Our first day at sea on our Pacific crossing was Thanksgiving day. It was a normal class/work day, but it was still a special day. Molly, Byron, and I got together on deck 7, wrapped in jackets and sweatshirts for a Thanksgiving church service and shared our gratitude.

Our "Southbraz" family got together for Thanksgiving dinner and we also celebrated a couple birthdays. It was Kristen's birthday in Japan and I didn't even wish her happy birthday when I saw here in Hiroshima. Byron joined us for dinner, so he became Uncle Byron.

It wasn't quite like a home cooked family Thanksgiving dinner, but the food was good and it was fun to be with my Southbraz family. We even went around the table and said what we are thankful for. The pumpkin pie was tiny squares with not enough pumpkin pie on them, so I'll definitely have to make a pumpkin pie when I get home.

Thanksgiving day ended with Turkey Coma Coffee House where students performed songs and poetry and they served coffee and the 10:00 snack. I stayed almost until the end and didn't think I was missing anything, but apparently at the very last minute Molly got up and taught her hobo lullaby and I missed it.

Tonight begins the first of 4 nights in a row that we push our clocks forward. We have a total of 5 clock advances before Hawaii, UGH!

The theme during this crossing was utter exhaustion. With all the end of voyage tasks, activities, and clock advances, waking up and staying up were hard, and taking naps was easy. One of my biggest tasks was updating the IT Admin staff manual which was in major disrepair. There was definitely time for fun though. During the last Captain's Dinner which Jason L., Byron, Rico, and Beth were at, Jason V. and I were feeling left out (we had gone to a Captain's dinner earlier on the voyage), so we had a party of our own. I brought in some of my "Amy wine" - sparkling grape juice from South Africa and we watched the Goonies. That was nice and fun and all, but I was in a silly mood, so I got Jason to join me and we toilet papered Rico's room. It didn't take us long and we only used 2 rolls of toilet paper, but it was fun and his room definitely looked decorated. We weren't around to see Rico's reaction, but he loved it. He saved the toilet paper to use so nothing was wasted.

Molly and I wanted to take advantage of the sauna and steam-room for the entire voyage, so one of the last class days, we paid them a visit to give Molly a good study break. We did this right before the Ambassador's ball, so I felt all clean and primped then the evening rolled around. It was very fun!!

I helped Molly and Corey get ready and curled both of their hair. There was serious primping going on. I barely left myself time enough to throw on my black dress that I had made in Vietnam and meet Byron for Chris' slideshow.

The slideshow that Chris and Rico have been up for days straight working on was awesome, brought tears to some eyes and made everyone wish the voyage would never end. Sony's video was good too, but the slideshow was what everyone was talking about. We had a bit of standing around about 45 minutes where people were taking pictures and the crowds were waiting to be let into the dining room for the 8:00 seating (Molly had been in the 5:15 seating).

Our table was me, Byron, Beth, Jason, Rico, and Chris who didn't show up until the tail end because he was showing the slideshow to the second group, so we just collected each course and saved it for him. Dinner was pretty good, we had a shrimp appetizer, salad, soup, and steak. Dessert was later, they had an out of control elaborate dessert bar that was being served in the Garden Lounge.

When we found out that they were about to open the dessert bar, Byron and I were able to sneak in with Dean Beverly just before it opened to get some photos of the extravagant desserts that must have taken them at least a week to prepare. Somehow we were able to sneak in in front of everyone who had been waiting in the extremely long line since we were already inside taking photos. It pays to hang out with the dean. We piled our plates high and went outside to eat. We still had a lot leftover which we took up to the Staffulty to some people who were very happy to polish it off for us.

The evening ended with a dance, but the union was packed, hot and smelly, so most of the staff and faculty stayed away with the exception of one who added many stories to the evening, but I'll leave that tidbit off this public journal entry.

November 29th was a very long day - 47 hours to be exact. We crossed the International Date Line today and gained a day, but set our clocks back and lost an hour! We actually crossed the date line late on Nov. 28th or early in the morning on the 1st November 29th, but the celebration date was pre-determined before the voyage. My first time around the world (traveling west) my life was robbed of one day, so really I just got that skipped day back. If the date thing wasn't enough to confuse us, all the hours lost have completely messed up my internal clock. I'm on a 3 a.m. go to bed schedule and wake up around 11 a.m.

Time on the ship is definitely never dull towards the end of the voyage. Our evenings were filled with a performance by Dixie Tymitz of a play she wrote; the Global Nomads showing a documentary of photographer Dan Eldon who was killed while covering the conflict in Somalia, called "Dying to Tell the Story"; an improv show by the Improv Pirates, an awesome salsa performance that both Molly, David, and Rico were in (among others of course), a faculty & staff party, and on November 29th (both of them) I watched Groundhog Day over and over and over.

