While at Sea

Well a lot has happened in the past couple of days. Starting with the free day we had two days ago. It was nice to be able to catch up on all my school work and to be able to hang out with friends. We also had an awesome bar b que out by the pool that night, with all kinds of grilled fish, chicken, and hamburgers where everyone stayed out even after they were done watching the sunset and enjoying having some time to just chill and relax. Yesterday was also kind of a slow day where I was able to prepare for the global studies exam that I had today, as well as sit out on deck for several hours by the pool. Then I had several meetings to go to, first was my intercultural ambassadors meeting where we talked about upcoming events and people that were coming onboard. Then we had our yellow Sea meeting (which is the people who live on our hall) to discuss what’s been going on, different rumors, and the Sea Olympics.
Karen my RD has been telling all of the other RDs that we are going to kill everyone in this which we should because we’ve got a very involved group. I signed up for mashed potato sculpting, which is where they give you a plate of mashed potatoes and then show you a picture of something and you have to artistically sculpt it to the best of your abilities. I know it doesn’t sound like an Olympic event but then again most of the ones I have seen on TV don’t really seem to be either. It should be a lot of fun either way, I have been looking at lots of photos of the Eiffel tower and Taj Mahl to practice. Another event that AJ and Alberto signed up for is Monopoly where you have thirty minutes to see who can accumulate the most net worth, I think it is all luck on who can land on the free parking space the most but AJ thinks that he can come up with some sort of strategy to win it all. But the one that is the most important that AJ, Alberto, Austin, Tiffany, and I signed up for is……sequinissed swimming!!! It is going to be pretty funny, jorghe and Aleghondro are also doing it in there sea. We are going to put together a mix CD to go along to and use “Old School” (the movie) as our motivation with such songs as “Everybody dance now” and “Titanic”!!! That is on the 16th of October so once we get back then we will only have a few days to practice.
Well we arrive in Mauritius tomorrow which is supposed to be one of the coolest islands ever. I have gotten a lot of emails from different friends saying that it is supposed to be like better than Tahiti so that should be lots of fun. I think that we will try to Scuba dive and if there are enough waves Erin wants to try and teach us how to Surf I don’t know if that will be possible though I wasn’t very good at it when we tried in Hawaii a long time ago.
Also we have been talking to Armitish that lives down the hall. He gave us the name of this website that auctions off air travel from Air Sahara and we were able to win one way tickets to Delhi (close to where the Taj is) for like $100 US which is really good. Armitish who lives in Delhi but goes to school at Stanford told us not to worry about a hotel room or a return flight that he was going to call while in Mauritius and arrange one for cheap for us. Also that his roommate here on the ship is going to be traveling with him to Delhi and that he will take us to the Taj and show us around Delhi so it sounds like everything is turning out pretty good.
Finally during the crossing we had another Impact (which is like a Christian non-denominational service) where we tried to sing an acapella song after a few lead by someone playing the guitar. It didn’t turn out real great I think mainly because the different parts for the guys and girls weren’t separated and spread out over more slides. But I think that we are going to try and figure it out and give it another try on our next crossing to India. I tried to get some of my Jewish friends like Alberto to come with but they said they didn’t want to because they had just been done with there group. They named it the Jew Crew I thought that title was kind of funny, but then again that whole group cracks me up. But I guess my point was that there are about 70 or more people that came to Impact and each week it seems to be growing it is just kind of cool how people from all the different faiths can get together to worship with all the many things going on in our lives.
I guess that’s about it, we had a pretty interesting night last night with the huge waves we were hitting at the front of the ship where our cabin is. All of the glass glasses that are on my desk kept sliding from one side to the other and bouncing around. And the doors to my closets kept slamming open and shut, luckily none of the glasses broke. The seas have calmed down a little today but I think it is mainly that we are going a lot slower, currently we are just off the coast of Madagascar for those of you who are keeping up with our location. All for now, God Bless!!!

Chad