but my family can only do so much!