September 18 2010 ? MV Explorer

I woke up today after a really creeptastic dream where I rescued some sort of creature that I’d loved that had been corrupted and basically sold my soul to take care of this dark demon creature that was only a shadow of whatever it had been (I think it was my baby?).  It was really freaking creepy, so I was only too happy to go up to World Poetry.  We talked about some stuff in this poem “The Woman With Whom I Share My Husband,” which was very traditional/modern black Africa/white European, when someone shouted that there were dolphins at the porthole!  So we all raced over. 

At first I didn’t see anything, but then I saw lots of dorsal fins raise slowly out of water and then back in a cluster.  They didn’t seem to be moving.  My skin crawled—I had seen dolphins several days ago, joyfully jumping alongside the ship, and these weren’t all the same.  Later, a couple people said they saw sharks around the same time that morning.  It was pretty creepy at the time, but for some reason I never made that connection (for some reason I had thought that they had died, but couldn’t figure out how that waas), but that’s what they must have been.  Their dorsal fins were really jagged and freaky.  There were also flying fish!  They were skimming the water which was really cool, I thought they were birds at first.  <3

Anthropology of Tourism was kind of dull today and I found it a bit hard to pay attention.  I took good notes, but aside from that I wasn’t too into it.  I didn’t enjoy this chapter about different kinds of authenticity too much, but oh well, it happens.  Also, the more I’m in my Contemporary Social Issues class, the more I realize how little I know  about politics.  It kind of makes me feel like a gigantic imposter and fool, for even voting in elections when I know so little about how the government really works.  Like, I can know about specific issues, but nothing at all about the political system.  Kind of felt like a doofus when we were talking about lobbyists and corporate interests and etc.  I really hope that I continue to learn more and more about politics in this class (hopefully some basic stuff too).  I emailed mom to look into sending me my absentee ballot, though I’m gonna have to use my internet minutes looking into some of the issues. 

Somewhere between AOT and CSI I filled out all my customs forms for the countries we’re going to after South Africa, so hopefully I didn’t mess up on any of them.  I definitely didn’t know whether to put my full name including middle name in some of them, as sometimes there wasn’t enough space, so hopefully that works out.  Today is FINALLY laundry day (thank goodness, I’m down to my last clean pair of underwear), so I shoved things into two bags and left them outside.  I hope my morocco dress isn’t destroyed.  We’ll see.  I also washed my bras in the sink for the first time, which was… an experience.  I hope they don’t feel as uncomfortably like hand soap as they do while they’re wet.  They are taking up the entire shower right now, as they are. 

Anyway, Yom Kippur  was today, so I decided to go to the Shabbat services.  There were ten thousand more people than there were last time, and I felt kind of awkward because I didn’t seem to get on common ground talking to anyone else there—then again, I guess I am not Jewish and therefore cannot talk about Bat Mitzvah experiences and stuff like that.  Still, trying traditional Jewish foods was cool—bagels, challah, and kugel (this sweet noodle dish, it was excellent).  BASICALLY ANYTHING WITH FOOD  AND I’M GOOD.  After that I was invited by Julie and Lorelei to go to the interport presentation on Ghana, so I went to that and snooooored through it.  It was far too long.  One of the ladies next to me, a lifelong learner who is quite older but in a couple of my classes, asked if I was as bored as she was, and when the lady in front of her gave her a disapproving look, she made a face at the back of her head.  She is kind of amazing.  The Ghana presentation wasn’t that bad, it was just a lot of information I probably could have found on Wikipedia. 

After the presentation, we (Julie, Jared, Ellie, Lorelei and myself) went down to my room.  Lorelei had acquired Aladdin, The Jungle Book, and The Lion King for our next ports to get us ready for them, and we were going to watch Aladdin to celebrate leaving Morocco.  We had a pretty great time—all clustered around the computer.  I haven’t seen Aladdin in forever so there were parts I had completely forgotten about.  I also forgot about how fierce Jasmine is.  We made lots of comments about inaccuracies about Moroccan culture and I LOVE that we can do that.  We did lots of teasing and making silly comments—felt just like home.  :) 

Now they’re all out of here and I’m just writing at the end of the night.  Still recovering from being sick but I feel like I’m getting there—gonna go to the medic ward tomorrow just to get myself checked out (I must seem like a total hypochondriac, I’ve gone in there so many times) as well as to pick up my malaria medicine.  Whoooo!