September 16 2010 / MV Explorer

Today was a pretty good day.  The stillness of the ship woke me up, and when I looked out our porthole, we were alongside a refueling ship, and beyond that was a city.  We had apparently pulled up to Las Palmas of the Canary Isles to refuel until noonish, which is kind of weird because we just did that in Casablanca.  It’s also strange to see land without being able to go on it.  I wasn’t too tired after going to bed pretty early last night, so I decided to check my email for a while before getting up to go to poetry class.  I am really bad at not taking poetry at face value, I’ve discovered—straight up, I’m terrible at deciphering deeper meanings and crap.  I like Hemmingway, for goodness sake.  Anyway, we had the Ghanaian interm-port guy come and tell us about some of the African poets we read about for this class.  There was a great powerful womens’ piece that I really enjoyed, but interestingly enough virtually all African poetry is politically based, which is really cool to me—in the United States we can afford to not be political, as we’re so comfortable, but in Africa they really can’t so it’s prevalent in literally every aspect of their lives.  I found that really cool so I’ll definitely have to incorporate that into my Ghana poem.

Grabbed a quick lunch with Martha before racing off for Anthropology of Tourism, which we talked a little about different kinds of tourism (the traveler vs. the tourist vs. the anthropologist) which was really interesting, because I could see so many aspects of how people wanting to define themselves as a traveler (someone who prides themselves on being able to find the MOST authentic experience) was exactly what was going on in post-port reflections, while I totally saw my parents as tourists (people who are interested in the culture shifting… while staying comfortable at the same time).  I’m really enjoying that class though I wish there was a little more discussion.

In between I did a little bit of reading for my Comparative Social Issues class, which was just rereading the same passage from Nickeled and Dimed that I’ve read a thousand times at this point, and then I went on writing my poem for Morocco.  It still needs work but this one at least has a rhyming scheme (1 2 1 3 4 4, repeat) so at least I feel like I’m branching out a little bit.  I hope the professor understands that this is my first shot at poetry, haha.  I’m definitely giving it my all and participating a lot, so I feel like whatever I’ll get in the class I’ll be happy with, I’ve gotten so much out of it.

Contemporary Social Issues was a lot of the same as last class, talking about the stages of modernization and a lot of functionalist perspectives, which I think is kinda interesting because I don’t know anyone who considers themselves a functionalist who’s really into this field, but I guess it was still kind of neat. 

I had a solitary dinner, which was fine because I kind of like just looking out over the ocean and being introspective.  I like how it’s not an awkward thing to sit alone here on the ship, like it is at home in Chapman.  After that I watched like the first half hour of an episode of Planet Earth I had on my computer—SO AMAZING.  I am loving this series so far.  The narrator sounds kind of like Mufasa from Lion King, so it was basically like “THIS IS OUR WORLD, AND THE SEASONS COME AND GO WITH THE YEARS” and I’m like “MY GOD, MUFASA, YOU ARE SO RIGHT, IT’S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.”  Turns out it’s David Attenborough, but I mean I guess that’s okay too.  I’m just pretending it’s Mufasa.

Around 2000 my CSI professor, Toscano, was giving a lecture/discussion about politics and his role in the Virginian house of delegates, so I decided to go to that before my “beverage service duty” at 2045. I actually found it really interesting, but a lot of it went over my head—I think I really need to take a politics class at some point.  I really don’t know very much about how it all works, and I really feel like I need that, especially if I want to look into law school.  But otherwise I really enjoyed it, even though I had to leave early to head up to Deck 7. 

Basically beverage service duty is when you just go up and hang out on Deck 7 while they are serving wine and beer and make sure no one is being sketchy (like taking alcohol off the deck or pouring it into a water bottle or something). I don’t even know why you would smuggle it off.  It would get disgusting.  At one point I just had to take the head security woman’s post, I sat there for a little while and when she returned we discussed her life in the Secret Service, which she has been in for 30 years.  Because I was also looking into FBI jobs I talked to her a little bit about what the Secret Service had been like and all that.  It seems like a really cool job, though I still feel like the FBI would have the things I’m looking for a little more.  But anyway, I primarily just hung out with Lorelei, Dasha, Julie, and Ryan, who I met on the Berber Villages trip who reminds me a little of Alex Rhodes (a super sweet guy who happens to smoke cigarettes).  Hopefully we’re all going to go clubbing on the first night in Ghana, as we’re all looking for things to do. 

Anyway, we talked for a little while, and they wanted me to watch The 40 Year Old Virgin with me, but it’s definitely time for beddy-bye time—0800 class tomorrow.  Night my lovelies!