September 21 2010 / MV Explorer

In Women in High Courts Joe Bami talked to us about the queen mothers and the proper way to show respect, which is by avoiding eye contact, not using your left hand, and bringing schnapps, so I guess that will be kind of an adventure to deal with, especially considering we don’t even know if the queen  mother will speak English or anything about what we’ll be doing. 

Class in Global Studies today was on education, and it was okay.  The guest speaker started talking about slavery, and then starting talking about “whose fault it was” in which he mentioned that African traders traded people themselves, so we started getting into a huge ragefest that was just starting to boil up in the student body.  If there is anything I hate more it is discussions about whose fault racism and slavery is , because without a mediator that knows what they’re doing it just gets out of control fast, which was what was happening.  Not a fan. 

I honestly didn’t do too much today.  I caught up on a little bit of Global Studies work is all, and took a nap to prep for Ghana, haha.  I really didn’t get too social until dinnertime, where I sat with Martha and Julie.  Martha, Julie and I hung out talking in Martha’s room until it was time for logistical pre-port, in which they taught us how to use a squat toilet, and to which I said guys, why didn’t we get this in Morocco.  :O  Squat toilets are no fun.  I will need to buy tissues this time around, for sure.  Some students also got up and talked about how embarrassing some SAS students were with their behavior in port (basically being loud obnoxious drunken Americans), which I appreciated.  I really hate being talked down to, but I mean come on. 

After that we were planning on watching The Jungle Book, but first Jared came over and told me we couldn’t work out today because he had no clean clothes.  I gave him a hard time about it until I said that I didn’t have any clean clothes either, and Steve joined into our conversation in the hall about being grumpy about laundry.  We hung out in Jared’s room for a while and Julie and Lorelei joined us.  Apparently Jared’s roommate said I was a “crazy girl” or something?  Hearing people say that kind of thing about me is really weird, especially when I don’t know them at all.  I had literally talked to him like… once.  Then again, he was hanging out with Julie’s roommate who is kind of a rude monster, so I guess I shouldn’t take it too personally. 

We all went up on deck 7 for a while and I finally had one of their famed cheeseburgers, which was pretty good but the ship has been rocking terribly today so I am regretting it a little bit.  Apparently Jared has published a novel, which I need to get.  After a while we went off to Lorelei’s room and some of us watched the Jungle Book together (I never saw Martha after dinner D:).  There is so much of that movie that I don’t remember that just came back to me eventually.  I love Bagera so much.  And I love how Ballu is “that guy.” 

I’m sorry this is kind of short, I’m just really tired for some reason and am mostly distracted away from this day from Ghana being TOMORROW. 

September 20 2010 / MV Explorer

Poetry this morning was lovely, as per usual.  We learned about synecdoche and chiasmus, which are pretty neat.  I am always impressed by the level of interpretation that we do in class that is helped on by our professor, and how whatever terminology we are learning about fits the reading perfectly.  It really is an incredible English class.  I really want to do more with poetry in later classes and in my later life, even.  I have never been able to write long stories particularly well, but with poetry you can tell a huge story and the trick is to be concise, which I love being anyway.  Mmm, delicious poetry.  A trick he told us to do for writing is to use unconventional/strangely related vocabulary for a subject matter, so I am trying that out with the poem I’ve been working on today.  I had told James I would write one for him but this just sort of turned out to be weirdly inspired by him.  It is strange but great.  I’ll post it (maybe) when I finish it. 

Off I went later to AOT, which only strengthened my desire to go to Elmina slave castle and dungeons when we get there, because it sounds like suuuuuch an interesting tourist spot and just historical site in general.  Luckily, Lorelei and I worked out later in the evening that if we left really early for Kakum park, like at 6:45 in the morning or so, we could get there for the morning, eat lunch at the crocodile restaurant, and then go over to the Elmina slave castle to explore that in the afternoon.  It will definitely be a packed day but I think we can manage it, especially if we just hit the ground running, which I am totally ready to do. 

I came back to my room and worked on my poetry for a little while, including printing out three poems I’ve done so far and dropping them in my professor’s box.  Considering some of the poetry I’ve seen from my peers, which they proclaim themselves took ten minutes, I feel pretty good about it and am looking forward to what my professor has to say to this first draft.  Contemporary Social Issues I felt waaaay more at ease with, because we were talking about wealth vs. income and inequality vs. poverty, which I am pro at, as this was more sociological stuff than political.  So I was able to contribute a lot, which was good.  South Africa has the highest Gini Coefficient of all the countries that we’re going to (.65), higher than even the USA (.48), undoubtedly due to apartheid.  We also talked about the Bush tax cuts that are expiring soon and how Obama wants to extend them for middle class only.  Neat stuff.

