Log 32

So our “snow day” really wasn’t that bad. We watched Frozen in the beginning, which gave the student life office sometime to organize some activities. At noon a schedule was sent out. My friends and I were mostly in Lido Terrace, playing games all day. We also played Hamchunk, which is similar to fish bowl. That was both interesting and extremely difficult. Then we went to dinner. And lucky for us, since we succeeded in conserving our water, we got our ice cream bar. We finished dinner around 1800, when we moved to Kaisersaal. Now from 1900 to 2200 in Kaisersaal, there was story time with Dean Dan, open mic night, and then concluded with improve. Now, if you were paying attention to the times I was giving you, you may have noticed that we went to Kaisersaal an hour before these events started. Well, that would be because there were others already going to get seats. And when Dean Dan is giving story time, you want to be in the best, closest seats you can get.

Story time with Dean Dan is one of the most desired activities on the ship. He is now on his fourth voyage with Semester at Sea, which means he has experienced many things. He talked about the original purpose of SAS, which is really different from what is has become today. Then, of course, he proves and disproves and myths and legends that make their way to our ears. One of which was whether or not the ship is haunted. Dean Dan says no, but some of us aren’t totally convinced.

Open mic night was great. We have discovered from past experience that we have a lot of singers on the ship. Which is so awesome, because I love to just listen to people sing. I am curious though, if any of the people who choose to perform in front of the 500+ people are music majors. Singing isn’t the only act on open mic nights though. Some people read poems. To me, poems tend to be boring, so I have a very hard time paying attention at these moments, but it is nice that they feel comfortable enough with the ship community to get up in front of everyone and share something that holds meaning to them.

Next was the improve. Now, this was hilarious. I hadn’t been able to get to go to one of their other shows, but man was it funny. It wasn’t just the members of the improve group doing things. They had volunteers go up and do it as well. I did not, but some of my closer friends did. Two of the games they played I like more than the others. Freeze and Thought. So in freeze, it is literally just rolling with the situation and freezing when prompted. Then someone gets replaced and the new person continues the scene or creates a new scenario. We went from two people giving a weather report, to two guys misplacing a volcano. Then Thought, is where you have people playing on a given scenario. But behind them is their “thoughts”. The “thoughts” are supposed to say what their person is thinking, which may or may not match what the person actually says.

For open mic and improve, the staculty limited the audience to college/gap year students only. No dependent children were allowed in Kaisersaal during this time. I think the student life team organized I movie for them instead. I have to say, it is a good thing for that, because things got really inappropriate really fast. I feel like part of that was because everyone knew it was a 18+ crowd, so they knew it wouldn’t be frowned upon. Also, there was a lot of profanity. But let’s be honest, everything is funnier with profanity. Jeff Dunham isn’t the same when you put on the bleeps. The same idea applies for improve. Especially because, these people up on the stage don’t know what is going to happen. It isn’t always so easy to filter your tongue when you are reacting to things. All things said, it was really funny to watch. I am going to talk to my friend who is involve in the club, and see if they can set it up to have improve in Kaisersaal once a week.

The night ended with star gazing. The captain shut off all of the lights in the front of the ship. It would have been awesome, if only the sky wasn’t cloudy. I made the most of it and decided to cloud gaze instead. It is just like looking for shapes in clouds, but not you are doing it in the dark. It would have still been really cool though to see the stars instead.

Now we are back to classes. Global relations was a big review today. I didn’t really help though. My friends and I agreed to get together tomorrow and study for the exam. I don’t think the exam is going to be so bad, but you never know what is going to be covered. I am enjoying Current World Problem more and more as we make our way through the semester. Don’t get me wrong, I will never consider a job in political science, but as I start to understand more of the terms, I am starting to at least enjoy class. Environmental ethics is as boring as ever. I have wanted to skip so many times, and I’m not exactly sure what is stopping me. I know that I like school and in the past I would have pitched a fit if I had to miss class. But since I’ve been in college, I’ve become more laid back about that. I don’t just skip any class. I do look ahead to what I will be missing. For example, I skipped a Global Relations class on Buddhism. Many people thought it was such an insightful and interesting lecture. I’m sure I would have shared their thoughts if I hadn’t already learned about Buddhism in my other TWO class. That would have been my third time listening to the lecture. So I skipped it and slept in. Ethics is just so boring. It is not what I expected the class to be about, and the professor tries to get to a right answer, which shouldn’t exist in a philosophy class. I don’t think, however, that is completely the professor’s fault. I think he is too informed on his area of expertise, philosophy, and that he is so used to teaching philosophy students, that he just doesn’t know how to teach other types of students, like science kids like me. Science is very right and wrong, in a sense. You are right if you can defend your statement. But philosophy has no right or wrong. Science is evidence based and philosophy is suggestive and, in my opinion, in simplistic terms, a guessing game at what is to come and what has past. They are such different sciences, and I think the professor just doesn’t have a science lens to use to teach his science students. There isn’t much more left to the class. My only choice is to suck it up and just push through, but that doesn’t make it any less boring. I am starting to miss those rigorous science classes that made me want to rip my hair out.

That’s enough of me complaining. After all, I’m sailing around the world on a ship! Next port is Cape Town, South Africa. This is the one I have been waiting for. I have so many awesome trips planned. Ziplining, Safari, hanging out with penguins. I’m doing it all. Get ready for some exciting logs in the near future.

Days until I come home: 38