Sea Olympics

To ensure the ship community comes together, Semester at Sea hosts the Sea Olympics every voyage. As a member of the prior champions on Spring 2010, the "Red Sea," I had high expectations of my Sea, the Bering Sea, as we dressed in as much green as we brought and drew eye back marks on our faces to intimidate the other teams. For the opening ceremonies, we boastfully sang our chant "Green Trees, Green Grass, Green Team will kick your... *followed by claps*" and "We are the mean, green, fighting machines!"

As many of you know, I have a love for Asian culture, so my team recruited me to compete in the Chopstick Challenge. After the opening ceremonies, I headed to my event to move 70 beans from one bowl to another using only chopsticks. The competition was heated, and I moved those beans they almost jumped out of the bowl, but we ended up getting fourth! I was extremely proud of the other 2 girls who competed on my team with me.

Other events that day were volleyball, word find, and dodgeball. Dodgeball got incredibly intense with bodies and arms flailing about, maneuvering large flying balls. There were tears and laughter, and sadly our team didn't place. This year the Sea Olympics were split into two days (during the evening), so the first update of the scores that night put the Bering Sea in 2nd place!!

The second day of the Sea Olympics was by far my favorite. It started out with great performances on the 7th deck of synchronized swimming. Guys and girls flipped and flopped around the water to songs of "Under the Sea," "I'm Sexy and I Know It" and the opening song to stepbrothers. Some of the best moves were when people spit water out of their mouth and each person peeled off in time with the music. The other event that was my favorite was the Lip Sync. I participated as a background dancer for Bering Sea to which we did a cute rendition of "Surfin' USA." A lot of dances included guys dressed up as girls dancing around to Spice Girls or I'm a Barbie Girl, but my absolute favorite was by the Red Sea that payed tribute to the great N'Sync. One girl in their sea was a great choreographer, who taught half their sea moves to "Dirty Pop," by far the best song they have.

Each team worked hard on the events and had some really creative events, so when the winners were announced I am proud to say that Bering Sea ultimately got the bronze! The gold went to the Agean Sea on the second deck and the silver was third deck Carribean Sea. I think what was the coolest part was that every one was really into it- students, teachers, and the dependent families on board. Even though the events were really silly, we had a great time together and I met a lot of cool people on my deck and we still walk around with our "green pride."