The Time Traveler's Life (Delayed)

Hello hello after so long! FYI our email was messed up on the ship for a while so I couldn't blog.  I am about to update so many times since I just got back from Japan! AMAZING! So check more over the next two days before China.

Here is a blog I wrote when we crossed the international dateline about a week and a half ago!

Hope you're still reading! Love!

...


 I have officially reached my biggest dream...time traveling.
 I mean honestly, it's time traveling, teleportation, and then having a moderated temperature bubble (Caitlin remind John endlessly).

  So I did it-Success! But I kind of cheated by crossing the international dateline. The craziest concept ever.  We crossed it and then we lost a day-we just lost it-left it somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

  The international dateline is a concept we are all familiar with but when you think about it you can not make sense of it.  Everyone on our ship has been talking about it for weeks-mostly because Don, our global studies prof, made a contest for a fifty dollar gift certificate to the school store to whoever could best define the international dateline.  So last night we held the contest in the union and discussed about ten different ways the international dateline might make sense.  Singing it like Lady Gaga, rapping it like the fresh prince, or even just a simple definition didn't do it.  Instead the best definition (or maybe just the most entertaining) was told by a kid named Zack and it was a story about the pain of loss and the joy of recovery.  Zack's story was as follows:

"This story has to do with two paths that never cross.  One path begins on a ship in the Pacific Ocean heading west. The other path is that of a creature called an anole (which Zack explained he didn't know exactly what an anole was but most importantly it has a tail).  This anole's name was Carl and he lived in Peru with his tail.  Both the ship and Carl have been going on about their lives normally when all of a sudden down in Peru Carl is walking across the street, gets hit by a car, and tragically loses his tail! Coincidentally the same day the ship is crossing the international dateline and loses a day!  So both Carl and the ship are sad that they have lost a part of their lives.  But, as the ship keeps moving westward on its path it gains an hour every 15 degrees and with each hour it starts to feel a little better.  Luckily for Carl, his tail has the capability of growing back slowly, 1/24 at a time.  And as time passes Carl's tail grows back to its full length and the ship goes entirely around the world and gains all of its twenty four hours back.  So with the passage of time everyone lives happily ever after."

 Did that make sense? Probably not.  It simply does not make sense that just because we are going west means we should lose a day entirely.  However I have come to the conclusion that it is for pure convenience.  On the ship we are gaining an hour every 15 degrees due to the fact that the Earth is spinning and thus time zones exist and we are selfishly taking 25 hour days.  So if we had continued to take an hour to stay on track with the countries we are visiting we would be 24 hours ahead of everyone else when we docked in Ft. Lauderdale in May.  So in order to stay in the same world as everyone else we must trade in our day somewhere for all the hours we're stealing.  So here it is.  And February 3, 2010 will never exist for me.

  If it were up to me I would always live in another world but instead I am now about seventeen hours ahead of east coast time (sixteen hours tomorrow).  Weeeeeiiiiiirrrrrddddd.  But at least I know what the future looks like. Muahahaha.