Day 23: Neptune Day!

February 14th, 2008

Today was the infamous Semester at Sea Neptune Day. This usually happens when we first cross the equator, but since that was so early in the voyage they pushed it back to today. There were no classes all day, and it started with members of the faculty (mainly the deans and other high-ups) going around every deck on the ship and banging pots and pans to wake everyone up. This was at like 5:30am. Needless to say, nobody woke up. Then at around 8 everyone went up to the 7th deck and had their Neptune day initiation of having fish guts poured all over them, then jumping in the pool, then kissing two huge fish (the king and queen) on your way out of the pool. It was pretty gross. The fish guts, however, weren't what you would think they were. It was some baby blue mixture of something so you couldn't really tell that it was fish guts in there, but it smelled absolutely terrible. After everyone was done with that, people proceeded to 'the main event' of shaving their heads. I'm not sure exactly how many shaved their heads but there's quite a few both male and female. (Not me though).

The rest of the day was filled with a bunch of nothing. We had an awesome meal for lunch – hamburgers, hot dogs, and seasoned french fries. Probably one of the best meals we've had yet.

When I went to sleep last night we were in some of the smoothest waters of our voyage thus far. Then, halfway through the night the waves picked up to the worst that they've been at by far. During the 'lighter' part of the day the captain was telling some people the waves were about 18 feet, but they just got worse from there. I would estimate the waves being about 25 feet in height at some points of the later afternoon and night. Everyone was having a hard time walking around and doing ordinary tasks with such movement on a small ship. It's rumored that they're only suppose to get worse tomorrow and as we get closer to South Africa. There's a lot of rumors on the ship though, so we'll just wait and see.

It's also (supposedly) Valentines day back in the states, but you would never have guessed it being on the ship. :)