26,000 Words Later...

Well, folks, this is it. My last night on the MV Explorer! Last post…so, here goes. (sorry in advance if it gets a little mushy)

I’m full of mixed emotions right now.  I honestly can’t believe how quickly this summer has flown by!  After 68 days, 9 countries, and countless memories, I’m going back a changed person. Cheesy, but true.  I can’t wait to go home and share all my stories/pictures with everyone, though! Carmella and I made this cute video of this summer that I’ll definitely be showing to anyone willing to sit down long enough.

For those of you who’ve stuck around reading my blog all summer, thank you!  It took me awhile to decide if I even wanted to write one of these things, but I’m so glad I did.  Even now, I’ve gone back to read some of my earlier posts and realized how much I’d forgotten about.  If there’s any story you want to know more about, just ask.  For every story I wrote about, there’s probably about a million details I left out.  And for every port, there’s probably at least another few stories…including the ‘not appropriate for my blog’ stories, which I would be happy to tell ;]

Most importantly, I want to thank my parents for the experience of a lifetime.  For the past year and a half, the two of you have dealt with me talking about Semester at Sea non-stop.  For the past two months, you guys have gotten more ‘I need more money’ phone calls than I’m sure you ever wanted.  And for the next two weeks, before I head back to school, you will be subjected to looking at an obscene number of pictures, listening to a ridiculous amount of stories, and pretending to like an outrageous number of gifts.  I appreciate everything more than you know.

Tomorrow, we dock in Norfolk, VA.  From there, I grab my bags (or struggle awkwardly with them until I find some guy who’s only taking one bag home to help me), head through customs (where I’m sure my not-so-subtle last name will get me a lucky “random” check), and say my goodbyes (where I’ll surely ruin my super tough reputation and cry like a baby).

Wow. I can’t believe it’s over. Back to reality…

To Study or Not To Study...

Hello, loyal readers/people with nothing else better to do!

Today was officially the last day of classes…and it was glorious! I’ve still got exams left, but I’m currently ignoring that little fact while I watch 500 Days of Summer on our closed-circuit TV.  We get four movies every day, and most days the movies/weird ass documentaries they choose suck…but today, the day before the Global Studies exam, they decide to play a decent one.  Of course, they would do that to us.  Thank you, evil movie-picker outers, who clearly DON'T have an exam to study for. 

The past few days on the ship have been pretty chill.  Most of us have had a lot of work since classes are winding down, but we’ve had a few activities going on around the ship too.  The other night, we had the Shipboard Auction where people spent obscene amounts of money for things like getting to steer the ship for 30 minutes, blowing the horn as we pull into Norfolk, 24 hours of unlimited internet (which is like GOLD on this ship), and being able to pick the dinner menu one night.  Although I didn’t bid on anything, it was pretty amusing to watch as people spent ridiculous amounts of their parents’ money.  Two guys even spent 400 bucks to pie our Global Studies teacher in the face!  While I’m sure that a few seconds of shoving Dr. Bowler’s face into whipped cream would be rewarding…I think my parents would’ve disowned me for spending that kinda money on something like that.

The night after that, Carmella and I went out on the top deck to watch the meteor shower.  The astronomy professor got them to turn off the ship’s lights from 11pm-2am, so we could see the stars.  In the hour that I was out there, I saw 5 shooting stars!  I’m not quite sure what the rules on the whole wishing on a shooting star thing are, but I sucked at making wishes.  That sounds like a weird thing to suck at, but it's true.  I would think about it for a bit beforehand and decide on what I wanted to wish for, but when I actually saw the star flying across the sky, my thoughts weren’t ‘I want a great junior year!’…they were more like ‘Oh my God! Is that a shooting star!? I think so! Wait, I’m not sure! It could be a plane! It’s moving fast! Everyone else is ohhing and awwing, so it must be a star! Oh….it’s gone.’  Anyways, I’m hoping that my thoughts before and after seeing the shooting star count as wishes.  If not, I need to work on my wish-making skills.

