Ahoy! I am back on dry land and there was a flurry of Halloween-related activity, including an all-nighter involving crocheting a T-Rex costume, but first the conclusion of the BOAT saga.
First of all, there are some great perks to being on the BOAT. Just look at how nicely my laundry came back!
It certainly never looks that nice when I do it! Speaking of which, fun story!! The day before the last day I was on the boat, I missed the deadline to put my laundry outside the door and have it picked up. Wanting to have clean pants to wear home on the plane (I sat in some mud on deck), I took my bag of dirty laundry downstairs, thinking I could toss it in with the rest and things would continue as usual. Your laundry bag has your room number on it, which is how you get your things back.
Anyway, it turns out that things weren't that simple. There was no bin and I ran into a terrible language barrier with the older gentleman who ruled the laundry room with an iron laundry spatula. I did a terrible job communicating my needs and he somehow got the idea that I didn't know how to do laundry. Just to be 100% clear before this next part, I definitely know how to do laundry. The older vaguely Thai looking man very patiently showed me how to do laundry, which I sort of smiled and nodded my way through because I couldn't really figure out how to communicate anything that would stop that train, and then asked me how I had managed to get a husband without knowing how to do laundry (!!!!!!!). I..... did not try to explain about feminism, but did explain that I don't have a husband. To which he nodded knowingly and seemed to think that he had perhaps done me one of life's greatest favors. Oh goodness.
It turns out that being the only girl on the BOAT does have advantages though, here is a picture of the two beds in my room. Since I was the only girl on a ship with about 100 people, someone started calling me the 1%, and then someone else started saying things like "The 1% has twice as many beds as the rest of us."
Below is a picture of how one is supposed to put on a life jacket, as handily illustrated by the 1980's. That is a lady in very heinous mom jeans in those pictures in case you were having any doubts.
My room had a television in it, which is not that entertaining. I am only showing it to you to illustrate that it did not have any buttons. There were no buttons on the side.
You had to operate it with these remotes, illustrated below.
Which is too bad, because batteries were not included.
Also, for some reason, which was never quite explained to me properly, instead of having regular power adaptors, there were these honking things plugged into nearly all of the outlets. They reminded me of mechatronics lab. No one I was on the ship with had any thoughts that sounded remotely legitimate other than "we picked them up for bargain basement prices while we were getting the life jacket instructions from the '80s using our time machine." One on the deck, which I didn't get a picture of, was a brand called "Minwah," so there's something!
Who said that a bunch of dudes can't be clean! They had these little booties at all of the entrances so that you didn't track muck from the deck inside the accommodations. My mom needs some of those inside of our house. That would resolve much discord.
Here is a picture of my door. My room number was 355. It was good to be home :)
The stairs to nowhere were one of my favorite deck features of the ship. They were located next to the graveyard of disused office furniture, which was unfortunately also the location of what in highschool we used to call "smoker's corner." Still, Those are some decent stairs that don't go anywhere.
Finally, here is an idyllic offshore sunset picture, just like I promised!! Isn't it pretty!!!
