Alcohol or Bust

MTV did a season-long special on Semester at Sea a couple years ago. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard. It sounds like, from that program, it received the reputation of what one might call a “booze cruise”.

I signed up with this Semester at Sea program to take more interesting elective classes than the ones offered at Florida Tech, and of course, to travel the world. Others, it seems, have let their mommies and daddies pay to ship them away on a cruise for 4 months of the year, just so they can have the time of their lives. Time spent getting drunk, that is.

Cliques have been forming for a couple weeks now on the ship, and it seems like the most predominant one is the “popular crowd”. I kind of thought that role had vanished when we graduated high school. But these kids are from California, New Jersey, the boonies. They’ve either grown up around nightclubs, expensive jewelry, and mansions, or dirt roads and wide open corn fields. Either way, drinking was the main pastime.

The ship has for sale alcohol vouchers, $3.50 per drink, limit 2 for dinner and 3 on “pub night”. I originally thought pub night would happen once, if that, between each port. From what I read in the Voyager’s Handbook, I believe it stated three or four times throughout the semester. If I’m counting correctly, they reached their limit tonight, and it’s only been 2 weeks.

Before we ported in Brazil there was a pub night I was unaware of (then again, I never know when they are). One of the dean’s came up to me around 8:55 pm as I sat on the deck by the pool with my laptop, finishing up some homework. He handed me a paper that said no water bottles, bags, or personal belongings on the deck past 9 pm during pub night, along with some other information. I had to read it a couple times before I understood what was going on. They were kicking me and my laptop case off the deck, because they thought I was going to smuggle alcohol into my room. Sorry, I don’t even know what an alcohol voucher looks like.

I hear kids strategizing for the best way to get drunk. I guess their tolerance level is too high for three little cups of wine or three cans of beer to have an effect on them. “What if we save them all up and chug them as fast as we can?” Good idea. “We could all buy them and then take turns giving them all to one person to get drunk that night. Then the next pub night it can be someone else’s turn!” Getting warmer. “I have (something similar to vicodin?) medication we can mix with the alcohol so we will really feel it!” WINNER. I overheard another girl at lunch today- “I don’t understand why they don’t let us just drink what we want. They make more money anyways. They we could play drinking games and it wouldn’t be so lame.” I almost offered to throw her overboard. That would spice things up.

People are getting so desperate they are smuggling little bottles and big bottles on through security. In their underwear. I guess there is a panel in every room that opens with the help of a screwdriver, and this has become the stash-your-loot hole in the wall. One guy got suspiciously drunk on a non-pub night. They turned his room upside down, couldn’t find anything, and gave him 24 hours of docktime in Brazil, meaning he couldn’t get off when everyone else could. He missed his flight to Rio and paid more than his original alcohol purchase to reschedule his flight. Good thinker.

A friend of mine said her voyage was very different. People that drank were the outcasts on the ship. Long nights of uno, midnight soccer, and movies. Sounds good to me. I haven’t quite found people like me yet, ones who want to hang out the old fashioned way, without shameful stories to tell about “that one night”. I’ve found a few people who aren’t concerned with spending their money on booze, but they instead are obsessed with battling each other out for who can know more people, who can make more friends. I think they’ve ended up making more acquaintances who don’t actually remember their names. Whatever floats your boat. Or ship.
I’ll stay the same. Meet people as they come. Do my homework. I like quiet time anyways.  People packed “going out” clothes. I packed hiking clothes. And I’m happy with my decision. Because I know when I finally do make really good friends, they’ll stay really good friends. I have a lot of patience.

If I decide one day that I want to get fat, I’m going to do it by happily and constantly eating sweets. Confetti cake, brownies, chocolate pudding, ice cream. Alcohol requires special enzymes in your body that, when you drink, preoccupy their other duty of breaking down the fat from your dinner. The fat from your food gets shelved, or stored, until the alcohol has been processed. The definition of a beer gut.

I am happy here being me. I just hope that sometime along this voyage, I can meet someone else who is happy being like-me.

In other news, McCully Culkin is on our ship taking classes. And that's not a joke.