Alright. I’m off to study…or kinda sorta look over my notes and pretend I’m studying so I can feel better about myself.  Home in 6 days! (P.S. I honestly don’t know how Columbus did this whole sail-to-America thing for so damn long. We’ve only been on this ship for 5 days, and I’m already whining. I want LAND already, damnit!)

Morocco, Part 4: 1000 Camels for Your Love

The next day, we woke up early to go to this big shopping square in Marrakech.  We only had three hours before we had to head back to Casablanca, so Kallyn and I split from the rest of the group and power-shopped. Of all the places I’ve been to, Morocco had some of the coolest stuff by far. And it was all so cheap!

As we were walking along, I spotted a really pretty scarf that I knew my mom would love.  I went into the shop and started inspecting it, when the clerk came out from the back and started talking to me.  He asked what my name was and where I was from…the usual questions.  Then, he started saying what a gentle person I was…a little strange…but whatever. If that’s what gets me a good price, I’ll take it. As he and I were bargaining, he grabbed my hand and put in on his chest over his heart and said, ‘Your name will forever be etched in my heart.’ Oh jeez. Not another weirdo. 

It was super hot, so Kallyn and I were both working up a sweat while we were walking around.  As the clerk and I are still bargaining, he wipes something from my forehead. I was slightly embarrassed, but wanted to know what I had on my face, so I asked…and he replied with, ‘You were sweating, my love. I wipe it for you.’ Oh God. Did he just wipe my SWEAT from my face with his bare hands!?! That’s DISGUSTING! Is this how they show affection here? By wiping their beloved’s sweat? Kallyn and I both awkwardly laughed as I muttered something like, ‘Oh…you don’t need to do that’...but despite my attempts to dodge his hand, he KEPT DOING IT! I was sufficiently creeped out/grossed out/wanted to leave….but I wanted the scarf really badly still. Finally, I managed to get him to come down to the price I wanted for it, and Kallyn and I headed out as quickly as we could.  As we were power-walking/running away, he kept yelling, ‘Goodbye, gentle Elaina. I would give 1000 camels to have you forever!’ Aw, shucks. 1000 camels!? For me!? No guy has ever said such a beautiful thing! I was so taken by his flagrant display of affection that I told Kallyn sayonara, and headed back to him. Alright. Not really. But if he’d said 1001 camels…I might’ve.

As we recovered from the awkward scarf-buying ordeal, Kallyn and I wandered around buying souvenirs.  As she was buying a Moroccan CD, the man selling it to her overheard me say how I wanted to get a henna tattoo before we left.  He started exclaiming about how his sister did henna and to follow him.  So, we did, and he led us out into the middle of the square to a lady who he claimed was his sister.  I still had a few things to buy, so I told her that I only had 50 dirham to spend and asked her to show me what I could get for that.  She pulled out her little book of tattoos and pointed to a picture of a scorpion.  Um…I don’t think so. I was thinking more along the lines of cutesy and girly…not a bug.  I started shaking my head and said, ‘Is there anything else? How about a flower?’ She replied with, ‘No. For 50 dirham I can only give you scorpion. It’s nice scorpion.’  Yea right, lady. I’m NOT getting a fricken scorpion on my hand.  I muttered, ‘What about a SMALL flower? It can be REALLY small if you want! Less ink than the scorpion!’ One of the other henna tattoo ladies started saying, ‘Yea, just do small flower!’ My lady, who was clearly not having any of that just kept shaking her head and said, ‘No FLOWER! I only do SCORPION for 50 dirham!’ I turned my head to ask Kallyn if we should find someone else, and while my head was turned, the lady grabbed my hand and started drawing!  After 30 seconds of me repeating, ‘Wait! Can I have a flower!?!’…I just gave up. And before I knew it, I had a scorpion on my hand.  And, because I’m such a smart gal, I had asked her to use the long-staying henna when we had been negotiating. So instead of this thing being on my hand for 5-7 days, I get ‘What the hell is on your hand?’ looks for 2-3 weeks! Lucky me!

