Neptune Day

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

This morning I wasn’t woken up by crashing waves, or by a beautiful port outside our window.  Rather, I was woken up at 7am by a hoard of people dressed in togas and banging drums and pots and pans outside of our rooms!  This was our wake up call for Neptune Day.  Neptune day is where you cross the equator and it’s a tradition to do crazy things like shave your head the first time you ever cross the equator.  Don’t worry I ddin’t shave my head, but I did take part in the rest of the Neptune day activities.  We threw on our rattiest bathingsuits and clothes and headed up to the pool deck to see what the deal was.  All of the crew was dressed in togas and was carrying spears or shields or razors or drums or other weird things.  At the back of the parade of the toga clad crew was our executive dean wearing nothing but a hula skirt and a crown!  Not to mention he was also covered from head to toe in green paint.  After our dean-turned-grinch sat down on his “throne” we all lined up on the side of the pool so we could have “fish guts” poured on us.  I know whatever it was they dumped on us wasn’t exactly real fish guts, but whatever the mystery liquid was it wasn’t too pleasant.  After being slimed Nickelodeon style we jumped in the crowded pool to rinse off.  Next we had to kiss a fish, yes an actually fish on the mouth.  I tried to just blow in its face like we do when we go fishing at home, but they were going to have none of that and made me give nemo a big smooth on the smackers.  We then had to kiss Dean Neptune’s giant ring and I cant wait to see what sickness we will all contract within the next few days.  The rest of the morning and afternoon we watched as people lined up to get their heads shaved!  Even a few girls actually shaved their heads.  If I were a guy I would have done it in a heart beat, but although I would do anything to get rid of my afro/lion’s mane on the top of my head, there is no way I could ever shave it all off (mainly because my hair would probably break the razor).  If the morning wasn’t already fun enough, we walked into the lunchroom I almost didn’t recognize the heavenly smell of greasy ground beef, beans, seasoned rice, and avocados.  Yes it was our first taco day!  Literally the greatest day so far.  I did learn one lesson from taco day… More than 4 tacos might be doable on solid ground but considering the fact that we are constantly rocking, you might want to at least try to exercise some kind of self-control before inhaling the entire buffet.

“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.”

– O.W. Holmes