Packing.....

Day 18

I woke up on February the 4^th after going to bed on February 2^nd. The concept of having a lost day is quite weird. I had my first Global Mental Health exam this morning, and I think I did quite well. There were a couple questions that were a little tricky, but overall, it could have been much worse. We went to the Union and watched Jaws last night. It was fun to watch it with everyone, as there were a few moments where pretty much everyone in the entire place screamed. It is such a great and classic movie, even though it scared me to death when I watched it when I was 7 or 8 with my dad. I fully blame him for my ridiculous fear of sharks.

In other news, I had dinner with my extended family tonight! The extended family program is one where students, faculty, and lifelong learners can sign up to be a part of a shipboard family. A number of students will be assigned to a set of “parents” who may or may not already have kids. I got assigned to Barbara and Phil Yarnell, two absolutely adorable and thoroughly enjoyable lifelong learners. The two of them usually sit in on my global mental health class, but up until today I never realized who they were. My family consists of 8 other students, and we all met for dinner at 5:30. Our parents weren’t eating, as they had been invited to dinner with the captain that night. In talking with them, we found out that this is their third voyage on SAS as lifelong learners. They did one other semester-long voyage as well as one summer voyage. They really enjoy having all of the kids around, and they definitely love to travel. All of us kids at the table got to talking about school and trips and whatnot, and 5 of us found out that we were doing the sleep on the Great Wall trip through The China Guide. John and I are both doing option 2, and the other girls are doing option 1, but we figure we will still see one another on the trip. Our parental unit left around 6:30 or so to head up to the captain’s dinner, but all of us kids sat and talked until around 7:30 or so. It was so much fun, and we are meeting again our first day at sea after Japan. After dinner, I wandered around in search for my friends, who were planning on watching a movie. Lo and behold, I found them in classroom 8, just starting Inglorious Basterds. I know Grandma Max didn’t really like it, but I absolutely loved it. A certain amount of appreciation of Quentin Tarantino is required, which I now have after watching Kill Bill. It had a great plot line, and the acting was phenomenal, especially on the part of Brad Pitt. We set our clocks back one hour tonight, which is always greatly appreciated on movie nights, as we are usually up fairly late. 

 

Day 19

No global studies class today! Which is nice, but I still have to be up at the crack of dawn because I have an 8 a.m. class. It sucks a little bit, but that’s ok. I got the details about my first theology paper today, and it is due the day after Japan. It's terrible, but I guess it has to be done. Tonight was the Mediterranean Sea’s movie night. I am in the Baltic Sea, but the majority of my friends on the ship are in the Mediterranean, so they told me to crash their movie night and go with them. So I went, and I was the only person who wasn’t in that sea that managed to not get kicked out by the Sea’s Living Learning Coordinator (basically an RA). We had cookies and popcorn and watched Top Gun, and it was awesome. Tomorrow is my last A day of classes before Japan, and I can’t wait to get there!!!!

 

Day 20

Woke up today, went to Global Mental Health, got my test back, and got an A!!!! Go me! I was incredibly happy, so hopefully I will be able to keep this up for the rest of my semester in this class. I have my first global studies test tomorrow, so we will see how that goes. It’s 50 multiple choice, so I don’t think it will be too bad, as I usually do really well on multiple choice tests. Otherwise, I had a mostly uneventful day. Got some studying done, but I will be doing most of it tomorrow after I get out of class at 10:45. We were told we were going to have rough seas today, but other than a little bit of rocking and rolling, it hasn’t been bad at all. Last day of classes tomorrow before Asia Day!!!! Woohoo!

 

Day 21

Ok, so I totally take back what I said about the rocking and rolling. It started getting bad really early this morning around 3. We weren’t really rocking from side to side, but now it is rocking a bit more forwards and backwards. When we come down off one wave, we hit another one head on, and the entire ship jolts a little bit and shakes; it’s called pitching. The jolting and shaking doesn’t happen every time, so it isn’t too bad, but it was nearly impossible to sleep last night. I woke up probably every half an hour, and from 5 am on I didn’t sleep, so today has been a ridiculously long day.

Went to class this morning, which got out early (score!), then sat in the garden lounge on deck 6 to study for global studies. I sat in that room all day, right up until 7 pm when our test was. It wasn’t bad at all, and I finished it in about 25 minutes. The rocking of the ship got really bad from lunch until after our test, but it mellowed out a little bit a little later on. They came over the loudspeaker and said that due to bad weather, the captain was having to slow down, which would most likely delay our arrival into Japan. Everyone was incredibly sad to hear about this, as we all just want to be off the ship already! A bunch of us played Apples to Apples until late, then we all headed off to bed, excited not only for Asia day, but the SUPERBOWL!

 

Day 22

Woke up at 7, breakfast at 7:30, headed to the Union at 8, where they were going to try and stream the Superbowl for us. They turned off all the computers in the computer lab and asked people to not use the internet so we had all the bandwidth possible to try and stream the game. They managed to stream the game, and although the quality wasn’t the greatest, at least we got to see the game and the commercials! We got pretty good seats towards the front of the room and on the side, so we could see all the action. We had some diehard fans from both teams in the room, and watching the game with everyone was a blast. How many times will I ever be able to say I watched the Superbowl on a Monday in the middle of the Pacific? Never again. It was so much fun, and while I was sad for Mr. Manning, it was nice to see the Saints win. We are having Asian themed food for dinner, but until then, I am going to try and get some packing done, then start my paper I have due the day after Japan. I will blog again after Japan and let you all know about all of my adventures!!!! Hopefully I will have some great stories!