Subject: A typical day at sea
Date: E-mail sent October 3, 2005 11:30 PM from the middle of the Indian Ocean
Today is our first full day in the Indian Ocean, having left Cape Town, South Africa last night. It's 4:28 p.m. in Boston, but it's 10:28 p.m. here on the ship and I'm just getting ready to get to bed. This will be a very early night for me (at home I'd consider this a late night). I'm still trying to get caught up on my site and e-mail updates, but since most days of this voyage are spent at sea, I thought it would be appropriate to tell you about my typical day aboard our ship, the MV Explorer.
The students arrived on the ship on Tuesday, August 30, and we set sail that night. It didn't take long to settle into a regular schedule. My typical day is getting up and trying to get to breakfast before 8:00. I have 4 alarm clocks in my room and still have trouble getting up because there is no light in my room, thus I have no sense of time. I slept through a few meetings during orientation and had to buy an LCD clock in Nassau and have my friend Beth call me every morning she doesn't see me at breakfast. There are two dining rooms on the ship, but I always eat in the one that is connected to the outside deck. I think I can count the number of meals I've eaten inside since August 26 on one hand. I always have to make sure I'm carrying my sunglasses and a hat or bandanna to keep my hair out of my mouth during the wonderful meals outside. The food is actually pretty good this voyage (lots of fish), and the waiters are very friendly and learned that I like juice at every meal, so they take very good care of me.
The computer lab is always open, but we staff it from 0800-2300 (yes, we use military time around here). I have 6 work-study students who are in there most of the time, but my office hours are from 0800-0915 every day, so if people have really big problems that the work-study students can't help out with, they know to find me first thing in the morning. This is also when the lab is the quietest, so there's some hope of getting some of my paperwork done.
All but 3 or 4 days that we're on the ship are class days. Our "weekends" are when we're in port. The class days are split up into A days and B days, with half the classes on A days and the other half on B days. On A days I'm the only one in the lab in the morning, but on B days I have a work-study student to help me out.
By the way, I love my work-study students. I think they're some of the best students on the ship. None of them had any computer experience before this, but they've really stepped up to the plate and I'm getting some great managing experience. I'm constantly feeling guilty that I'm not doing enough for them and not giving them enough guidance, but it's hard when I'm pulled in many different directions. I've had to learn just to trust them to do their job and then when I need to connect with all of them, buy smoothies for our meeting so I look like a really great boss :)
From 0920-1035 every day the entire shipboard community comes together for Global Studies class where we mostly learn about the countries we're visiting. We learn about the culture, politics, music, food, history, etc. I was really looking forward to this class, but unfortunately I'm usually so swamped with paperwork that I work on during this time, that I'm not able to pay much attention. Hopefully that trend will change. After Global Studies I go and meet with the system manager who is a member of the crew. Together we have to deal with any Internet account issues (which is what most of my paperwork is about) and deal with any other computer issues that passengers may be having.
If I'm lucky, I finish with that meeting by 11:45 and then go to pick up Beth for lunch. The late morning class period ends at 11:55, so if we don't get to lunch before then we have a long line to wait in. Lunch is the nicest part of the day. It's a chance to sit out in the warm sunshine (or sometimes cool overcast weather - but still outside) and be with all of my friends. The staff (and even some of the faculty) are all very good friends and we've all learned to eat in the same dining room so we get to catch up during meals.
My friend Molly Menschel is a student on the voyage, but most of the staff considers her one of us. She'll usually come hang out and at least sit with Beth and me at lunch while she waits for the food line to die down. There's potentially a lot of waiting in line on Semester at Sea. It's nice to have one familiar face from home to see around the ship.
