Suite Life on Deck

            Day 2 of 6 at sea before we get to Brazil. At home on a given day I walk anywhere form 1-4 miles around campus, maybe get in my car to go grocery shopping, to a friends apartment, or run some other errand. It is the weirdest feeling having NOWHERE to go. Anywhere I need to go and everything I need is within a 2 minute TOPS walk of each other. I keep thinking that one day I'll get over the uniqueness of this ship and experience and stop writing about it, but it is realllly unique so who knows.

            Days at sea are so interesting. I know I've said it before, but I'm really loving this community. The openness has not changed yet one bit, everyone is still so welcoming and ready to talk. Meal time is great, today for example, I sat down for dinner at 5:30 to eat with some friends. I did not get up from the table (with the exception of getting up to get tea once) until 7:30, and by the time I got up, it was almost all new people than the ones I started dinner with. This environment may not be the best for my school-work, but I am loving the plain interactions. I was talking to people tonight at dinner about how we meet each other not out at parties after a few drinks but usually sometime in the middle of the day, or at night when we're sitting outside writing our blogs (like I am now). Then, after meeting each other we don't go home, get a facebook friend request (or send one) and stalk their lives…here it's just pure people and real impressions. The ship offers drinks only on certain designated nights, and on those nights you are limited to three drinks. Needless to say, most nights there aren't "drinking nights." In college, people meet and generally go our together and get drunk…sorry parents and adults, but it's not like you don't already know this. I always say that in the beginning of college a lot of people sort of hide behind alcohol and use it so that they can meet people and not feel that awkward feeling. Here there is no alcohol (well very little, and it's rare) so we don't have that. This means that we get to bond and really get to know each other a lot faster and on a much more real level….for those of you that have worked at or gone to summer camp it's a very similar experience.

            After dinner I walked around and socialized and eventually joined in on a super fun game of catch-phrase. Then, at 9:15 we had a ship-wide (optional) game of Family Feud!!!! We got there and made teams of 6-8, there were FORTY THREE groups (lotttt of people). We were given a category and each group had to submit an answer, if your team submitted the most frequent answer you got points! This actually turned into a dance party when they tallied they results each time. It also turned into less of a competition for the most frequent answer and more of a competition for the funniest answer. Each time the two hosts would read out some of the funniest answers. For example, one question was "what is one thing women do better than men?" and some answers were lactating, getting pregnant, making sandwiches…you get the point. Most of the funny answers though had to do with SAS inside jokes- which is crazy to me how many inside jokes there already are in this community.  After dinner people just hung out on the top deck, and in the lounge talking.

            Some good news is that my "sea-legs" have arrived, YAYJ! This is for sure a ship, and it's a nice one, but it's a lot smaller than your average cruise ship. We really rock back and forth throughout the day, so much so that in the beginning I found myself constantly being shoved into walls and people. The rocking hasn't stopped, and I still feel it, but my body has adjusted and I'm no longer nauseous or dizzy. Now, standing in place simply means that I have to transfer my body weight from side to side constantly…it's like learning the simple things all over and adapting. I have been told that when you get off the ship you can always tell who is on SAS because they sway back and forth, well that's totally going to be me.

            Tomorrow night me and a few others have organized to have Shabbat dinner on the ship. We have had a lot of people say they are interested and we have definitely not just invited Jews. So many times in the past few days when I've found out someone is Jewish I've invited them to Shabbat dinner…then I've been tapped on the shoulder by the person behind me going "If I'm not Jewish can I still come?" Again, it just goes to show how truly open this community is. I'm really excited to have this on the ship and oddly almost more excited to share it with those that know nothing about Shabbat. The ship is going to provide us with Challah and wine but of course NO candles or flames are ever allowed on the ship so we'll have to create some sort of "pin the flame on the candle" thing.

            Tonight is another night where we lose an hour of sleep…I think it's bad now but I just need to wait till our 9 days at sea where we cross the Atlantic and we're sure to lose sleep every other night at the least. It's already 1:38 (I didn't realize that until a few moments ago because I just realized I needed to change my clock) and I plan on waking up for 7am zumba so it looks like I need to get to sleep.

 

Missing everyone at home!!

 

-Steph

 

P.S. If you didn't "get" the title of the blog then you need to watch more Disney channel!