Life on the Ship

This is our seventh straight day at sea. It’s strange to look out and see nothing but water and the occasional boat for days. At night though you can see more stars than you could ever imagine. And the past couple of nights we’ve been able to see the lights from Brazil’s coast. On Wednesday we crossed the equator, so we’re in the southern hemisphere now. We arrive in Brazil tomorrow! The days actually go by pretty quick. Classes are really interesting, but there’s been a lot of reading for them. I don’t think I’ve ever taken such reading-intensive courses. So that’s taken some adjusting to. We keep changing our clocks too. It’s been just about every other night that we change our clocks. The silly part of that is three nights ago we turned our clocks forward an hour, and last night we are turning them back an hour. While in Brazil we will be 2 hours ahead of New York. So I have found that also takes some adjusting to. I’ve also found that no one ever knows what day of the week it is. Our schedule runs on an A Day/B Day schedule rather than by week because of the schedule of ports, so weekday doesn’t matter. Our “weekends” are the days we’re in port. Saturday and Sunday don’t mean anything; as long as we’re at sea, we’re in class.

Since being Puerto Rico, we have had a chance to join different clubs, and start our own if we want. I’ve joined a Bible study, and we had our first meeting last night. It’s very informal. We’ve split into small groups and are going to meet as we can. There are also all kinds of fitness classes that will be starting after Brazil. There are kickboxing, pilates, and yoga to name a few, and they’re all run by students on the ship who are instructors back home. I also signed up to be “adopted” by one of the lifelong learners on board. This is a chance to get to know some of the adult students on board and create more of a community. Last night there was a spotlight dance. This is something I’ve never heard of, but the way it works is you wear a certain color to indicate what your relationship status is; red for taken, green for available, and yellow for somewhere in the middle. I thought it was interesting. Between the atmosphere and everything going on here, it becomes difficult at times to focus on schoolwork and very hard to get into a routine. Have to do it though! We took our first exam this morning.

On a final note for today, here are some interesting things about Brazil that we learned in our cultural pre-port:

Giving the “OK” hand gesture is a vulgarity in Brazil.

Kissing someone three times on the cheek is a way of saying you’re not married.

Kissing someone twice on the cheek is a way of saying you are married.

Rubbing your earlobe is an indication that you like something, often some type of food.

Crossing your index finger over your thumb as though you were signing the letter “t” is a gesture of “good luck” in Brazil.