Ideally the time between lunch and dinner is the time I have to myself to get things done. Unfortunately I've only had one or two ideal days. One I spent sleeping by the pool, the other I spent sleeping in my cabin because there's so much activity and excitement around the ship that there's not much time to sleep. Usually, I check in with the computer lab and the second I step in there, I have a line of people waiting for me to fix their computer. They don't usually like my solution of "buy a Mac - they work," but fortunately it's not my responsibility to fix everyone's personal computer. My main duty is just to assist people getting connected to the ship's network. I usually head to dinner around 18:00 or 18:30. It's not usually difficult to find at least one table of friends to sit with whenever I decide to eat. Sometimes we have family dinners. That's right, I have a family on the ship. There is an adopt-a-family program that any interested students can participate with so they have an adult to talk to and be close to on the ship. Faculty, staff, and adult passengers get to sign up to be moms, dads, and grandparents. I see a lot of students in the computer lab, but I don't really have a chance to meet them, so I decided to become a mom so I could meet more students. I was assigned 4 students and then decided that I didn't want to be a single mom, so I combined families with my friend David. The night we had our first family dinner, all 8 of our children showed up and we even got one more that wanted to be adopted, so we're a family of 11. We have assigned birthdays to everyone and David and I get a Mother's Day and Father's Day. Who said you can only play house as a kid! Of course I'm still getting to know all of my kids, but it's been great to have 9 more people around the ship that I know.
Once 20:00 rolls around, there is so much going on that it's hard to feel like you're not missing out on something. From 20:00 to 21:00 we often have community college where someone teaches a session on anything that they think the shipboard community would be interested in. I've only taught one so far on setting up your computer to the network, but I'm hoping to teach a few more on blogging and a Make Your Own Website 101. I almost always go to community college because there are some amazing people on this ship with great things to share. Chris the photographer gave a few sessions on digital photography and the ethics of travel photography, my friends in the Global Nomads Group (who I will definitely have to talk more about later) gave presentations on projects they've done in Rwanda, Iraq, and Sudan where they do video conferencing to bring together high school students in these countries with students in the US. These were very moving presentations. We also had a session on where the garbage on the ship goes. It was quite interesting to hear how sophisticated all of the technology behind the scenes on the ship is. It has also made me much more aware of the water I use especially in port because it is very expensive to buy and dispose of water when we're in port.
The two days before we get into port we have pre-port sessions instead of community college. Our first pre-port is a cultural pre-port where the inter-port lecturer and student (who are only on the ship for the leg before we get to their country) stand up and tell us all about the food, culture, and other highlights of their country and the port city in particular. The next night is our logistical pre-port where the field office tells us about the trips, emergency phone numbers, and we always get some kind of a medical briefing.
The social time on the ship is from 2100-2300. Almost every other night a group of students teaches salsa, samba, and meringue lessons. I usually go to those, but there are twice as many women on the ship as men, so the women's side gets a little crowded. It would be great to be a guy on this ship! Many nights the students have pub night where they are allowed to drink alcohol. The alcohol is pretty well monitored and contained, but it's a big deal to the students when they get to drink. They have to buy tickets ahead of time, and those lines can get very very long. If we're not participating in other activities, the staff usually goes up to the faculty/staff lounge which we now call the "Staffulty Lounge," thanks to a slip of the tongue that I made while I was giving an all faculty/staff training session during our pre-voyage sessions. They sell alcohol up there every night, so that's a main draw to most people. It's a different atmosphere for me to get used to. On my birthday I had professors offering to buy me drinks right and left, but they stopped offering when I'd only order sparkling water.
A side note - The crew on the ship is amazing. They take such great care of us. I am amazed at how many crewmembers know my name and what I do. I'm doing well to remember faces, and they remember not only my name, but what I want to drink, where I work, what office supplies I recently ordered, any work requests I've put in, and much more. I think they must have learned everyone's name the first few days of orientation when we were wearing nametags. Each and every nook and cranny on this ship is cared for by this crew. They spend hours polishing the brass diamonds on the floor, wiping down railings, cleaning windows, polishing ceiling tiles, making beds (sometimes 2 or 3 times a day). If I take a nap in the middle of the day my steward James will make my bed again when he comes around for his evening rotation. If I haven't messed up my bed since he made it in the morning, he'll turn down the corner for me.
Most of the staff is usually up in the Staffulty Lounge at least by 2200, and we tend to leave around 2330 or midnight when they turn on the lights and abruptly end our chill time. It's probably a good thing because otherwise we'd never sleep. I rarely get to bed before 1:00 and am always up before 8:00 (although I'd like to be up at 6:30). There is just so much going on around here that I don't want to miss out on one second of the excitement.
I'll write another update soon about Neptune Day and some other fun events we have on the ship.
stay tuned...
-Amy