Halloween!

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  The Tasman Sea, New Zealand
Wednesday, October 31, 2007

So I promised a Halloween blog. A month ago. Go me.

Let's pretend it's Halloween. Even though it's now December (December!!!) and we're headed to China (China!!!) where it's going to be cold (cold!?!).

Someone put on a dance party for Halloween and there were going to be contests for all the Residential Communities to carve pumpkins and stuff. I wasn't going to go; I didn't have a costume and did have a lot to do and was just going to hide in my cabin and take advantage of the chance to get something done while it was quiet. Liz wouldn't hear of that of course and in the end I was really thankful for that. I wore a wrap I'd bought in Tahiti and went barefoot and didn't pretend to be anything in particular. Liz and I used the fancy French Manicure kit I'd bought (I know, girly huh) in Ecuador and we gave each other manicures and my nails were really really long so we did some cool fancy stuff with mine. We danced a lot, and I decided for the third or fourth time that I needed to do this more often. I just never do it. It just feels so good to let go. It was fun to see everyone's costumes; Ricky was Pancho Villa and Rachel was a flower child (of course) and Jonathan was wearing someone's cowboy hat and was nobody in particular. Liz and I were just dressed up. Arturo was dressed (very elaborately, I might add) as a woman and spent the whole night talking in falsetto. It was fantastic. Or should I say fabulous.

At the pumpkin carving competition, Eliana and I ended up doing all of the carving. We were split up into our RCs (residential communities) so I didn't get to work with Liz and Ricky, but it was fun to work with people that I don't get to spend much time with. David gave us a good idea for a design: Seasick Stuart, the puking pumpkin. No joke. We carved a big mouth for him and put all the goo from inside the pumpkin coming out of it. We did swirly eyes and everything. It was so cool. Actually it was really gross. We had this really pathetic little knife to carve with, so it took us a long time. Next to us, Jonathan broke his knife making a galaxy of stars all over his pumpkin and they brought him another one - a kitchen knife no less, that was at least 6 inches long. Minutes later he was complaining that it was too big, so I traded him and then I got to play with the big knife. The hardest part about that particular pumpkin carving (wasn't putting my hands in the goo! Aren't you proud?) was keeping my hair out of the ick and away from the knife. I was wearing it down and didn't bring a hair tie on purpose so that I would leave it down and then I got nominated to carve the pumpkin and got up to my elbows in pumpkin ick.

Kim was the judge of the finished pumpkins, which she herself said was odd since she'd never carved a pumpkin in her life, and she took a long time to judge. Everyone had a funny story to tell about their pumpkin, everything from being from North Dakota and being average to having had a bad day and then visiting with Kim made it all better to our lovely seasick pumpkin. She ended up choosing ours, actually, not because it was clever or funny (which it was) but because the eyes (the swirls, remember?) were a significant shape to the culture of New Zealand! I can't remember what it means but it's Maori and everyone has picked it up and identifies with it and it's really cool. So our pumpkin made her nostalgic and think of home and we were on our way there and so she picked us!

It was a really fun night and a good start to being back on the ship for a while. Not a long while, though, which was good, and I was super excited for New Zealand of course. Not much happened over the four days in between, except that the sea was really rough, and I actually was feeling a little sick for part of it. I definitely wore out the pressure points. And I didn't get anything done. It's really hard to work on a rocking ship. It's really hard to work on a ship in general, actually. I shouldn't really be blogging right now because I have so much due when we get done in Shanghai. It's weird to be almost in China and the blog thinks I'm in French Polynesia. Weeeiirrrd. I promise I'll get this caught up as efficiently as I can so that I don't leave you hung out to dry for any longer than I already have. Yeah, sorry about that. I love you guys soooo much!

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