Chocolate Milk

        Our boat was trucking through a good amount of rain this morning. And chocolate milk. Wait, what?

        We entered the Amazon River last night to an announcement from Captain Jeremy and his European accent: “Good evening passengers. We will be entering the mouth of the Ah-mazon around ten ther-Tee pm toniyght, and I wahnTed to let yew know, thaT due to inclemehnt conditions, we are prepahring for some rough seas. If yew’ll please check that ahll of yohr pehrsonal belongin’s ahr secuhrely stowed away, it will save everyone the stress of things shifting in the night and cawsing distuhrbances. At this time, we will also be activating the stabohlizahrs. Thahnk Yew.” (That’s the best I can do imitating an accent on Microsoft word)

        It took all of 30 seconds for hallway doors to start opening. My roommate had already resigned herself to a night of no sleep. She marched up to the 7th deck with the rest of my classmates to see……. Nothing. Nothing happened. At all. The water was calm as anything. When she returned at 1:30 am, disappointed in how worked up she had gotten, I laughed, turned over, and drifted back to sleep.

        This morning she told me that everyone stood outside waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for something, anything to happen. Very anti-climactic. Seems to be a good let down though. I wasn’t really looking forward to the “rolling” our captain had talked about as nonchalantly as if they were serving potatoes for dinner again. (We’ve seen some form of potatoes at literally EVERY meal. Not kidding.)

        And when I woke up this morning and stepped on the deck to run, I first noticed it was pouring and humid. Then I noticed that our ship was moving smoothly through what looked like chocolate milk. Okay, okay, so the Amazon is really just as muddy and dirty and brown as you see in the pictures. Maybe even worse. But it’s better to think of it as chocolate milk. We’ll just pretend the random bugs the ship has seemed to acquire since it’s not-so-gripping birth into the largest river in the world are chocolate chips. For decoration only.