I Have Totally Been Slacking......

SORRY!  I know I haven’t put up my blog on Brazil yet, but I promise it is almost done and it will be awesome! 

        Today our voyage was able to celebrate one of the traditions that happen during Semester at Sea…….SEA OLYMPICS!!!  Sea Olympics is a competition between the seas (kind of like our dorms) and the winner gets to get off the ship first in San Diego.  The ship is split up into different parts, such as 3rd deck starboard (right) side aft (back) (which is where my sea is located), and each part is named after a different sea around the world.  My sea is the Caribbean Sea and our color is ORANGE!!!  I was able to provide a lot of people with clothes to wear with my vast collection of orange.  There are 8 student seas, 1 faculty/staff sea (the Luna Sea), and 1 life-long learner sea (the sea salts).

        My voyages Sea Olympics experience was unique when compared to other voyages.   Most of the Sea Olympics from past voyages take part during the middle of the voyage, so they had tons of time to prepare.  Our Sea Olympics was in the 3rd week of the voyage, and we only found out the exact date until 3 days ago.  This left us less than 72 hours to make up cheers and chants, choreograph dances, and paint posters. 

        I competed in the Trivia Bowl and Dress Your LLC (who is like our RD).    The Trivial Bowl did not go as well as our team planned.  In the end we had too many strong minded people on the team, all who believed they had the right answer.  Even though we did not win this event, we received points for showing up, having spirit, and good sportsmanship.  Dress Your LLC was tons of fun.  Each Sea received a category to make a costume out of the items we have in our rooms.  The category our sea received was “clown”.  My teammates and I made bright orange pants out of a rain poncho, which we stuffed with pillows to make large legs.  We made a top out of a tie-dye t-shirt and a pair of yellow sweatpants.  One of the guys made clown shoes out of a pair of his dress shoes, cardboard, and red duct tape.  We filled an umbrella with baby powder so it would spray all over when opened.  We painted our LLC’s face with lipstick, watercolor paints, and eye shadow.  We did not place in the top three in this event, but we got 4th place. 

        Some other events that were part of the Sea Olympics were Tug-o-War (1st place), crab soccer, Dodge ball (2nd place), Hula Hoop (1st place), card stacking, relay races, limbo (2nd place), and synchronized swimming.  At the halfway point of the day my sea was in 1st place, but in the end we received 4th place out of 10, but missed winning 3rd place by just 1 point.   I think in the end the lack of participation from some of our sea, as well as some funky scoring, hurt our chance of winning.

        To finish out a fun day we had an amazing BBQ on the pool deck.  We had some of foods we had not had in a long time, such as hamburgers, hot dogs, ribs, and corn on the cob.  We also had a yummy ice cream sundae bar, which is a big treat!  All in all, today was a really fun and exciting day that helped break up the 9 days it takes to get from Manaus, Brazil to Takadori, Ghana.
Peace and Love

P.S.  We are now officially 5 hours ahead of east coast time.