Back in Black, Bering sea attack

Remember the 2018 Winter Olympics? Good for you, because I don’t. It may be because I was in Fort Collins where I don’t have access to cable TV, but I could not give you one recap of the Olympics. Even though the Winter Olympics aren’t normally my jam, I was obsessed with the summer Olympics. Rooting on the Fab 5 gymnastics team and watching Michael Phelps wine yet another gold medal was unforgettable. This year, thanks to SAS, I was able to have my own summer Olympics.

Every semester, a day at sea is designated for a day of extreme competition and spirit. At the beginning of the semester, based on your floor and room number, you are assigned to a “Sea.” Within your Sea, there’s about 80 other students that participate in meetings and events throughout the semester all leading up to this day. I was in the Bering or “black” Sea!

In the month leading up to the Olympics, my sea had negative pep. All the spirit rallies, my sea would sit there with blank looks on their faces and faint cheers overpowered by all the other seas. However, on the actual day of Sea Olympics, my sea underwent a metamorphosis and went nuts. Black war paint and handprints all over our skin and rowdy cheers that drowned out the competition. “BACK IN BLACK, BERING SEA ATTACK” really got the crowd going and won us first place in the spirit competition.

The day started with a Rock Paper Scissors bracket tournament and a rubix cube competition. We lost both. We then went out to the pool deck to watch Synchronized Swimming. This is one of the two big events of the day. Other than almost passing out from heat exhaustion from the beating sun and 100 percent humidity, it was hilarious!! Everyone gathers around the pool on the top deck and watches 6 members from each sea compete in a pathetic attempt of synchronized swimming. My sea incorporated wigs and my eyes will never be cleansed from seeing Stephen in a long black witch wig. Scarring. They had a cute bit where they were all outside the pool pointing at Lydia with a shark fin in the water while “baby there’s a shark in the water” played. I might be biased, but we definitely deserved higher scores than we were given. Maybe the professor judges didn’t appreciate the strip tease scene, but hey we all thought it was hilarious. Other seas had amazing performances with flips and full on story lines! It was definitely the most entertaining part of the day even though we lost... again.

The rest of the day was filled with volleyball, water balloon toss, tug of war, and other minute-to-win-it type games! An absolute blast even though all our war paint was melting off due to sweat and we were exhausted by the sun. My body was sweating in places it never even attempts to in Colorado. Shins sweat?? Upper lips sweat?? Excuse me?? Tug of war was another intense event everyone got in to! My sea worked our way through the bracket to the championship round and LOST to the old guys (aka the staff and lifeline learners)!! Embarrassing.

The last big event was the Lip Sync Battle. I am in Greek Life dances every semester and musicals as a child, so this was my MOMENT. The girls that choreographed our dance we’re too intense, though. We started practicing like a month in advance when everyone started two days before. They were throwing out dance terms like “ball change” like I was going to remember my two years of dance lessons as a five year old.... like no. It ended up getting more fun closer to the Olympics day, but I had to drag my butt to practice every A class day and skipped most of them. Our time came and it honestly turned out a lot better than I thought it would, and we definitely had the cutest theme. It still looked like a mess for most of it though. The rightful winners, The Red Sea, has a whole routine to “Salute” by (INSERT ARTIST HERE) which looked incredible. They even had Felipe dress in drag and do a whole routine to “Fergalicious” with a red wig on. Iconic. They definitely deserved the title, and honestly every sea except the orange did amazing. But guess who won the big title of gold medalist..... the orange sea????? They sucked all day but won all the useless events like trivia and backwards spelling bee which added up and gave them the winning title. Everyone was SO bitter and definitely got a scolding for poor sportsmanship after booing them. Worth it.

Even though we lost the gold medal, we got bronze overall and won the second biggest title of spirit and sportsmanship! Which I think my Resident Director was more excited about anyway! It was so fun to see all my friends on stage having a blast and being stars! I screamed so loud for all of them!! And overall it was a day that brought not only my Bering Sea closer, but the entire shipboard community. It was so nice to have a break from classes and studying and be able to enjoy everyone’s company! And who doesn’t like a little healthy competition?!

I wish someone would have filmed the whole day because it was definitely more exciting than the Winter Olympics of 2018, in my opinion. There are some updates on the SAS Instagram page if you want to see a recap and I’ll add some videos and photos below!!

The next big day on the ship is Neptune Day, so stay tuned to see if I’ll shave my head or not !!!