Sea Olympics

So I know I usually don’t write while we were at sea but I want to say a few things about the Sea Olympics. They were supposed to be held the day after we left South Africa but were moved due to the threat of rough seas. Turns out that it was good because we didn’t end up leaving until a day late anyway. The Sea Olympics was on Saturday, March 8 but started well before that. Prior to the competition day, there were 3 captain’s challenges. The first was to make up a dance or skit. I am in the Yellow Sea, the best sea. We did a stomp routine with chanting and ended up coming second! The second challenge was a trivia challenge for our sea captains to test how well they know each other. We didn’t place in that round but did make it to the final round. The last challenge was to tell a story in less than 5 minutes and 22 seconds about something on the voyage this far. We did a skit that incorporated singing, acting and chanting. We ended up being disqualified because apparently our skit was inappropriate.
The actual Olympic day began early at 8am with a yellow sea breakfast. We all sat together and ate while we painted our faces and decorated ourselves with yellow. At 9am the opening ceremony began and we marched in 3rd. Each team entered with a cheer, which we were judged on. We ended up coming third for our entrance. At 10am the events began. Everyone was allowed to participate in 3 events as long as they didn’t overlap. Events included scavenger hunt, photography competition, pie eating, ping pong, flip-cup, trivia, simon-says, bowling, uno, scrabble, Pictionary, poker, mash potato sculpting, synchronized swimming, wet clothes relay and lip sync. The yellow sea led the competition for much of the morning but in the afternoon other seas started gaining on us. We didn’t win many events, I think only one, but we placed in most of the events. Going into the lip sync competition it was neck and neck between the yellow sea, the Caribbean sea and the Baltic sea. Although our lip sync was really good and well choreographed, it wasn’t as entertaining and funny as the other teams. We didn’t place in that event and subsequently ended up coming 3rd overall. We were all really happy with that because although we were competitive, we were laid back too.

I participated in the scavenger hunt. We had to find and take pictures of 26 different things and people around the ship. There was a team of ten people from the yellow sea and we split up the list. There were things like a picture with your favorite crew member, a picture with the dean, with the global studies text book, on the treadmill, and your sea captain cheering on the team. These things were all very easy to find so points were allocated based on originality and creativity. Some of our pictures were quite funny and I will post them when I get the chance. For the favorite crew member picture we took a picture of our steward tucked into a bed with a student vacuuming around him. We ended up coming 2nd out of the 10 teams which was really rewarding. The hunt took all day, simply because we had to think of original ways to capture each image. It was really fun and I got to meet some new people from my sea. I think overall the sea Olympics was one of the best days of the voyage thus far. We will arrive in India tomorrow but until the next post….xo