Sea Olympics!

One of the huge differences between ship life and life at home has to do with time. Our days on the ship are organized into A days and B days. Whether it is an A day or a B day determines the teaching schedule for faculty and students. The complete voyage consists of 25 A days and 25 B days, a few “Study Days” and a few “Community Programing Days.” The days of the week have no relevance on the ship. Fridays, Sundays, and Tuesdays—they are all the same to us here on the MV World Explorer. 

Recently we had our very first “Community Programming Day, “ Sea Olympics, which is a Semester at Sea tradition.  All of the students are split into one of 6 “seas” (Red Sea, Adriatic Sea, Arabian Sea, Yellow Sea, etc.) and the faculty/staff/dependents/lifelong learners make up the 7th sea (our team name for this voyage was Odd-a-Sea). All seas complete in 26 different events and at the end of the day, one sea is crowned the voyage winner based on the outcomes of the events. 

By all accounts, this is an extremely fun day on the ship and really important in terms of breaking up the rhythm of long stretches of alternating A days and B days at sea. On our voyage, the ability to let loose and have some fun seemed doubly important given the impacts of the voyage itinerary changes. 

The morning started off with a banner and spirit competition as well as lip sync. Each sea is assigned a color and a specific seating location in the union and most people go all out with dressing in their assigned color to promote team spirit. My peeps in Fort Collins will be happy to know that that many wigs and costumes that we packed came in handy for Sea Olympics 😊. We looked GOOD. 

Seeing all of the color in the union and hearing the students’ enthusiastic cheers for their sea was really a treat. 

The 26 events included challenges of all types such as a chess tournament, geography bee, math test, volleyball, water balloon catch, relay race, basketball knock out, banner and spirit, and many more! Chris participated in “name that tune” where 1 second of a song is played and you then had to name the artist and song name.  He and the rest of the Odd-a-Sea participants pulled off a respectable 3rd place considering that the college students were quick to identify any music produced after the year 2000. Our crew was solid on the oldies! Wally and Rigley loved participating in crab soccer and I had a blast dusting off my 20 year old volleyball skills. Guthrie made a surprise cameo appearance in the Odd-a-sea lip sync. He was doing his robot dance to the song “I’m too Sexy” when he felt inspired to try to take off his shirt and throw it into the audience. Unfortunately, he had a wardrobe malfunction and couldn’t get the buttons undone on his “cute suit” to get the shirt off. It was sooooo funny. The whole shipboard community was dying of laughter. Rig and her girlfriends participated in the synchronized swimming competition. Thanks to a lifelong learner named Tami who used to coach synchronized swimming and agreed to work with the girls, the Odd-a-sea made a strong showing in that event. 

The end of the day was capped off with the closing ceremonies and announcing of the winners. Guess what?  The Odd-a-Sea got 2nd place!  Not bad for a bunch of old folks and kids!