Author: Noé
Date: 23th March 2020
Geographical Position: On our way to the Bay of Biscay
Nautical Position: 40´37.5 N/ 022´22.5W
Etmal: All in all: 11160

As you might have thought, after 5 ½ months on board, we had some really good conversations and discussions in our watches, in the rainforest of Costa Rica, while eating etc…..

Sometimes you’ve already forgotten about them the day after, but some are still stuck in my head. I think we’ve all learned a lot, and those conversations are a big point in our development.

So let’s start…

1. Character change

A really common thing we talk about is how easily a character can change. We are influenced by the whole world around us and everything we do in life will stay with us, like glue on paper.

Certain things form our character and we experienced that quite a lot on board. It’s not just the character, it’s also our way of acting next to different individuals. It’s really crazy. Our thoughts on that:

• Our parents and friends
  I think we all got formed in some ways. I mean, most of us want to have the same job as our parents or have similar interests. That’s because thy were shown to us from the beginning. If we’d never practiced that one hobby our parents made us do, we would have nothing to do with it now, we maybe would have found other interests.
  
• Books, movies etc.
  Especially when we were younger and read a book, we wanted to do the same as the main character: experiencing an adventure, being a little witch or be able to fly. But sometimes you also wanted to have some of the person’s character traits, maybe be a little more confident or whatever. The same applies to movies. That’s why with every book or movie we watch or read, we’re changing a bit and adapt certain parts of it to our lives.
  
• In different groups
  If you start hanging out with a new peer group, you also start to behave differently. That’s because you want to be accepted, or maybe because this group matches your own character. But you act differently around friends, parents, teachers…

2. Clothes to (not) wear in school

I think that’s a really hard one. We had a really long conversation in the mess about it.

Jogging pants A no-go?

For real, I think you should try to be dressed a little more formal in school, but I understand that you want to wear something comfy. Also, sometimes it’s a fashion thing. I mean some joggers are not made to hang out in them, they have an awesome design that you want to show.

I understand both sides, and I think teachers should tolerate your clothing/style choice. At the end of the day, we’re all children finding our way to be ourselves and be happy with it. Also, you can’t always express your own style because of society, but I think I don’t need to explain that one.

3. Feminism

We did not find a solution about that one in our group yet, because everybody has a different opinion. I’m going to tell you what I think: Yes, we still need feminism in this world, some countries are still really old- fashioned, but Germany is already really open minded.

It’s more about some individuals that can’t realize that women should have the same rights as men, and are not there to stay in the kitchen and with the kids the whole time.

But also, some people are overreacting on this subject. At the end of the day, if you would give a girl and boy the same toys, the girl would still take the pink barbie and the boy the exciting car.

Also, the boy’s body is stronger than the girl’s. (Mostly but not always, not to forget!)But that’s a really complicated subject, and I haven’t come to a final conclusion yet and am always more than happy when I hear other views on that.

4. The perfect behavior

Why does everybody behave so differently, why are some behaviors without respect or even cheeky? I think at home we all have similar things that are valued as good or bad.

I mean, our knife is always on the right side and our fork on the left. We also need to put our shoes off at home etc. (not everybody)

But it also depends on the country. While in Germany it’s OK to put a sushi stick in the rice, in Asia that’s a sign of death. While we are not “allowed” to point with our finger at somebody, in Asia you have the same meaning when it comes to chop sticks.

Also, in some countries, a chef likes to see that somebody ate everything on their plate, because that gives him the sign that it was a delicious meal. In other countries it’s nice if you leave a rest on your plate, because the cook knows that he made enough for everybody then.

So, you see, every family and every country have their own “perfect behavior”.

5. Is it all a game?

Ok, firstly I need to say, I didn’t really understand that conversation, so I’m just telling you a little about that. Some of us think that our whole world, that all of us could be part of a computer game.

What if? There were a lot of arguments going around during lunch, but I don’t know what to think about that one.

6. Future

After we’ve heard about the Corona-Virus, we all started thinking about the future of our planet. I mean, the whole economy will collapse after that virus is over – isn’t that the perfect moment to show the world we need to change something?

Many people will realize that we need to take care after Corona. I mean look at Venice. The water became clear, after there were no ships anymore. Dolphins came back to many coasts and the air/sky in China went clear and fresh.

And that after such a short time. But yeah, we know that it sounds easier than it is, but still that was a theme we all had a really similar way of thinking and we all agreed on it.

7. Overfishing

In the last couple of days we all prepared for a big discussion on overfishing for the German/ Biology project. We needed to find a solution and agreements on how to save fish and not keep on fishing until extinction.

Therefore, we all had to take on different roles like a politician or a scientist, for example.

So we had pro and contra positions and started a big discussion (there were about 6-7 people in a group, all with different roles). That was really a lot of fun, even though my group found no agreement at all.

I would love to write more about that, but then this daily report would become really long.

8. Acceptance

Why is there so much judging going on? Why does everybody have prejudices towards each other?

That were questions we were thinking about. We came to the answer that people don’t like differences, or things they don’t know anything about. But luckily, this world gets better every day. But also, on this ship we had some judging etc. going on at the beginning and after we started knowing each other, they disappeared.

So that was our solution → Showing our life and talking about different hobbies and interests.

But yes, that was a solution on board, worldwide that’s a lot harder. But I think our generation is already doing big steps into the right direction.

That’s already it, of course we had many more interesting subjects, but I think we’ll tell you everything back home personally. I just wanted to give you a little look into our deep talks.

Many greets and kisses go out to my family, Love Love Love, your Noé.