So I just realized today in Global Studies that we are traveling 1000 miles up the Amazon to reach Manaus. I had no idea that was the case and before I left I kept scouring the coast of Brazil looking for Manaus when in reality, Manaus is located 1,000 inland in the mid NorthWest Region of Brazil. Crazy!
Yesterday we had our first Ship Wide Activities Night which I helped to plan along with my other board members! I actually really like being on the activities board because we are responsible for all shipwide events so I got to chose what sort of activities we will be having like a Mr. SAS, a student made travel video film festival, a around the world theme dance, etc. We are all pretty creative so I feel like we are definitely going to make this semester awesome. I don’t think I got on sea council because they drew names out of a hat…lame but I have no idea who our representatives are so its kinda weird…I had my third day of classes today and they are all really interesting except econ. Our teacher is actually very strange and asks us ambiguous questions which spark these heated debates. For example she was asking what the biggest difference between feudalism and capitalism was. I said that in Fuedal times people were less motivated because all or most of their crop yield/money/etc went directly to their feudal lord, whereas with capitalism people are more motivated to not only work hard but to become innovative because there is competition and your hard work is compensated with personal advancement. My teacher actually sneered at me and then said “Now what sort of assumptions is she making here?” She continued to say how I was assuming that in Fuedal times people didn’t work hard. I dunno I just think she’s kind of mean and is very close minded. She wants us to follow her way of thinking and its really annoying. My answer might have had assumptions and was probably far from what you would see in a textbook but I believe that there was validity in what I said and the way she responded did not foster an atmosphere for discussion. Kids later in the class actually yelled at her so I know that I am not alone in thinking she’s ridiculous someone was like “why do you ask us questions if nothing we are going to say is what you want to hear?!” haha its entertaining at least to see people sparing with each other an her. Anyways back to the ship-wide activity, we had an open mic night and then an impromptu dance. The open mic night was a mixture of amazingness, sillyness, and then some horrifiness (horrificness should be made into a word just to describe the act I am about to talk about) So anyways there was the usual mixture of singing and guitar playing but then there was the act by Darleen. Here is some background on Darleen. The first time I ever laid eyes on her was at breakfast a few days ago, this is why I noticed her…she was wearing green plaid pajama bottoms, a HUGE fluffy bright pink terry cloth bathrobe that fell to her knees, a turbo twisty (which makes your hair look like its in a turban-for after you get out of the shower) and a fanny pack around the robe…ummmm WHAT!? Is it really that hard to at last take yur hair our of your turbo twisty and put on a shirt with your pajama pants?! Anyways tis opitimizes Darleen who is also in my econ class. On the ship I have become friends with a bunch of the different cliques that have formed. Me and Becca call ourselves jumpers because I would say we are some of the few who hang out with a wide variety of people (thus the reason that my amazon trip has 25 people all from different cliques i.e. the Chapman Kids, the deck 4 kids, the squad, Dave and the trouble makers, etc…and I made up these clique names, other than the squad which is the name of these guys intramural team…) anyways I was hanging out with a small clique to which I was recently inducted (no joke they said Alicia we have decided you can join our crew…the ship is getting a bit weird) but this specific one includes Sarena this gorgeous Indian girl from London, Nicole, a super trendy asian from New York, and Patrick and Chance to gay guys who are Hilarious! Anyways I was sitting with them after helping set up for open mic when they were like did you hear that Darlene is performing?! Apparently she had asked them to help her execute Gagas bad romance video and had wanted them to makeout while carrying her in…wtf…they obviously said no but I was still not sure what we would witness when she did come in, and this is where the word horrificness is brought into play she had two boys carry her in waering tiny little outfits and for the entire song she proceeded to belt out the worng lyrics while looking like she had taken a crazy amount of drugs and doing really disgusting dance moves. Her eyes were rolling in the back of her head and she was growling and crawling around the floor, at one point her hair extensions fell out…I think you get the picture, well I was horrified yet could not stop laughing. Darleen is now infamous on the ship but I actually think she is insane. After that we had a dance party which was sortof fun but the DJ was my constituent on the activities board who is flambouyantly gay and would nly play techno. Overall it was fun though. I lost Becca in the dance party but then went and hung out with Mandela Bryan and few other people and we proceeded to play Mafia for about two hours…soooooo much fun! I finally went to bed at two in the morning. Today is what we call a reading day where we are supposed to catch up on all the reading that we have been slacking on however I have been in meetings allll day. Members of the American Embassy came on so I went and listened to a lecture on Brazilian Economics, then I had a meeting with my global studies group where we decided we were going to do our project on the affects globalization has had on Chinese economics, after that I went to a discussion on working as a foreign ambassador for the US. I don’t think its for me first off you move every two years or so to a new country and while I do love the idea of living abroad I also do eventually want to have a family and it sounds quite hard to do in one of those positions. The rest of the day I have just been finalizing details for the Amazon Trip, which has become a huge group of us. Its crazy to look out the window and see huge amounts of lush vegetation it doesn’t even look real. I can’t believe that tomorrow we will be reaching Manaus!!! I’m supposed to be holding the first meeting for Dance Club in a few hours but I don’t know if it made it into the dean’s memo (the daily news-which has not been posted today) so not sure if anyone will come. I did however get approval to perform with Ritika and Sarena for pre port in India…we have pre port for Brazil tonight I hope it’s interesting because the last one for Dominica went on for wayyy too long. There were funny parts where the doctors sang and presented us with the only way to truly not catch a disease, a huge plastic bag with a hole for a scuba mask to breathe through that they named the full body condom (Becca was actually considering it because she is terrified of malaria), but as a whole pre port is pretty lame giving us obvious advice you know, like don’t drink, don’t hook up with anyone, make sure you take your malaria medication, etc. Speaking of malaria medication my roommate and me are doing weird things in our sleep well actually Erin is a lot worse then me. Two nights ago I woke up to her screaming and freaking out. I was so terrified that I hid under the covers haha probably not the best response to her cries for distress but I panicked I yelled at her to tell me what was wrong and she cried back that a crab had just bit her toe. Now normally this sort of announcement from someone who had been sleeping would have brought out a laugh in me HOWEVER there are some facts to take into consideration A. we had recently left Dominica where crabs would dwell anywhere even in the mountainous regions and B. Erin had started out the night at a slumber party on the deck and had not come back to the room till early morning leaving plenty of time for a crab to have crawling from the deck into her sleeping bag. We scoured our room and no crab was found but the screams had terrified me and I fell into a fitful sleep where I dreamt that I was one of the clean up personnel for natural disasters and I was called to a site to clean which was this mountain of straighners and curling irons that had been confiscated. (IF I haven’t already mentioned this I got my straightener back! It took an hour of begging but finally the security guard let me shift through the garbage bag stuffed full-like at least 100- of straighteners and curling irons-I think this sight is what elicited my dream). Apparently during this time I had this conversation with Erin in my sleep:
Me: Mom, Can I please get a dog now
Erin: No
Me: (with a sigh of resignation) Okay
Later I again woke up to Erin freaking out (no screams this time) claiming that there were bunnies all over the floor, she has no recognition of this one at all…
So needless to say we are unsure whether this is an affect of our malaria medication or craziness but we hope it stops lol. I will try and write while I am in Brazil but If not at least expect an update in the next 5 days!
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