We weren't supposed to be able to get off the ship for our day in Hawaii until the morning of December 1, but the ship was ahead of schedule, so instead of holding us all captive on the ship overnight, they let us get off on the evening of November 30. Of course this day was still a class day, so while the ship approached US land there was still work to do and classes to attend. The students had the last Global Studies test in the morning, so most of the faculty and staff had the ship to ourselves and the pool deck was the most popular hang out area. Of course we were all working while laying out. Actually, it was pretty cool, so not ideal basking in the sun weather. In fact, I had a mug of hot tea to keep me warm.

Our cell phones were starting to work, so it was hilarious, students were all over the deck talking on the phone, or at least trying to get their phone working. I at least made sure my phone was working, tried to call Kat, but only left a message.

Work-study evals were my focus that day sailing through the super smooth and shimmering Hawaiian waters. Most people, including me, had made plans to stay off the ship our one night in Hawaii. We were all anxious to get off the ship and enjoy our 24 hours.

It was fun seeing the ship come into port, but I missed most of it because I made my first phone calls of the entire voyage. I called Kat (talked to M&D too) and Christa. Chris and Jason made fun of me for being on the phone, but since this is the first time I've called all voyage I think it's OK. We were welcomed to Hawaii with a beautiful Hawaiian sunset.

When we FINALLY got off the ship (after a couple hour delay trying to fix the card swiper), Byron and I headed to Waikiki. We found our room and then went out on a walk on the beach looking for a place to eat. The hotel suggested one place across the street, but it was pretty packed, so we kept walking. A girl came up to us on the beach and put beautiful leis on us. She was trying to raise money for some kids trip, so we both gave her $5 and went on with our walk. I'm glad we took the walk down the beach because it was a nice walk down the beach and we found this great place with an all you can eat huge amazing salad bar and then they bring you your entree to cook on the grill yourself. Byron had grilled ahi and I had BBQ pork with pineapple on top. Byron was the grill master, I didn't really know what I was doing and a chef was supposed to be around to help us out, but were were on our own.

We were stuffed after that huge dinner, but we decided to stop for some ice cream after our walk back along the beach right before we got back to the hotel. After the Pacific crossing we were exhausted, so our evening in Waikiki ended with dinner and ice cream.

After a late breakfast at Denny's and checking in with Molly and her boyfriend Nate who had come to visit her, Byron and I decided to try out the bus system and took a bus from Waikiki to the windward side of the island - Kailua. We made a few mistakes getting the right busses there, but we made it fine with only a modest walk to the beach. Turns out we should have probably stayed in Waikiki because it was sunny there all day, but it was cold, cloudy, and even started raining over on the windward side. Doug, Erin, and Mandee were at the same beach we went to. We keep running into them in several ports. They had rented a car (which we probably should have done) and were driving all over the island. They offered to let us come with them, but we just wanted to sleep and relax, so we didn't go.

We didn't really swim much although we both got in the water at one point. A lot of the staff was supposedly getting together for drinks at sunset in the other Sheraton on the beach in Waikiki, we'd pretty much missed that, but we hopped back on a bus trying to get back for sunset. We actually just saw the sunset from the bus, but it looked like an amazing one. We were going to go back into Waikiki, but we passed a movie theater on the way and decided to get off the bus and see if there was anything to watch.

We ended up seeing "The Ice Harvest," which was actually pretty good. It was with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton and set in Wichita, KS. After dinner we went to Boppa di Beppo for dinner and had pizza (Byron's choice) and amazing cheesecake (my choice). I decided to be a little rebel and break a rule before the voyage was over, so I packed up the leftover cheesecake and snuck it back on the ship - it tasted really good a few days later when we broke it out during "Return of the King."

We walked back to the ship after the movie and unfortunately all the stores were closed that would have had the type of souvenirs I wanted to buy, so I had no souvenirs from Hawaii.

The final stretch at sea was a blur. Students had one study day, then finals, packing, and boom, the voyage was over. It was hard for anyone to work or study on the study day because we were all exhausted, and no one really had any immediate reason to wake up. It was difficult, but I actually got up at 0800 to work on work study evals and packing.

The top bunk in my room finally came down so I could lay out all of my bags and boxes and pack them up with all the stuff I got. I did get a lot of stuff on the voyage, but it doesn't help that I came with a lot (probably more than I bought).

We had the entire voyage photo where we all smooshed onto decks 4, 5, and 6 aft. Byron was one of the last people to make it up there, I was one of the first. Jason V. and I were at the very back of deck 4, so you can't really see me (not to mention I wasn't even looking at the camera, I was turned around looking at the ocean) and Byron's standing in the very front, hands on hips as if he's the most important person on the ship, pretty funny. I ordered the photo just for that.