After paying for my scorpion, we started walking around trying to find a tajine (this cool pot thing that they use for cooking) for Kallyn. We walked by a clothing store, and the clerk tried to get us to come in.  We didn’t need any clothes, and we were both pretty broke at this point, which we told him…but he replied with, ‘Come in! Take pictures in clothes!’ Hmm…alright. Why not? We’ve got some time to kill…and almost no money to spend, so this will give us something to do for a bit.  We went into the store and as the dude was pulling down an outfit, he said, ‘This one for you, Laina.’ Since I hadn’t told him my name, I was slightly weirded out…until I remembered that along with my scorpion, the henna lady also put my named in Arabic on my hand.  Phew.

The clerk told us his name was Aziz, and started to put the outfit on me.  It was super complicated.  First he tied the top half of the cloth around my chest, and then proceeded to go between my legs with the rest of it, which made for some very awkward few seconds.  All the while, he was muttering, ‘I like you very much, Laina.’…to which I responded with, ‘Umm…thanks?’ Meanwhile, Kallyn spent the entire time giggling and taking pictures of the strange encounter.  After the weird between the legs thing, I put my arms through some random holes.  Then he tied a pink belt around me and that was it. I had no idea what I looked like, but by the look on Kallyn’s face, I knew it was pretty hilarious.
 
At this point, Aziz was getting a little touchy feely.  We took the picture, and he didn’t take his arm from around my waist.  Before I knew it, he started kissing my cheek and saying that I could be his Fatima (who I think was a queen or maybe Mohammad’s wife? Something along those lines…). I managed to pull away and look in a mirror…and boy was I a sight. And even though I’d had no intention of buying it before…I figured it’d make a pretty funny Halloween costume…so I asked if I could have the outfit for free. He looked at Kallyn and said, ‘She can have it for free…if I can keep her!’ Keep me!?! Do I look like a fricken dog to you!? Kallyn, being the great friend that she is, just started nodding and saying ‘She’s all yours!’ Then, I shamelessly proceeded to make sad faces, hoping that would entice him to let me have it.  He said he couldn’t give it to me for free since he didn’t own the shop, but then pointed to his lips and said that if I gave him a kiss, he’d pay for it.  All he wants is a kiss!? SURE!...Okay, not really. Unfortunately for him…and my wallet, I have way more self-respect than that, so I handed him 5 dollars and 50 dirham (about 11 bucks total) and called it even.  Halloween, here I come.  For future reference, I’ll be the chick in the super un-sexy blue drape. 

Only 8 more days until we're back in the US! I'll be sure to keep you all posted on anything interesting!

Morocco, Part 3: Camel Toe? More Like, Camel Crotch.

Alright. Time to finish telling you about Morocco!

After our night at the nomad camp and our breakfast of tea, hard-boiled eggs, and bread, we made our way to the bajillion camels waiting for us outside of the camp.  I wasn’t particularly excited to be going on what we were told was a 2 hour camel trek after my uncomfortable 10 minute camel ride at the pyramids in Egypt. Thankfully, though, these camels were much smaller and the saddles, at first sit, were substantially more comfortable than the other ones had been.

We had a little caravan of four camels. Sarah up front, Pete on the second camel, I got the third, and Alex, wearing his turban-type thing and looking pretty legit, holding up the back. My camel’s name was Azuzu, and he was pretty good. He didn’t make one noise. Pete’s, on the other hand, was going nuts and crapping every two seconds, which I got to watch the entire time.  After about 20 minutes of camel trekking, I was beginning to realize that despite the increased comfort of the saddles, the fact that we were going to be riding the camel for 2 hours was going to leave us pretty damn sore. About halfway through, I decided to break the rules of Camel Riding 101 and sat Indian style on the saddle.  That was probably really dumb, but I didn’t fall off so it was a success!  Our trek ended up lasting about an hour and a half in all, and we were ready to be off of it by the end. 

