Day 73: Sea Olympics

We came in 9th! WOOOO!!!

Out of 10! WOOOO!! 

Seriously Aegean Sea. I feel as though we could have done better. 

We were a hot mess. 

We did win two events. Hula hoop and the spelling bee. We didn’t even come in the top three in anything else. 

I am actually really impressed by the spelling bee win because they had them do some hard things. Like stand back to back with their team mate and spell a word backwards with each team mate saying only one letter at a time, alternating back and forth. 

Hot damn. 

And I am proud of the hula hoop win because I was a part of that. We went up the glazer lounge to watch the end of it and when my team was up they spotted me and recruited me because they didn’t have enough people. 

It wasn't hula hooping. It was when you all stand in a circle holding hands and have to pass the hula hoop all the way around. We came up with the great strategy of the next person squatting down so that the hula hoop would fall right over their heads. 

It was freezing cold outside, and windy. It actually probably only felt cold because of the wind. But it did not cause me to be excited to jump into the pool at all. 

In the middle of yesterday we were told that there wasn't going to be water in the pool. There hadn't been for a while because the weather hadn't been very nice and they were just going to keep it empty. That didn’t go over too well. How was wet t-shirt relay going to work in an empty pool? Better yet, how was synchronized swimming going to work in an empty pool? 

Luckily, they ended up deciding to fill up the pool. And it was heated. Thank goodness. 

The wet t-shirt relay took forever. We had a team of 5. We had to put on the t-shirt, jump in the pool, swim to the other side and back, get out of the pool, wring the shirt into the bucket, and then pass the shirt off to the next person. We were done when the bucket was filled all the way up to the top and it was timed. 

It took so long to fill the bucket. My team started out strong but tired and got lazy so we came in fourth of the four teams that competed at the same time as us. It was a lot of fun though. The ship was rocking enough that the water in the pool would change depths by a few feet as it sloshed around. Swimming in that was interesting. And the water was really warm once you were in it, so we were freezing cold standing out of the pool. 

You know was else was freezing cold? The frozen t-shirt contest. That is what secret event #2 ended up being. And it was awesome because we weren't allowed to slam them against anything like you sometimes are. So you really had to use your body to defrost them. There was a lot of rubbing, the six of us got really close. We used our stomachs, our backs, and our teeth, and our tongues, and just…every part of ourselves. At one point one of the boys had one down his pants. 

We were given three t-shirts that were tied into knots and then frozen. We were done when we got all three shirts on different people. We discovered the trick of hitting them against each other. It was a quick and dirty way to break the ice apart. 

The first two we got apart so quickly. I got my arm in the bottom of the first one was able to break it apart from the inside out. The second one came along almost as quickly except that we ripped the arm almost completely off it. 

The third one. Oh the third one was our downfall. We were in the lead for so long but the third one was a completely solid ball of ice. And it was one the inside so there was no way for us to get to it. We just had to melt it. We tried everything and it just wouldn’t budge. 

We ended up coming in 7th. Such a bummer, we were doing so well. It was a lot of fun though, it was my favorite event that I was in. 

It was way better than human knot where we couldn’t even figure out how to hold hands correctly. 

Oh Aegean Sea, we were such a mess. It's ok, I didn’t really want to win, I didn’t want to have to decide when I am going to get off the ship in Florida. I think the winning sea chose to disembark first. 

The whole day was incredibly high energy. There are five moments that specifically stick out. 

The first was when a adult beat a little kid a limbo. Hannah, from the Adriatic sea, was able to bend backwards and go under a bar that was about two feet off the ground. 

The second was synchronized swimming. Everyone did a fantastic job and put together some things that were worthy of the applause that they were given. There was a high percentage of boys ripping of their pants to reveal speedos underneath. There was also some hilarious and poorly done cross dressing. One person is actually a competitive synchronized swimmer, there team was pretty awesome. That is the one thing that is fantastic about SAS. You can come on this ship and do anything you want because you are almost guaranteed to find someone who majors in it or does it professionally, or just loves it too.

The third was the moment synchronized swimming was over. The lip syncing contest was right afterwards in the union. As soon as the last group got of the pool everyone ran for it to get a good seat. And I literally mean mad-dash sprinted out of the pool area and down the stairs, through the ship, and into the Union. It was intense. We were clever enough to bypass the massive, stampeding crowd by going across up on deck seven and then down the stairs right by the union. Our seats were decent. 

The fourth was the lip-sync contest itself. There were some great acts. The Dead Sea Seals did fantastic, they chose a awesome mash up/cover of Payphone and Call Me Maybe. The little boy that took over Payphone was awesome and knew all the words. The Mediterranean sea pulled a fantastic one by just having one guy do a heartfelt and powerful rendition of And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going. That brought everyone to their feet. Everyone else had elaborate (or not so elaborate) group routines. Again, the Aegean Sea struggled. 

The final moment was when the winner was announced and simultaneously the powerpoint slide told us that someone else won. That was exciting. There was a lot of yelling, and protesting, and confusion. The Union was suddenly a massive explosion. 

The Mediterranean sea did win. The powerpoint slide was wrong.