It’s hard to write poetry in rhymes.  I don’t know how Dr. Seuss did it.  I keep coming up with awesome lines just to change them because nothing rhymes with “bloody” that I want to use.  After a while we went off to dinner, joining Julie and later Lorelei, Jared, and a couple of people from Deck 2.  For all I said that I should stop eating beef yesterday, they had beef with sautéed onions, which I immediately was a goner for.  My bad, Planet Earth.  The seas were particularly rolling in the evening, and when someone hollered something about a whale, I almost fell over myself to get to the window.  I did not see any stinkin’ whale, and apparently neither did anyone else, as he was just blowing water occasionally up into the air.  But I didn’t see him so I went back most dejected.  We were cheered by some people at the table next to us who decided that they had far too much birthday cake and wanted to share though!  And I was made fun of for saying groovy.  I tried to counter it saying that Shaggy from Scooby Doo says groovy, but no one seemed to buy it. 

Around 2000 there was Ghana’s cultural pre-port, so I went over and sat next to Lorelei.  We saw Caroline (our Seville buddy!) and called her over, and she was interested in doing Thursday (the packed day above) with us too!  So we’ll have a pretty full group, which will be fun and I’m definitely excited for it.  Apparently I need to eat something called fufu, which I didn’t write down what it was, so we’ll see what that turns out to be, and red red, which is fried plantains and beans.  I can already tell this country and me are gonna get along just fine.  Also, my Ghanian name is Adwoa/Adjoa (you have to say the jw together) because I was born on a Monday.  There was a little bit of info about how to be respectful of royalty, which I was grateful for because I’m gonna go see the queen mothers of the Ga tribe and I don’t want to offend anyone (I’m going to have to sit on my left hand).  Apparently Archbishop Tutu is getting a reward that is like… the African Lifelong Service award and is going to meet with the king and stuff, so that’s awesome.  I think we’re going to be debriefed afterwards on how that was too, so that’s exciting.  :D  I cannot wait for Desmond Tutu to teach the Global Studies class on South Africa.

Jared and I went and worked out again today, because we’re hardcore like that.  This time I was able to be on the stairmaster for ten minutes, which was more than enough for me, as well as having some bike time in there too.  Then we lifted weights again on the deck and failed to figure out how to cool down so we just walked back.  Baby steps.  We’ve got it covered.

I took a most excellent shower and then decided to write this blog!  Tomorrow in Women in High Courts we’re going to be briefed on how to be respectful for the queen mothers, which will be a fun class, and then some Global Studies, and then… GHANA!! :)

September 19 2010 / MV Explorer

0800 WIHC—Everyone was in the same boat (ho ho ho, my puns, they are so clever) because we all had hated the reading for that, which was about indigo cloth dyeing in Ghana and how it relates to royalty and fertility. But the professor kind of went over it when she realized how dull we’d found it, and now it’s much more interesting and is stuck far better in my head.  After that I went to Global Studies, which was pretty exciting because it was about women, and educating women and how that was going to lead to the world being saved.  I am only exaggerating that a little bit—women are the world’s most underutilized resource, so as soon as countries start investing in educating their women and having jobs available for them, there will be a massive economic boom in developing countries. There was a speaker that basically covered an entire Women’s Realities class in about twenty minutes.  She said she wanted to focus on women empowerment, but she hit all the stops—female genital mutilation, bride burning, acid throwing, domestic abuse, honor killings, gendercide… after class I went up to her and introduced myself and (hopefully not in a rude way) mentioned that she should mention feminism as a beneficial way to respond to some of these injustices, as there wasn’t really a “what you can do” section of the presentation.   Hopefully I didn’t seem obnoxious or telling her how to do her presentation—I thought I was very polite, and told her I enjoyed it (wrong term, probably) a lot.

Afterwards I was pretty exhausted (what a surprise!) and took a nap before meeting up with Lorelei and Julie to plan for Ghana during and after lunch.  We have some pretty epic ideas, no lie.  We really want to go to the Kakum National Park, because they have an incredible canopy walk that stretches over the treetops, and apparently the variety of birds there is unbelievable.  The only problem is that I’m pretty sure it’s going to rain the entire time we’re in Ghana.  It’s been raining all day today, the first time it’s ever rained while we’ve been at sea, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to let up anytime soon.  At least it’s warm as well?  Another idea was to go to the Elmina castle and slave dungeons, which was used by the Dutch at first as defense from naval attacks but then as slave dungeons during the slave trades.  Elmina is right between Takoradi and Cape Coast so we don’t think it would be too tough to get over there.  We were also thinking about going to Lake/River Volta and renting a boat to go to check out regions around the river that are famed for basket weaving, rum distilleries, and sugarcane fields.  Also in this area is a restaurant built on stilts over a river, where you can throw bread to hungry crocodiles—all I can say is CRIKEY!

