3/23/07
07° 42.60N
082° 9.93E

Almost to India! We are currently traveling around the island of Sri Lanka on our way to Chennai, India. Everyone is super excited and ready for a true cultural experience. I’ve heard from past voyagers that India is the most shocking port-of-call that we will visit. They say, “it will literally change they way you see the world and how you interact with it.” Bring it on.

Anyway, the last several days on the ship have been a doozy. We started our leg Between Mauritius and India with the Sea Olympics. Students competed against one another in basketball, dodge ball, tug-of-war, rely races, lip sync, synchronized swimming and many, many others. I did the tug-of-war with 9 other teammates from the Bering Sea. Let’s just say we got smoked. Tug-of-war takes on a whole new meaning when you are on a ship that is rocking back and forth. Long story short, my team as a whole didn’t do so well in the Olympics. It looks like we will be disembarking last in San Diego. On another note, I had a great conversation with the captain the other day about pirates. According to captain Jeremy, we have two defense mechanisms to use against pirates. First, we have speed. We are on one of the fasted cruise ships in the world…we will outrun any pirates. As we travel through the straights in Southeast Asia, Captain Jeremy says we will be going full speed during the night in order to avoid an encounter. We have yet to travel full speed. Second, we have fire hoses. In the event that pirates do catch us and are able to reach the side, we will blast them away with fire hoses. Um, let’s just hope there are no pirates. Other than that, my week has been primarily occupied with midterms. Studying is hard to do on this ship, but everyone seems to manage. Oh yeah, one more thing. We have some Indian inter-port lecturers on the ship for this leg to supplement our curriculum and class discussions. They are great. Both of them graduated from the very reputable Indian Institute of Technology system in some sort of science/engineering field. They have provided some very applicable and thoughtful insight as we prepare for our travels through the world’s largest democracy.

Another interesting fact…last night we set out clocks forward 1/2 hour. India is one of the only, if not the only, country in the world with a time zone only 1/2 hour ahead or behind the rest of the world. Weird.

Ok well, I’m off to take a midterm. I’ll be back in a week to fill you in on my new perspective of the world. Over the course of my visit to India, I’ll be checking out Chennai, Delhi, Agra (Taj Mahal) and Varanasi. So excited!

Peace out,
Mike