Day 4 (3rd of October)

Despite not having to change our clocks it was still an ordeal to get up to make our way down for 8.00a.m., especially when we were feeling a bit nauseous and lacking in appetite. Breakfast was good though- ‘eggs to order’, which was egg with onions, spring onions, leeks, peppers and tomato. We also helped ourselves to some Nesquick (when at sea…), pumpernickel and bread rolls with Thuringer Art Pflaumenmus. Jenny was not having a lucky morning, not only did she manage to spill the orange juice all over the tablecloth, but the tomato ketchup down her front too! She had properly acquired my cold now too and with an increasingly rolling ship we decided against standing at the stern, but spent the day sorting pictures, reading, DVD watching and playing ping-pong twice. Table tennis when your body can’t really work out where it is even when you’re standing still is an interesting experience. We did briefly make it outside just long enough to feel it was still cold. With decreased visibility and the waves breaking in white crests spotting a whale would have been pretty tricky, so we didn’t really try. Lunch was baked potato with a cream cheese and spring onion filling, with the leafy green pak choi type vegetable, runner beans, onion and carrot. For dessert we shared one of our slices of very sweet American chocolate cake with an oreo on the top. The officers and engineers are not the greatest of fans of this type of cake and it gets left in their recreation for some days before it’s eaten, because according to the chief engineer ‘no one can eat this shit’. In the evening we had to walk upwards along the corridor to the mess room and had to be careful not to fill too much juice into our glasses. Once more we had green rice and alongside it tofu, cabbage, carrot, red/green pepper and cauliflower.