Land, ho!...sort, of

Hello all!

Sorry it’s taken me so long to write! I planned on putting up a new post yesterday, but the waters were sooo rough! There was this rare bird that flew onto one of the decks yesterday and apparently someone touched it...so according to the superstitious crew, we got punished by having rough waters. Wonderful. Thank you, asshole who decided to touch the dying bird and cause us all to feel unbelievably nauseous.

We passed through the Strait of Gibraltar today and it was so cool! It’s an 8 mile stretch between Europe and Africa. I was in bio while we were passing through it, so my professor let us out early for this twice in a lifetime experience (since we have to sail through it again to leave the Mediterranean).  You could see Africa on one side and Spain on the other! And that’s when I saw whales! Guess I can mark that off my bucket list. For those of you who don’t know me well, whale-watching is in my top five list of things to do before I die, right up there with going to every location that Mary-Kate and Ashley ever made a movie. Okay. Just kidding. About the whale-watching part. Not the Mary-Kate and Ashley part. That’s legit.

Sunday, I made a call to the pops to wish him a happy father’s day. After a whole 4 minutes and 14 seconds on the phone, and an accompanying phone charge of somewhere upwards of 20 bucks, I’m sure he would’ve preferred that I’d just emailed. But hey, that’s the cost of appreciation these days.

In other ship news, I accidentally saw a naked chick yesterday. As my new buddy Brianna and I were walking along the 5th deck, we passed a row of windows that look directly into rooms. Naturally, we would kinda glance into the rooms as we passed them. We learned our lesson quick, though. As we were walking past one of the rooms, a girl, who had apparently just gotten out of the shower, was lotioning herself on her bed. I mean, I do that…but I have a view of the Atlantic. Immediately I wondered to myself, what person in their right mind parades around naked and leaves their curtains open when tons of people are constantly walking by their window?  Then I remembered Aquinas…and our wonderful view of the quad…and our big windows…whose shades stayed open about 99.9% of the time. I guess I should think before I judge.

Today at lunch, I met a girl from India who asked me where I was from. When I told her Tennessee, she got all excited and exclaimed/asked, “You are from the home of the HANNAH MONTANA!?!”  It was really a beautiful moment for me to realize that Tennessee’s worldwide recognition is based on a fictional television character played by a sub-par actress who is the daughter of a one-hit-wonder country star. Tennessee, we should be proud.

Every day on the ship, we have the 1730 announcements (that’s 5:30pm for all you lucky people who don’t have to deal with strange military time). During these announcements, the “voice,” as we like to call him, informs us of ship news and a “question of the day” that’s been overheard on the boat. The past couple of days have been pretty funny so I decided to share them...today it was “Will we be crossing the Atlantic on our way back home?” (how the hell was this person’s GPA high enough for this trip!?) or my personal favorite, “Where in Italy is the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”…Elaina’s goal for the next two months: to not make this list. Given my background in super-stupid question asking (i.e. when I innocently inquired to the hermit crab seller at the mall kiosk as to how we would go about changing our crab’s shell when he grew out of his old one…along with a variety of other enlightened questions that I’m sure my roommates would be more than thrilled to divulge), I think that the task ahead of me is no easy one. Whoever said “no question is a stupid question” apparently never met me.

Tonight, I met another kid from Saudi Arabia who’s in my biology class while studying for our exam that’s tomorrow. He goes to Northeastern and comes to RI all the time for Arabic food. Didn’t get a chance to smell him, though. I’ll look into that. (Please refer to previous post and not think I’m a total weirdo) He was studying with Saudi Arabia Boy #1. Both SABs are quite nice, actually. SAB #1 was explaining the plight of everyone thinking that just because he’s from Saudi Arabia, he’s super rich, which just isn’t true…as he sits there in his a Burberry shirt. Hah. Okay, SAB #1.

Bio test tomorrow. Barcelona on Thursday! So exciteddddd!

p.s. the email on this ship sucks! So, don’t be sad if you haven’t gotten a message from me yet.