Monday January 18

So my room doesn’t have a window, but I don’t really mind because 1- I tend to draw my curtains shut anyway, 2-I don’t plan on being in my room that much, 3- it makes sleeping ay easy and nice 4-it is replaced by a huge wall mirror that is perfectly suited for putting on makeup and dancing wildly in front of. There is just something really thrilling about dancing in a mirrored room. Oh ,and it helps make these fairly small rooms seem a little roomier.

I keep eating cheese squares, its like the best part of meal times, but I’ll probably get over that soon.  Already im wondering how many cheese squares my body is going to be able to contain

Haven’t unpacked yet.

Returned my extra books, but have not yet been reimbursed for them.

Okay, unpacked one bag.

There was an “involvement symposium” this evening, or rather the fancy term for “activity fair where everyone actually participates in an excited frenzy.

Seriously, this was the only activity fair I’ve seen where the booths didn’t have to advertise, everyone wanted to be there.

Which is really nice.

I signed up for about a thousand things (some LLC-lead, some student-lead), I am never involved in very many oncampus extracurricular stuffs, but I assume I will be for this semester, because I signed up for two different yogas, salsa dance, dance club, improv, community service, language club (people teach basics of languages they know so we’re better prepared for countries or just later travel), tutoring kids, babysitting kids (the faculty brought their families with them),  career/resume building,  snakes club (“lets hang out and talk about SNAKES”),  meditation and sacred poetry, drum circle (YESSS), knitting for a purpose, and a bunch others. There was one called “bluegrass jam,” I forgot to sign up for that one, oh well.

ALSO, apparently I am chairing a new club, a “foodie club.”

Basically I went up to the Living Learning Coordinator for health and wellness, who had various signups sheets for weight loss, vegan/vegetarianism, etc, and was like “is there any just like…FOOD club? Like maybe eating healthy in other cultures and just being a fan of food?”

And he said “NO, but we can MAKE ONE.”

So the official description is something like we get together and discuss what is healthy to eat and what we’re interesting in eating in other cultures, and then perhaps getting hold of the ship’s kitchen and doing some cooking of our own, of the recipes we’re interested in of whatever culture.

Everyone here is so nice, I cant emphasize that enough.

Anyway after the involvement symposium there was trivia, which was fun for a little while but then got frustrating because my group didn’t know everyone, and so spent the hole hour talking about snakes and pretending to talk about snakes. Courtesy of ben mullinkosson. Whose sea name is “toby.”

Before we quit (we weren’t much of a competition anyway), there was an evening free snack service from 10-1030!! And Apparently this happens every night! They had PB&J, meat and cheese sandwich triangles, breads, cream puffs, cheesecake minis, éclairs, and it was SO PERFECT for that moment.

I may very well be able to get away without ever spending anything at the snack bar.

All I really may consider is a cheap massage or use of the sauna/steam room. But like, once.

I wandered around the ship for awhile and played ping pong with a new friend Edwin before going to bed.  He is also trying to organize a group to do stuff independently in Vietnam, since no one knows what they want to do through SAS- anyway.  Update, everyone still looks drunk all the time (if I didn’t mention this before, I am now, and everyone walks like a toddler, and it’s really funny), and I am similarly spilling everywhere I try to walk on  this here rocky ship home.  However, the rocking it is somewhat conducive for sleeping,  I feel like adult humans would still get big satisfaction out of sleeping in adult size cribs/rockers, they just don’t have the balls to “go there.” Also ,there is no window in my room, so everything is pitch black once the lights go off, and my brain just kind of goes “Well, nothing to do here” and shuts off. Classes start tomorrow, but first I plan on getting up to go to meditation and sacred poetry at seven tomorrow morning.