Sea OlympicsWednesday, February 02, 2011

Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Every day at 4:30 PM our life longer group meets. Monday we were told that we were going to be taking part in the SAS Olympics on Thursday. The students are made up of various seas and compete against each other. The faculty and staff have their own group too. We will be competing against the other seas and have named ourselves the “Sea Salts”. We have made a couple of banners. One says,

Sea Salts Hear Them
The Comic Relief Team Snore

Another says: Don’t mess with the Sea Salts
Age ain’t nothing but a number kiddo
Sea Salts Rule


Dave and brother, Dick along with others are going to be involved in the synchronized swimming group. I went to their practice this morning to take pictures and what a riot it was. One man in his 80’s was wearing his white jockey shorts for a swimsuit. We asked all from the team to wear those but he was the only one who had any so the others wore real bathing suits. Laura and Phyllis are going to be in the tug of war group along with some other ladies (one using a cane and in her 80’s). They have been instructed to let go of the rope as soon as the competition starts pulling. I have been making pompoms out of white plastic laundry bags turned inside out and cut into strips today to cheer our teams on. One of the ladies made friends with housekeeping and got an old white sheet to cut into strips for us to use as sweat bands for our heads and wrists. You can see we need to use our imaginations. Carol Bender is going to be playing volleyball with another woman from our group. One man is playing basketball (horse). A few men are playing crab soccer and dodge ball. Some of us will be in relay races – dress up like a crew member, carry a ping pong ball in a spoon, make a tower out of playing cards, wheel barrel race, three legged race, hula hoop contest, trivia contest, etc. Tonight will be the opening ceremonies. The lifelong learners will march into the union together singing our song and doing our cheers and carrying our banner and pompoms. We are lucky to have some very talented and clever lifelong learners in our group to get us organized.

Thursday, February 3, 2011
Last night we had the Olympic opening ceremonies and it was a riot. It is amazing what all of these groups of seas came up with. Each sea has its own color Mediterranean Sea – green, Red Sea – red, Yellow Sea – yellow, Baltic Sea – light blue, Bering Sea – purple, Arabian Sea – black, Caribbean Sea – orange, and Aegean Sea – royal blue. All teams dressed in their color when they entered as a group in the union singing and cheering their teams on. I can’t believe the enthusiasm these kids generated for their different seas in just a day and a half. The SAS store must have done some really good business the past few days. Our group wore white and some of us wore our shirts turned inside out so no logos were showing.

Once everyone entered the union each sea group was invited up front to show off their banner. You can’t imagine the noise with all the cheering going on. We were all judged on our banners and then on our cheers for each group.








The sea salts sang:

My bonnie new friends on the ocean
Are traveling to many new lands
Of classes and food there is plenty.
The students and teachers are grand

Bring on! Bring on!
Sights and adventures on land and sea!
Sing on! Sing on!
Life learner “Sea Salts” are we!

Are we winners?
Well I guess!
Sea Salts! Sea Salts!
Yes! Yes! Yes!

After singing this song, some of our group got up and did some dancing to a Michael Jackson song with Boyd (80 year old man) dancing around with a silver sequined glove on one hand holding a flashlight in the air. Then six people from our group got on the floor and formed a pyramid. Our group tied for 1st place. The Olympics games begin at 1 o’clock today and I will be out taking lots of pictures and will be participating in the spoon race. I will update this when the events are over.

We have been in the Atlantic for quite a few days now but it doesn’t seem too long. We have been so busy and the seas have been quite calm. But today we woke up to rain so some Olympic e events were changed or canceled. Dodge ball was replaced with musical chairs and volleyball was replaced with balloon volleyball that could be played inside. However, by the time these events were to take place the weather cleared and we went back to the first schedule. The synchronized swimming was the best and I think Linda will post a picture or two to the blog so you can see what it was about. Wish I knew how to load pictures into this document. It was a hoot! All of the events were fun to watch or participate in and everyone had a good time. The opening ceremonies started at 9:00 PM last night and when they were over we turned our clocks ahead one hour so it was midnight before we got to bed. We were up early this morning so Dave could practice with the synchronized swimming team so we are tired tonight. Closing ceremonies start at 8:00 PM tonight. I know the Sea Salts didn’t do too well overall. The first prize for the Olympics is to get off the ship first in San Diego and all of the students must really want that prize because they sure worked hard for it. We sure don’t need outside entertainment on this ship. We are very good at making our own. Two more days until Ghana.