Reflections on Shipboard Life

Ok so I wanted to take some time to respond to some of you all’s comments. I mean I really like the comments so it would be selfish of me to not respond. Esther – haha yes I definitely miss you beating me in words with friends but you still have plenty of other people you can pick on. Natalie – girl me and Kaitlyn (hope I spelled that right) met day 1…she is one of the people that noticed my hat. I mentioned it earlier I think, but we quickly figured out we were from the same town, oh and we call each other “Memorial” and “Santa Fe,” it’s like our little Oklahoma joke lol. Oh and Nat I met the only other person on the ship from OU and she is a THETA!! Her name is Molly, she has long blonde hair, a little shorter than me, and she is a year older than us; she knew exactly who you were as soon as I said your name! JT – our doctor isn’t the guy you are talking about, although I wish he was. Our doc is very negative and very direct, not many people like him very much. Daryl – dude my roommate is awesome! Our room is a comfortable temp so no worries there. And I can’t help who I happen to meet first, I’m just a social guy. Shirley – dude I know I miss both of you and chilling late on Friday nights and playing settlers, and don’t worry, there are plenty of stories waiting for you till I get back. And despite not having the last name Smith, I still consider you family so it’s kinda the same haha. Dad – thanks for the sports updates, gotta keep tabs on my Sooners! Court – I bet those crappy high school classrooms suck…been there, done that. Oh and I am already getting tan so sorry bout cha!!

So I was trying to think what all I should tell you guys about the ship and everyday life that I hadn’t already and I realized I hadn’t told you about our living conditions. If you have been on a cruise it is just like that but a lot smaller and more compact. It’s actually really cool because you are hardly ever in your room but when you are you feel nice and cozy. Despite the beds being small, they are surprisingly comfortable. I have crashed every night and the waves’ rocking me to sleep is like the best feeling in the world!! It is gunna suck sleeping on land after having a boat rock me to sleep everynight haha!! Our bathroom is tiny but we don’t even really notice it because it doesn’t need to be big. My room is on the inside of the ship so we don’t have a window, at first we were bummed but then we realized that our room is pitch black all the time so that is a huge advantage if we don’t have classes in the morning. Then we have a “room steward” that is in charge a section of our floor. His name is Rommel and he is very friendly and quite efficient. Every day he comes in, makes both our beds (like really makes them, tucks them in and everything), changes the trash bags in our trashcan, restocks our toilet paper and Kleenex if needed, cleans our bathroom like every other day, and even folds any clothes we leave out. It is soooooooooo weird having someone do all that for you!! It’s really cool but at the same time I feel really weird cause it’s like “hey I don’t really need that done for me every day.” So the result of everything Rommel does for us is a very very very very clean room. Another thing that is unique on the ship is laundry. We have assigned laundry days and you get the option of giving them one bag (about the size of a Wal-mart plastic sack) of laundry. You leave it outside your door on the specified night and they clean it the next day and return it. It costs $6 per bag so you pretty much cram as much as you can into 1 bag so you only have to pay the $6. There are no self-service laundry machines on the ship so this is the only way to do laundry in a machine. Some people have resorted to doing laundry in the sink with woolite but I don’t have that much yet and am only going to do that as a last resort. If there is any other aspect of ship life that you all have questions about, comment on it and I will try to answer your questions.

Something else that I thought I should just briefly mention…back home when we go to camps and stuff on charter buses, you always hear people complain (especially the dudes) about going to the bathroom cause the bus is shaking and everything. Well you guys should just try doing that on a ship as you are swaying side to side; let’s just say that I will never complain about going to the bathroom on a bus again haha!! Sorry if this disgusted some of you all but I thought it was something funny that should be noted.

Now about the food, basically all our meals are buffet style…breakfast is every morning from 7:30 to 8:30, lunch from 11:30 to 1:30, and dinner from 5:30 to 7:30. Like I said, it is buffet style and you can come and go whenever during that time. The food is alright but extremely repetitive. After a week of meals, the most common foods are pasta and potatoes. We have had potatoes every meal except two of them (including breakfasts) and there has been some sort of pasta at every meal. The ship definitely caters to vegetarians because there are soooooo many vegetables. I mean since I don’t like vegetables it kinda sucks but at the same time they do have some sort of meat at every meal, and there is usually a type of fish. I’m not complaining at all because it is still decent food that we get as much of as we want!! And at breakfasts I snag a couple of the boxes of cereal so I can munch on them during the day when I get hungry. Most meals are repetitive but every now and then there are dishes that are a nice surprise. Like yesterday we had a baked macaroni and it was absolutely AMAZING!! It was definitely all I ate that meal. Then we had really good brownies one night at dinner so that was a nice taste of home. (miss your deserts mom) It’s funny after only a week how much I already miss American food…and I mean like simple stuff. Like I am totally craving a root beer float…weird right? I mean you can actually buy like cheeseburgers, pizza, hotdogs, smoothies, and ice cream (even root beer floats), at the sun deck grill, but it’s pretty pricey and I know that if I buy one then I will want to eat that food every meal instead of the free food. So right now my plan is to wait until like a month from now when I am really, really craving it and then I will eventually cave lol.

