Travel Across the Atlantic towards Ghana

02.09.12

Time is so lucid while on the ship. We do not have weekends and we have lost 4 hours in the last seven days. I have sent some emails to people about how I am spending my time on the ship and I wanted to elaborate.

The Atlantic crossing passed quickly. We have had eight days of classes which is the longest stretch of classes by far. The work is not really that difficult or time consuming and I have plenty of time to socialize and to rest. Everett and I have been waking up for 6:30 for an Insanity fitness class since the Feb 6th. We are both pushing each other to get up.

I am learning sign language from a girl on the ship who is deaf and her translator. They have started an ASL club! The translator also Ballroom dances, so she joined our little informal group to teach those who find us and want to learn or to just dance and have fun. One of the girls is from France had found us dancing by accident and she was thrilled to learn ballroom and expressed that excitement to me.

I also attended a Spanish club, where I got to talk to other Spanish speakers and my professor! I am really excited-I will continue to use this as a way to preserve my Spanish.

We spend a lot of extra time playing card games like Egyptian Ratscrew, Rummy and Hearts. We played Cranium a lot at first. There are different programs put on about music or other different topics. Also different movies are played in the Union (auditorium area) and on the TVs. We have seen Hangover, Toy Story 3, and Pirates of the Carribean. The TVs for awhile marathoned Shrek, Pirates 2 and Tarzan. On the day of the Super Bowl, we all had to give up four hours of internet for there to be enough ban width for them to show it. I watched up till half time!

The ocean is really calm and we can barely feel the boat rocking which is unfortunate because I enjoyed being rocked to sleep at night. The weather has been significantly cloudier than the past weeks in the Caribbean area! We get rain almost every day and the decks are constantly wet. On the 9th we got to see a lightning storm and I had a great view (Note to Daddy and Uncle Don). It was exhilarating. Everyone is feeling better (as far as sea sickness)! We also had about 16-20 people quarantined for a day. Many of them were simply sea sick but the crew was not taking any chances with norovirus (often called the "stomach flu").