Ship Life

My past nine days on the ship... well besides classes, working out and sleeping nothing really exciting goes on. I have been writing a ton of essays and preparing for finals. This might be my worst semester yet-as far as grades go. My fake family onboard had a special dining dinner one night. It consisted of a five course meal and was absolutely delicious! A great change from the regular ship food. There was a big silent and loud auction to raise money for different charities around the world. People donated things they had bought as well as things like a stay in their mountain cabin for a few days. From the loud auction alone we made more than $20,000.
We celebrated national GLBT (Gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gender) day with a great barbecue and ice cream party on the seventh deck. That night the members of GLBT put on a fashion show of all the fun stuff people bought in different ports.
There is a large Jewish community on board so we put together a big Passover Seder for the first night and the kitchen crew makes us special meals for lunch and dinner. It is so nice of them and the seder was so great! We even had Manischevitz! We said a lot of the prayers and definitely sang tons of the songs.
Everyone's sleeping patterns are so out-of-wack because of the time changes we have gone through. Basically no matter how early or late I go to bed, I always wake up at 4:00 AM and cant go back to sleep until my day is done. Sometimes I can take a nap if I am lucky. I've tried everything from Tylenol PM, Nyquil to hot tea-no luck.
The emotions throughout the ship are very odd. People are ready to get home already, but at the same time they don't want to leave. Going back into our real world seems to scare us all quite a bit. Going home might be the biggest culture shock we have to deal with.