Day 86 (04-13-09)

Global Studies exam today. I hate taking tests in the Union. The chairs are fairly comfortable and padded and whatnot, but there aren’t any desks. So they give us trays from the cafeteria to put on our laps and lean on. It’s rather rudimentary. And distracting in a testing environment. But I think I did well enough. I suppose I’ll find out in a couple of days. More classes after the test. Dinner. Know what sounds like a terrible idea? All-nighter. Chris, do you have any fathomable reason why you’d need to pull an all-nighter? No. The answer is no. But will you do it anyway? Oh yes. Yes I will. I spent the wee hours of the morning wandering around the ship with friends. Sitting outside. Enjoying the waves. Talking with friends while they registered for classes in the computer lab. It was enjoyable. But tiring. I crashed at about 6:15am. Bad idea…

Day 87 (04-14-09)

Today, we get the day off. Sort of. It’s picture day. So we had our group photo at 8am outside on the top deck. What was I thinking sleeping for an hour? I should’ve just stayed up straight through. Whatever. Oh and of course, only about half of the students showed up. More great planning on the part of SAS. Let’s take a group picture with all 726 students at 8am on our only day off. It was doomed from the start. Afterwards, they broke us off into groups by our home universities, and we took school pictures. It was great. A photo with (60 of) the 80 Boulder kids. We sang our fight song together. It was the first time I’d sang it since Colorado last fall. Fight, Fight, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!

Tonight, there was a mini career night in some of the classrooms. A few of the professors and Living Learning Coordinators got up to give some descriptions of their careers and the steps that guided them down their respective paths. I sat in on the “higher education” and “working abroad” lectures. Who knows, maybe I’ll be teaching English in Borneo someday.

Just for the hell of it, I decided to shave my head again tonight. I got some clippers from someone on the ship and my friend Sara shaved me down, bald as Neptune Day. My hair had been growing in differently than it ever had before. I didn’t like it. Maybe it’ll fix itself? One can only hope.

Day 88 (04-15-09)

Yet another lazy day here on the MV Explorer. Slept. Ate food. I had a friend of mine shave my head with a straight razor today. Just to get it down to the bare minimum. My head is very white. And smooth. It’s different. Sunburn, here I come. Oh, and I kept the sideburns. So I have no beard. No hair. But I have big mutton chops. It’s pretty ridiculous.

Oh, I finally took the Bridge Tour today. Every day, the crew gives a tour of the ship’s Bridge, where the captains steer the ship and do all the captain-y things that captains do. I loved the new perspective. Seeing the open waters in front of us from the bow of the ship, sitting in the captain’s chair. Fantastic. And there are these guys. That stand in the Bridge in shifts. 4 hours on, 8 hours off. And their sole job is to stare out the window and look for stuff. They point out any irregularities or pieces of debris that are in the water and the ship’s systems might not detect. It’s not really an interesting job, but I thought the concept was simple and neat.

We sailed through a little storm today at about dinnertime. Nothing big or life altering. But it yielded the best rainbow I’ve ever seen. It was a perfect arc. Touched the water on both sides and reflected in the waves. And it was clear and thick and bright. And, sadly, short-lived. We passed through the storm and the clouds broke a little bit, leaving our rainbow as a 5-minute memory. But we saw it. And it was one of those things that just brought us all together, if only for a few minutes. We all just stood at the railing, shoulder-to-shoulder, realizing in that brief moment how lucky we are and how we’ll never be a part of something like this again.

The first performance of the on-ship play was tonight. It’s The Persians by Aeschylus. Pretty dark and dramatic. And it would have made much more sense had we actually went to Turkey. Since it followed the fall of Darius after a battle with the Greeks. But it’s no big deal. I enjoyed it.

Test results are in. B on the Global Studies exam. Solid.

Alright, well enough of this rambling. Bedtime. Hasta la bye-bye.