Monday, April 23, 2012
April 20, The Second One
April 20, The First One.
Have you ever seen the movie Ground Hog Day? It is a story about an obnoxious weatherman who has to repeat the same day (Ground Hog Day) until he gets its right. We have our own version of Ground Hog Day when we will live through April 20 twice. In order for us to adjust our clocks from being 13 hours ahead to 6 hours behind New York Time and crossing over the International Date Line, we will repeat April 20.
The crew is having fun with this as well. In the movie, you knew it was the same day because the radio plays “ I Got You Babe” every day when the morning alarm went off. The crew was playing this song over our ships intercom.
Our Dean’s Memo which tell us our days schedule, now states April 20, the second one.
April 23
I just wanted to try and describe what things have been like on the ship more in depth. My parents may not like this, especially my grammy!
Time has become lucid for us and we no longer are preoccupied about what time it is or what we should be doing at any hour. Essentially from the time changes and the huge amount of work, many people have become nocturnal. There are four others with me in the computer lab at 4 am and many others spread around the ship.
We all simply sleep when we are tired because it is hard to sleep during regular sleep time. I have found for my papers that I need a large block of uninterrupted time to make any steady progress. So I stayed up the night before a reading day to get my research done and slept during the day.
I have never seen so many people up for breakfast when it opened. People are pulling all nighters to get the intense amount of work done for each class. We have lost so many hours since Japan that I cannot keep track. For me, it is just insanity to see everyone up and about so early and it makes me feel a lot closer to everyone too because we have no idea what our bodies are doing!
I am doing really well though. My school work is fine and I’m getting a good amount of sleep so don’t worry!!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Japan, April 10-14
We arrived in Kobe, Japan on April 10. We made arrangements to travel across Japan and meet the ship in Yokohama on Friday April 13. We stayed on land as the ship traveled between Kobe and Yokohama.
Kobe was in full bloom with cherry blossoms throughout the city. Everett got a chance to visit Kyoto which apparently is the city known for cherry blossoms. It rained two days out of the five that we were there but temperatures were in the 60s. I enjoyed Japan a lot. It was very clean and organized and the people were friendlier than in China. Japanese people tend to be more robotic especially when we were in Disney. Everyone seems to follow a protocol as well. For example when I would order food, they had certain lines and were just very professional almost in each activity.
On April 11, we had to travel from Kobe to Tokyo and were considering the bullet train. We then decided to take an overnight bus which would get in to Tokyo at 7am. The bus was really nice. I was uncomfortable for a while but I slept really well. (Imagine me sleeping on a bus!). The bus provided blankets and slippers.
On April 12 we arrived in Tokyo. We walked around the city and went to a baseball game.
On April 13, we went to Tokyo Disneyland. One of the attractions is Theme park Tokyo DisneySea which we visited and had a fantastic time. One of the attractions was a Cape Cod village. I have visited Cape Cod every year since I was born. To be half way around the world and see an attraction that was very personal to me was emotional.
The language barrier was interesting. There was a lot more English than I expected but the shows and attractions were lost to us, since they were in Japanese.
We spent a long day into the evening seeing attractions and going on rides at Disneyland. The ship, now in Yokohama, was about ½ hour from Disneyland and we arrived back on the ship at 2:00 a.m. Even though we had one more day in port at Yokohama, we did not get off the ship. The weather was raining and our legs were sore and by the time we got ready, it was too late to do anything. Overall, we really enjoyed our visit in Japan.
Kobe was in full bloom with cherry blossoms throughout the city. Everett got a chance to visit Kyoto which apparently is the city known for cherry blossoms. It rained two days out of the five that we were there but temperatures were in the 60s. I enjoyed Japan a lot. It was very clean and organized and the people were friendlier than in China. Japanese people tend to be more robotic especially when we were in Disney. Everyone seems to follow a protocol as well. For example when I would order food, they had certain lines and were just very professional almost in each activity.
On April 11, we had to travel from Kobe to Tokyo and were considering the bullet train. We then decided to take an overnight bus which would get in to Tokyo at 7am. The bus was really nice. I was uncomfortable for a while but I slept really well. (Imagine me sleeping on a bus!). The bus provided blankets and slippers.
On April 12 we arrived in Tokyo. We walked around the city and went to a baseball game.
On April 13, we went to Tokyo Disneyland. One of the attractions is Theme park Tokyo DisneySea which we visited and had a fantastic time. One of the attractions was a Cape Cod village. I have visited Cape Cod every year since I was born. To be half way around the world and see an attraction that was very personal to me was emotional.
The language barrier was interesting. There was a lot more English than I expected but the shows and attractions were lost to us, since they were in Japanese.
We spent a long day into the evening seeing attractions and going on rides at Disneyland. The ship, now in Yokohama, was about ½ hour from Disneyland and we arrived back on the ship at 2:00 a.m. Even though we had one more day in port at Yokohama, we did not get off the ship. The weather was raining and our legs were sore and by the time we got ready, it was too late to do anything. Overall, we really enjoyed our visit in Japan.
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