to wrap up

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To finnish up with what I was saying before hand:
-we all spent the morning opening gifts and playing chrismas games, all very surrial to be celabration in the hot weather!
-then we all got dressed up (as best as we could on the boat) and had a really lovely chrismas dinner, katie and jill pulled out all the stops and some how found a turky somewere? and jordan a tav, the bosuns, put everything together, we didnt see them for most of the day.
-Jose, one of the first mates, had made a slide show of the whole leg and we sat around for 45mins reminising all the good times.
-boxing day on the ship was definatly the most entertaining one I've ever had. instead of doing the usual eating leftovers and being sad thats chrismas is over we got into our watch groups and had 'salts olypics' which involved many skill testing activitys (dory racing, ancore diving (deepest was 65 feet free dive!), the human plane (getting the most air while being draged behind the zody), syncronized diving and rope swing flipping), I some how lost a chunk of my finger at some point but its healed back now. After we were all spent and colapsed on deck we found out that our watch won (of course) and had our own celibration!

-after boxing day we all cameback to Madang and spent one more day with eachother, the next morning at 5am everyone leaving packed up there stuff and headed to the airport. It was very emotional to have to say goodbye to everyone and a few tears were shead.
-that day all the girls who were staying on to next leg suffled over to the Madang resort hotel to spend a relaxing 3days away from the boat, mostly not moving from our room, recoperating and trying to heal our wounds.

-after the rest days were up we head back to the boat to welcome to new tranies aborde they all fit in with the boat comunity quite quickly, and I've made some really good friends so far!
-we left port a few days after everyone was settled and immidiatly hit strong trade winds which fluctuated a little bit throughout the 5 day sail
-we crossed the eqator near the end of the passage and got 'inisiated...' it involved alot of getting randon boat food (new and very old) thrown at us then having to face eaither the barber, or some sort of compitition involving more food and slop. afterwards jose/neptun declared us greenbacks and marked us with a green hand print (i was picking flour out of my hair for days after wards...)

-we hit the micronisian islands a few days later, and pulled up to a small island called Truk (still not intirely sure how to pronounce it...) and spent some time exploring, snorkiling and stocking up on stash, not to much to report from here.
-spent 4days sailing to Guam, didnt feel to well, a combo of sea sickness and a cold that wouldnt leave for 3weeks...

I will finish up all the other happenings once i reach China (hopefully in no more that 4days), hope to speak to you all agin soon.
Love Tiana

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