We got back on the buses, camel-stench and all, and headed back to Marrakech, with less stops this time since we told our tour guide we wanted to get there as quickly as we could.  As we were riding along, I began to see droplets of rain on the windows. All I could think was, is it seriously raining in the SAHARA DESERT?! First palm trees, and now rain?  Did I get jipped on this whole desert thing or what?
Once we got to our hotel in Marrakech, I made a beeline for the shower so I could wash away all the nature/camel nastiness.  From there, my friends and I headed to the supermarket down the street to pick up some snacks.  As we were heading to the register, a Moroccan man approached us with a 100 dirham bill in his hand.  Oh jeez.  Why is he waving his money at us?? Does he think we’re prostitutes?!? Boy, put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and all of a sudden you’re a whore. 

Before we could walk away, though, he asked if we would buy him beer. What the hell? Why does he need us to by him beer? Then, he pointed to the men guarding the alcohol section and muttered, ‘Ramadan.’  Ohhh.  We’d seen them checking people’s IDs before they went into the alcohol section to make sure that they weren’t Muslim because Ramadan was the next day, and they weren’t allowed to drink. Gosh, that sucks.  So, we grabbed his 100, bought him some beer, and went back to his place where we converted to Islam and celebrated Ramadan.  Okay. Not really. More like, we muttered our ‘Hell no’s’ and headed to the register.  It’s not like Ramadan came out of nowhere. If this crappy Muslim didn’t stock up on contraband booze before the religious holiday, then he doesn’t deserve to get any now!  Dumbass. After our supermarket stop, we headed to Pizza Hut, grabbed a couple pizzas, and headed back to the hotel where we spent our last night in port hanging out. 

HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY, DANIEL!

I hope Mom got you strippers like I suggested! If not, don't worry...when you come visit me in Providence this year, I'll be sure to take you to this great little place called Foxy Lady. Word on the street is that when they're not busy having Bible study sessions (which is the only reason I ever go), they turn into a strip joint. News to me. Never say I wasn't a good big sister!

More about Morocco when I finish my bio paper!

Morocco, Part 2: When Wine Replaced Water in the Sahara

The best part about the camp…it had a BAR. Yep. A well-stocked bar…in the middle of the Sahara. Do these nomads know how to cater to college students, or what? Before we got off the bus, they told us that under no circumstances were we allowed to bring alcohol to the camp because apparently some crazy shit went down last year when people snuck alcohol in. Apparently, though, we were allowed to drink if the alcohol was from the nomad bar. Woohoo! 

Despite the bar, I got a coke while everyone else was getting beer and bottles of wine to split. I’m not a fan of either, and the only other options were buying an entire bottle of gin or tequila. 1) Ew. 2) How the hell do I drink an ENTIRE BOTTLE by myself? Bad idea. So, responsibly again, I stayed away from the bar.

As the night progressed, though, and my friends were getting happier and happier by the sip, my coke was looking less and less appealing. Everyone seemed to be enjoying their wine… so I figured, why not? Besides, if I was gonna be sleeping with bugs and sand and God knows what else, it’d probably be best if I was knocked out. So, I manned up and split a bottle of wine with a friend of mine. Half a bottle and many disgusted faces later, I was good to go.

As we were sitting out by the bonfire area nursing our nomad alcohol, all of a sudden, techno music starts blasting and strobe lights turn on. No joke. COOLEST NOMAD CAMP EVER! Who knew that when we all signed up for “Nomad Camp and Camel Trek in the Sahara” that we were gonna get “Booze and a Dance Party in the Middle of the Nowhere.” I had to give myself a little pat on the back for picking this trip.
 
None of us had eaten since about 1, so we didn’t have much in our stomachs. At about 9:30, they told us it was time for dinner. Perfect timing for drunken munchies. Like I mentioned before, there were two dining tents. One was huge with tons of tables…the other was a tiny little thing on the other side of the bonfire area that was essentially a sleeping tent, but with two tables in it. We slowly sauntered over to the main dining tent, but found that we were too slow…so we got the boot and were sent to the tiny one. The 9 of us grabbed one of the tables and dug into the bread within seconds. Halfway through our desert meal, the lone light bulb that was hanging in our tent went out. Thankfully, one of my friends had deemed her two glow-sticks a nomad camp necessity, so we made do.

