A crazy thing happened on the ship between Mozambique and South Africa: Kim and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary!
We had tentative plans to have "fancy dinner" on the ship, in which you can order an expensive meal in the Four Seasons Restaurant, but as (bad) luck would have it, the restaurant was closed for mid-term exams on our anniversary. So, we decided to get burgers and fries in the Chappy bar instead.
Another cool thing happening on the ship was the Sea Olympics, which took place the day after our anniversary. The Sea Olympics are a HUGE ship wide event. Every voyager on the ship is assigned into a sea when they board according to where they are staying on the ship (I think). Each sea has a Residence Director (RD) who leads occasional meetings throughout the voyage. It's virtually the dorm of each student on this floating campus. All adults (staff, faculty and Life Long Learners, children, and companions) are part of the Aegean sea for the purposes of the Sea Olympics.
Here's how it goes: Each sea designates representatives for various events in which they will compete. Pulling off the Sea Olympics is a huge initiative as it requires a lot of planning in advance. Ender and Kim signed up to take charge of the lip sync for our team which was the final competition of the whole event. Jacob signed up to play speed chess.
The preparation for these events was comprehensive! We were also going to be judged on spirit and overall participation. So we got our 15 people together, chose a song, and started teaching and rehearsing choreography before we even got to Kenya. Finding places to rehearse was a huge problem as each sea had a lip sync performance to rehearse, but the ship programming didn't stop so most of the rehearsal spaces were in use most of the time. This meant practicing in hallways, on deck, and for 30 minutes at a time on the big stage when we got the chance. At our final dress rehearsal, one of our voyagers filmed us so we could work out the kinks the night before.
When the day finally came, we were excited, but anxious.
The entire ship was up early and gathered in the auditorium, wearing our sea colors. The energy was electric as we prepared to compete for the glory of the voyage. Each sea chanted their chant and rallied their teams.
Several events were taking place at the same time, but we were glued to the chess competition. Ender was a last minute entry to fill in for someone who wasn't feeling well. He lost within minutes to the chess team captain. Ender is still proud that he was able to make sure the team didn't have to forfeit.
Ender was already out of the running by the time Jacob played his first match, also against a college student.
Which he won. This lead him to his second match, also against a college student:
Which he also won. On to his third match; the stakes were getting higher.
Unfortunately Jacob lost his 3rd match, but was really proud of his place.
Sadly, because of rough seas, the synchronized swimming tournament had to be canceled. So at the last minute, they substituted this with "backward spelling bee." We went to watch, just to check in and found that our sea was once again short players, so Ender volunteered to spell.
Maybe we were lucky, or maybe it's because our team had a bunch of professors on it, but our sea won the backward spelling bee taking 4 of the 5 top slots that earned points. Ender came in 5th place overall out of 46 players which he recalled was where he placed the last time he was in a spelling bee in the 4th grade.
What we didn't know is that Jacob was called back to play more chess. Once the first and second place winners were decided, they held more matches to determine 3rd, 4th, and 5th places which would still win points toward our team's overall standing. Jacob won both matches, one against a college student, and one against a man in his 60's (which he won in 5-6 moves), which put him in 5th place overall!
Other events happened on the ship, and we weren't able to watch them all, but we did our best to support our team.
We found a nail polish in Mozambique that matched our team color and Ender made sure everyone had plenty of spirit.
Because it was a day without classes, Jacob had a lot of time to hang out with his friends playing games and waiting for all of the events to close.
At the end of the day, the scores were still coming in. Aegean Sea (us) were in second place behind the Red Sea. It was time for the grand finale: the mascot wars, a video, and a lip sync performance.
The mascot wars were interesting. Didn't get amazing pictures, but each team dressed up a mascot and came out to lead a chant and show off. We lost that one, but some of the seas had really amazing mascots:
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| Ursula, the Sea Witch |
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| Not sure, what this was, but a crowd favorite nonetheless |
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| Our own Sea Witch, actually named Ursula, driving a boat? |
Finally, it was time for the lip syncs. Each sea was given judging criterion which included things like: involving everyone, actually lip syncing, not just dancing, quality of choreography, etc., for no more than 5 minutes. Because we were a bunch of old folks, we picked a 3 and a half minute song and cut it down to two and a half minutes. I don't know how we would have had time to learn another 2 and a half minutes of choreography! We were rehearsing constantly as it was! As luck would have it, were were the last sea to perform. Every other sea chose to do a mashup of multiple songs, which filled the whole 5 minutes. Some were better than others; heck, some had entire professional dance teams on them!
The song Ender and Kim chose for our group was Dynamite by BTS. If you aren't familiar with BTS, it's a Korean boyband and the song Dynamite SLAPS. Our group loved Ender and Kim's choreography and song choice and really got into it. We were a very popular performance because the ship voyagers loved seeing their professors, deans, counselors, et al. on stage dancing to boyband music.
When it was all over, the judges left to discuss and score and make final determinations so they could pronounce a winner. Our two media experts on the ship lead a game of Simon Says while we waited.
Perhaps you can tell from the setup of this blog, but our Aegean Sea did end up winning the Sea Olympics. Our lip sync came in 3rd which was enough to beat out the Red Sea and put us over the top into first place. It was an exciting moment for the way-too-competitive adults on our team, but for us it was fun to know that our family had contributed to the overall score through chess, spelling, and dancing. We went up on stage to rub our win in everyone's faces while they played "we are the champions" over the loud speaker.
Before announcing the winners they handed out incidental awards. Things like, the person who spelled the most words in the spelling bee competition, or the person who held the longest plank (9 minutes!!). It was completely unexpected when they announced the Ship Kid Spirit award, to the kid who won the most points for their team, showed great sportsmanship and spirit: Jacob Brimhall. Jacob was int he balcony when his name was called. He ran down the stairs and up to the stage while 600 people in the auditorium chanted "JACOB! JACOB! JACOB!"
When he got back to his seat, we all hugged and cried. Jacob has been having a tough time on this voyage missing his life and friends back home. It was really special for him to be recognized this way. We later asked him if that was the best moment of the voyage. He clarified that it was the best moment of his life.
Comments
I really would like to enter a backwards spelling bee as I feel like that event was created with me in mind.
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