There are no classes scheduled for today.
Today is a day set aside for the Sea Olympics on the ship. Each student residence hall or "sea" competes in different events that are held throughout the day. The team with the most points at the end of the day will be allowed to disembark the ship first when we arrive in San Diego.
The faculty/staff has a team as well (our team color is purple - hence all the purple in the photos I uploaded) and we could sign up to participate in certain events throughout the day. There is no real impetus for our team to win though because I think faculty/staff are among the first people to disembark anyway.
I signed up for the "Juice Pong" event and the "Trivia Challenge" event. Other events included a Team Chant competition, Simon Says, Limbo, Lip Sync, Slippery Twister, Poker, Syncronized Swimming, a Photo Scavenger Hunt, Basketball, an Obstacle Course, Dodgeball and Ping Pong.
On the agenda for me is the following:
- Juice Pong (Time: 1030 - 1200)
- Trivia Challenge (Time: 1530 - 1700)
Update:
The day started at 9:00 am with the Union filled by students in order to do the team chant competition. Our team chant was a song that was to the tune of "Day-O" with lyrics that revolved around our team mascot - the baby on the ship, 8-month old Ryder. Everyone on the ship knows Ryder and Desmond Tutu is especially smitten with him and will hold him and giggle at him in an attempt to entertain him. The effect of him giggling doesn't faze Ryder much (Ryder is constantly looking around to see who will interact with him next), but whoever overhears Desmond Tutu giggling at Ryder will immediately begin to laugh because his laugh is really infectious.
At one point, Ryder was having a combination of overstimulation during the chants and pain from getting his first tooth, so his mom Shawn took him to one of the satellite classrooms to watch the rest of the chants on the TV screen. I ended up joining them there and played with Ryder a bit, taking his hands and blowing raspberries into them which he is fascinated by. I told Shawn that I saw Ryder was signed up for some of the events and asked her what was up with that (a lot of the dependent children on the ship are participating in events such as the photo scavenger hunt, dodgeball and limbo), but I was really perplexed to see that the sheet indicated Ryder would be participating in those things too. Shawn replied that "Yeah, someone signed Ryder's name for those events - we are going to maybe have him crawl under the limbo stick, but I am not putting my baby in dodgeball!" What I came to find out later was that when the kids (ranging in age from around 7 to 13 I think) were playing dodgeball some of the college kids were really pegging the ball at them. I imagine that if someone held Ryder in front of them during dodgeball, some of these kids wouldn't hesistate to hurl the ball at a baby.
