Finals and Alumni Ball

I’m sure that at this point you can tell I’m catching up, not writing by night. I had a lot on my plate those last ten days, let me tell you what. I worked non stop all day. I had two papers for trade due (4 pages and 9 pages), a twenty page paper due for Marketing, a huge power point presentation to make for Marketing (which James helped me SOOO much on, wonderful boy), and a global studies test to make a huge study guide for and then study for. When finals finally came about, I was exhausted. My marketing group was actually supposed to help me, but they didn’t help a bit. I had to rewrite all of the sections except one. I wrote twenty pages of the twenty four. Then they couldn’t even get the power point right (though it ended up being ok). I was pissed, lol, though it was still good despite them. We were also helping out the shipboard drive at this time too, so our regular naps were disturbed. We did gain some hours though, and that was really nice. Saved my life.
When the finals were finally over, it was a dream come true. Lol. I was so relieved. That night was the alumni ball. We all got dressed up, met up, and then went down to the fifth floor dining room. People were looking so nice! I just straightened my hair (since I had a final till ten minutes before the ball), but it was ok. We went down with all of our nine friends, but we didn’t all fit on one table. We were right next to each other though. James and I sat next to our friend Matt who would have been left out if we hadn’t sat next to him. We put ourselves there because we knew it wouldn’t matter so much to us who we sat by, and we’d have to sit with three other random people because they needed to fit tables of six. Anyway, we got there before the rest of the table, and when we sat down we looked at the other tags to see if we knew the people. We did. It was my roommate and the girls directly across from us. Delightful. Hahahahahahaha. It turned out ok, but we were NER-VOUS! Dinner was great though. There was bruschetta, soup, salad, chicken or steak, and then a huge dessert buffet a couple of hours later. It was all delicious. After dinner we went up to the sixth deck and took some incredible pictures. They were awesome. Right on the ocean and we all looked great. There was some good times. We headed down to the fifth deck and Tymitz square where the captain was and took some pictures with him too. Which was pretty cool. We took a lot of pictures that night. With Tom the voice and the deans, with Joe the CRO and his wife. With the discipline officer who is from U of A. All kinds of people. It was a great night. At the program after dinner James and John played the newly wed game. John answered a question that made me want to punch him (I won’t repeat it, but let’s just say that I was EMBARRASSED), lol. John, you’re lucky I love you. Heh. After a slide show, we ate the dessert buffet. Then the dance started. We were there for a bit, but not long. We danced with Charlotte and Maggie, and then with Patrick a bit. I had a pretty killer headache though, so we weren’t there long, and I had to finish six more pages of the marketing paper before I could call it a night. It was due at 9 in the morning. The day was fantastic. A little crazy with finals and the dinner, but awesome. We have some pretty great friends.

Gibraltar

I feel that I should mention this. The day after the auction, we bunkered for a day in the straights of Gibraltar. Spain on one side and Morocco on the other. We stayed in one spot for a whole day. I think I had a test that day, but life went on like normal. We refueled there because it’s the cheapest in the Mediterranean. We didn’t completely refuel, but to do so costs half a million dollars. That’s the thing. People don’t really realize how much this whole voyage costs. ISE and SAS are completely non profit entities. It costs 7 grand an hour to dock in Casablanca and it’s a horrible port. We don’t go to France ever because it’s SOOOO freakin expensive. A lot of kids didn’t want to refuel because they said SAS makes too much money anyway. It’s totally not the case. Some years they have to ask for donations just to make ends meet. It’s a wonderful program and I’m so glad that it’s still around despite the expenses. And Gibraltar was cool. We got a great look at the Rock of Gibraltar!

Fine Dining:

