October 9 through 13 2010 / MV Explorer

The week between South Africa and Mauritius was filled with both the exciting and the dreary.  On the reading day I legitimately spent a good majority of it writing my Women in Royal Courts paper, finishing it a few days before it was due and sending it off to my professor for suggestions.  (I still have not gotten it back with suggestions, and it is due tomorrow.  Drat.)  I also did a little work on my Contemporary Social Issues midterm research as well as my Women in High Courts class, as I had both of those midterms before Mauritius.  Contemporary Social Issues midterm was two essay questions picked out of a hat, as well as ten multiple choice questions.  I just got that midterm back today (October 16), and I got a 25/30, which I was kind of disappointed about, because I thought that I had done much better on my essay questions than I actually did.  I guess I got higher than the median, but it was just still a little disappointing for me.  I want an A in this class, darnit.  Women in High Courts was even more difficult, just because the class is so random and tangent-y in the lectures, so now I’m even more anxious about how I did on those essays—which we had to do 3 of in an hour and a quarter.  I’m just glad it’s done and over with, I guess, but I’m still disappointed.  =/

As we curved around the Cape of Great Hope, we discovered why it’s also known as the Cape of Storms.  On the second night out after leaving Cape Town, we sailed through a massive lightening storm.  Jared wasn’t sure whether we should go out and lift weights that night, but I knew as soon as we were doing cycling in the gym and the room kept lighting up with lightening flashes that I was even MORE sure that we should go outside and lift weights.  It was truly incredible—every twenty or thirty seconds a gigantic bolt of lightning would crack open the sky, some bolts only being three or four miles away.  There was definitely a feeling of intense mania aboard the ship, as people roared their approval to the sky as thunder rumbled and particularly branched gold would streak out of the sky.

The most fun part of these last couple of days was starting up a Dungeons and Dragons campaign!  Jared is our DM and Julie, Martha and I are the players, as well as Bryan.  I am playing a smartass Halfling rouge that probably talks too much, Martha is a cleric changling that is masquerading currently as an elf, Bryan is a soul train Deva invoker (who speaks in a soulful voice), and Julie is a longtooth shifter paladin.  We’re having a great time dealing with fun time travel adventures that seems like it could be a little Lord of the Rings inspired, dealing with a huge war across different areas.  It’s extremely different though, because unlike in my DnD group at home, Jared does not let me get away with ANYTHING.  He adds a little more realism—if I say that I want to kill a wolf by stabbing it in the mouth, he makes me roll a rabies check!  He does a lot more checks in general, which is kind of cool.  And he does a lot more quest chains and sidequests, which is also pretty neat.  Having a small group is really exciting, basically, because you can do more independent adventures.   Rolling a 1 means you hit yourself and a 2 means hitting someone else, also.  Basically it’s pretty different—I think may be more reality-formal?   But it’s an interesting learning experience.  I kind of want to DM a DnD group when I get home.  Any takers? 

My last interesting event of the week was getting a survey through my email.  One of the questions was about how we perceived ship officers.  Though I didn’t mention it in my blog, I had a bit of a strange run in with a ship’s officer in Ghana.  Because of my strange writing about it, I was called up to the Assistant Dean’s office and was told to write up a report about the issue.  Because I don’t want to write out the whole story, here it it—you may remember it as the night that some of my friends and I went to the Duty Free shop across the way with a couple of my friends, and I ended up playing mother hen for the night:

“These are events that occurred on the night of September 24 2010. 

“I (Stephanie Mech) and a couple of my other friends (Lorelei Thompson and Julie Bowers) decided to go out that night to the Duty Free Store across the way from the ship.  We got our drinks and set down a little always from the crowd on the upper floor outside of the store.  Julie and Lorelei were sitting against the railing, while I was sitting facing towards them.  After a little while I felt heavy hands on my shoulders.  I couldn’t understand who I knew well enough who would do that, so I turned my head around to see who it was.  Directly in front of me was the face of a man who was older, white, with extremely piercing blue eyes.  I said hello, confused, and he just continued to stare.  I turned back to my friends and asked them to help me.  Julie started shouting things like “Go away!” while Lorelei sprang up and started pulling him away from me, speaking very quickly “Hey, who are you?  Why aren’t you talking to me?  What’s your name?  What’s going on?” in order to distract him away, as I was very uncomfortable with the way he was just staring at me.  I did not hear this, but later Lorelei said that he mumbled something to her that was akin to “You are nothing, you are nothing” before he finally stumbled away. 

“A little later I looked down off the balcony to see him being led back to the ship by a much shorter man with black hair.  I initially thought it was a student, but I’ve heard that it was a crew member.  I believe he was wearing a white shirt, but otherwise I was too far away to see anything else. 

“I recognize this man as the officer of Security and Environmental Affairs, a man whose name I do not recall but is on the officer board in Tymitz Square, in the middle and down, with blue eyes.  I have heard many other rumors about this event, such as him trying to kiss girls or pulling at the front of their shirts.  I did not see any of these events take place but just hearing about them is enough to make me extremely uncomfortable—the fact that he is the officer in charge of making people feel secure is quite angering to me enough.”

Soooooo basically both the assistant dean and executive dean that I talked to were really thankful that I had come forward with this information.  Even though I had been kind of creeped out and uncomfortable, I hadn’t really known who to talk to (you can’t talk to the crew, because it’s a hierarchal structure and you just can’t really do that).  So I told some other people who had had similar experiences to come forward, because they want to dismiss this guy because he is the HEAD SAFETY OFFICER.  If the Head Safety Officer is creeping on girls in port, I don’t feel very safe.  But they were wonderful and the captain has been notified, so this officer is going to get dropped in Port Louis and left there, pretty much.  Good riddance. 

The other awesome thing about before Mauritius was an open mic night we had, where a lot of people played songs but even better were the people that did spoken word poetry.  I want to learn how to do spoken word poetry—it’s just so potent and badass and fierce.  It really makes you listen.  I wish I had a book that was How To Do Slam Poetry, because I am definitely a fan.  But I did email my poetry professor and he said he would be down to do a lecture on it at some point near the end of the semester.  YAY.  :)

Working on my Mauritius blogs.  Had a wonderful time there.  Will probably update about it later tonight.  <3