Day 69, 70, and 71

Our Halloween study started with a fantastic surprise: a 9:15 lifeboat drill. We weren't warned about the drill but it was posted on the dependent children's schedule on a bulletin board so I did know about it. It didn’t make it any less of a rude awakening. 

I actually woke up to a crazy rocking ship. We were going up and down so intensely that I could picture us bouncing over the waves. It was nothing though, compared to that crazy ferry. 

It was so rocky that our lifeboat drill was held in the bad weather locations instead of in our muster stations on deck 5. So I got to sit in a comfy seat in the union while Nathan called role. 

After the drill my plan was to meet Amanda in the Union at 10 to work on our talent show performances. But I fell asleep and didn’t make it up there until 11. She was still there, jump roping away, with Molly watching. 

I practiced a bit, but it is so hard to dance on a rocking ship. I give so much credit to performers on cruise lines, they have some serious talent. The back and forth throws off your balance and center of gravity. You expect the floor to be there and its not or vice versa. 

After lunch Molly and I watched the Bling Ring until I had to go meet with my group for International Management. Or actually, I think we watched The Bling Ring at night and I spent the afternoon taking a nap. Yup, that's definitely what happened. My group put our presentation together and agreed to meet once more at 8 to run through it again. I ate dinner with Cody and then went to find Molly. 

When Amanda, Molly, and I were leaving the dining room we saw a table that had gotten a cake that said 'Happy Halloween' on it. A cake for Halloween, what a great idea! We were discussing how much we wanted cake when we realized that there didn’t need to be a reason for us to have cake. We could have cake just because we wanted cake! 

So Molly and I went back to the dining room and filled out the cake order form for an 8" chocolate ice cream cake. And what did we have them write on the top of it? Yay cake! 

Seriously. We told them to write 'yay cake!' on the cake. Because why not. 

Best decision ever. 

And what was the next day? November. What. 

Holy crap time is flying. I can not believe it is already November. 

My group presentation went fantastically. 

Lets see, what happened the rest of the day? 

I started blogging about Cape Town. My urge to blog was strangely less than it had been after all the other countries. I think it was because of how much I had to write about. This was our first 5 day port, and 5 days is a lot. I struggled to get started. 

Molly and I watched Limitless and then she went to work. I didn’t leave her room. I fell asleep alone in her room. At one point her roommate, Marie, walked in and I said, "It's me, not Molly."

"What, Molly?" She replied. 

"No, me… not Molly." 

That was funny. Molly came back from work to find me still there. She just laughed at me. We were about to start watching The Big Bang Theory when Alexandra called. She was going to dye her hair, did we want to help/watch. Of course! 

So we went to her room and I made a time lapse video of Molly dying her hair blonde. Her hair was already pretty blonde so it just lightened it up a whole bunch. It looked really awesome. 

We got our cake!! We all gathered to eat dinner at 5:45 and then got our cake around 6:30. The waiter who brought it over asked us what Yay Cake! meant. We told him that we just felt like celebrating with cake for no reason. It was delicious. About 10 of us ate the cake, I took lots of pictures. It was a great time. I highly recommend having a random cake day, it just adds some whimsy to life. 

In the evening I went to a Union seminar put on by the scientist that is sailing with us during the crossing. His name is Greg and he is dropping two different kinds of probes into the ocean to measure temperature, currents, salinity, and a whole bunch of other things. Because I am in marine bio I will be able to go observe what he is doing sometime later in the week. 

The next day I finally kicked myself into gear with my blogging. It felt good to finally be writing it. It took me almost two days to get started when I am usually done after two days. 

Molly is a terrible influence and tried to get me to skip class. How could I skip class when my professor had just met my parents and told them how awesome I was. Nope, couldn’t do it. 

At one point I went to Bryan and gave him some pictures of the parents trip. Hopefully he used them! 

I watched 21. That's an old movie, but a good one. 

I blogged some more. Getting there! 

At 6 I went up to the wellness center, Lillian had decided she was going to dye her hair jet black. The blackest black they had. Her hair was already pretty dark so it would be a subtle change. Molly and I sat with her until 7 when I had to leave to go to the information session for the film festival. 

We are having a film festival! We have until we get off the ship in Buenos Aires to make them. They can either be filmed while we are on the ship or can be made from footage we took in country. They have to be between two and five minutes and have some little criteria. We have to use 50 or and variation of the word either verbally or visually. We also have to incorporate something we bought or found in country. 

I'm so excited! But I can't really decide what I want to do, I have too many ideas! 

After the info session I went back up to the wellness center where Lillian was almost done. Her hair looked awesome! The black looks awesome on her. 

Molly decided to get her hair dyed. She has had every color of hair that you could ever think of. She is going to get a hair cut and it re-dyed red tomorrow afternoon. I wish I was brave enough to dye my hair but I am afraid it would never be the same, and I like my blonde hair. 

After Molly does hers tomorrow we are going to take a picture with her, Lillian, Amanda, and me because we will all have the extremes of different hair colors. Random things bring us joy. 

I practiced for the talent show more. I perfected the part of Thriller that I am doing, it is really coming together. I also went and practiced it in the Union after the Pencils of Promise group had their meeting. 

Oh, Pencils of Promise. It's a group that builds schools in different countries in Africa, specifically Ghana. It was founded when a guy was in India and asked a little boy what he wanted most. The little boy responded a pencil. Here is the cool thing: its founder is an SAS alum. Here's an even cooler thing: His name is Adam Braun. His brother is Scooter Braun, who is Justin Bieber's manager. So we are only two degrees of separation away from J-biebs. 

I think that's pretty cool. Even though he isn't the nicest person, he is a celebrity. And he supports Pencils of Promise pretty heavily. 

Right before bed I watched Life of Pi. I would suggest you go watch that movie, it is fantastic. It wasn't anything like I thought it was. The weird thing was during the opening credits they were showing all these exotic animals and I was like, oh I just saw that, and that and that. It made me laugh. 

Seriously though, its a really deep movie.

Take my advice, drop everything you are doing, and go watch it. 

Right now.