A couple days in we took our Global Studies final. Most of it was on the study guide (whew), so it went well for me. I got a 96. Missed two. Anyway. That night, the ship had a drawing for a free fine dining. We all had completed a survey, and the one that got picked from the pool got the dining experience (which is usually $25). Anyway Some guy named Will Jenkins got it. I recognized the name but couldn’t bring a face to mind. I forgot about it right after. James and our friends had a volleyball intramural, so I was too excited for that (I was the cheerleader, and they got second. We actually all played a lot of volleyball for fun during those few days. It was pretty fun, and I got a lot better. Yay. Lol). Anyway. That night at dinner, we were walking out, and this kid from our trade class stops James. I didn’t notice at first, so I had to backtrack to get back to him. When I got there, James and this kid were shaking hands and James was thanking the guy. I smiled because we’d talked before, but after we walked away, I was like, what was that about.
James said that the kid came up to him and said that our study guides had saved his global studies grade and that he was really appreciative, and that he had won the fine dining that night, but that he wanted to give it to us. So he signed us up for it instead of him. I was flabbergasted! I couldn’t believe how nice a gesture it was! We didn’t intend to do fine dining because it cost too much and here this kid just gives it to us. It was SOOOO nice. I told all out friends and they were all in shock too. It was seriously so nice.
The next day we got all dressed up and went in. It’s like a mini restaurant inside the dining hall. Kids get seated at different tables and they give you champagne (James and I brought our own soda). There was legit bread and we had the best view of the ocean. We got a table all to ourselves, which was nice. We got to pick all our dishes and it was like 4 courses. Everything was great except the crab which was a whole crab deep fried. Lol. Next was Greek salad (which was great), raviolis, and a dessert. It was awesome. You had a server and h’ourderves. Perry was our server and he’s the sweetest guy on the crew. Seriously. We love him. It was a stellar experience. I was so glad we did it. We wrote a thank you note to the guy and thanked him again and again for it. But I’m still almost in shock from the whole thing. I loved it!

Auction Day:

Well, first day back to sea. It’s Shipboard Drive Auction Day. Every voyage, a committee puts together an auction for the students. People donate objects or services to bid on, and the goal is to raise the most money for the ship. SAS is a non-profit, so they need the help for scholarships and ship maintenance. People donate things like: salsa lessons, patches from around the world, ties, books, paintings, guided trips, house stays, condo stays, ski resort stays in time shares. There are things like: last off the ship, first off, steering the ship for twenty minutes, picking a menu for the day, being the voice for a day, throwing a pie at Prof. Bowler, getting the navigation map from the Navigation Nook. Things like that. We didn’t buy anything, but our voyage set a record: 30,000 raised from the auction alone. Which is a NUTS number. Kids who have their parents credit cards obviously. Still, it’s for a good cause, so we were super stoked!
This goes along with the ShipBoard Drive, which James and I were apart of because of our Study Guide. This is a donation drive for kids to help for the same reason. The goal was 100% participation, but that never happens. We were also shooting for 50,000 dollars, which would break every record that SAS has ever had. James and I sat at a booth for lunches for 4 days straight asking kids to donate. I made a thirty page study guide again for students to study for the final, and I’m telling you, I don’t want to toot my own horn, but James and I made the difference with that thing. Kids donated twice, one for the first one, and once again for the second. People would come up to us and say, is this were I donate for the study guide? It was awesome. Anyway. We ended up making 53,000 dollars! Which I know may seem like a huge number, but it was a HUUUUUGGGGEEEE number. We broke the grand total record by ten grand total. We broke the shipboard donations record by eleven grand total, and I don’t see another voyage catching up to us anytime soon. It was intense. Very successful.
James and I had a lot of kids and staff as well comment on the study guide. The Registrar said she was so glad we posted it because she learned more from it than she did for class. Kids came up to us all the time thanking us, and teachers said they thought it was a great idea. I was glad we did it. We almost didn’t for a bit there. The study guide took some serious work. We already had the first and second parts already finished for the most part, but the third part was intense. Anyway. It was awesome. Something to say in an interview: Oh ya. I was apart of a donations drive and I ended up helping the drive raise over fifty thousand dollars and break every record EVER. ☺
Anyway, the next day I had my marketing exam, which went horrible. I got a 64. But it was the highest in the class, so it ended up being a 100%. Just to give you an idea of how nuts the tests are. I spent every night in port reading that wretched book, and still didn’t know half the test. Hahaha. Luckily no one else did too. Anyway. Just a huge paper to write and a power point presentation and I’ll be done with that class!

Last Day in Morocco:

Well, we slept in again, which wasn’t too bad. We headed out, tried to use the phone card we’d bought yesterday, and finally succeeded after like 100 tries and help from two different groups of people. It was semi hilarious, but not at the same time. Anyway. We switched our hotel reservations around, and cancelled some stuff. We called out parents (or tried), and then went back to the hotel we had originally and got some more last minute internet stuff done. We also spent the rest of money. I bought a little travel bag. Lol. Which I needed at the first port, but didn’t get till the last day of the last port. Typical. ☺
We got back early, but that was good. We finally got a shuttle again, but we still waited for about thirty minutes to get on. It was the last port, and the last day, so security was nuts and they had some serious bag checks. We were lucky we got in early. They were afraid they’d have a lot of people be late, and instead of dock time, they punish by not letting us go to the Alumni Ball. Bad news bears. Lol. We hung out on the ship till we left. We watched us depart from our little dock windows and then I went to town on studying. My marketing test is the day after tomorrow.
Woop.

