Stargazing and LAND HO.... almost atleast

Same old same old.... except for stargazing. Oh yeah and we saw land. This morning around 8am, we passed by the Azores, a chain of islands a good distance away from Portugal, which is said to be the “Hawaii of Europe” or something like that. It was a good change because this was the first time we saw land and civilization for the past 5 days, just a good reminder that it still exists. But in all fairness, the island I saw looked pretty un-inhabitated, which is a good thing for a tropical and exotic island I guess. Then in my comedy class, all we pretty much did today was tell jokes in front of everyone. This was great and ridiculous because some of the Lifelong Learners (other members of the voyage who are like 60+ years old) had some pretty inappropriate jokes, and we never saw it coming from them. At night, the captain turned off the lights on the front of the ship to let us have some stargazing. Everyone was awed and amazed by how many stars we could see, but I was like.... meh. I have seen much better than that, you couldn’t even see the Milky Way, which was surprising because we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, there is no light pollution for miles. Then again, it was pretty cloudy, and the captain of course couldn’t turn of all of the lights for safety reasons. Nevertheless it was a nice experience to go out and do some good old stargazing again. Haven’t done that since Yash left for college (like 5 years... wow).
-Nimish
September 1, 2010