Day 88 – Sea & Seagulls

Nov 23rd

Tropic Birds Attack
After lunch, I spent some time tanning on the seventh deck. While I was leisurely reading about anorexia for my psych of food class, Ginnie (Goldie’s roommate) and friends joined me. We were sitting there relaxing, enjoying the sunshine, when all of a sudden an injured (and very large) white tropicbird flaps down from a higher perch. Ginnie and I jump up just in time for it to fall between our two lounge chairs. A life long learner then proceed to get the bird a piece of bread with peanut butter and a glass of water. Of course, the bird wasn’t used to eating sandwiches and didn’t touch it. Later, Ed Sobey, the on board nature specialist, came by to ID the bird and make sure it was well cared for. The Dean’s Memo the next day highlighted this whole event:
“A Red-tailed Tropicbird landed on the ship Sunday. This beautiful bird is predominately white with a black eye patch and long red tail. Several have followed the ship in recent days (in addition to the large, dark Petrels that have been around). To prevent further injury to the Tropicbird it was moved to a sheltered area in the hope that it would recover and fly off when ready. It did so this morning ☺”
After this traumatic incident (and sadly the most exciting thing that happened all day), I headed inside to recover during sociology.

Location
Currently, we are passing what was the world’s largest marine reserve, the Northwest Hawaiian National Monument. By far the largest US national park, this body of water, coral reefs, and islands contains 70% of the nation’s tropical coral reefs, unspoiled home of the endangered Monk Seal, and nesting homes for millions of sea birds. When President Bush signed this monument into existence it doubled the US National Park system. Recently this reserve was dethroned as the world’s largest by a much larger park in the South Pacific by the nation of Kiribati. (Assholes.)

Divided We Fall
After finishing some work, Dan and I headed to the Union to watch “Divided We Fall,” a documentary made by a 20 year old Stanford student about the anti-turban sentiments following September 11th. It was incredibly long and definitely opened my eyes to the utter stupidity of many Americans, but also just a nice way to avoid doing any more homework.

Highs and Lows
My “high” was eating Julie’s cookies (since she gets about 5 fresh ones a day from the kitchen staff member that has a crush on her). My “low” was finding out there is an epidemic of Mac’s crashing (apparently, the vibrations of the ship are destroying hard drives).

RIP: Britney Brit’s MacBook (November 23rd, 2008 at 23:16PM)