Yesterday I absolutely did not feel like blogging. I feel like I am talking about the same things because every day is really similar and there aren't too many new things to report. Although I did realize that I have addressed most of the bigger things that have been happening and have let some little, yet still interesting, things slip away.
Here's a brief update that covers a bunch of things during the crossing:
On the day before the talent show, right before the dress rehearsal I met with my family. We had girls night and painted nails and ate snacks and asked each other questions from the book "4000 questions for getting to know anyone and everyone." Molly came too and is now an adoptive cousin in our family. My favorite question that we asked was "What is your favorite speed limit?" So random and yet you can learn a lot about a person by there answer.
Speaking of questions and answers we had to interview a student in class during Travel Writing. Cody and I interviewed each other. One of his questions to me was 'Do you think you are normal?' Thanks Cody, that is totally a normal question. Then we had to present our interviews to the class and we went first and it was just a hot mess. Partially because it was weird that our teacher wanted us to reenact our interviews after we had already spent 20 minutes conducting them and partially because Cody and I deviated from the assignment which was to ask questions pertaining to Semester At Sea. I asked him the speed limit question and his answer was that "It depends on the day." Some days he likes to go slower because life goes so fast and other days he likes the adrenaline rush of going fast. What this tells us about Cody is that he is way to deep when answering simple questions.
We did not end up making a movie for the film festival. Very disappointing. Nobody ever seems to have as much enthusiasm as I do.
My International Management teacher has cut out a bunch of our remaining assignments leaving us with just our field lab report and our final paper. And we will not be having a final, hallelujah.
Speaking of that, it looks like we will be having our field lab on the first day in Buenos Aires. Thank god, this means I will not be punching someone for making me miss the patagonia trip for no reason. I am still mad that I had a field lab that made me miss it in general but if that field lab had not actually happened I would have been indescribably angry.
On Amanda's birthday we could not find her, we thought she was hiding from the world. Turns out she just had a meeting with a group for her class. We got her a cake and she didn’t know about it and dinner wasn't all that great so she was going to leave and eat something on deck 7 so I ended up having to blatantly tell her that there was cake coming. The High Seas also came over and sang her happy birthday, which was embarrassing but not as embarrassing as when the entire ship sang her happy birthday during the talent show.
The next day there was baked Macaroni and Cheese for lunch. Best lunch ever.
For dinner we had taco night. But it wasn't taco night for the whole ship, it was special taco night. The life long learners can order food if they want to, which includes tacos. Amanda is really close to a life long learner so she ordered a taco night for her and Lillian, whose birthdays were two days apart. There were quesadillas and burritos as well, it was a good night.
Surprising the food has actually been really good during the crossing. They must have picked up a bunch of stuff in Cape Town. We are on Day 11 and there is still fresh fruit at every meal. Today there were roast beef sandwiches with actual baguettes for bread. I feel like they knew we were expecting the worst and so purposely had awesome meals. I am not complaining.
I was not involved in the decorating of Lillian's door for her birthday. She stayed up late studying so Amanda volunteered to do it in the morning before she went to breakfast.
We had the High Seas come and sing 22 by Taylor Swift for Lillian's birthday. She's turning 22, so it was appropriate. We also got a giant plate of cookies, and by giant I mean it comes with 50 cookies. There were so many cookies. We offered them to some of the kids that were eating near us, and to another family a while later. By the time we were ready to leave we still had about 25 cookies left so I walked around the dining room to the people studying and offered them cookies. The majority of them said yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Now, let me tell you about the politics of cookies. Desserts are provided at every meal but they are not that impressive. Except for the occasional cobbler…. Yum. They sell cookies on the 7th deck, you have to buy them in threes. They are Oscar Meyer cookies and they bake them right there. They have double chocolate, chocolate chip, white chocolate macadamia nut, and oatmeal raisin. The double chocolate is clearly the best.
Sometimes cookies are provided as incentives to go to thinks. Like sea meetings. I had a sea meeting tonight, and Nathan had cookies there for us. It was held in the deck 6 dining room, and the cookies were put out on a table. As Nathan talked to us people who are not in our sea kept sneaking up and stealing cookies. Other people sat through the meeting to pretend like they were in our sea in order to get cookies. People who were entitled to cookies took 5 or 6, wrapped some in a napkin, and saved them for later. Or handed them off to unintitled friends. What is it about cookies that makes people so crazy. There was dessert at dinner, and it was actually pretty good today though. But cookies are apparently better. Some people will do crazy things to get a cookies, if you have cookies you have power. When I was walking around the dining room with them after dinner I probably could have gotten those people to do anything I wanted. Especially if the double chocolate was up for grabs. Cookies equal power. It's the little things on this ship that make up our culture and make us happy.
