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!