Still on the ship

Monday February 4th 15:26 (12:26cst)

In case you haven't noticed, we have no sense of what day of the week it is or what the current date is while on the ship. I have to look up the day every time I write one of these entries. Our class days rotate between A and B days, that's pretty much all we know. Today was an A day. After 4 class days, we get a day off.

We had our first laundry day the other day. It works pretty nicely. You just stick all of your dirty clothes in a (small) bag and set it outside your door when you go to sleep for them to pick up at 5am or so. Then, a day later when you wake up you'll have all of your clean clothes folded in a new bag outside your door. It's beautiful! Genius!

Last night of course was the Super Bowl... Or should I say not-so-super Super Bowl. Yes, I wanted the Patriots to win, as I have all season, not just when it started looking like they may have a perfect season. So in case you're wondering why/how I could possibly root for the Patriots, here are my reasons: Laurence Maroney, Randy Moss, 1998 NFC Championship game. Naturally, I'm a huge Maroney fan since he was such a stud on the UofM football team my freshman and sophomore years there. Even though Randy Moss left the Vikings, he is the best receiver in the NFL and I think that we should have gotten rid of Culpepper before Moss because Moss made Culpepper, not the other way around. And to top it off, regardless of anything that anyone ever says about Randy Moss, he'll always have a dear spot in my heart after he "mooned" the Packers fans at Lambeau after a touchdown. And I don't really want to even talk about the 1998 NFC Championship game because I may still be a little bitter about it. But needless to say, I hate the Giants and think Eli is a little baby.

We didn't actually get to watch the game, and the Academic Dean refused to let us use any SaS equipment to broadcast the game, even over the Internet. We couldn't even use some of the many loud speakers they have. So what ended up happening is some kid's mom is the nurse on the ship and all staff gets free unlimited (but still slow) internet. So she logged into her son's computer and he broadcasted a radio feed of the game and that sound was amplified over some of those iPod speakers in the dining hall. So there were probably about 200 people all huddled into a corner of the room trying to listen to the game. Even though it was only an audio feed, it still cut out. This happened at some pretty huge moments such as right when Brady took the snap. We still got the gist of most of the game though. I think (or hope at least) that someone is sending a tape to the ship so we can watch it. The earliest we could have it is South Africa but it sounded like a good game to watch.

Last night was also a "Pub Night" that I actually drank at. First time I've drank since the Bahamas. The solid 4 beers (Bud Light) for $3.50 each tasted great.

Today feels like that Friday before spring break. I'm done with all of my classes for today and tomorrow morning at 7am we get to Salvador for 5 days. I'll be waking up early again to watch us as we approach the port and watch the sunrise at the same time. It was pretty awesome to watch in Puerto Rico so I'm sure it could only be better in Salvador. After thinking about how great this feeling is and talking with my roommate who feels the same way, we realized that we're going to get this feeling basically every other week - AWESOME.

Probably just hanging out for the rest of the day. Hope to get to bed at a decent time so I'm not tired for Carnivale.