the netherlands of the earth/ravaged by God

i have two options:

a) important academic work
b) keeping you people updated on life

the things i sacrifice for you...hehe, just kidding :-P

actually soon i'm going to chose secret option c, which is to watch the faculty play doubles ping-pong for the Sea Olympics. everyone on the ship is part of a sea (Mediterranean, Caribbean, Aegean, Bering, Red, Yellow, etc.). We all compete against each other doing really weird and/or not weird things (like sock wrestling, which, it turns out, is brutal. so don't get into sock wrestling without assessing the risks) for one day in the sea olympics. i'm in the Baltic Sea. The faculty, staff and Lifelong Learners are in the Dead Sea (yes, that is supposed to be funny). the winners of the sea olympics are the first sea off the ship in miami (it takes all morning to clear the ship in port when we're NOT trying to get all the crap we own through customs...it's a big deal to be first), so the Dead Sea mostly competes just for the fun of us being able to watch them compete, because they get off first anyway. sorry parents, i love you and i can't wait to see you, but i don't really want to be first...as most of you know, i have the real bad separation anxiety. also, i'm a slow-ass packer.

my favorite event, and the only one i actually sat through all of, was the sychronized swimming competetion. mostly i promised the Dead sea team i'd cheer them on (Lara is a perfectionist (me too, i get it) and was really nervous...plus she put on some team spirit eye makeup that by that point made her look like she'd just been punched out). the whole event was pretty funny, from Jim the assistant dean flopping around in the wading pool to my team, who i think reenacted birth. There was one team that did a ridiculous aerobics dance. in the middle of it we suddenly went under this giant bridge, and eveyone got real distracted for a second and was like "hey where the hell'd that come from?"! it was cool.

why, you may ask, was there a giant bridge? because we're, oh, in the middle of the suez canal! probably the most interseting lecture that we had this section in global studies was on the canal, so we learned all about it, about how it's 150 miles long, 660 feet wide and 72 feet deep, and we are a member of the once-daily northbound convoy (there are two southbound convoys, and they both let us pass - it's a one-lane canal) (we must look pretty darn silly, a bunch of container ships and tankers with this silly blue cruise ship full of American college kids in the middle of it...i don't know how wise the sea olympics in the canal was - the army guys watching us from the sides are going to call and tell Alexandria not to let us in; we're just a ship full of crazy people). it takes 3 pilots (one of whom apparently eats a lot...Jim said he walked onto the bridge this morning and it was just this pilot and a giant plate of french fries) and 14 hours to go from Suez to Port Said, traveling at no-wake speed of 8 knots. it's pretty amazing. what's so cool about the suez is that it's green and agricultural, with cities and such, on the Egypt mainland side, and complete sandy desert with a few oases and outposts on the Sinai side - all the way from the very beginning, with only 660 feet of water between the two landscapes. pretty neat. everything else to be said about the canal with have to come in pictures, because it's just too hard to describe. it seems funny to see this much of a country before we even get off the ship.

i was originally worried that the long passage from Chennai was going to seem endless (getting to japan caused us all a bit of anxiety), but it didn't, really. partly because i've been completely overwhelmed with schoolwork, but partly because it's not so bad, being on the ship a lot. i've learned to spend more time alone, but also gotten to know old friends better - and even made new friends - on this stretch. like i finally got to spend time with Lara, and Eva and her friends, most of whom i didn't know, and i even brough Great Big Sea into the life of Kathy Soule, the librarian. and i met Julia who works in the bookstore (and introduced HER to GBS too! and she played me spanish pop) (Julia was working on making a super-awesome Capt. Jeremy costume for Jake, who's 7. and then we made him a paper boat). well...and then there are the friends from the beginning who i never see anymore...but these things happen.

plus we've seen all kinds of cool things, especially since we got into the red sea. (oh! well, there was a pirate drill for the crew (capt. morgan's something or other) and a whale in the gulf of aden that we saw breaching - SOOOOOOO cool. that was the night that it was really super-duper windy and we were all on 7 forward watching this beautiful sunset, and Eva and i were talking, and Eva said, "you know, this is kind of like a metaphor for the universe. here we are, this tiny thing floating around on the planet, and that, that out there? that's like, the netherlands of the earth." by which she didn't actually mean the Netherlands, of course. it was funny, but also deep. and then, feeling exceptionally deep and philosophical, as we sat out there in the wind, she told me about a poem in which the poet talks about being "ravaged by God" and how, in that moment, out there in the wind with no company but the sea and the sunset, it felt like we were being "ravaged by God". hmmm. another famous Eva quote was when we were talking about our weird global textbook and we decided that, based on the expression, "100 monkeys with a 100 typewriters could eventually produce the works of Shakespeare..and if not, it would be Port-to-port".) ANYWAY, we came through the Bab el-Mandeb at like 6 in the morning, passing between the funny pointy mountains of Yemen and the funny pointy mountains of Djibouti/Eritrea. we were a lot closer to the Yemen side, but you could see both - how fascinating. since we've been in the red sea we've passed all sorts of funny little islands, including a VOLCANO (roommate!) that just erupted, like, the day we left India! it was still smoking and spewing ash and lava - AMAZING! yesterday during class (which was already sufficiently interrupted by everyone complaining about the global studies test) we were all thoroughly distracted by watching giant mountains and offshore oil rigs go by (Cole said "look! transnational corporations!" our econ. professor HATES transnational competitions).

and yesterday evening was really lovely - we celebrated halloween! they did a BIG cookout with burgers on the seventh deck, so you could eat on 5, 6 OR 7 - the whole galley staff was out there, their hats somehow not blowing away, grilling (the veggie burgers were pretty much the leftovers of all the veggies we've had in the past two weeks mushed up with some rice - i thought it was brilliant! that's how i like my veggies!). anyway, they carved jack-o-lanterns and had sundaes and other delicious deserts and EVERYTHING. mmm. and...Eva and her friends were sitting with that guy that is nice but i'd never talked to! so i got to talk to him - yay! - even if it was with a big group of people. and he said i was cool. and i said we should chat or have dinner sometime. and he said, well, look at that, we both like food, sounds good. it was a beautiful thing.

and then i had lots of desserts with lots of people. and then Lara and i tried to feed the seagulls that had flocked to us like moths to a flame, but they largely ignored our contributions. further proof that seagulls are greedier in Maine than in Egypt.

the rest of the evening was not as lovely because we attempted to put on a halloween dance. all the lists got screwed up and i was the one telling people they had to re-sign up because their names got lost and trying to remember the alphabet really fast, which is, in fact, one of my worst skills as a human being. oops. it ended up being ok, people had fun, i think, and there were lots of great costumes! my roommate was a mermaid - i walked in on her half-naked sewing a seashell bra (she learned the truth of my saying that i really can't think on my feet.) the BEST (the ship thought so too - he won the best costume contest) was my friend Aaron, who dressed up as my absolutely ridiculous Canadian professor Bob Cecil. trust me, it was funny.

sorry i completely bored you about ship life. i know, i know. pyramids are more exciting. don't worry, we're getting there.

love, another very distant and excited Red Sox fan...muddy suez canal, you're my present, but muddy Charles...Boston, you're my home!