I have come to love days at sea. I would often find myself bored at the start of the voyage but now it has become my peaceful and relaxation time. I think that has to do with many things like my love for the ocean, the separation from social media and reality, the people I surround myself with on the ship, star gazing, the ship sunsets, the activities while at sea, and the dolphin spotings. I do not want it to end, the ship has become my home. This semester is the first time I have enjoyed learning.
Sea Olympics:
On the last leg, we had a day off from school for the Sea Olympics. Based on the halls where we live, we were split into "Seas" and we competed against each other in a field day for college students. There were many events that took place throughout the week before as well as the day of. I did not participate in all of them but I involved myself in as much as possible. The few days before the event each sea was told we would perform a dance at the closing ceremonies. Our sea also had to make a hype video. I will provide the link if possible! Anna made our sea's dance. She of course made me be a part of the dance. It took a lot of practice and a lot of time.
On the day before the event, each sea was giving a paper and one color of paint to make a poster for the sea. I drew and painted our poster. I unfortunately did not have much help but had a lot of fun painting. Our sea had a chilly pepper as our mascot, so that is what I put on the poster. I am in the Red Sea so our saying was Red Sea, Red Hot.The banner did not win any points, but I thought it was cute.
The actual day of Sea Olympics was crazy busy. They woke everyone up at 7:45 for breakfast and opening words from the captain. After the opening words, we had about an hour before the events started, I sat in one of the dining halls braiding almost everyone's hair in my Sea for the day. After I was done, I went to cheer on my team who was playing musical chairs. Yes, I said musical chairs was one of the events. The crowd was so hyped, we were yelling and cheering our team on. Red Sea ended up winning musical chairs, the only event we won all day.
After losing my voice at 10 am in the morning, a few teammates and I went to take pictures on the deck to remember the day. We then cheered on our team for the tug-of-war event where it started snowing mid tug of war. It really was an experience. We got second to last in the tug--of-war... ooops :) After, I cheered on volleyball. It was very fun to watch as our team made it all the way to the final and got second place. My voice was now completely gone. After volleyball, we went inside to warm up before I had to play spoons. I did not do well in spoons as a too-competitive LLL (life long learner) took some of the fun out of it. I cheered the rest of my team on while they played before I had to report for the Limbo. I am pleasantly surprised with how much flexibility I still have. I placed forth all around. The person who won was actually a male. He was crazy good and wasn't even arching his back - he would do this weird thing with his knees.
I went back outside to cheer on the basketball team playing before heading to the pull-up contest. Each competition needed a least one girl, so I did pull-ups for my team. I can only do two now but that is more than most females. After pull-ups and a quick dinner, I then headed out to play crab soccer. I did not like crab soccer at all. It was horrible, it hurts your hands so bad, my team lost pretty quickly but we were not upset.
The ship waited around for crab soccer to finish before doing the dance battle. I was so nervous, I practiced the dance in my room for almost an hour right before we went on stage. I even started doing pushups at one point. It was terrifying but so fun in the end. I mostly just did tricks in the dance but being in front of that many people was scary and so out of my comfort zone.
The Red Sea unfortunately came in 7th place - last place - but I got to know so many new people in my hall and I had so much fun. Even though we finished last, our Sea came together and got to know each other better. It did not matter what place we got. This was by far the best day at sea.
The day after our RD (basically and RA) got us an ice-cream cake for placing last. We all got together and had a mini party. The theme was "best at being last."
Videos:
Red Sea Hype Video
Red Sea Dance Video
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