Tomorrow I’ll be in South Africa!
It’ll be for 6 days, our longest port yet! This past week on the ship has been filled with many fun and meaningful things:
• Last Saturday we crossed over the Equator! This is a pretty big deal when done by any water vehicle. We awoke to our joyous crewmembers marching up and down the hallways playing loud instruments. It reminded me of senior night/morning at band camp! We were all summoned up to the 7th deck for the Neptune Day Ceremony. The marching crew band led on King Neptune and his wife—aka our Captain covered in lime green paint, long white wig, and a hula skirt… he looked a lot like King Triton in The Little Mermaid! When one crosses over the equator for the first time by boat, they must be “initiated”… dum dum dum… So one-by-one we got red and purple gew poured on our heads, jumped in the pool with our clothes on (unless you put on a swimsuit knowing what was going to happen… but I missed that memo… lol), kissed a fish (4 times for me… one was a Spanish kiss on both cheeks! haha), knelt to be dubbed, kissed the queen’s hand, and then finished by kissing the king’s ring with deep gratitude. Once one is initiated, they get their head shaved and all hair is off! So right now as I’m writing this, I have a bald head! All my hair is GONE! It feels a little weird, but it’s a lot less to take care of! So we just have a bunch of baldies running around the ship now ☺ haha, what a sight and what a FUN day!
• Crossing the Equator means the season changed! I jumped from Summer right into Spring! And believe it or not, even though we’re this close to the Equator it’s actually the coldest it has been yet!
• I played in Intramural Volleyball! Team Sparkles played our first game very well… We won the first one, lost the 2nd, and then lost the tie-breaker. But for having no warm-ups and having not played in quite a while, we sure put up a good fight! And all that matters is that we had fun, and we most definitely did… with a few laughs included ☺
• I attended a seminar titled Global Citizenship… As we’re traveling and seeing so much of the world, we’re realizing what it means to be a global citizen: becoming aware of the worlds problems and compassionately doing what we can to help. SAS has developed a program called $100 Solution. They met with Ghanaian Rotary members and asked what they could use $100 for to better their society. After much discussion, they decided that what was needed now are fans in schools. There’s a 50% attendance rate because of how hot, stuffy, and crowded Ghanaian schools are. One of the members matched the $100 for $200 total… and with that they were able to buy and install ceiling fans for 720 students. When SAS was in the schools they saw how crowded and uncomfortable the children were with a 3 kids to 1 desk ratio. The rotary members decided that they should do a fundraiser to buy more desks to increase comfort and attendance. They went back to their board and by the next day had raised enough money to give them desks. $100 Solution focused on the immediate needs and took action with this “small” amount that we just throw around. Now these students can learn in a more comfortable environment and enjoy school. Programs like this show us what it is to be a global citizen: no longer being ignorant to the rest of the world and finding responsibility in helping others.
• I have continued going to Salsa dancing and also joined a couple of other dancing classes—Hip-Hop and Flamenco! How neat to learn world dances while traveling the world!
• These ocean waves aren’t like Grand Lake’s! They are getting pretty big and this boat is really rocking! While crossing the Atlantic, we were tilting from right side to left side, which made it pretty hard to walk straight and difficult to avoid running into people and walls. But now while sailing along the West/South African Coast the boat is rocking from front to back! This makes it seem like you have a TON of pressure being pushed on to you and then it changes quickly to seem like you’re walking on the moon! And these intense alternating movements occur several times a minute! My cabin is 2nd in from the front of the ship, where it feels the waves the worst. My body is adapting to sleeping with this movement and even wakes up sometimes when it stops! I also live on the 4th deck, which is fairly high. We’ve had some waves splash our window! I’ve heard that it’s the worst going around the tip of Africa, but then it should get a little smoother.
Well, we arrive in Cape Town, South Africa tomorrow morning! We’ve been learning about the apartheid (separate-ness) there between the wealthy minority whites and poor majority blacks. I’m excited to be exposed to this and learn more.
Oh, by the way, I and many others opted out of the head-shaving. My short blonde hair is still sitting on my head… haha! Gotcha!
Wimoweh wimoweh, o wimoweh wimoweh…
Kels
A new video has been posted from Semester At Sea in Ghana. I'm not in this video, but it will give you a glimpse of the culture in Africa! http://www.ise.virginia.edu/video/F09/vid_4.html
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