Over this 8 day crossing from Rio to Manaus we have had a host of superbly awesome events and such that have occurred which seriously made up for the mostly really crappy food—just kidding (or not). We are in the midst of our ship board drive which is our big fundraiser on ship as SAS is a non-profit organization. The theme this year is Mind the Gap as in reality we as students only pay enough money to get us to some random location off the coast of Brazil, the rest of our way is paid by alumni and other donations. Therefore we are now paying it forward so that the next group of SASers can sail. The goal is to have each person on the ship donate at least one dollar so that we can have 100% participation and right now we are getting closeish—I believe we are at about 70-75% or so. Thus far it has been really exciting because we are one of the smallest voyages ever but we have raised the most money—a lot more than they expected us to so YEAH F12!!! We totally rock! We have had a spirit week of sorts to get everyone involved and it’s been pretty fun.
We also had an auction the other night! Over the course of the voyage people have been buying things in port and donating them to the auction. In addition, people can auction off a free stay at their house with a visit to a local attraction or a free weekend at their vacation home in Belize, and stuff like that. It is a really fun way to make some money for the program. I personally donated a traditional blue and white painted tile from Portugal that depicted four ships (which I thought was very appropriate) and my music class as a whole pooled together to buy one of the Ghanaian drums to put in so I donated that (in part) as well. Danielle had a really good idea and she bought a bar of chocolate in every country and put that in the auction and it went for over $100!!! Yikes! There was a silent auction and a live auction. The silent auction was comprised mostly of gifts that people bought in port such as scarfs, bags, chocolate or coffee, whisky, flags or pins from every country, etc (though our drum was in the live auction) and some of the trips that people had offered. The live auction had the rest of the trips, some traditional SAS gear and things around the ship. Here are my favorite examples (if you want the whole list I can send it to you—some of the stuff is pretty ridiculous):
· Milk and cookies served to you in your cabin by Dean John (our executive dean)
· The Capitan’s (signed) hat
· A map that we have been tracking our voyage on that hangs in Tymitz Square (this little map went for $2,600---two thousand and six hundred dollars!!!! The Union was going fricken bananas as two students kept upping the price and this is what one girl finally bought it for!
· A bath in the tub in the dean’s office (glass of wine included)
· First dance with each of the Dean’s at the Alumni Ball
· Someone to personally pack all your luggage at the end of the voyage
· First off the ship in Florida
· Raising the US flag as we pull into port
· A SAS graduation stoll that Dean John found in his closet that is one of a kind
· A picture of Dean John in the stocks wearing a sign that says ‘Village Idiot’
The list goes on and on but I won’t bore you now. I collectively won one thing in both the silent and the live auction. In the silent auction Danielle and I won a trip to Disneyland with the Paul-Rios family (the family I mentioned in Rio that we went to the beach with) and we are super super excited about going with them! Then, in the live auction our friend Megan Drew bit on sitting at the Dean’s table for the Alumni Ball dinner and won so we each chipped in about $14 so that we could join her and that is going to be cool!
Hmmm other things…oh yeah we had over 50% participation in the ship-board drive so we got Taco Day!!!! And we had a cake for the Sea Olympic Committee to celebrate the best Sea Olympics ever!
I already told you about the meteor shower…..though did I mention that after getting up for that and going to bed at about 0330 we had to get up for Astronomy class at 0800 during which our professor decided to try to explain special relativity….needless to say I don’t think a single person could keep their eyes open long enough to pay attention.
Ok to be honest I am tired and my fingers are starting to hurt but I promise I will finish this segment early tomorrow
~Colleen
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