September 17 2010 / MV Explorer

Yes, I am highly over this being sick business.  Despite going to bed early last night I could hardly get out of bed this morning, slowly chewed on my peanut butter jelly banana sandwich (for those of you who know me well you know that not inhaling anything put in front of me is feat in itself), and have this perpetual one eye closed, nostrils flared expression—as though I am always ready for a sneeze to come on.  I haven’t really checked it out in a mirror lately, but I’m sure it is highly unattractive.  Paying attention in WIHC was tough, and I decided to skip Global Studies today to just flop in bed and get another couple of hours of sleep.  Once again, these were those kinds of dreams where you’re aware that they’re dreams and they take days to go through (it was very Inception, because I had to figure out whether I was awake or not in them all the time), but by the time I woke up for lunch, I felt much better—at least my face is only screwed up in a half-grimace a lot less now.  I have been freaking everyone out by sneezing at least three times in a row, and now it’s come down a lot. 

I nommed on some lunch quickly and then went down to my room to work on homework—reading African poetry (or rather, a very long poem over several pages).  I think I analyzed this one a little more in depth than I have been—hurray for not just looking at face value?  I also had been feeling kind of inspired so I wrote some feminist poetry I had been working on yesterday, which looks pretty good in my opinion but I don’t know if it’ll make the final collection of poetry that I submit for my final.  I finished my Morocco poem yesterday, kind of.  I feel like it could be a lot better but I feel like people aren’t really tough on critiquing poetry because there’s such a personal aspect to it.  I sent an email to the professor of the class asking about maybe starting up a peer review network, because I really don’t want to send in a bunch of poems that I don’t realize are horrible and have that be my final grade.  So hopefully he gets back to me by tomorrow on that.  I also did some Anthropology of Tourism reading, which at first I was really excited for because it had Lion King mentioned in the title, but there was almost no Lion King mentioned in the chapter except for Hakuna Matata—advertising fail! 

After that I watched the end of the Planet Earth episode I started yesterday and felt horrible about contributing to global warming as I watched this polar bear die due to the ice melting faster than he was prepared for, which was :(.  I really want to go a lot more green when I get back home—no one seems to understand why I don’t want a car anymore.  It’s because I don’t need it and don’t use it, and I’d rather ride a bicycle that will be more healthy for me and for the environment.  When I have a job I’m sure it will be a different matter, but as a student I feel like it would be more responsible to not have a car.

After a while I wandered upstairs and popped into the student store to buy bugspray—I realized belatedly that the kind I bought in Halifax does not have DEET in it, and my goodness do I ever want toxic chemicals all over my body (well,  I guess it is preferable to malaria), so now I have 98.7% DEET-happy spray.  I also bought a SAS keycard lanyard because I looked myself out for the thousandth time today, and a SAS teeshirt because laundry day is still three days away and I only have a tanktop left.  I feel like it’s probably still a good investment.  I did a little bit of writing and then went to dinner… I ate alone again, and at this point I feel like I’ve probably eaten alone too often, because I felt a little depressed by this point, and hadn’t really felt too great all day, I think in conjunction to being sick and just not seeing any of my friends around (I would have sat with people that I would have known, had they been there!).  I guess everyone has points were they just need to be social and hang out with people, even though I had been pretty good about being independent and social at the same time.  So I was feeling pretty lonely today, though I told myself that around 2100 I would go up to Deck 7 and hang out with Lorelei as she was doing her beverage duty shift.

I felt infinitely better once I went up there.  I got my “Tropical Calorie Burner” (pineapple, banana, blueberry and mango smoothie… more like calorie enhancer for me) and hung out with Lorelei and later Julie on the side of the pool deck, talking boys and what we wanted to do in Ghana.  A guy came by named Lander who was really cool who was from Alaska, and we talked about feminism and music and snow and had a really great time.  I felt just so much better being up there and hung out until midnight just talking.  I really hope I talk to Lander again, he seems like a really awesome guy who I feel as though I can get along well with—just before he came by we were all talking about how it’s kind of difficult trying to strike up friendships with the guys on the ship, because a lot of them give out the impression that they just want to sleep with you and don’t want to have a deeper intellectual relationship with you (always a weird thing, because I tend to have more guy friends then women).  But it’s always nice to find people who break the mold.  :)

Anyway, I feel emotionally better after that, but we’ll have to see how I’m physically doing tomorrow.  My objective is to get better before Ghana!  Sorry about all the whining this post, I'll get much better! :D