As most people are forced to realize, technology is not always a friend. In my case it has become the frustrating enemy! What happened, you might ask. Well, long story short, my laptop has left this mortal coil. It is no longer with us. The funeral will be held on Tuesday. With it go my Namibia and South Africa) blogs and about half of a paper for History of U.S. Immigration. I will try to re-write the blogs (and paper, but they may not be in order. For starters I am going to do Mauritius and the Sea Olympics!
Mauritius was beautiful! It reminded me a lot of Hawaii except that it didn’t have nearly as many flowers. Since we only had one day in Mauritius I chose to spend it on a catamaran! Snorkeling equipment was provided and I spent the majority of the day with my head underwater. The water was amazingly clear and we could see a ton of fish at the first site! Sadly, my mask was leaking and the pretty fish were not worth salty eyes so I spent most of my time there just swimming around. After about an hour we all got back on our catamaran and went to another area of the bay. And then it was time for lunch! This was one of the most amazing meals I have had on this trip! We had barbequed chicken skewers, barbequed swordfish, garlic bread, and mashed potatoes. After eating (and waiting twenty minutes!) I went back into the water to see more fish with a non-leaking snorkel mask. There were fewer fish at this part of the bay, but I still was able to see glowing squid and some other small fish swimming around. I forgot how much I love snorkeling. It is just me, my breathing and the water. It was so peaceful and it reminded me of meditating. Hopefully I will have a chance to do it again in either Thailand or Hawaii!
After snorkeling we returned to the ship for more barbeque (of a lesser quality) in anticipation of Sea Olympics! Now in order to understand Sea Olympics I need to explain how the MV Explorer is organized. Similar to dorms with floors and RAs, SAS has seas with living learning coordinators. The seas include the Red Sea, Bering Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Baltic Sea (yay ninjas!), and Adriatic Sea. The professors, lifelong learners, and family voyagers are all in the Odyssey. Now the seas were required to participate in events such as wheelbarrow race, spelling bee, synchronized swimming, and potato sculpting. I was only participating in the synchronized swimming (although I wish I had done spelling bee).
Now here is a small (large) rant. I stayed after at the meeting to sign up for events to see if the spelling bee was still open. About four other people were asking about various things and the leaders were assigning things that had no contestants yet. Suddenly I hear “spelling bee” and before I can jump at the chance a (CU) jock goes “Oh I’ll do it!”. I turn to him to ask if he was a good speller and he replied “Oh yeah…sure”. I repeated the question letting him know that I was really good at spelling and would love to compete. Finally I gave up and left. Round one of the spelling bee the Baltic Sea was eliminated on “celery” spelled “cellary”. Hell hath no fury like Kendra when epic stupidity strikes! I have nothing against poor spellers (I love you Dad!), but I do have issues with people who ruin the chances of others on a whim. Needless to say the Baltic Sea came in second to last place in the Olympics overall with medals in Sudoku and Twister. Synchronized swimming was a lot of fun though and there were parts of the day I did have fun, but those of you who know my competitive attitude will understand how the spelling bee broke my spirit!
Well, there you go! One semi-coherent blog entry with a complimentary rant! Now I feel like sleeping for weeks. India left me physically and emotionally drained and I need some time to absorb everything I have seen and done in the last few days. No class tomorrow so I will try to write out entries for Namibia and South Africa! Happy Purim everybody!
No comments:
Post a Comment