4/26: I am alive. I never thought I would survive to see this day. I woke up at 0900 and took a shower before heading up to Global Studies. The entire Global Studies class was devoted to showing different projects. Damn. The five that they showed were really good. It made me wonder how people have time to do stuff like this. I went to 1100 Biology of Sharks. The last class everrrr of it. Oh, yeah, I think I forgot to mention that today is the last A day classes for the semester. Aka ever. We did an evaluation of Abel then took the practical shark ID. I got to omit all 20 because I had all the pictures. So I sat there and attempted to name some without having studied. We spent a few minutes going over what would be on the final then he let us out early. I managed to eat a small box of Corn Flakes I stole from the dining hall a few weeks ago. This was the first thing I had eaten since dinner that night I got epically sick. Food wasn’t really appealing to me, but I knew that I was approaching 2 days without food and it was necessary. This was all I could stomach.
As soon as class was done I left immediately to go down to the 3rd deck to work on my Anthropology paper that was due at 1400. I had yet to start it. Plus I had to do a mini presentation of some sort for that class, which I also had not done.
When I got down to the 3rd deck I went to the internet café to do work. Bad idea. Chelsea was out there. Apparently she’s in a lot of trouble from the night before when she showed up wasted to the ship. Since they can’t give out dock time with no ports left, they don’t know how to punish everyone. She’s currently under room arrest. She isn’t allowed to leave her room except to go to class and go to meals. But she can only eat on the 6th deck in front of classroom 2 and is only allowed to be up there for a half an hour. What assholes. It’s the last week and a half on the ship and they still feel the need to be absolute dicks about life. They’re so pissed that they can’t just assign dock time left and right to everyone. So many other people are also under room arrest. They treat us like we’re toddlers now. We’re no longer even high schoolers or middle schoolers. People are now, literally, getting time outs. Some of them deserve to be in trouble, but I’m not sure this is the most effective way to do it.
She told me that she and her roommate had split a bottle of champagne in the afternoon before coming back to the ship. They think it must have been drugged, because people found them passed out by the port and couldn’t wake them up. They had to be carried back to the ship. Chelsea was also epically sick with a cold and barely had any voice. I felt really badly for her.
Anyways, I was able to get my paper done after hanging out with Chelsea for awhile. It actually came out much better than I would have expected considering how little time I put into it. I printed it out and stopped by Becca’s room before going to class.
We did our evaluations for this class as well. Toby told us that we could either do our presentations (by the way, none of us have any idea what they were supposed to be on, and when we asked her in class, she refused to tell us, so no one had prepared anything) or have an extra reading for the test. We decided we could do a discussion to get out of it. She told us we’d all have to make sure to participate if we each wanted credit for it. It was 10% of the grade. One of the guys raised his hand to ask about the beginning of the semester. She had asked us during the 2nd week of class if we wanted to do this or if we wanted to have attendance be worth 20% of our grade instead of 10%. Obviously we said have it be 20%. She snapped at him for asking this and said this was completely voided. She basically told us that our class sucked because we weren’t that engaged in her class and we barely spoke. It was a really bitchy comment. I don’t think that some of the older teachers and adults on the ship understand how exhausted we are after each port. Most of them remain in the port city and are on the ship each night by a certain time, either because they’re required to be on duty or because they’re tired. But we travel across these countries, wake up hella early, and party most nights. We only have 4-6 days in these countries and we’re trying to get the most of it. Then we get back on the ship and have to attend classes the morning after we leave port. Honestly, they should be impressed that we can make it to these classes. Some of the teachers recognize this and really appreciate attendance and any effort.
She has no respect for what we do. And she also harshly criticizes any activity that we do that’s not “getting to know the local people and understand them.” She thinks that all time in each port should be spent doing community service or doing homestays. She thinks things like traveling to the Amazon, going on safaris, shark diving, and scuba diving are all frivolous “tourist” activities. She has literally insulted every activity in every port that I have enjoyed and looked forward to. I love community service and I’ve done homestays before, so who are you to tell me I shouldn’t be out doing something else that I love? Scuba diving and anything with the environment and being outdoors are things I live for, and I believe that that is a huge part of this trip, realizing and experiencing what you love. It’s wonderful if you love to spend all of your time trying to understand the local people. I’ve met some great locals in the different ports, but I’ve also done some great sporting activities. Don’t knock someone else’s passions. Your passions are not necessarily someone else’s. That’s also something that you should take away from traveling. Everywhere we’ve been has been so different, I’ve come to realize that what I love and cherish most is vastly different from people in these countries.
So class was spent discussing this voyage in general. I talked a bunch at the beginning about how it’s hard to fit in to most of these countries we’ve visited because we’re white. I talked about my experience in Osaka, Japan where we went to a Manga exhibit and were the only white people. Several of the girls were pointing at us and giggling and whispering to each other. When I said this Toby got really defensive that they weren’t laughing at me. Well they sure as hell weren’t laughing with me. And regardless, it was obvious that they were talking about me. I didn’t say they were making fun of me, but they were laughing at me. Laughing is universal, I do know that. It means different things to different people, but they were laughing at me. I managed to not challenge her too much, because I just want to do well in this class. We butt heads immensely, but it has never come up directly. I’ve never directly challenged her, so she doesn’t know this. I’m impressed I managed to make it all semester without getting into a serious argument with her. I guess I have matured and realized that maybe getting the grade is more important than arguing my point.
