The Halfway Point

This week marks the half way point of our voyage. All the Life Long Learners celebrated with dark chocolate truffles, small cakes, ice cream cake and fruit with chocolate fondue. Many of us wore some indication about being half way like half- painted heads or faces. The best was Louisa who donned all the items she had purchased during the first half: a skirt from Spain, a child’s skirt from Morocco which she wore on her head, necklaces from Mauritius, shoes from Morocco, fabric from Ghana and a basket filled with little items. She called herself” halfway done with shopping!”   Paul and I wore caps with our world globes half blown up taped to them.  We also wore our Semester At Sea shirts with the countries we've visited taped out.  I would vote us second best, but I am prejudiced.  A friend has the photos but I forgot to ask her for them.  Perhaps you'll see them later!
Then we began working on the Sea Olympics which would be in 4 days. I think I mentioned before that the students were divided into seas according to their stateroom locations at the beginning of the trip - seas like Red, Bering, and Mediterranean etc. The Life Long Learners originally were the Tipseas, but we recently joined with staff and faculty to become the NoMer Sea.


So the BIG night, a HUGE night arrived! We kicked off the Fall 2010 Sea Olympics signing up to participate in the events, be judges of events and/or event leaders.  Then...at 2100 (9:00 pm), the pep rally took off with lots of yelling and excitement! Ten of our teammates from the No MerSea had worked tirelessly to put together our team skit. And, boy was it good! It was truly the best of the lot during the rally! Themed after Lion King. It’s amazing how many animal costumes were concocted from shirts, pajamas, ribbons, white plastic laundry bags etc. The wife of a faculty member did fabulous makeup.





Fortunately, two faculty members, Nancy and Geno Carr who are professional New York actors wrote the skit and acted and sang in it. Quite an advantage over the competition!! Our mascot is Griffin, the 8 month old on board!




MerSea's mascot


The No MerSea was the first because, heck, we go to bed early! We sat in the front because we're the biggest team which also includes the children of the No MerSea team members. Our color... WHITE. Painted faces. White shirts. White hats. White shorts. White Skirts, White sweatbands. Team pride!



      No MerSea! No MerSea!! No MerSea!!! No MerSea!!!!




I was bragging about our team to some students yesterday. One said, "Yeah right, you're just a bunch of little kids and old people." Pshhh...We’ll show them what's what!



Yellow Sea Excited Entrance to Opening Ceremony




But in the end, we showed them. After a raucous day of Opening Ceremonies, chants, cheers, various games, more cheers, and Closing Ceremonies, the MerSea came in third!!! And our banner took second place which made me proud since that was my responsibility. I did have help however. That’s the first time in history that the “old” folks have placed in the Olympics!

The dead fish represent the other Seas!

There were nine other Seas of students besides us. They were so creative with their banners, cheers, outfits and skits. Some 15 events took place, including dodge ball, tug of war, table tennis and Pass the orange, Lip-sync was the most fun to watch! Those groups of 5 -8 students were so creative. One group had me jumping out of my seat with cheers!

Other events included Synchronized swimming. Paul and seven others hobbled onto the pool deck pretending to be infirm and gracefully fell sideways into the pool. One group ended their bit like Esther Williams used to do in her films, sitting on the shoulders of others while disappearing slowly beneath the surface.



 

Ahhhh! Life aboard the MV Explorer. I swear I cannot figure out how the students ever have time to study!! I can barely get a book read! And Halloween is in a few days!! Oh what shall we wear???
India tomorrow. We have been told we will never be the same after being in India! I’ll let you know. Or maybe you will notice!   One of these days, probably when we get home, I'll figure all this photo handling out!  Here, the internet is so slow it takes forever, and I don't understand why certain things happen. like some of these photos being fuzzy when put into the blog.  But It's late and the slow internet keeps me from wanting to experiment more.  I already seemed to have wiped out my flash drive of photo storage tonight!  Drats!  Now that will have to be repeated, I guess!



Today's sunset



Paul lost his boobs!  See the pink balloon?