SWY16 - A normal day on the ship

It is hard to describe a “normal” day on this ship, since there are a lot of special occasions and a very varied program. But this short article will try to describe shortly the outline of a normal day.

You should wake up around 0730 by the morning call made by group of the day. These calls are made every morning and normally last for around five minutes and include some messages and some (very loud and annoying) music.

Breakfast – The most important meal of the day! You can start your day with having hot rice and beef, but there is also some cold food. There is no such thing as sitting by the window of the dining hall and watching the ocean and enjoying a relaxing cup of tea before you start the day. As the weeks pass by, it gets harder and harder to get up in time for breakfast for many people.

Morning Assembly – It is the first and sometimes only gathering of all the participants during the day. It normally starts with the national anthem, followed by an activity prepared by the Group of the day. This activity is supposed to be some sort of an energizer to wake people up. Then there sometimes is a short statement made by the group leader or one of the group members. At the end of the assembly there is often a lot of announcements made by the participants about various activities that will happen that day or sometime soon. This is the best way to let everyone know about your activities.

Activity period (before and after lunch) 1 & 2 – There are many things that go on in the ship. During the 16th programme we had two periods during the day for activities. There are many things that are put into these periods of 3 hours. We had group sessions (activities with your group), seminars (seminars held by advisers and professors on different topics), discussions (Discussions prepared by discussion committee on various issues such as the UN, terrorism, globalisation and happiness.) and sports and recreation. National presentations are also done in these periods. National presentations are one of the highlights where each country gets to present what they feel is representative for their country. There are a lot of dances, music and visual effects as well which makes it a very nice cultural event.

Lunch – sometimes you will feel like you just finished breakfast and go straight to lunch, and then straight to dinner. But sometimes you will also find yourself blessed by the dishes of hot food such as squid, beef, mutton, mutton with corn, chicken, mutton, some more beef and maybe some Miso and mutton soup. more you are encouraged to seat your self by the window and maybe you'll see some flying fishes, dolphins or maybe even sea hippopotami.

Group meeting – Japanese people love meetings and this seems to be one of them, but it is actually quite nice to have them for half an hour a day. You get some important information, and also have a great opportunity to get to know some other people from different countries.

Dinner - Just as breakfast and lunch, you might feel that this meal is just here to get you fatter, but it is actually very nice. This is one of the great opportunities to get to know different people and cultures.

Evening – The evenings are normally filled with activities. To mention a few: parties, movie screening, voluntary activities, parties, discussions, watching the stars, playing games, sleeping, going to the grand bath, having meetings and what ever you want to do really. Enjoy the evenings and sleep when you get home is the advice from all the Norwegians.

Free time – This is the time to do what ever you want amazingly enough! There are a lot of activities made by the participants. Everything from martial arts, latin dance, to playing the Japanese harp is offered. Think of activities you want to do before going on the ship. This is also the time to play football, basketball and other sports with your friends.

There are also holidays, visits to ports of calls etc. these are special occasions that have no or already planned programme.

Finn Myrstad