They really do work with the staff to make these random days special. Like both April 20ths we were woken up by that song from Groundhog Day.
I just realized it isn't readily obvious why we repeated a day. It's because we crossed the international date line with all of these hoarded time changes so we just went ahead and repeated a day. :0)
It confused my poor computer! haha I got several e-mail with the time stamp being "tomorrow."
The weak leading up to this, we had Spirit Weak! There were lots of fundraisers for SAS (it is amazing how many donations the program needs each quarter to keep the prices reasonable. It costs over $80,000 a day to operate the ship! If you do the math with out tuition, you'll see there is a while lot extra that donors have covered. That is even aside from the personal scholarships.) We have had a drive going on where we can donate from our shipboard account and donate any extra items we have but don't have room to pack. :0) Last night there was a silent and live auction with some seriously cool items. Like a bubble bath in the dean's office! (He wouldn't be there at the time. haha) or a homestay in Switzerland!
As part of Spirit Weak, we also had dress up days. I believe the schedule was PJ day, Sea color day, What in the world are you wearing day, and SAS gear day. We also had an awesome crew talent show! Some of those guys have moves! Oh my! I only got pictures of a few of the days due to being distracted.
PJ Day with Breakfast for Dinner!
So we decided that Morgan is a lumberjack. Just look at his lumberjack meal! haha
We also ordered some cookies. $24 for 50 cookies! We split it four ways and it was a beautiful thing!
Josh! Why you always have the most awesome photobombs!?!?!
Misc. Shenanigans
Crew Talent Show
Crew Appreciation Day
The distractions came in the form of manically getting as much time with friends as possible because we have to leave each other soon, fitting in explorer seminars that are interesting, writing hundreds of pages of papers for class (one of my papers was 72 pages double spaced!), and for me, health issues. A few days ago, I'm kind of forgetting the exact details, I started with the shakes again. Whatever, happens all the time right, I did my zombie walk around the boat that day but still got things done. Then the next day it happened, and the next day, and the next day. One shaky time isn't all that bad, just annoying, having it almost constantly for three-four days gets to be really bad because it's completely exhausting. Imagine having to move constantly for all that time. No bueno! I started having a bit of memory problems (didn't remember anything from when I was shaking) and my heart was being all irregular so I decided it was to the health center with me.
Some pictures of shaky time:
Me trying to take a picture of Andrea during shaky time^ haha
I finally went to my favorite person, Dr. Bill and he was awesome as usual. He didn't get bogged down by the fact that he probably couldn't diagnose me (UCLA and Mayo couldn't so....) but he would be happy to treat my symptoms. Those of you not in the rare illness world may not know how rare this is. I think for the doctor it feels like working in the dark which has to be scary. Only the really brave doctors will treat us when we have these crazy strange problems.
Anyway, he gave me a liter of saline because I was dehydrated on top of everything else and convinced me to take a muscle relaxant. Normally I wouldn't want to take something that would make me loopy, but I was so completely exhausted that I wasn't able to get anything done anyway. So I took the med and in thirty minutes or so something beautiful happened. I stopped shaking. I almost heard angels singing I think. I slept the rest of that evening only taking a break to devour a hamburger the kitchen staff was so kind to bring me, chat with my friends who came to visit me once they found out I was at the health center, and to have an apparently silly conversation with my roommate and her friend once I got wheeled back to my room. They were ecstatic to point out that I managed to get high on 4-20. I laughed, but then again, I think I was laughing at everything.
I watched about five minutes of the action (still bummed I couldn't go to that) and then passed out for the next SIXTEEN HOURS! I slept for SIXTEEN HOURS! I woke up expecting that to make me feel better but within two hours I was shaking again. So another dose of the muscle relaxants and must have slept some more because my friends woke me up for dinner and it had only been 3:00 the last time I remembered. I was bummed that I had missed another homework day as well as some filming for a video contest I'm participating in. But that's life. I slept some more after (possibly during) dinner and then went to bed rather early again.
Today I woke up after another excellent nights sleep. Only 12 hours, but that's not too bad. So far I only feel a little bit shaky, so hopefully it won't develop into anything. I think I have enough rest now so that even if I do shake I will be able to not take the muscle relaxant and get some work done. Dr. Bill wants me to go to a doctor in Hawaii if this doesn't clear up, but I'm pretty determined to go to the beach instead. As long as I can prevent myself from getting exhausted, I don't see why the shaking should hold me back from having fun on the last week of the ship.
I had heard that you had to be on I.V. valium. Was that the case, or were you just on I.V. saline? In any case I hope that Hawaii treats you well and that you have a splendtastic time. And I will see you when you get back!
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