My title was going to be"Last Week in Brazil, I Was Unwittingly Groped More than Once by Dapperly Dressed Transvestites: Anything Goes in Carnavale!" I scrapped it because I'm not sure it would work so well as a title. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.
Sure, the travel is cool on this program, but it's the shipboard society that is the real experience. Imagine a place about half the size of your local high school where you eat, sleep, drink, study, attend class and do whatever else makes your world go round. Now imagine 1,000 other people doing the exact same thing in this very same place. As a fellow who places great value on his alone time, this prospect of sharing a relatively small space with a large number of people sort of terrified me.
Then, it began, and I remembered something crazy that I had almost forgotten about: We humans are the greatest situation-adapters on the planet. That's why we have lived everywhere and have been able to build neat things. And slowly but surely, I adapted. Before I knew it (and by that I mean yesterday), it hit me like a ton of bricks during a moment alone, listening to music out on the sixth deck: I didn't really like being alone like that anymore. I immediately walked off to seek out people to be around, pondering how I could have possibly undergone such a drastic personality change in less than a month.
This ship is a land of opportunity for change, which is a big sack of irony, because land is something that we are nowhere near. Land is silly. Which brings me to my next point. Actually, it doesn't at all, but, please, let me continue.
I like you all at U.Va., but seriously, it seemed like you stymied my every effort to make a rock 'n' roll band, to find practice space and to locate venues that didn't want to hear just the same old worn out frat-party mishmash. I was here for fewer than two weeks before finding two beautiful grand pianos, a guy who wanted to jam with me who had played guitar with Chuck Berry and the Doobie Brothers before and a public area to play literally any brand of music in for an appreciative audience, literally every other day at 19:30 hours. This ship is a land of opportunity for rock, even if quiet hours begin at 23:00 hours.
In dear old Charlottesville, if we have a school-wide televised news program, I am not aware of it. Even if I wanted to be in it, being a weatherman would probably require me to be an environmental science major, and a good one at that. After one interest meeting between Puerto Rico and Brazil, I secured the position of SeaTV's chief meteorologist, SeaTV being a program broadcast throughout the ship.
With my one semester of EVSC 250, I was easily the most qualified applicant (from a field of one) to step up. We've only filmed one episode, but so far it has been just about the most fun I've ever had in front of a camera. This ship is a land of opportunity for wannabe TV weathermen, even if the weather is basically all the same while we're at sea.
I am not loathing the prospect of coming home. That is by no means the point I am trying to convey. This trip lasts only 100 days, and at that point I suspect we will all go our separate ways and only stay in touch with the two or three people with whom we really, really connected. But until the day when I have to start my internship (assuming UIP comes through for me), start taking out the trash and shopping for groceries again, and basically rejoin Western society, I am going to embrace this strange little moving community where I can do and be whatever the hell I want, and no one is the wiser. Freakin' land of opportunity.
I implore you not to be concerned at my unusually sentimental and optimistic tone. The cynicism and skepticism will be back with a vengeance next time. Just do me a favor. If you've heard of this program before, give my positive words at least as much credence as the rumors of the "floating mattress." Trust me, the mattresses here aren't even really that comfortable. If you haven't heard of the program, then trust me, it's most certainly worth a closer look. Till next time, as they say in South Africa, "goodbye." Or something.
Erik Silk's columns run whenever they wash up in a bottle. He can be reached at silk@cavalierdaily.com.
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