i guess it's blog time.  i feel like 5 AM is a good time to write my first entry.  also on semester at sea is a good time to do it too.  we're halfway through the voyage and at this point i think i overestimated how interested i actually was in learning about other cultures.  either that or i am just tired of walking around in countries interacting with people.  it's very stressful to do that, you know, especially when you don't speak their language and you are an introvert.  i really just don't want to get off the boat at all in india, but i feel a lot of pressure from my family to have the absolute most amazing time ever and if i don't enjoy it as much as they want me to then they're going to be disappointed or something.  they keep telling me to take lots of pictures and to tell them about things that have happened so far but i don't want to.  i really just miss things and i want to eat doritos that aren't retarded-flavored and go to fast food places and play rock band and have the internet back.

i made some friends.  i think about six of them... we were one of the cliques that formed when the cliques started coalescing about a week into the voyage.  but i don't think they like me anymore and i don't think they like each other anymore and i really really just fit in less and less every month with the traditional nerdy types.  although eric and i still get along well, which was a nice surprise.  this past week i made a few more friends and they are superior to the original SAS clique.  one of them is this girl that i noticed really early on but who i never talked to until recently, and when i noticed her, i thought, "i suspect that that girl is awesome." and it turns out she is.  it's pretty easy to judge people by their looks, i think.  you're not supposed to but it's usually pretty accurate, at least for me.  your subconscious processes massive amounts of data and finds statistical correlations without having to understand why the correlation is there, and then it translates the results into a "gut feeling" about a person, and informs your conscious mind what it has found out.  i think she's a lesbian or at least bi.  i tend to get along with lesbians.  and not gay men.  the group of gay guys on the ship is predictably repulsive.

i drank too much on my 21st birthday so hopefully that won't happen again.  apparently INTJs are prone to alcoholism so maybe i should watch that, heh.  i didn't throw up but i gagged and almost threw up twice, which was a little embarassing but honestly whatever because it doesn't really matter.  it wasn't very fun so i probably won't want to do it again.  i don't even really feel like trying pot anymore because it doesn't seem like it would be very fun either.  i also did a few other really stupid things.  i sprained my ankle really badly because i was climbing on this rock/cliff thing on table mountain in south africa that i wasn't supposed to be climbing on (it was off the trail) and a huge-ass rock that had about the same volume as my body came loose when i grabbed it and i fell and if it had fallen on me i could have died.  but the thing is, i knew it was horribly dangerous and i did it anyway, so i'm suspecting that i have self-destructive tendencies that i should watch for from now on so i don't end up killing myself.  or maybe it's not self-destructive, maybe it's more just like i want something interesting to happen so i take risks.

i don't want to go back to rochester after this is over, i really don't.  can't i just get a job at movie scene and share a shitty apartment with a friend and mooch off my parents?  the plan was that semester at sea would give me a break, a vacation, from all the hard work at rochester, and then i'd be able to go back refreshed.  but it's not working at all, because it's actually A) pretty boring and B) pretty stressful and C) reminding me constantly how bad i am at making friends.  i won't be able to tell my family any of this when i get back home and they ask how things were because i'd feel like i wasted a ton of their money and like i was being ungrateful and also just because i never open up to my family.

positive things to end the entry on a happy note!  um.  well i miss my rochester friends a little bit at this point, so that's a good sign.  oh my computer broke.  that's a bad thing so it doesn't belong in this section but i just thought of it.  eric says there is an 80% chance that my data is recoverable.  that data is pretty much the only thing i own that i care if i lose.  particularly my jpegs and such, and my music collection and a few movies.  um so more good things.  well this is just getting awkward because i'm trying to force it so i'll sign off now.  oh i lied i have another good thing.  mark bought me a copy of the pictures for sad children book, so i'm excited to get that when i get back home.