Neptune Day!!!!

We are now getting pretty close to the middle of the Atlantic ocean with fairly calms seas tonight, although I can’t say the same thing for yesterday. Although yesterday was a lot of fun because we were able to do a pretty cool bridge tour. It was conducted by 2nd officer Louis who had just join the MV Explorer two weeks ago. Some of the highlights were when we showed us all of the radar equipment and how it can become more or less sensitive even to the point to where it picks us large ocean swells. And then he took the ship off of autopilot which is what it is usually on while at sea. When you take it off of autopilot you have the option of standing up and steering it with a half steering wheel or you can sit in one of the two captains chairs and drive it with a joy stick just like a video game. He then put the ship back on autopilot and showed us how that worked. With one round knob you could change the degrees from smaller and lower by turning it the pushing it in lightly which changed the coordinates. You could then watch on the above monitor and see the coordinates gradually changing as well as slowly watching it change directions visually. With that said he stated that it would take at least ten minutes to change the course of the ship to miss another ship at the usual speed at which we were going at 20 knots. The Explorer is only around 25,000 tons so it would be even longer for the larger cruise ships. After showing us even more cool gadgets and letting us play with even more buttons he got out two of the captains official hats and let us take photos with them which was a lot of fun. When we are in Cape Town and in an internet Café I will post these photos.

Then today was the big exciting Neptune’s Day which is the celebration of crossing the equator and changing us from pollywogs (those who had not crossed the equator and gone through the rituals) to Shellbacks (those who had). This event started bright and early with tons of the Philippineo crew members dressed like Roman Knights with aluminum hats going around with drums and banging on the doors and screaming chants. This happened several more times til finally I decided to go up on deck to have breakfast, sadly it was past 8:30 so I was lucky enough to get a cup of coffee. It had just rained so there was the best rainbow just perfectly aligned with the back of the ship I had ever seen. We sat out on deck until the announced that we would probably want to go and put on a bathing suit to prepare for the arrival of King and Queen Neptune and his guards. So I ran down stairs where AJ was finally up and by the time we got back out onto deck King Neptune (Captain Jeremy) who was dressed in a white sheet and covered in green paint was seated at his thrown with his guards and bride at his side. The pool was surrounded by millions of students and the Dean Timitz announced that anyone who wished to go from pollywog statues to shellback statues needed to line up and prepaire to pay the price. So we made our way through the line where when it was our time we stood in the kiddy wading pool next to the main pool and first had what was said to be fish guts (but was really soured milk littlie sprinkled with oat meal) poured on the top of our heads then we had to jump into the main pool which had a line of about ten kids in it. Which was some of the coldest waters I had ever been in (although I didn’t see them do it but it felt as if they had put I in it) then before we could climb out of the pool we had to kiss two dead rather large salmons. After climbing out we had to pay our respects to the queen and finally get down and kiss a gaudy ring on the finger of the Bright Green King Neptune (AKA Captain Jeremy). Those who tried to get by the king without paying proper respects were pushed into the water by his highness. In one occasion the queen went to push someone back into the pool and she got dragged in with, which was pretty amusing. Many faculty members such as my business professor that is from Aulstralia who decided to wear a spedo as well as the Academic Dean participated in this event.

Afterwords everyone was given the opportunity to shave their heads and the girls could donate their hair to locks of love which makes them into wigs and gives them to cancer patients. One whole family did this which was one of AJs Economics professor did this as well. Overall it was a fun and very eventful day. It was the first free day on the ship so we were able to catch up on school work and much needed rest. The one photo that I am going to try to attach is one of us in Rio on Cococabana beach the last evening. Talk to you all soon we don’t arrive in S. Africa for about six more days I don’t think. It has been very interesting getting to interact with such a distinguished person as Archbishop Desmond Tutu he is very nice and we look forward to hearing him speak as we make our way towards Cape Town.

Chow!!!