can i have some water?

Friday, September 2, 2011 (12:27am) - MV Explorer

so tonight marks 2 days out from our first port. that means we had a cultural preport meeting in the union. tonight wasn't mandatory, but since it is our first port, pretty much everyone on the ship was there. the point of the cultural preport is to kind of give you a sense of the customs and what to do and not to do in each country. tomorrow night, the meeting will be mandatory and that is the logistical preport which is just what it sounds like. some interesting customs and things to keep in mind while in morocco. for example, water is a community resource. i thought "okay... community pools? the beach??" yeah, not so much. they're talking drinking water. like, they see you have a bottle of water, they'll ask you for a drink. and it's borderline rude to say "no dude, this is mine." most everyone of you reading this knows that you wouldn't catch me dead without my water bottle. and now you're trying to tell me i have to share it with some random dude in morocco?! i might sound like some arrogant, spoiled american brat, but we have these things called germs in america. i don't want my mom drinking out of my water bottle, let alone this. yikes. and it didn't help that the articles i had to read for global studies tomorrow oh so kindly reminded me of the terrorist bombings in casablanca in 2003. so that's cool. went hand-in-hand with the dean reminding us at orientation that a ship full of american college students is a prime target for terrorists. haha you're welcome family for that reassuring advice.

in lighter news, we learned some pretty important things like how we can't eat with our left hands cus that's your "toilet" hand. good thing i'm not left handed, but still. what am i supposed to do about a knife? considering just sitting on my left hand for every meal. we also learned some moroccan... which is really just arabic. like how "shukran" means 'thank you' and "labas" means 'how are you.' i think it'll be cool to actually be able to say a few things when we're roaming around morocco.

we also just received a warning email from the dean telling us that the waters coming into morocco are going to get really rough and they already are starting too. the dean told us to secure anything that could move... including desks and drawers. um, how am i supposed to secure a desk? i don't really have like bungie cords or anything. and naturally i decided this would be the best time to shave my legs, when the seas are actually starting to get rough. who doesn't like a challenge, right? yeah, atlantic ocean - 1, my legs - 0. it looks like i've never shaved my legs before... cut myself all over the place. not great.

anyways, brew and i have a little whiteboard outside our room for people to write messages if they can't find us or something (no txting is out of control, how did people survive without cell phones!?). two days ago a message appeared: "i love you." so i wrote back "i love you more... who are you?" currently playing hangman on the whiteboard to figure out who this kid is. potential best "how we met story" EVER, i think.

okay, time for bed. i know i'm forgetting stuff, but today is the first time that i really felt the loss of time catching up. we set the clocks forward again tonight. these 23-hour days are really killing me. that makes it 7 hours ahead of home. out of control.

love you all. stay tuned for morocco adventures coming soon. and "assalam o alaykum." i'm not really sure what that means, but i think it's like a greeting. you look it up, i don't have internet access. wah. goodnight!