Our Southbraz family had our last family dinner and birthday party. Hardly anyone remembered, but fortunately enough of them were at dinner at the same time that I drafted them and we ended up with a decent turnout. Unfortunately we were missing Ron and Lisa Marie. We had a beautiful sunset tonight, and Mez had even reserved a table for us. Of course I didn't realize the table that was reserved was for us, so we sat at a different table, but he did bring out the huge birthday cake which they made very nice for us. We had so much cake that we had to share with a lot of other people.

The crew knew the students would be up studying all night, so the late night snack was a full breakfast that they served to get all the students through the night while they were studying for finals.

After A-day finals we had a work-study pizza and ice cream study break. After the study-break we had a bit of a staff party and several of us played cranium up in the Staffulty. There were 13 of us. Byron, Jason L., Melissa, and I were on a team and we won. Byron and Jason make a great team at the impersonation things. Melissa was great at the blind drawing. I felt like the weakest link on the team, but I made clay sculpting my speciality.

I spent most of B Finals Day packing. I have so much stuff, packing takes me a lot longer than most people.

I got called out of dinner to check in with the computer lab. Some malicious person has been deleting all of the photos in the Public folder. Justin had made a backup, but he was busy with his computer and couldn't take the time to upload all the photos, so his roommate copied the 200+ GB of files onto his drive and took it to the lab to upload, but I needed to make sure that the drive was safe and couldn't be stolen since this is the point in the voyage where things go missing.

I had a final meeting with the web team and pretty much got the rest of the project dumped on me because Nessie, the one student still working on it is stretched too thin with yearbook. I thought I would have some free time at the end of the voyage, guess I was wrong.

I worked on writing a script to spit out the website pages while watching "Return of the King."

The last day of work for work-study students was also taco day which is a favorite day for most people on the ship! I walked in my room after lunch and jumped because someone was on my bed. It was Molly, she needed a quiet place to work to finish her last paper which she'd gotten an extension on. I'm glad she was in there working, but it was quite startling.

No one was able to provide the help I needed on the website (of course I could have asked Justin, but I didn't want to and didn't think to bother him - he had enough other people demanding his help. I had a lot of clean up work I had to do before I had something useable, and it still wouldn't look great. I stayed up in Staffulty and jammed on the site (of course lots of faculty, who were now done with their jobs, decided this would be a good time to bother me and ask me lots of stupid pointless questions. I finally had a breakdown I was so stressed with everything. I made it through though, and had the website done before we got off the ship.

Molly's Gamelan group performed on our packing day. She was the girl leading the whole group. After Gamelan we had San Diego pre-port and then they had an encore performance of the swing dance.

Last full day on the ship was - packing and convocation. We had to be all packed up by 11:00 to start dragging out bags down to the 2nd deck where they'd be taken off the ship. I had been up until about 4:30 packing. I woke up at 7:00 for breakfast and apparently just missed an AMAZING sunrise. Jason had gotten a dolly for our steward James, so he was helping us move our bags which was awesome, and much more than we expected. I piled all of my bags out in the hall and Jason took Cameron my camera and captured the excessiveness. I got lectured by Rico and others about my shopping problem which I assured him was just a stuff problem (maybe worse). Chris, Jason, and Rico interviewed me for one of the last videos. I don't think that DVD is going to be finished by the staff party.

After getting our luggage stacked down on deck 2 and turning in the website, I had to celebrate, so Molly, Leigh, Byron, and I went up to the pool bistro to redeem our smoothies and hot dogs we'd purchased yesterday. Molly had bought a pizza and in the midst of her packing put it in one of her bags that were stacked down on deck 2. Amazingly she went down there and found her receipt in an outside pocket and only had to move a couple of bags. We went down to deck 2 and sat in the small aisle between 10 ft. stacks of luggage lining the entire hallway, if there had been a big wave we would have been smooshed underneath a pile of very heavy bags. I heard someone say something about the sunset on my way up. I can't believe how fast the day flew by. I ran to my room to get my camera and then back up to the back deck to watch a beautiful sunset (our last on this ship) with 500 of my closest friends. Of course Chris and Sony both missed it. Chris was taking a much needed nap and Sony has been missing pretty much everything these days. (I think) I saw the green flash as the sun set (I'll have to do some more research to make sure what I'm seeing is really what they call the green flash.

We had convocation at 8:00 where the students who were now completely done with college were graduating and we had several speakers including the Captain, both deans, Willie as an adult passenger representative, Michael Penn for faculty, Yas for staff, and Emanuel and one other girl I didn't know for students. Yas's speech was probably the best. She spoke about there not being 1 Semester at Sea experience, but 800 individual experiences. The choir also sang some beautiful songs.

Our last day at sea was also Dean John's birthday, so we had a birthday party for him in the Staffulty. I almost missed it and went in my PJ's -- oops. Wow, I can't believe it's all but over. This has been an incredible voyage. Tomorrow - San Diego.