Sea Olympics

Life has returned to "normal"- well, as normal as life can be when you're sailing around the world on a luxury cruise liner. I'm so glad to have more than two days down time between countries. By the time i got to Vietnam I felt like I was still tired from Japan, and recovering from China, all while trying to soak up as much of Vietnam and Cambodia as possible. In between Vietnam and India we have 8 days (sadly 2 of which I spent incredibly sick). The eight days were supposed to give us time to get back in the groove of school work, which as you can imagine was basically impossible. Every time I stepped outside I heard the lawn chair in the sun calling me, "Katie! Katie! Come sit and procrastinate on me!" How could I neglect a chair that even knew my name? Sometimes I indulged in some school work with a book, but since I have developed narcolepsy while being on the voyage, I frequently have been just falling asleep in the sun (and i have had to lather up on sun lotion because the equator sun is a brutal monster that has already made its mark. Yes, lobster girl has returned! All I need is a little butter and I would be ready to eat at any moment.)

Semester at Sea must know how much students adamantly do not want to go to class and work (besides, we learn more in the countries than I ever could in a classroom) because it seems every few days we now have a fun day to break up the "monotony of classes." A few days ago we held the Sea Olympics. As most of us were unable to watch the real olympics this past month, it was exciting to compete in our own. My team was the Red Sea, composed of maybe 30 kids that live close by on the same hallway. We were perhaps the least enthusiastic at the opening ceremonies and most certainly the least organized. We had never had a sea olympic meeting, half of us weren't wearing red to support our team (and the ones that were all sported different shades.) We joked about how funny it would be if we won since most of us didn't even sing our cheer.

The games begun the next day. They were a lot like field day games- sponge pass, crab soccer, dodgeball, asain cube scramble, tug-o-war, pull up challenge, flip cup, synchronized swimming, hula hoop, lip sync, etc... I competed in the first event of the morning, extreme musical chairs. They tied our hands behind our backs, and threw wads of paper at us and we danced around the chairs to heavy metal music. My team got second place in the event. As the day progressed our team was seemingly silent, but deadly. One by one we were dominating events, either winning or racking up points with second or third place. Before we knew it...we had one the entire olympics! Out of nowhere! We beat the Adriatic Sea (they had a great banner and a mascot of a shark) and the Mediterranean Sea (they had a really awesome chant.) We won bragging rights and our sea gets to get off the ship first when we dock in Florida at the end of the voyage... but I don't want to think of the voyage ending right now. I'm having too much fun!

The days after the olympics were a little less exciting, but a nice way to recoop before India...tomorrow! It's hard to imagine that the next country has crept up so quickly! All i've heard about India is that its a completely different world, I can't wait to experience it for myself!