You Decide- My vote is yes.
In the tradition of Neptune Day, in order to make sure that sailors could handle the hot and expansive seas past the equator, a type of "light hearted hazing" was started including shaving your head or jumping in straight up fish guts, as well as swearing allegiance to Neptune Rex. (This might be added in by SAS, I don't know, I didn't do much research.) In the morning Semester at Sea's experienced Shellbacks dressed up in ridiculous green and white costumes with tin foil shields and some out of tune marching snares and ran around the halls starting at 7am banging on doors, playing whistles and waking people up. Luckily, my room is over in a little offshoot that is mostly forgotten so my alarm woke me up and I was at breakfast by 8 before they finally got to my room.
We slept in our suites assuming that they might wake us up and shove us out the door for initiation but really we just got to go up and eat breakfast- which was nothing special. Getting up to the 7th deck we found that people had already staked their spots on the deck with towels, shoes, bags and water bottles (we contemplated just moving stuff and taking the seats, but decided we would be mad if someone did that to us so we just went to port side and took a couple chairs from there and tried to Tetris-style force them into place on the pool deck.) The kicker was that as 9 inched closer and tan-fanatics duked it out for the best sun-spots the crew came around and told us to put away all the chairs because we had to fit all 730 some students up on top deck as well as make room for King Neptune and his entire crew.
They made a big ceremony about what we had to do to become Shellbacks from our lowly pollywog status (standing in one of the shallow parts of the pool you get a pitcher of lime-green sulphuric smelling fish goo poured on our heads, we walk over to a lady-knight REGAL ANYONE!? holding a frozen large fish of some sort-kiss the fish, kiss the ring on our king's finger, ( who was actually captain Jeremy in swim trucks, body painted green wearing a long, white raffia wig and a foil covered cardboard crown) bow to the queen and then jump into the freezing pool to de-goo. After exiting, we were knighted by the security officer who was also dressed up and held a wooden, painted sword.
We (Vanessa and I) striped our clothes to our bathing suites and lined up... hearts pounding in excitement.
We went first while our friends waited and took pictures on the other side of the pool. We held hands and waited while the stink grew and grew. We got up there and when they poured the goo on, unknown to us, it was the bottom of the barrel, not a nice pitcher like everyone else. All the chunks, bits and pieces that sunk to the bottom got firmly lodged in our hair. There was erupting cheers from the crowed as we still didn't know what was going on until looking at pictures later, we were lost as to why we were treated special. We kissed the fish, who's teeth poked my lip: awkward, kissed the ring and jumped in the pool. Upon entering I have to say the only thing on my mind was getting out as fast as I could because it was so cold. This problem made me exit the wrong way and I think I missed getting knighted. Oh well. :) The weird part about getting out was that it was instantly warmer even with the wind and it wasn't expected. Vanessa and I took pictures while the other's were initiated and then we staked out our spots on chairs for the next 2/3 hours on the port side. (Left side, for everyone who is not used to the language). There we lathered ourselves with sunscreen and then lounged like we'd never lounged before. It was glorious. Periodically one of us would get up and get frozen fruit or some frozen-yogurt (no where NEAR as good as yozen frogurt but still delicious on a hot day.) Lunch was "meh" and since we were all sun-baked none of us were all that hungry.
By they had thankfully cleaned since we all had used it to rid our hair and bodies of stink). The pool was filled with sea water and it felt absolutely amazing. Jordan loved how buoyant he was and told everyone who got in the pool to try it. Then we decided it was a good idea to try to make it into a whirl-pool. This actually worked surprisingly well and I think had we all the pool-goers in on it, it would have worked better.
After pooling we changed and headed to the courts where we found the tournament already started but it was fine cause the teams got done early so we just scrimmaged with a few of the members and then Alex and Vanessa played on some kids team that were missing a few people. They won and then it was our original team's turn to play. I guarantee that this team is the only one of its kind on the ship because its the proud team of two type Ben and Em! Anyway, that team lost and if we lose again we're out of the tourney... which would not be fun.
However before this loss we had possibly one of the best dinners I have ever had. Not due to quality of the food (although it was BOMB) but because it was straight up American BBQ food. Hamburgers, hotdogs, finger-licking BBQ Pork Ribs (I had 2 slathered in sauce), grilled lemon-butter fish, roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, baked beans, macaroni and potato salad, cole slaw, fruit (apples bigger than your fist, bananas, oranges, pears, plums, GRAPES, nectarines, pineapple), ice cream sundaes (THEY HAD RAINBOW SPRINKLES! which I ate sans ice cream I was so excited) and pound cakes. It was all cooked up on huge grills they busted out on the 7th deck and everyone gorged themselves and stole as much fruit as they could. It was quite possibly the best food-baby ever experienced. Soon after we played our volleyball game.
Showers came next and a photo-swap. We were all so tired from laying out, volleyball and digesting that gigantic meal that we passed out nice and early.
Today we resumed classes and our ship is BOOKIN' it. We had all four engines running at 85% all morning and the wind on the sides of the boat was intense. Today was also cool because we crossed the actual geographic equator (though the point of direct sun-light at noon is still to come due to the earth's tilt and it not being an equinox). I was in Tropical Ecology at it happened at 3:23pm my time (8:23am-CO and 7:23am-CA). The only thing that I could think of was that I was crossing the line that my brother is currently residing on. Dylan, where ever you are I think of you often and I hope that Kenya is treating you well, soon I'll be back on the African continent in Namibia and I'll be thinking of you then too. Love you and hope your project is going well.
That's all for now. Hope everyone is GOOD!
Em
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