When the sea is calm, the ship sails smoothly, and when you are downstairs you'd hardly know that you were on a ship at all. So far, it's been like this about 80% of the time.
When the sea is rougher - even little, choppy waves will do it - the ship rolls from side to side, left to right...
At the moment it's such that if you walk port or starboard (left or right) on the ship, you have the impression of either running downhill, or of trying to walk uphill, depending on the ship's angle at that particular second.
You have to guard glasses so they don't slide off the table. Coins or small objects might fall off the couch onto the floor. Curtains hang at an angle. Look at the wine glasses and see the level of the wine changing with each roll of the ship. And waiters never fill your glass anywhere near the top.
Time travel
We are constantly travelling through time. Every few days we get another hour, and as we are generally travelling west, we will have (I think) 23 days of 25 hours. When we cross the international dateline, we will have one day of 1 hour. That is, when the clock ticks over to midnight, it will become 11pm of the next day.
So far we have changed the clocks four times. At the moment we're travelling kind of southwest. The sunset time has changed quite a bit.
It's lovely now that we've started teaching classes, because we get up quite early, but we are having two days in a row of an extra hours' sleep. ^_^
Ports
So far we have been to three ports - Xiamen, China, Da Nang, Vietnam, and Singapore. It is a strange thing to carry your home around the world with you. You wake up in the morning, have a shower, get dressed, grab your handbag, go outside and - bam! - you're in a new country that wasn't there the night before.
Each port was good fun in its own way, and we went around in groups of teachers; forming bigger and smaller groups throughout the day, as we happened to meet up. It's nice to go with a group as you can get cheap taxi rides etc, but nice not to be in a huge group when it comes to making group decisions on restaurants etc.
Food
I can't say I'm a big fan of the ship fare. Lunch is probably the best meal of the day, since it's a buffet and there's usually a couple of good dishes, and not all Japanese food. Dinners are kind of B-grade Japanese 'washoku', lots of little dishes of tofu and pickles and rice and such things.
One thing we all do in port is stock up on goodies. I was happy to find BBQ Shapes in a supermarket in Singapore. What more do you need? ^_^
Arrr
We're travelling through pirate-y waters. We've just come through the Strait of Malacca. No problems. Later we will be going near Somalia, through the Gulf of Aden, and at that time we will have some extra safety precautions. We get to sail up the Red Sea! Very cool.
So far we have passed through the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca... we saw parts of Sumatra yesterday, and I think we passed part of Sri Lanka today. I don't always know what I'm seeing, but you do see the odd glimpse of land...
Sometimes you can see little markers in the ocean, which I think mark the shipping route. I never thought of there being a marked shipping route before. We have seen a number of other boats over the last two weeks.
Events
There've been various events on the ship. I'll give you some examples:
-every day there are random 'fun' events like dancing workshops, percussion workshops, Wii gamefests, painting, shamisen, etc
-there are lectures by guest experts about topics related to the theme of our journey, like the Palestine issue, nuclear weapons, etc
-there are language program events, like parties and festivals that we will organise
Last night there was a full moon party, which I didn't attend, but oh! The full moon was absolutely stunning over the water. It shone for miles, and formed a kind of rainbow in the clouds surrounding it. And in the distance we could see lightning making the clouds golden.
Yesterday, since we just left Singapore, we had a big tropical fruit party. There were commonplace ones like mango and pineapple, as well as more unusual ones like dragonfruit, rose apple and durian (which I don't recommend ^_^). I had the good fortune to volunteer for it, and apart from its being very hot outside, it was an easy stint and resulted in some free fruit. ^_^
Highlights
There's a lot going on all the time, so what are some of my highlights so far?
The nice thing about working with nice people is that work doesn't completely feel like work. Yes it will get busier and busier - we're still just starting - but when you have meetings and stuff, it's not a chore.
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