Go ninja, go ninja, go!

I’m halfway to India! I thought this part of the trip would seem a lot longer, but it has actually seemed to go by pretty quick. That’s partly because half of the days were spent building up to the Sea Olympics, which happened today! Forewarning: This blog entry extremely biased to the Bering Sea.

Yesterday we had the Opening Ceremony. Bering Sea had the color green, so we decided to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! We made masks for everyone and did our cheer to the theme song:

        SAS Bering turtles!
        SAS Bering turtles!
        SAS Bering turtles!
        Portside on the fourth floor!
        Bering power! (fist punch)
It was pretty bad ass. We also got some good “Go ninja! Go ninja! Go!” chants going on. We kept it sweet and simple, just like our team. We didn’t go into this expecting to dominate, and no one else really expected us to either. Butttt.....

The morning started out really strong for us. I was part of the Olympic Relay, doing the Orange Pass. We had our technique down pat and flew through it, and ended up winning first place for the entire relay, which also had three-legged race, wheelbarrow race, and fireman’s pass. Then we took first in the work-out relay, which no one expected because our hall has the smallest guys on the ship. Volleyball also took first place! Dana secured our place in the lead, winning hula-hooping and limbo.

The afternoon did not go so well, unfortunately. The human knot, which I was in, was a failure. It wasn’t even a real competition. Two teams had figure out “the secret” to the human knot, so they got it done in 10 seconds. The judges wouldn’t listen to us that if it was a real, random human knot that would be impossible, so those teams went on to the final round. But in the final round, the judges decided they did it too fast, so they made them re-do it with a random knot. Yeah, real fair there. So we didn’t even get a chance to see if we could really compete. Then we didn’t win anything else the rest of the afternoon. Before synchronized swimming with 5 events left unannounced, we were in first place up by 2 points.

Our synchronized swimming team was awesome! Unfortunately the event had to be done in the Union because the water was too rough for the pool to be filled. But the Bering Sea’s routine was one of the only ones that you could imagine being done in the water. A lot of the teams forgot the “appropriate for all ages” rule as well - Bering Sea was throwing up a lot of “awkward turtle” hand signs.

At the beginning of the Closing Ceremonies, they told us that Yellow Sea and Bering Sea were tied for second before the Synchro event. We were sitting across from each other in the Union, which made things really tense. Arabian and Caribbean tied for third. And, unfortunately, we came in second. Apparently we didn’t even place in Synchro, while Yellow got first place, which everyone - even people in other seas - have told us is completely ridiculous. We definitely got gypped. We’re pretty bitter right now, to say the least. First place gets first off the ship in Miami, but we don’t get anything for second place. Not cool. The good thing is that the competition really brought our sea together - along with the fact that we all walked around the entire day in green shirts so you could really figure out who was on your hall.

Four more days until India! I’m so ready for it, considering these next four days contain two midterms and a paper. We also got our second round of trips sign-ups. For those who are interested in looking at the itineraries on the SAS website (cough cough Papaw), my new trips are: PEN11 - Welcome Reception and Shadow Puppets; PEN27 - Temples and Mosques; HCM01 - Cu Chi Tunnels; SHA07 Suzhou; KOB03 - Hiroshima; COS16 Canopy Adventure. I had wanted to do Hiroshima independently, but it would have cut too close to the trip I’m planning with my friends - we’re traveling to Tokyo on our own, spending a day at Tokyo Disney, a day exploring Toyo, and then hit up Mt. Fuji before getting back on the ship. I still don’t really have anything planned for Malaysia, but no one really does so I’ll play it by ear. When we get to Malaysia the semester is halfway over, and it’s just going to fly from there!

I love hearing from you guys. All the wonderful comments about my blog and pictures mean the world to me, seriously. I love that no one’s complained yet about how much I write! I seriously think this is the longest blog in the history of SAS. If you have any questions, however random they are, let me know! I can tell you right now, the rumors about pirates are all false, but hysterical. No, we didn’t have a blackout to hide from pirates - they turned the ship deck lights out so that we could stargaze. No, we didn’t change routes to avoid pirates near Kenya - we had always planned to stop at Mauritius to bunker. I wouldn’t object to Orlando Bloom taking the ship hostage, though, so if someone can get on that....