Location: Underway to St. Helena
So today, we finally passed over the prime meridian at around 3:30 a.m.! I am pleased to announce that this monumental event was greeted with as much enthusiasm as the rather tired team on watch (which happened to be mine) could muster, consisting of a few rather quiet hoorays and some scattered clapping. We aren’t morning people.
As the distance between Saint Helena and us shrinks, our excitement grows. It’s been nearly eight days since we last saw any land whatsoever, and while being under passage has really grown on us all, it will probably be quite nice to be able to have our feet on solid ground for a while. For lunch today, we had a lovely noodle dish, followed by cleanup and classes as usual. Since we only had one class, though, Britt decided to take a moment and explain to us how, from day 45 on, we will be creating our own menus for the days that we are head chef. This created quite a bit of excitement, as it meant we could make anything we wanted for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, within reason, of course. I’ve seen several people already begin to lay out their menus for the days that they’re chef, and I myself am quite excited to see what everyone comes up with! Following this, Emma delivered a very interesting lecture on seabirds, and then showers were had by all. Afterward, we found ourselves with a good chunk of free time and wandered off to finish our homework, watch movies, nap, or entertain ourselves in whatever way we saw fit. Today’s dinner was a tasty chicken casserole, and as always, it was preceded by a squeeze question. “What is your weirdest talent?” was today’s. During this time, we discovered that, among other things, Jia Her could twist his arm around twice over so his palm is facing down, Helen could stick her shoulder blades out ridiculously far, Marina could make a goat sound that’s absolutely perfect, and Ben is Batman. Cleanup from dinner is occurring as I type this, and I imagine pretty soon everyone will be trailing off to bed. It’s been a great day, and I look forward to the days ahead.