After dinner, we all went to our tents and dragged our mattress pads out by the bonfire because we decided to sleep out there. Before we knew it, everyone was dragging theirs out of their tents too. Hell yea. SAS sleepover under the stars. It was so beautiful out! A little cloudy, unfortunately, but such a cool experience to be sleeping outside, under the stars, in the Sahara. That, alone, made the uncomfortable 12 hour bus-ride and obnoxious tour guide 100% worth it. 

We all settled down for the night, and, just as I’d hoped, the wine put me out. I woke up the next morning after a good night’s sleep, bug-free, to the sunrise and the loud snoring of the kid sleeping above my head. I was so tempted to throw my pillow at him, so he’d shut up, but I was in a good mood, so my pillow stayed under my head. I seriously don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do if I get a snorer as “The One.”  Please, fate, don’t do that to me. Even I don’t deserve that kind of punishment. 

So I’ll fill ya in on days 3 and 4 tomorrow!

Morocco, Part 1: Palm Trees in the Desert?

Hi all!

I’m back on the ship and sailing for home! I still can’t believe that I’m done with my last port!

Anyways, I have four days of stories to tell from Morocco. Here goes…

On the first day, I headed out on my trip to Marrakech and the nomad camp. It took us four hours to get from Casablanca to Marrakech by bus. As we were driving through Casablanca, I realized there wasn’t much there, so I was glad I wasn’t going to be spending any time there. I do wish that I’d been able to go to Rick’s Café, though! Yep. It exists. Apparently some woman who used to work for the US Embassy in Morocco quit her job and opened it.  Pretty cool.  Some of my friends went and said it was awesome, so I was pretty jealous.

When we got to Marrakech, I was so surprised by how gorgeous it was! There are palm trees everywhere and all the buildings are painted this pretty pinkish-red color. And unlike Alexandria and Cairo, it was so clean! That sounds like a really weird thing to notice, but after seeing how congested and dirty Egypt was, I was expecting Morocco to be similar. Not one bit, though. Most Moroccans can read and speak both Arabic and French because France occupied Morocco for a period of about 50 years in the 1900s. Also, the culture is so much more liberal than I expected! After Egypt, I figured that Morocco would be super conservative, but they’re not nearly as conservative as the Egyptians. I mean, some of the women were covered up fully, but for the most part, we all felt comfortable wearing whatever we wanted.

Our first night, we went to dinner and got to see a belly-dancing show, which was cool. After that, a lot of SAS-ers went out to this club called Pasha, which was supposedly the biggest club in Africa.  My friend Kallyn (who I met/hung out with in Mykonos) and I thought about joining them…but then opted to drink a couple of cokes and hit the sack early, forgoing the possibility of a hangover on the next morning’s 7-8 hour bus ride to the nomad camp. I felt lame at time…but was grateful for my brief lapse of responsibility the next morning when half of the people on the bus felt like shit.

Our 7-8 hour bus ride turned into a 12 hour bus ride because our tour guide liked to stop what seemed like every half an hour for the bathroom or to take pictures. I appreciated the picture stops, but the bathroom breaks were unnecessary. If one person expressed their need to pee, we stopped. If, twenty minutes later, some asshole that didn’t get off the bus at the stop before expressed their need to pee, we stopped. Then, after about 8 hours, one chick told the guy she needed to find an ATM…so, obviously, we stopped. I honestly wanted to ask her if she realized that we were going to a NOMAD CAMP. Where the hell did she think she was going to spend it!? Little did I know…

The drive was beautiful.  There’s one road that goes down the entire country and weaves its way around the mountains, so the view was amazing the whole time. After the mountains, we went through a town called Ouarzazate which has a bunch of movie studios, including the biggest one in the world. It’s where Sex and the City 2 was filmed! (We also passed by the hotel that was in the movie back in Marrakech. So cool!)  Before we got to the nomad camp, they told us we’d have about a half hour walk through the desert to get there. Our 30 minute journey through the desert turned into a 5 minute walk down a sand dune.  Glad our tour-guide was so well-informed.

