We have been on the ship for a while now. I feel like it’s been forever since we were in Morocco, having a blast. 9 days on a ship again, only this time it feels so much longer. I just took my first test onboard the ship, and it was pretty easy. After taking med school level biochemistry, I feel as if studying for the classes on the ship is too easy…lol. I guess that was bound to happen.
Anyways, people have been busier on the ship with papers and exams, so we haven’t had as much free time to get together with friends and hang out, play cards, etc…I really can’t wait for Namibia in 2 days.
A few days ago, on February 9th we crossed the Equator and entered the Southern hemisphere. According to tradition, when a ship crosses the equator for the first time, it is called Neptune Day, and there are several activities which take place. First of all, the ship’s crew dressed up and ran through the halls at 7:30 in the morning, playing drums, singing, basically making a LOT of noise. There is no way anyone stayed awake through that, I sure didn’t :) So, after I got out of bed, I quickly took a shower as I heard The Voice on the PA (We call the guy who does the daily announcements The Voice). He announced for all students to report to deck 7. I got ready and went to the top deck, and it was crazy. There were students EVERYWHERE going through the Neptune Day festivities. These consisted of: students getting fish guts poured on them (well, they used green liquid instead), students kissing a fish (yep, they had a real fish to kiss), then bowing to Neptune (the ship’s captain was painted green and carried an awesome triton) and jumping into the pool. I had my camera with me and went with the taking-pictures-only option ;) I got some great shots of all my friends, Achal included, getting covered in mystery green liquid and jumping into the really small pool on the ship. Then, there was the last activity: shaving heads. People, by tradition, shave their heads on Neptune Day, girls included. A lot of guys including Achal did it cuz hey, it’s a free haircut. I personally have shaved my head before and hated it, so once again, I took the photos. All my friends who shaved their heads wanted me to stay and take their pictures cuz I have a nice camera (EOS 30D baby!!). I stayed and saw something pretty surprising. My biomedical ethics professor, who had very nice curly hair, sat down on one of the chairs and SHAVED HER HEAD TOO! I have to give it to her, she has guts to do that. Anyways, after a few hours, I had taken enough pictures, and it was pretty insane on the deck. So, I headed down to my room, and relaxed for the rest of the day, enjoying my day off from classes. It was definitely an experience I will never forget. Oh, and on an interesting note, we found out that we weren’t going to actually cross the equator on Neptune Day and crossed on the 10th.
Namibia is 2 days away. We just had our cultural pre-port meeting for Namibia and I am pretty excited to see this country. I just found out that the average age of a Namibian is less than 20 years old! Pretty crazy and it definitely shocked me. I am looking forward to going to the Namib Desert (driest in the world) and stargazing in one of the darkest places in the world. That’s all for now, folks. I haven’t had too much to write about, but I will definitely be putting up a hefty update after visiting Namibia. We only have one day between Namibia and South Africa, so we have a very exciting 9 days before us! Hope everything is going well in whatever country you are reading this blog from. Feel free to leave some comments on my posts…they are greatly appreciated, and they get emailed to me on the ship, so I can check them out. And stay in touch via email with me at yjbhatt@semesteratsea.net Even if you are just reading this blog for fun, and think I didn’t tell you about it or anything, just let me know what you think of it. I would love to hear from you! This is Yash, signing out until Namibia! Take care, blog readers.
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