Ok so story. The other night there was an activity put on in the piano lounge called speed friending. As the name would suggest this was a take-off of speed dating. The way it worked is everyone put on a name tag first off; then the MC would say something like “everyone find someone with the same color eyes” or “everyone find someone whose name starts with the same first letter as yours” and we would all run around and find a person like that. Then we would introduce ourselves, say our hometown, college, major, hobbies, etc. After small talk the MC would then say a question that we all had to answer to our partners; some examples were “what superhero would you like to be?” “what’s the craziest thing you have ever done?” (I had a hard time picking just one on that one lol) and “which celebrity would you marry if you could pick anyone?” Some were serious, some were funny, and some were kinda awkward, but that just made it more fun! So in all you had about 2 minutes with each person, and this went on for an hour. I met SOOO many more people it was crazy!! Although it’s easy to meet people on the ship (definitely my favorite part so far), it was just a cool, fun setup that a lot of people got really into and really enjoyed. Oh and my friend Austin followed me around with a video camera all night for a project for his film class. That made the whole process more entertaining cause he was literally right over my shoulder the whole time and it made some people really uncomfortable; but at the same time, by the end of the night everyone was referring to me as “the dude with his own camera-man.” That was definitely the coolest activity so far that we have done.

A couple of night ago, Alex, one of my new friends, turned 20 so we had a birthday party for her at dinner. Her mom had payed for a cake for her so we all had this HUGE cake for dessert which was AWESOME!!! And it was cool because like all the people at the party had just met her a couple days ago cause she was like me and came knowing no one. But at the same time you would have never known cause we were all joking around and acting like we had known each other forever. She even got a hand full of icing in her face from one of our friends Anhil (I know I spelled that wrong), and it was stinking hilarious. Then after dinner we all went out on the back deck and got a miniature astronomy lesson from Anhil. He showed us where Orion’s belt was, which was super bright with a clear sky; then we were also able to see Mars and Jupiter which was stinking awesome! They were so bright and it was very clear that Mars was red and Jupiter was a sky blueish color. I have never really known what I was looking at so it was exciting seeing stuff like that while on a boat sailing across the ocean!

After being on the ship for a week it is really cool seeing how quickly people have adapted to ship board life. People are no longer seasick and there are hardly any people with patches still on. In addition, everyone has met SOOOOOO many people. Like in just 6.5 days I have met an easy 200 people and talked to probably closer to 300. It’s just crazy!! Although keeping up with everyone’s names is so stinking hard, but we are all having a hard time so no one really cares that people forget. It’s just like “hey we met but I forgot your name, what is it again?” and if you have only met them once before then they don’t care cause they have forgotten yours too. But usually after you have met someone twice then you are able to remember their name pretty easily. Another cool thing about life on the ship is the way time goes by. Like I said, we left San Diego/Mexico 7 days ago today, but if you ask anyone on the ship they will all tell you that it feels more like 2 or 3 weeks. We just do so much and hang out with our new friends so much in between classes that it feels like we have known people and been traveling for a week. Me and my friend Nikki were talking the other day, and both of us feel like we have known each other a lot longer than like 5 days. It’s also funny cause the stuff that happens in the morning feels like an entirely different day than like 10 o’clock that night. People will constantly refer to stuff that happened like 6 or 7 hours ago as “yesterday” and someone will be like “dude that was this morning.” The days just seem so much longer that it’s really weird! If any of this is confusing I’m sorry, I tried to explain it as best as I could lol.

I know it sounds weird but it is kinda cool because we have so much time to get to know people and learn about people and have some really interesting discussions since we have so many different personalities in a given group of people. Like the group I have been hanging out with a lot we have people from Florida, Oklahome (just me), California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Then we have a vegetarian, a hunter, a surfer dude, an outdoor enthusiast, and those are just a few. We all have different majors, we all go to different schools, support different political views, and we all have drastically different religious views. All of this stuff combined leads for very interesting discussions and it cool getting to explain my views and why I believe in what I believe and everyone is just so respectful that even if they don’t agree with me, they still respect me and we can have a good time.

Yesterday during the afternoon I went out to one of the side decks and just listened to Casting Crowns and Hillsong for like 30 minutes while looking at the waves rolling in and hitting the ship and just the massive expanse of ocean with the horizon on the distance; oh and random fact, on a clear day the distance to the horizon on a flat ocean is 11.4 miles. But anyways, just listening to those songs while looking at HIS creation is overwhelming each and every day. I mean God is so freaking awesome!! It is so cool!!

I have just completed my sixth day of class (3 A’s and 3 B’s) and tomorrow we dock in HAWAII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone on the ship is really antsy to get off and people are all starting to plan what we are doing the next 4 days in Hawaii. Right now I am actually sitting outside on the sun deck with some friends and it is a little warmer than 80 degrees; no sun because it has been slightly overcast the last couple days but it still feels awesome, especially with a nice ocean breeze all the time!!! I will be updating the blog shortly after Hawaii so I can tell you guys what I did while it is still fresh in my mind.

Wow I just wrote so much haha. Oh well I guess you guys just had a lot to read, hope you enjoyed it!! I hope all of you all are doing well and thank you all so much for your prayers!! They are felt and I am extremely grateful to have friends and family like you all praying for me so much!

Love you guys!

T