back to ship life

It's been a few days now that we've been back on the ship. The first day, we were pretty much all walking around in this awkward, depressed funk. We love the ship, but none of us actually wanted to be back on it, taking classes, doing the regular thing. We all had cabin fever. I didn't really hang out with anyone for most of the day, except a mid-day break where Ali and I laid out tanning and drank banana-strawberry smoothies on the pool deck (which is apparently what the regular thing implies) Besides that, it was an off day, I didn't really want to be around anyone.

The next day was better. After work I took a nap outside in the sun and got a little bit more tan. I'm loving this whole being near the equator thing. Then I ran into Kevin and we hung out for a while and then met up with Joe. The three of us went to Kevins room to start working on our film. We pitched around quite a few ideas which came from all sorts of different ridiculous conversations, like "Pick a superpower that's completely pointless... or that has a catch". Some examples being "I can fly... but only inside of elevators." Liz and nate came in and we had a small dance break which was super fun and made us all really, really warm. They left to go see Adam Braun speak, but we kept working on the movie. We came up with a REALLY good idea and decided to roll with it. We worked on it for most of the night. We went up to the smokers deck so joe could have a cigarette, and I met a few new people which was cool. the three of us decided to spend new years in new york city together, where the two of them are getting an apartment. Kevin and I wound up staying up until like 4:30 talking about a bunch of random things, and then Farrah and I talked and I finally fell asleep around 5.

Yesterday was another day where I was just really, really tired. Probably because it's an A day and I can never sleep the night before and I have way to much to do. I skipped global studies... again... and took a nap. Musical theater class was awesome, as per usual. Met up with Kevin for lunch and then we started watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which is about 1000 times better than I remembered it being, and there are an insane amount of awesome quotes. After that I went to my world theater class, where we had a really interesting conversation about the role of sexuality for men and women in africa versus in western culture. I grabbed dinner very quickly and then went to improv club, which was super fun. After the club, there was an improv explorer seminar, which was lead by this guy named Dave who trained with second city which is pretty awesome, and that was super fun too. We then had our yellow sea ice cream social, which was pretty cool and also kind of frustrating, because not many people were as pumped about my iceberg activity as I was. Then Kevin and I worked on our paperwork for the next few ports which took way too long and I felt like I was going insane by the end of it. We then kidnapped Nate and hung out until about 2 AM talking about airplane high-fives, sci-fi, and flapping.

Now I'm sitting in the campus store, with 20 minutes left of my shift. We figure out that work study kids get roughly $50/hour. kind of nice, considering I mostly just do homework and fuck around. Tonight is my friend Stephanie's birthday, and she ordered 3 cakes which I'm excited about. I can only stay for 15 minutes, because then I've got an extended family dinner. Extended family is when you get partnered up with a life-long learner and a few other students, and you have dinner together every so often and share stories and just hang out. Tonight's the first night, so I'm excited to see who my family is going to be!

Next port is Ghana, which I'm beyond stoked to get to (Brit, if you're reading this, I need some Ghana tips!) We'll be there on Tuesday, and it absolutely CANNOT come quick enough.