There were palm trees scattered everywhere in the desert too! Definitely not how I pictured the Sahara. The nomad camp was so awesome, though! There were tons of 6-person tents held up by big wooden poles and covered with brown cloth…and they had mattress pads!...kind of sandy and dirty but I was content. There were also two dining tents with a bunch of little tables and pillows to sit on. And the bathroom tent had TOILETS. I mean, we obviously didn’t sit on them…and there were basically just holes underneath them…but the shiny, white porcelain that we got to awkwardly hover over was comforting, nonetheless. Privacy was a slight issue, though. There were these weird flaps that covered the top half of your body, so you could remain anonymous, but left the rest of you for the world to see. And you couldn’t pull the flaps together to close it because that would leave your neighbor hanging. We pretty much just took turns standing in front of the flaps so we could all pee in peace.

Stay tuned for the interesting stuff...

Here's to looking at you, kid.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Morocco! Casablanca, to be exact. They’ve had that movie on TV all day for the occasion. Sadly, though, I won’t be spending much time in Casablanca. I’ve got a trip that lasts the whole time we’re in port. I’ll be in Marakech the first night, at a nomad camp the second night, and back in Marakech for the third night. It should be quite a hoot. Especially the nomad camp part. I’m not really sure what I was going through my mind when I signed up for this trip, but I’m starting to think that I might’ve overestimated my tolerance for the outdoors. I mean, let’s be honest…I’m not really the camping type. For me, a mediocre hotel is the equivalent of roughing it.  Camping is just so…ughhhh. Tents. And bugs. And sand since it’s the Sahara. And no showers. And I don’t even want to think about the toilet facilities. They told us to pack toilet paper. Real promising.

Oh well. Not much I can do about it now. I’m gonna toughen up. Maybe I’ll be a changed woman after this experience. Maybe I’ll become a camping freak and wanna go all the time. Perhaps I’ll want to trade in my comfy bed and clean ways for a sleeping bag and grungy lifestyle. Okay. Not likely. Mostly I’m just hoping I make it through. Without getting any weird diseases. Like West Nile. That’s a concern here, right? I mean, we are west of the Nile. Which I guess is true back home too…but doesn’t it count more since we’re closer to the Nile now? Who knows.
 
I’ll be sure to let you all know how it goes! Farewell for four days! Keep your fingers crossed for toilets!

Somewhere Above Africa...

We’ve been sailing for four days now! Only two more until we get to Morocco. I thought these six days would go by super slowly, but they’ve been surprisingly fast since I’ve been so busy!

I had an exam in both econ and bio yesterday. Then I went to the Talent Show last night, which was pretty good. It started off with our two deans singing along and dancing to ‘I’m on a Boat’ while the music video played behind them. After that there were some cool acts like an Indian dance, a rapping magician, and some of the professor’s kids doing a spoof of the captain.  There were also a few acts that were excruciatingly painful to watch. There’s always that one chick that clearly overestimates her singing skills and proceeds to butcher a great song. (Boston, anyone?) And because we’re so lucky, we had a few of them. Other than that though, we’ve got a talented-ish ship!

Today, I had classes, and then had a global studies exam after dinner. Since everyone on the ship takes it, you can imagine how frenzied these days are. You can always tell who the kids are that aren’t transferring their grades back to their school because they spend the day chilling while everyone else is cramming. I hate those kids.

Tomorrow is Crew Appreciation Day, so our hall made a big sign for our cabin stewards. Tonight at our ice cream social, we all signed it. I thought we were just signing our names…but most people were writing out long notes, so I figured I’d write a little something to Edwin too. Instead of the typical, ‘Thanks for cleaning my room everyday!’…I went with ‘Dear Edwin, Thanks for being the only guy to come within 5 feet of my bed!’ Good, right? Okay. So I didn’t actually write that. But I really wanted to! Instead, I went with something along the lines of ‘Thanks for cleaning up my mess’ or something lame like that. Oh well. I’m sure he knows he’s the only man in my life. He’s the only man in most of our lives these days. 

Off to write my global studies paper now! Woohoo! Be jealous!

Sea Olympics!

Hi all!

