At Sea

So I've been without internet since leaving Hawaii mostly due to the fact that once you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean there aren't all that many satelites pointing at you and therefore you have no internet. Oh well- makes me appreciate my grandmother's era when there were these things called "letters" and you had to use the "mail system"

Life at sea has been great if a little bit monotonous at times. It starts to be a bit like groundhog day- up at 0600, breakfast at 0645, muster at 0730, "sweepers" (I'll explain more later) at 0800, then it's getting whatever tasks done for the day, lunch at 1100, dinner at 1630 and bed by 2200. And if you have nothing else to do it's up to pharmacy to count pills, yes hand count pills. We have counted millions of pills in the last week but fortunately the pharmacy CO believes in movies, popcorn and gummy bears- so we show up. The weirdest thing of all was crossing the date line- I did not have Friday last week, it just ceased to exsist for us.

I have also found a few increadibly surreal moments on board. On Sunday we had a "Steel Beach Party" where we all headed up to the flight deck (aka: Helicopter landing pad) and had a BBQ- amazing food, water gun fights, the best live big band I've heard in years (yes we've got our very own LIVE band on board). It was a chance for people to wear shorts (I of course was dressed in my best "say no to skin cancer" outfit) and suddenly I stopped and looked around and thought "we're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean- eating barbeque like it's a normal day- the nearest land mass is China" and it just struck me as so bizarre.

Anyways I have so much more to share but must be brief since it's going to take an hour to upload and there are ten people behind me wanting to get online. So know that I am well- my legs hurt like crazy- some sadistic man decided it was a good idea to put female berthing on the bottem level and the mess deck on the top, and the rocking of the boat makes doing anything more challenging but all in all it's great- I have many new friends and will write more the weekend when we're in Guam.

Amy :)