The Stretch- Part 1

Hola amigos. This blog is going to be slightly different than my previous posts (mainly because I’m not in a different country this time). But also, I’d like to share a little more about life at sea and right now we are crossing the Atlantic; from Africa to Brazil. Now I titled this blog “The Stretch” because we are spending seven straight days at sea. Which also means seven straight days of school (actually we have one day off because of Neptune Day but I’ll talk about that in a bit). Anyways, it’s not our longest time at sea because we have another stretch at sea that will be a lot longer. But still, I thought this week would be a good one to talk about.
We were in Senegal on Halloween, so we never really got to celebrate anything for it. But when we got back to the ship after Senegal, we had a Halloween dance party. It sounds pretty lame but it turned out to be really fun. There was also a costume contest that my friends actually won! My friends Allie and Melonie dressed up as a mosquito carrying malaria and Malerone (the prescription medication against malaria). We’ve all been taking our malaria meds every day and we get CONSTANT reminders to take them, so their costume was pretty hilarious.  My friends Liv and Kelsey and I dressed up as the waiters that serve us in the dining hall. They’re super funny and nice, and we didn’t have any other ideas for a last minute costume. We made name tags out of paper and just wore white shirts and black pants. I wasn’t really thinking about Halloween when I was packing for this trip. Anyways, we basically just danced until midnight and it was so much fun. Not exactly a normal halloween, but it was a good one nonetheless. The next day consisted of me writing essays and studying for midterms, so I’ll just skip that part. The day after was Neptune Day! For those of you who don’t know what day that is, that’s when we crossed the equator. It’s tradition to have a bunch of festivities and you get fish juice poured on you along with other things. It’s also tradition to shave your head the first time you cross the equator— don’t worry, I didn’t shave my head… well not all of it. I shaved about an inch above my ear for a sort of half shave but it can still be covered by my hair. Not too drastic, but I’m still kinda able to say I participated in the tradition! So I got fish juice poured on me, jumped in the pool, kissed a fish, then shaved part of my head. It was such a fun day and a really nice break from school. The rest of the week was pretty normal and consisted of my friend’s and I trying to catch up on Grey’s Anatomy. Also, we got pooped on by a seagull while we were lounging on deck 7. It was really strange because we don’t see many birds when we’re at sea, usually just dolphins. Despite how disgusting it was, it was so hilarious because basically the whole ship heard about it (nothing really interesting happens on the ship so that’s how we stay entertained).
The week went by a lot faster than I expected, and I was actually sad about it. This trip has been so eye-opening and I have loved every minute of it. Especially our long stretches at sea. Ship days just mean more time to talk to people and have good conversation and just get to know everyone more. I’m looking forward to our future ports, but that also means the voyage is almost over. I miss everyone back home, but I’m not ready to leave the ship. Not yet at least.