Lillian told me that I need to blog about the passive aggressive behavior surrounding the treadmills on the ship. Apparently there is a lot of it. You are only allowed to sign up for one half hour slot at a time, but people have found fantastic ways of getting around this. Take Lillian for example: she will sign up for one time as Lillian C. and the one right after it as L. Chreky. Pretty clever if you ask me. She told me she would give me a quote and more detail on this passive aggressiveness. So there will be more information to follow. All I know is that there are only two treadmills and they are highly coveted.
I hope that is everything that I needed to cover.
Oh, I'll end with this: I got the words to the poem read at the talent show. It was written by one of the professors and is very, very good. Enjoy:
A (Bad) Semester at Sea Love Poem
By Louise Harmon
Semester at Sea Fall 2013
Night falls at sea.
The ship churns
through water ink black,
with purpose and direction.
It’s late.
Snack time is way over.
Just hours ago games were being won
and lost, clumps of cheering jeering,
pony tails and baseball caps,
latte slurping, pajamas, and
fuzzy slippers, flirtations, and
bravado, laughter, a few sad sighs,
and in the corner, desperate sentence
makers punctuate the air
with fevered
click click, click, click, click,
Oh my god it’s due
in the morning,
like artillery,
click click click click click,
international perspective this
and expanding world view that,
the contemporary world of today
that we live in now---
click click click click, click.
But all that urgency is now over.
All have now pushed ‘save”
and folded screens like giant clams---
The games have been lost and won.
The room is empty.
Successful hook ups,
abortive hook ups,
no hook ups---
all have gone down.
We have all gone down for the night,
except for the man at the snack bar,
solitary, stoic, handsome, dark,
with epaulettes on his blue sweater,
keeping silent vigil
over Reese’s Cups and Hershey bars
and Skittles,
standing guard over the expresso
machine, an altar to the God
of caffeine, whose name we take in vain
each time our lips touch grey plastic.
In our cabins down below,
we are horizontal,
movies looping at our feet,
over and over again, movies with
no ostensible plot, no beginning
and no end.
One by one,
we have fallen into our beds,
our small little beds,
our cots---let’s call them what they are,
our cots with preternaturally tight sheets,
that grab our fins.
We line up like sardines
from Lisboa,
one by one,
crank the key
to the tin can,
and peel back the thin metal roof,
careful not to slice your hand,
whoever you might be---
and you would see
The silver fish of Semester at Sea.
Here the metaphor fails.
She stops dead in her tracks.
She flounders.
No, no, no, the professor rails,
you cannot introduce a flounder into the sea
when the poem is about sardines--
Don’t you see?
And that clunky clam in the first stanza,
a computer clam, now what is that?
And by the way, fish have no tracks---
not to mention the metaphor’s
more salient flaw---saline and salient:
The fish in your tin can
are neither dead,
nor on the menu.
Well, not much is on the menu.
Still she has some traction,
even without fish tracks---
this metaphor.
She’s right:
We do all line up
at night at sea
like silent silver fish in a tin can,
asleep, each of us churning
through our own water
ink black,
perhaps with purpose and direction
like the ship who holds us all.
Perhaps not.
Dreams have their own secret maps,
their own system of navigation.
But on a ship, on this ship
quarters are tight.
Our dreams have no place to go.
Dreams of the young and
dreams of the old.
The heat of loves remembered
and of loves hoped for
seep out through the cracks
of fireproof doors
and into the hallways
where they mix and mingle
with each other,
fear and sorrow too
wind around the corners,
making tendrils on
the stainless steel railing,
and creeping up the stairs,
wispy braids of
dreamstuff curling up the poles
In Tymitz Square,
forming low clouds on deck seven,
pale nimbi of memories
of things forgotten
and things to come.
We sleep together
on Semester at Sea.
We dream together
on Semester at Sea.
Crew, children, students, professors, family members
life-long learners—who have I forgotten---
The dreaming silver fish
of Semester at Sea.
Wait, the professor sputters
her furious phdful sput,
you can’t do that.
She circles words, she scrawls:
fish and braided dreams do not swim
together, rhetorically speaking.
She spills blood upon your poem,
in the thrall of a mandate,
dare I say—an illusion--of how things
ought to be.
To her I say, a poem is a noble thing---
even a bad one.
A poem means you have something
inside you that can’t stay behind
the sternum, and things
that can’t stay behind the sternum
are good for the world.
They push out with passion
and confidence and love---
and that’s what this is---
a love poem
for all of those I sleep with
for all of those I dream with
on Semester at Sea.
