More of the Crossing

Obviously Sea Olympics was our major event during the crossing but there are a few more I would like to tell you about quickly.

First, on the night of Sea Olympics we had a Great Minnesota Get Together since we missed the real thing in August :( As it turns out there are about 30 or more people on the ship from Minnesota—represent!  We all got dinner and hung out in one of the classrooms and just talked about Minnesota things for about an hour and half—it was great!   That might sound really weird but when you haven’t been home in two-ish months and you are surrounded by people who are confused by words like “hot-dish” and “pontoon” it’s nice to talk to Minnesotans who get it.  We all said where we lived—and a lot of people live near me—and which major freeways we like to take and which ones we like to avoid.  We talked about cabins and wake surfing and mosquitoes and lakes.  We mourned the foods we missed at the state fair and didn’t even discuss the concerts because we were already so depressed about missing the food :(  Seriously though it was a great time and we joked about how we are all Minnesota nice and that we should all get together sometime in the future, maybe next summer!

The second thing was Halloween!  While I definitely missed the pumpkins and the trees changing color and the typical fallness of Minnesota and Wisconsin it was kind of cool to celebrate my favorite holiday in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Sadly we started the day off with a mid-term but I aced it so its okay lol.  We all goofed off during the day and talked about who was dressing up as what and how it was so weird to be cut off from everything on holidays.  After dinner we scampered back to our cabins to get ready for the kids.  We only have twelve kids on board but still we wanted to make it special for them so we had a haunted house and some of us got candy in port so they could go trick-or-treating at our doors—it was really fun and they were super cute.  Not to be biased or anything but the two-year-old twins dressed as Mickey and Minnie took the cake!  After the kids were done it was time for our dance.  The students had a dance in the union and the faculty and staff in the faculty/staff lounge.  We all dressed up and attempted to dance to the slightly weird music they played—it was all really….unique versions of some popular songs and they kept getting cut-off but whatever, it was fun.  I could have done without the condom balloons, but it was fun.

Next is Argentina---I’ll try to have more posted later today.  As always e-mail me if you want pictures (colleen.lesch.f12@semesteratsea.org) 

~Colleen