Today, we had the much-awaited Sea Olympics! I think I explained this before, but that was probably awhile ago, so I’ll explain again…The entire ship is split up into seas. My part of Deck 4 is the Red Sea, down the hall is the Bering Sea, on the other side is the Adriatic, and so on. There are 10 seas in all…including the faculty and staff sea, which they so aptly named the Diploma Sea (apparently, they’re usually called the Dead Sea, but that didn’t fly with this group). Throughout the voyage, we’ve had ice cream socials and whatnot with our seas, but today was the big day to show off your sea’s talent. Not only does the winner get bragging rights, but they also get the coveted First Off the Boat spot when we get to Virginia in a few weeks.

There was somewhere between 15 and 20 events including extreme musical chairs, tug-o-war, flip cup, synchronized swimming, and a lip-syncing competition. We all sported our sea’s designated color to distinguish us. Last night, we had a meeting to solidify who was signed up for what event, fill available spots, and come up with a cheer for opening ceremonies.  Our sea was less-than organized. Our Sea Captains couldn’t really seem to get their shit together, and it was looking bad. We nominated two Sea Captains earlier on in the voyage. The guy has a loud personality, but is really nice. The chick, on the other hand, was not exactly leadership material. She’s just got a bad attitude all around and her only words of encouragement were along the lines of, ‘If you guys don’t win this, I’m gonna be effing pissed.’ Does she know how to inspire people or what?

Anyways, it was clear that our sea was less than enthusiastic about today. We went to the opening ceremonies dressed in red, but all the other seas seemed to be 10x more spirited than any of us. To top it off, the cheer that we had come up with was not nearly as good as the others. It was clear that despite the fact that we had the largest sea with the highest proportion of guys, we were definitely not a force to be reckoned with.

After opening ceremonies, we all went off to our various games. In the first round, I was in extreme musical chairs. I was doing pretty well until some chick in the Yellow Sea body checked me off my seat. Damn ho. Overall, though, we got 2nd place for that event. As I was waiting for my next event to start, I walked around the ship to check out how we were doing...and from what I heard, we seemed to be doing surprisingly well. We’d won 1st in the free throw competition, 1st in the pull-ups competition, and 1st at donut-on-a-string (false advertising—it was actually a bagel). I went to my second event, tug-o-war, where we sadly didn’t place. After that, though, they announced how the seas were doing overall…and Red Sea was in first place! I was shocked! For a team that had zero spirit, poor leadership, and a crappy chant, we were kicking ass!

I went to the pie-eating contest after that. The first round was girls. They gave them a huge pie…which we thought was all whipped cream, but under the top layer, it turned out to be this gooey, gross lemon filling. I was definitely glad I hadn’t signed up for that one. Competing for us was our bitchy leader, who I did my best to be supportive of. The contest was no-hands…but during it, the judge told the girls that they could lift the crust on the bottom of the pan so they could get to it more easily. Our chick, though, had already managed to get the crust off the bottom with her mouth…and she was pissed that he let the other girls use their hands. Before I knew it, she was in the judge’s face yelling about how letting them do that was ‘bullshit’ and how he was ‘effing retarded.’ Real classy. After the judge just shrugged and said too bad, she went back to eating her pie…and a minute later, she made a beeline for the side of the boat and threw up. I guess that’s karma for ya. I mean, I wasn’t happy that we didn’t place…but I was secretly satisfied that all her hard work was for nothing.

When they announced how the seas were doing again, Red Sea was down to 4th, which was disappointing since we'd been winning not long ago. We still had one competition left, though, and winning it would put us back into 1st. We had a barbeque for dinner, and then we headed to the union to watch the lip-syncing competition. It was hilarious to watch, and especially funny to see some of the faculty and staff do an interpretive dance. Unfortunately, we didn’t win, and when they announced who won during the closing ceremonies, we learned that we got 4th overall. Not bad out of 10 seas…but not good enough to get us off the boat first.

