Day 38. This is our life.

I think a certain realization has set over the ship in the past few days since leaving Cape Town; it’s certainly set over me. It’s kind of a wake-up call as to where we are, and what we’re doing.

Cape Town, for all intensive purposes, was our last familiarity for awhile. Mauritius, India, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan…these are different places. The people look different, their languages are different, and getting around is going to get harder, not easier.

Its great, of course. We all know that, how lucky we are to have just rounded the Cape of Good Hope…but still, it’s a bit unnerving. While we’ve been technically committed since pulling out of Nassau, there was something familiar about being only 2, 3, 5, hours ahead of the US…something reassuring about being on the same Ocean. Tonight, we advance another hour on our clocks, and will be EST + 10 hours; an unfathomable amount to me…especially because I’ve lived through each of those time changes, I didn’t just get off a jet 10 hours ahead.

If there was a point in the voyage that the gravity of the trip suddenly fell on me, it’s now…sailing northeast towards Mauritius, towards the equator, and further yet from home.

It’s incredible. It’s scary…and it’s ours to accept.

I think I’ve said it before in the blog that people are amazing in their ability to adapt. We must remind ourselves that we’re on a ship sailing the globe…because living here every day makes it all very commonplace and mundane. “There’s dolphins out the port side,”is something you may hear…and yet, it’s spoken with as much oomph as, “I’ll have a grilled cheese sandwich, please.”It’s scary how we can adapt to this life…

Yesterday we had a beautiful sight…the southern coast of Africa out the left side of the ship for a few hours before we turned northeast towards Madagascar. It looked so exotic, so beautiful, so un-touched…just a few hundred yards away. I tried to picture myself sitting on that beach, watching a huge ship pass by…what would I be thinking?

…Anyway, enough thoughtfulness for one evening. Global Studies went well, and everybody’s excited about our last day of class tomorrow before Mauritius.

Love from the Indian,

Greg.