So lots of options for Ghana.  After looking through a Lonely Planet on the subject, I decided to go back to my room to read for tomorrow’s classes—I think AOT is going to be interesting, because we read a chapter on slave dungeons/castles and what the black American experience there is like, as some of them feel really displaced from the culture and lacking what they’d come for, which was some sort of closure.  It was a really interesting article and made me all the more wanting to go to Elmina.  I’m not going to lie—I have a ticket for a Habitat for Humanity project I’d wanted to do, but that just sounds so culturally/historically rich.  Hopefully I can move things around the way I want. 

Later it was dinner time, and I luckily found Julie and Lorelei again.  We settled into a conversation on birth control and Japanese karaoke bars, of all things, and were pretty much as happy as could be.  Around 2000 we heard that there was a Sustainability and You panel thing going on, so we decided to rush over, because the subarctic temperatures in the ship are kind of ridiculous (and I love the cold, as long as there’s no snow involved).  However, our announcement was kind of shut down in a really rude way from one of the guys on the panel, and they were being really boring and general and it was like, you guys, are you kidding?  You have a captive audience, don’t talk about worldwide economics right now, and if you are, at least splice in some factoids about things that people can do to lower their energy intake.  It was just kind of disappointing.  Once again though, whenever I go to these things, I always feel like I don’t want to eat cow meat anymore, because it takes so much energy to farm, but then I remember that steak comes from cows, and it’s hard again.  :(  Being eco-friendly is very difficult for the carnivore.  But then, I guess I haven’t had any cow meat since setting sail?  Anyway, I’ve been better about turning off my lights and unplugging stuff a lot more when I leave. 

Julie and I had to sneak out a little early to go rush off to our Sea Meeting, which was kind of unfortunate because both Donna and I had thought the other person was going to get the supplies for door dec making (we really need to communicate more) so that’ll have to be an event that I plan on a random day.  We had a delicious ice cream cake to celebrate September/October birthdays.  Turns out the secret to good ice cream cake is having far more ice cream than cake.  Unless, of course, it’s cake with ice cream, and then you would always want more cake than ice cream.  Trust me, I’m a professional. 

While we scarfed down ice cream, Jared and I got the idea of having a work out buddy system to help inspire the other person to hit the gym.  I said yes, because I definitely need a buddy to keep me on track until it’s part of my routine.  So we got ready pretty quickly and then hit the gym at 2230—prime time, because no one is there.  Bike first, and then the stairmaster—I’m not gonna lie, I’ve never done the stairmaster before and it beat the crap out of me.  I could only do it for like five minutes I think.  I’m definitely going to have to try to get used to that.  I only lasted seven minutes on the olliptical (elliptical?), too.  I don’t get seasick, but bouncing up and down on the olliptical while also rocking all over the place on the seas was hard on my stomach.  I went back to the bike pretty quickly after that. 

Then we went outside and did weight training!  The equipment is all super old compared to Chapman’s stuff, I had to move all the weights off and on the equipment, so I hope I didn’t strain my back.  It was pouring outside (all the equipment was under an overhang) so there was water everywhere, sloshing with the rock of the ship.  At some points I just lifted dramatically less than I would have just because I was sick of trying to find more weights, haha.  But it was still a really good time and I’m glad I went.  Signed up to work out tomorrow too!  :) 

Came back and took a shower and did a quick poetry write-up.  Now I’m just laying in bed, getting drowsy but starting to realize—Ghana is only two days away! 

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! 

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

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!

September 15 2010 / MV Explorer

I’ve started abbreviating my classes now, so just be prepared. WIHC is Women In High Courts, CSI is Contemporary Social Issues, GS Global Studies, Antro is Anthropology of Tourism, and… well, World Poetry is World Poetry. 

Waking up early wasn’t too bad due to being up so early all the time at the villages, but it was still a little groggy rolling out of bed at 0715.  I really quick threw on some clothes and went up to grab a couple of bites of pancakes—I don’t really have an appetite because my nose was like “lol, I’ma gonna stuff you up” in the middle of the night apparently.  I am an icky mouthbreather.  Still I guess my throat doesn’t feel as bad, though I have a bit of a sexy rasp going on. 