Later on, I was talking to some people in my sea, and I found out something interesting. Our team leader’s little pie-eating bitch-out cost our sea a whopping 50 points. That’s the equivalent of winning two 1st places and a 3rd place in the events. And guess how much we lost to the other three teams by? Less than 50 points. Yep. If it hadn’t been for her, we would’ve WON! Suffice it to say, I’m a little bitter about it. Miss ‘I’ll be effing pissed if we don’t win’ only has herself to blame. Hmph. Oh well. At least I got the pleasure of watching her puke. 
I’m back to class tomorrow. These next 5 days at sea are gonna be rough. I’ve got an exam in every class, and two papers. Booo. I’ll be sure to update on anything interesting!

Pharoah, Pharoah?Ohh Baby, Let My People Go.

Goodbye, Egypt! We’re Morocco-bound now.

The day before we left Egypt, I went to the Alexandria mall with Caitlin and Lee. We hired a taxi driver for the day named Ali. It only cost us 100 Egyptian pounds (less than 20 bucks) for him to drive us around wherever we wanted all day, so it was a pretty sweet deal. When we got to the mall, we were excited to see that it also had a movie theater since we’ve been deprived of American entertainment for the past month and a half. There were only 3 English options, though: Shrek 4, The Echelon Conspiracy, and the Last Airbender (I think it was called?). They’d already seen Shrek, so based on the movie posters, we decided to go with the Echelon Conspiracy. It had Shane West in it, so it seemed promising even though none of us had heard of it. As we started watching, though, we realized that the movie probably never even made it into American theaters. I’m not sure what’s happened since Shane West’s A Walk to Remember days…but his acting was awful! Despite the crappy acting, the sub-par plot, and the obnoxious Arabic subtitles that kept covering some of the English subtitles that we needed to read, we had a good time. 

After the movie, we walked around the mall for awhile and did some shopping. It was super hot, so I took off the sweater that was covering my shoulders. It seemed like it was a pretty modern place, and I’d seen some other girls baring skin, so, why not? Between my scandalous shoulders and Caitlin and Lee’s blonde hair, the number of ‘you clearly don’t belong here’ looks that we got was plentiful. I could’ve put my sweater back on…and they could’ve covered their hair like some of the other blondes on the ship had been doing, but hey, we like to live on the edge.

After we’d had enough of the mall, we made our way to Carrefour, which is basically like a super Wal-Mart. It was actually attached to the mall, which was kind of weird, but cool since we didn’t have to go anywhere else. We grabbed a cart, and headed to the station where they put all of your shopping bags in these big sealed bags so you can’t steal anything. It was strange. Then we made our way through the unbelievably crowded a isles. Not counting our time in Morocco, we’ve got 17 total days left at sea…and ship food is getting old. We figured it’d be smart to stock up on food and soda (especially since soda is 2 bucks a can!) When I went to look at snack foods, though, all the stuff I wanted was so expensive! A package of Oreos was 11 bucks! Chips Ahoy were 10. A small bag of off-brand tortilla chips was 9. Off-brand Pringles were 7. It was outrageous! And as much as I wanted them, I couldn’t justify paying that much. So, sadly, I left Carrefour with only soda and a couple candy bars. Looks like I’ll be hitting up the pool deck some more.

After we were done grocery-ish shopping, we headed out and found Ali waiting for us. From there, we went to dinner. We told Ali to take us to a good restaurant...but as we were driving, we spotted a Chili’s so we excitedly waved him in that direction. Who knew they had Chili’s in Egypt? And the food was normal! We got chips, and I had a fajita quesadilla, and life was good. Movies, mall, grocery shopping, and Chili’s…ah, it’s like being home…I mean, if you pretend it’s Halloween, and everybody around you decided to dress up as an Arab. Yep, just like home.

The next morning, we went in search of internet, picked up some souvenirs along the way, and headed back to the ship before all the long trips were scheduled to arrive back. Getting on the ship takes forever on the last day because they are always 100x more intense about checking every single thing you bring on.

We’ve got 6 days at sea until we get to Morocco, which is the longest stretch since our journey across the Atlantic. Tomorrow, instead of classes, we’ve got Sea Olympics, though, so I’m excited! I’ll update on that tomorrow night!