I’m so glad that class is over. I dropped my stuff off in my room and went to find Becca. Sarah and Jenny were in the room, too. We all hung out for awhile and eventually decided to go up to deck 7 to get food. My first real meal. This was huge. I got a chicken sandwich. I was actually starting to feel a little dizzy and figured at the 48 hour mark I needed some real food. I figured I could stomach chicken and it actually sounded appetizing to me. It was delicious. The first real food in far too long. I got a crunch bar and 3 musketeers after I decided it was safe to eat again. It was down pouring while we were up there. It had been shitty weather all day. Almost no one left their rooms. Everyone was either still recovering from being sick in the Amazon or was too hungover to move.
I guess it turned out that out of the 4 groups that did riverboats in the Amazon, 2 of the boats got deathly sick. My group, group B, I think about 20 of the 30 people got sick. In group A, 27 of the 30 got sick. That’s so absurd. Only a few people on groups C and D got sick, but nearly in the numbers that our groups got sick in.
A bunch of people who were in group A were put into isolation in the ship. I got an email from Victor early in the day asking me to take notes for him because he was confined to an obscure room in the front of the ship. Group A had a lot of struggles coming home. I thought we were bad. They had a layover in Rio. When they were getting off the plane there, apparently, the stewardesses kept them on as a group and had them get off together. Then they were told that they weren’t going to be allowed on their next flight. This obviously was not an option, because if they missed this flight there was no guarantee that they’d be back to Salvador in time to make the ship. In that case, they’d have to fly home. Game over. They had to all pretend to be ok while all of this was happening. But like with our group, they were all puking everywhere and there was no controlling it. They all had to go to the clinic at the hospital and 4 of them were required to stay there and told they were too sick to leave. Luckily they were able to get on a flight soon after that to head back to Salvador and made it to the ship on time.
So they’re now thinking that everyone got sick from the beach party BBQ we had the second to last night. Since it was only groups A and B that got violently ill, it was probably from that, because that was the only big thing that we did together. There are so many theories going around about what it could have been. Honestly, it could have been any number of things: the water we drank, the food we ate, the heat and humidity, the lack of sleep, being in the sun all day, swimming the Rio Negro, someone could have had a stomach bug and spread it throughout the boats. Our two boats were together for most of the trip, so someone having a stomach bug that was really contagious is a possibility except for the fact that it hasn’t continued to spread since we’ve gotten back on the ship. And that is why people were put into isolation. They have no idea what this thing was. I would have been so mad if they put me in isolation, because you can’t just leave when you feel better. And if you do leave, you get in trouble. That sucks. Victor said it was pretty bad.
I’m so glad Marvel didn’t report any of us and knew how to take care of us. Dr. Mort is under so many regulations that he can’t even act as a good doctor. He has to report everything and is barely allowed to give us any medication of any type. Marvel had been calling and texting a doctor in the US that she knew and was asking what to do for us the entire time. This was probably 1000 times more effective than telling Mort we were all puking. None of group B got quarantined and now there’s nothing he can do about it.
None of us went to him because we know that if there’s a certain number of cases for stuff like this then we get quarantined in Ft. Lauderdale. There’s a high probability of this happening after the Amazon trips. If that happens, I’m jumping off the ship into the water and climbing up onto the pier. Good luck to those of you trying to stop me.
I went back to my room to get some work done. Almost as soon as I got into my room Vanessa called me to ask about Bea’s birthday. I feel so badly that her birthday is today. She wasn’t feeling too great and everyone on the ship was basically dead. We made her cards and blew up balloons and decorated them. We had told her we’d meet her in her room around 1730 for dinner. We grabbed Becca then went to her room. The door was ajar so we burst in and threw the balloons. She just laughed at us. And Victor was there! Out of isolation! We went up to the 7th deck for dinner. I got another chicken sandwich. Mainly in honor of Bea’s birthday, but also because I thought I could probably use the protein and general caloric intake.
Victor had been planning on ordering a cake last night when we got back, but had been so sick that he was brought immediately to the clinic and put into isolation. So he ordered one for tomorrow night. Bea understood. She was still just grateful to not be sick.
After dinner I spent the rest of the evening in the internet café working on the Global Studies project and uploading pictures from the Amazon and making Marvel a thank you card for taking care of me on the way home.
We had a meeting for our group at 2100. This went really well and really bad at the same time. Some of the group members got into a fight about how some people weren’t doing anything and others were doing too much. While I had already done my part I stood back and let them fight it out. I dislike some, well one, of the group members and really felt no need to contribute to this. I had already given my opinion and no one seemed to take it, so I dropped back. They all seemed pleased with what I had done for my part, especially in comparison to some of the other members. One of them had literally copied word for word information from the Lonely Planet guide book. She didn’t cite it or anything. And she saw nothing wrong with this. She is an education major and plans to be a teacher. How is this acceptable? Again, I stood back and let a few of them fight this one out.
I was happy to get away at 2200 to watch the next episode of the boys’ Sea TV “Well Hard” show. It was pretty good. It wasn’t as long as their other ones and there wasn’t as much depth to it. They were just setting us up for their final episode. It’s showing in a few days at midnight in the Union. It’s going to be so sick. They’re going to get such a good turnout for that. I’m really excited for them.
When it ended we hung out for a little bit before heading back down to continue working on our projects. There was more fighting and more work was divided up. We’ll be working on it all day tomorrow. But my parts basically done. I have to do a voiceover for the video, but I’ve already written my part, so it shouldn’t take too long.
Now it is time to go to bed. I am exhausted and could probably use as much sleep as possible after my near death experience. Tomorrow is the last day of classes! And then it is a week of hell before we get back to the US. I cannot wait to get home. I will probably be epically sad and cry my eyes out to leave, but I want to see everyone from home again. Bittersweetness for sure. 9 days.
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