We talked in great detail about eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire today, which was interesting because they were apparently the intermediaries that could go everywhere because there was a lot of gendered space in that court system, which was interesting.  It’s just that you always joke about eunuchs (well, I guess that’s not really the funniest joke of the time, but you know what I mean) but in reality they were a group of people who had massive political and spiritual power within court systems around the world.  Interesting. 

Global Studies we talked about underemployment and unemployment, most of which I knew already, but also talked about pensions and social security, which was interesting to see in charts and graphs that projected how we were all going to be screwed later on when there were tons of old people and not enough young people to support them.  Japan especially was interesting.  The guest speaker talked so inappropriately fast that at some point I think everyone gave up—I don’t know how anyone doing a lecture thinks that people will be able to follow them and take notes if they are literally whisking through powerpoint slides every five seconds.

I went downstairs and caught up on my WIHC readings, which I hadn’t done yet, and also read my Anthropology of Tourism reading for tomorrow before lunch.  Lunch was massively exciting because it was chicken fajita day and I ate far too much and it was totally worth it. 

Back downstairs I went to read some stuff about poverty and inequality for CSI, which I realized was pretty much exactly the same as Global Studies, so I didn’t feel too inclined to read it.  I started the African poems in our book though, which are actually really interesting and powerful.  I really want to get into the habit of memorizing poems again—I still know Thanks by Yusef Komonyaka, which is still my favorite poem to this day. 

I had a meeting with Donna at 1400, and we talked about Sea Olympics and floor meetings.  Our team color is going to be purple and it looks like the Sea Olympics are on the 9th of October, which will be neat.  I really want to cut up cloth and make cheap bandanas or armbands, but our budget SUCKS and can apparently only be used on ship—there are 7.50 bandanas EACH at the student store, which is like, no thanks.  I also want to make some IN/OUT door signs at our next sea meeting—I feel like that would be a fun art project to get more people to know each other.  I also learned that I have “beverage service duty” every three days while at sea, where I just hang out on deck 7 from 2000 to 2300 while drinks are being served up there and make sure no one tries to take alcohol off the deck.  The only thing that bugs me about it is that I will be working on a “reading day” which I’m pretty sure is going to be Neptune Day, and I kind of wanted to have a drink that night to celebrate.  Btu who knows, maybe it’s okay for us to drink while we’re on the job—I asked Donna about it and she had the same question, haha!

After the meeting with Donna I decided I definitely needed a larger calendar for my wall (four months packed onto one page doesn’t work) so I went to the library and spend sooo much time putting one together.  Still, it feels nice having everything planned out.  More reading happened, as well as putting up a new poster that said “What did you like best about Spain/Morocco?” with a pen (the old one had started getting lots of penises drawn on it—it was time for a new, clean version) and then I went up to dinner at 1730.  I was just finishing thinking about how I have been having lots of meals solitary lately and hadn’t minded when I saw Martha and we sat together outside.  We talked long into the evening about Twilight, Harry Potter, mozzarella sticks, Doctor Who, those KFC monstrosity sandwiches, depression, and Ghana.  We hit all the stops.  I really like talking to her.  :)  When we were finally kicked off the deck because they needed to clean it we went to my room to work on poetry, though we didn’t get very far. 

Julie ended up coming by and asking if we wanted to popcorn read Global Studies, so we agreed and went with Lorelei to hang out in front of the bulletin board.  We have decided the textbook author is extremely biased (“Which county is the worst in India?  Kerala.”)  And I was getting pissed off because he was talking about how men got soooo shafted when women began getting equal working rights in the United States because all of a sudden they were expected to start helping out with domestic duties.  No, I don’t owe you any sympathy, textbook author.  You’ve said yourself these guys desert their wives and spend all of their wives’ money on alcohol, I’m not going to feel bad about how “humiliated” they feel.  It just sort of pissed me off.  But we had a great time tearing it apart, even if we didn’t finish the chapter.   Lorelei asked if I was down “for Ghana” (“For what in Ghana?”  “Not sure!”), to which I said YES!  I’ve loved traveling with her and am only doing two things with SAS, one of which is only a half day thing, so I’m pretty excited.  I hear the nightlife is fun and we both want to do the canopy walk where you walk on rickety bridges way above the trees in the jungle.  Most awesome. 

Now I’m just about to shower and hop into bed.  I’m still operating on Berber time, though I’m sure I’ll get back to College Student time soon.  Three classes tomorrow will probably do it. 

By the way, thank you so much to all of those who have emailed me to say hello and to ask how my travels are doing.  I really appreciate it so much to hear a familiar voice from all the way across the world, even if just in text form—it brightens my day so much.  Thanks for all your support—miss you and love you all.  <3