Overall thoughts on Morocco:

I liked and disliked Morocco. There were a lot of things about it that were just like Egypt: the religion, the way that people acted in certain ways, the cabs, and the bargaining. But there were some major differences. The modernity that they’re working on is interesting. The king’s father was not so great a king, and the son is trying to restore the monarchy and the order while bringing Morocco into a global market place. It’s doing pretty well I think. The women have more rights, which is good, and there are new laws that prohibit the men from having all out power in government and things like that. The multiple languages are interesting. There are so many people who can’t read in Morocco, but at the same time, they all speak three languages. It’s an interesting dichotomy. That’s for sure.
Most of the people were really nice. There is definitely anti-American sentiment, but we didn’t feel it as much as we did in Turkey. There were a lot of people who went really far out of their way to help us (the phone and the pizza hut). There were people who were rude (but they’re everywhere). We had a lot of fun at the beginning, and despite our disappointments, I’d say that Morocco was amazing. The place is beautiful. There is a lot of history. There are some amazing architectural achievements. I’m not sure why it’s a popular honeymoon location, but then again, I didn’t get to Marrakech, and I think that’s where it’s at. ☺
We’ll definitely be going back some time.

Casablanca Day Three:

Well today was interesting. To say the LEAST. First, we woke up an hour early because we didn’t change our clocks for day lights saving time (cuz we’re retarded obviously). Then we went down to the bus station looking for our trip to Marrakech (which we were super excited for (there are snake charmers there, monkeys you can hold, and huge bazaars), and there was no bus. We were like…what’s going on. We needed to be out here at 7am and there’s nothing here. Well, turns out that they double booked us. Yesterday when we went to Rabat, we were supposed to have gone to Marrakech, but the yellow book said it was today. Well, the changed the trip last minute, so we didn’t get the memo. We missed the trip. We were TICKED! We really didn’t have the time to reschedule either or take our own trip. We only had a day and a half. We were super disappointed, and even though we got reimbursed, we still feel like we got rather screwed out of a huge experience. It’s just an excuse for us to go back to Morocco though. So…it’ll work out in the end.
Anyway, we went back to sleep for a bit. Woke up when lunch was over, so we missed it. We decided we should make a trip to the grocery store (and we figured we’d pick up lunch on the way, though we didn’t). It took us awhile to get there because we really didn’t know where it was and we got some interesting directions in a mix of Spanish, French, English, and Arabic. We finally made it though, and stocked up big time. I bought 21 kinder bueno bars, snacks, sodas, and some water bottles. We filled a whole backpack to the top and James’ carry on suitcase. We got a quick cab, and made it back to the port a ok, and pretty cheaply too. After we unloaded, we decided to head back for more internet. There were some quick things we needed to do. Then we went back to the ship. THEN we decided to go to the Souk that was right outside the port for some last minute shopping. Man. We got some stuff done. We also bought more luggage, which was a great decision in the end. We spent a pretty decent amount of time there. There was a lot to see and plenty of little stalls to bargain at. By the time we were done, it was around 6pm (note we had NOT ate yet). We were famished. Big time. We remembered seeing a pizza hut close to the port the first day on the tour, and we knew we were close, so we headed towards that. We figured we were starving. We needed some tastes of home. Anyway. We got hopelessly lost and decided we needed to ask. We saw a group of three girls walking towards us dressed really modern, no headscarves, and while they were modest, they had really fashionable clothes. So. We decided they prolly spoke English, and we were right.
The girls were super nice. They led us straight to Pizza Hut. The one girl who was the leader said that she was only 22, but she had some gray in her hair, and she looked a little older. We didn’t care too much though, she took us to the food. Lol. It was actually a little bit of a walk, but they were super nice about it and we finally made it there in one piece. The food was awesome. We downed a huge pizza. Two sodas each, and a bowl of pasta. It was stupid almost.
Afterwards, we headed back to the boat. We didn’t want to be out too long, and the sun was setting. We ended up chilling at the boat all night. We hung out in 2050 and watched the movie that was on. I still had a lot of homework, so I went to town on that too. It was an interesting day. A good one overall I’d say, but it started out a little auspicious.

