Spring 2015 - Day 99

Today was another study day. After lunch Andi called me and asked for a sheet of paper for a project. When I went up to their room Jen asked what I was doing and invited me to sit in the deck five dining room with her to get some work done.

So I gathered my work stuff and went down and started work on my World Myth paper. I eventually had to leave for my discussion group. Which, again, was less of a discussion group and more of quiet time to write. Which was exactly what I had been doing downstairs so that was annoying.

When I did get back to Jen there was a book waiting for me. Maddie had finally finished reading Wild and came to give it to me.

They had just made it into a movie with Reese Witherspoon but I wanted to read the book first. It is about a woman who hikes the Pacific Crest Trail alone in order to get her life back on track.

I started it right then and read it all day. I only took a break to go to the seminar. All of the artistic professors were showing off the work that they had done during the voyage.

Colleen, the writing professor, read two pieces. One about a ship graveyard she went to in India. It is the largest area where large cruse ships are broken down. So there are piles and piles of life jackets and lifeboats and life rings and blankets.

I had never thought to go to a place like that but her piece made me want to visit. Her second piece was about how, in the beginning of the voyage, she had to go outside and look at the ocean every day and that, by the end, it had become so normal that she stopped making sure to go outside.

Grace, my art professor, showed some pieces that she had done before the voyage so that we could get a sense of the art she usually creates. She then showed about 20 of the over 400 sketches she had done on the voyage. They were amazing.

The last person to present was Erik, the music professor. He makes incredible pieces out of the noises of every day life. He was working on a audio documentary about how covered music makes up the majority of the music culture in Myanmar. He played us an 8 minutes clip if it and encouraged us to get extremely comfortable to listen to it.

So I got out of my chair and laid on the ground with my eyes closed. He turned off all the lights and the projector and just played it into the darkness.

It was like I became one with the ship while laying on the ground. I just swayed along with the rocking and listened to the different interviews he had done and the sounds he had collected in Myanmar. It was pretty cool.

I left the seminar a tad early because Mom Shelley was having cookies and milk for our family at 9. She was in the seminar so when I saw her leave I went too.

I love cookies and milk with family. We talked about Morocco and Namibia and the end of the voyage. There wasn't too many of us there but that was fine, more cookies for the rest of us!

I took 4 cookies home to share with Stephanie and then stayed up all night reading Wild. I finished it at 2 in the morning. It was a very, very good book. I recommend it to everyone.

Now I need to go find the movie!