Karaoke Night

Wake up at 7. I'm still tired. Screw breakfast. I'm sleeping in till 9. So I started my day out a little later than usual, and then went to classes and got lunch. The day played out to the usual trends on the ship. Nothing out of the ordinary until the evening and nighttime. At 2:30, I went down to the main dining hall, where I participated in tutoring some of the children on the ship. My tutoree is Kelly, and I helped her in the periodic table today. It was a good experience, and kind of gave me some insight on how our elementary teachers felt while teaching us. We had our cultural pre-port at 8 in the union. This consisted of our interport student, Candance Chetty, giving us a presentation on things we could do, common phrases in South African vernacular, how to stay safe, and some miscellaneous knowledge. I must say, she has one of the most interesting accents ever: it's like a mixture between British, Australian, Indian, and American. It was like she was using a different accent for different words. Quite the cacophony of sounds. After her, we had presentations from Louis Patler (interport lecturer), and two shipboard students who had spent time in South Africa. One of them had studied for a few months in Kruger, one of the best safari parks in the world and her presentation made me really want to do a safari. But safaris are really time consuming and I don't know if I'll have time to do one. Oh yeah and one more thing, we were given the good news that Dean David's daughter had a baby early today. Needless to say, the Dean was beaming throughout the pre-port, and afterwards I congratulated him. The pre-port was followed by karaoke night. I was looking forward to this because Dino was going to be singing "I Will Survive" (I couldn't wait). A lot more people showed up to the night than I expected. The Union was completely full (250+ people) with some people sitting on the ground. The crowd enthusiasm contributed to the energy and entertainment of the night, and the event was a lot of fun. I was going to sign up for a group song with some of the others, however right before I was going to sign up, the organizers announced that they were all full with requests already. Oh well, I'm sure they'll have another Karaoke night during the voyage. Next time, I'll be prepared. But now.... sleepy time.
-Nimish
October 1, 2010