Morocco Second Day:

Well. We woke up a bit earlier today. 8am. Somehow we never seem to make breakfast. I had an interesting experience with the water last night. It smelt a little funny when I was showering (but it’s super hot and humid in Morocco and I was disgusting, so I wasn’t going to stop). I got out, dried my hair, went to bed like normal and when I woke up, I found that my hair, my beautiful blonde locks, were green. Not completely, but it was definitely a tint to it. Hahahahahaha. The shower curtain was green, and when we finally got to the tour of Rabat, there were girls with blue hair as well as green. James had drank some of the water from the night before, and he said his throat hurt and tingled a bit. It was just a weird thing. We had heard that the water might be a little different in Morocco, but we weren’t really expecting that one. We survived though, and I’m pretty sure that the green has been predominantly washed out. Though it definitely lasted a few days.
Anyway. We went off to our tour of Rabat. The tour guide was the woman who wrote the whole Wiki-Travel section on Alexandria, so she was just a little node of knowledge. Very nice. She told some corny jokes, but you could tell she was super smart. She was also a single mother, which was something of a novelty. The king of Morocco is travelling towards modernity, so there are things like that which are now possible for women, though they are still seen as subservient.
Rabat was interesting. It’s the capital of Morocco, but there wasn’t much to see per say. We went to a couple of palaces which had some gnarly guards with huge machine guns. We saw the royal mosque. We walked to the mausoleum of Mohammad V which was very nice inside. This was the king during WWII who turned away the Nazi’s looking for Jews when he said that there were no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccans. He’s a national hero. It’ a pretty cool story really. We had a guy take a picture for us who worked there, and he tried to take other pictures after ours. James fairly ripped the camera out of his hand. Which would have been funny except it’s a nice camera. He wasn’t going to steal it…he just started to walk around with it. Haha. He was a little old Moroccan man, but it was still weird.
Next we went to a Medina of the city (Medina means city). It was by the water and there were some beautiful gardens to see. We had some coke and water which was amazing, and went to a bakery where they make bread for the whole medina. It was very quaint, very small, and a quick visit.
On our way back home, we passed a Muslim graveyard. This was interesting. The Muslims don’t bury their dead in a funeral, they simply put them in the ground. The graves are super close together with tall thin headstones, and all the feet point to Mecca. The graveyard was on a rolling hillside, and it was huge. I think it might have been the most interesting place we saw all day. We ate dinner on the ship. Sometimes its easier than scouting and we were pretty famished.
We went to a hotel right outside of the port next. Caught up on some internet time and skyped the parents for a while. It’ll be the last time for a bit, so we wanted it to be worth it. Lexee even got up to talk to me. Hahaha.
Went back to the ship and got prettied up a bit. We had made a date earlier in the week to have dinner with the Gillespies (the couple who really liked us from Italy). We caught the shuttle out of the port (one of the only ones), and then headed off for a bout a ten minute walk. We ended up at this little authentic Moroccan restaurant that had a French name and no real tables. There are little round desk like things that you bend over and sit around on coaches. It was really pretty cool. The atmosphere was great. Mr Gillespie speaks French too, so it was easy for us to find it luckily. Eating was nice. We had a little bit of everything: couscous, some things cooked in a tanjine (which is an all day process in a little cone shaped pot), a chicken dish with almonds in a little tortilla thing (like a taco bell crisp but WAY better and cinnamon like), and then lots of different desserts which were amazing. The whole experience was great. We talked about our homes and our majors. They talked about the classes they taught. We talked about the teachers and the program in general. It was all great conversation. We walked home in a big group of people, but we mostly stayed with them. After we got back to the ship, we ended up going upstairs with them to see how the people on the seventh deck live. haha. We always make jokes that the second deck is the dungeons, but its not really much different than the other decks except we have a smaller window. Let me tell you though, the people on the seventh deck live in style. There’s a coach, and a huge bed. They have a balcony with lawn chairs and a nice view. It was intense. They had a desk and a nice little refrigerator that was pretty big. They were definitely living the high life ☺
It was nice of them to let us see for sure.
After visiting with them we went back to 2050 where I started some more homework. I’ve been reading like crazy every night trying to get things done. I’ve got a lot. My marketing class is insane. That’s all I’ll say.