September 26 2010 / MV Explorer

It’s always weird trying to get back into the groove of things after port.  I woke up ridiculously early with my poetry class at 10:40, so I quickly read the poems that I had forgotten to read the night before.  Poetry was interesting—there was a great poem called Civilian and Soldier that I really enjoyed.  I also got back my three poems that I submitted for review from the professor—my major problem so far is combining emotional energy and metaphorical imagery, as two poems had lots of loose leaf imagery but no emotional theme and another was just emotional energy.  So I’ll definitely have to go through and do some massive revising, but that was exactly what I needed—I feel like I understand far better now. 

Was eating lunch when all of a sudden the midday announcements came on that today we would be traveling through point 0—that when we crossed the Equator, which would happen today, we would also intersect with the Prime Meridian at the same time!!  It’s the first time this particular ship has done that, and I was really excited (when we are initiated on Neptune Day, we’ll be Emerald Shellbacks (or Royal Diamond shellbacks, if we weren't from the USA!) instead of just regular Shellbacks…you can look it up on wiki).  I heard that we were going to be at that point at 12:30, so I grabbed my cameras and ran up to deck 7, where they had a GPS.  There was a massive crowd already there, and if you looked behind at the ship’s trail, you could see the zigzagging where the captain was trying to get there just right.  When we finally hit point 0, we all cheered, and a couple people hopped in the pool.  I myself dipped my feet into the water, as when you cross the equator you’re supposed to be “baptized” into the water of the equator, and because we weren’t crossing it exactly when the Neptune ceremonies would occur, I decided to do it out of tradition.

After that I motored off to class, as I’d missed the first part of it—lots of professors had cancelled their classes, but not ours.  We started watching an interesting documentary called Not In Europe, which was about this mine that hasn’t changed since the middle ages and is incredibly dangerous, but is still being used because it brings in money because of the tourism industry.  This was continued in my Contemporary Social Issues class… he decided to ask us how we found Ghana, and everyone was saying how lovely their time was and how they had all of these meaningful experiences and deep relationships with people.  I said how I didn’t feel that way at all—I didn’t feel as though I had deep interpersonal experiences, but my time was meaningful in that I saw the face of poverty and how an entire country was coping with it, and that I was bringing that back with me.  We got into an incredibly heated argument because many people were talking about how they’d helped in little ways while other people were arguing that without change on a large scale, you’re just teaching people that they can get money from tourists and aren’t creating anything sustainable.  People at Habitat for Humanity put some Ghanaian people out of work for a day.  People who visited an unsustainable water village built on stilts gave money to them, so they have more money for the upkeep as opposed to moving to a new area that would be safer and more sustainable.  So this was a really awkward, stressful, and very heated discussion.  I definitely feel, especially after Ghana, that you have to promote change on a larger scale, both governmentally and internationally economical, and that just having grassroots organizations aren’t going to solve poverty problems by themselves, but of course they’re a good starting point as long as they look at long term effects.  Anyway, it was a good discussion, if a little stressful.

After class I went up to the Wellness Center where I’d made appointments to get my brows done, and it was the most incredibly painful process ever, because I don’t know, the lady who was doing it was just really wax happy and didn’t do any of the usual soothing methods.  I actually have a red bruise/burn thing right above my eye now.  But they do look awesome, so I’m happy with that. 

It was Martha’s birthday, so I went to her birthday dinner celebration, where I cracked lots of jokes and demanded cake from small children, as well as attempted to pilfer cake from other tables.  I had a really great time, but quickly had to motor off to go do my social RA event, making IN/OUT signs or name tags.  It was just kind of sitting down in front of the bulletin board, giving people paper and magnets AND purple armbands, which I had cut into strips earlier in the day.  Lots of people came by, some to just grab a nametag but many stayed for a long time, just hanging out, talking about Ghana and about their lives.  It was a great time.  :) 

Afterwards Julie and I bombed Jared’s room because he had said something about having Roller Coaster Tycoon, which is amazing, so we watched him build roller coasters for a while before settling on watching Fruits Basket, which is this anime Julie brought from home.  It is pretty incredibly sexist with its gender roles, but I had a good time making fun of it (as per usual).  So a pretty good day, if a little hard to get into the swing of things with classes!  :D